BROADCASTS.com

b"Anthony BoucherAnthony Boucher known as was the pen name of William Anthony Parker White and he was known at Tony. He was born in 1911 in Oakland California and died aged only 56 in Oakland of lung cancer. I guess he liked it there. \\xa0He graduated from Pasadena High in 1928 and went to the University of Southern California and did his masters at University of California, Berkely. Boucher is to rhyme with Voucher rather than the French bouche.\\xa0Boucher was close to his grandfather who had been a steel worker in Glasgow and got free passage to America after signing up to fight in the Civil War. He couldn\\u2019t have afforded the passage otherwise. It\\u2019s said that the grandfather who made a big impression on Boucher was a rake and a rogue.\\xa0He was a sickly child with asthma and other illnesses and this made him a voracious reader and later writer.\\xa0Boucher was a professional writer of fiction who wrote mystery novels, short stories, science fiction and radio dramas. His story Nine Times Nine was voted the best locked room master of all time. He edited anthologies of science fiction and was a translator from Spanish, being the first to translate Jorge Luis Borges (I must do one of his stories).\\xa0Boucher founded the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and edited it from 1949 to 1958.\\xa0 He was a friend and mentor of Philip K. Dick. In addition to other things he was a keen poker player, a sports fan and a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. He collected records of early operatic singers. Apparently he was a friend of the occultist Jack Parsons who also lived in PasadenaHis first story was published in 1927 in Weird Tales when he was 15. It was entitled \\u201cYe Good Olde Ghost Storie\\u201d.\\xa0They BiteThis story was suggested by many many people. I watched a couple of videos on how to do Western accents, but I think I have not succeeded very well and hope that doesn\\u2019t detract from the story.This is a classic folk horror story albeit set in the American West, though it references Sweeny Bean a Gaelic cannibal from Galloway.\\xa0 Boucher\\u2019s grandfather was from Scotland. The story is similar to Samantha Hick\\u2019s story: Back Along The Old Track, though I don\\u2019t think Sam\\u2019s story was consciously modelled on this. The similarity is in the trope. Also similar is Lovecraft\\u2019s Dreams In The Witch House.\\xa0It isn\\u2019t clear to me why Tallant is climbing the rocks all day or has come here at all. He makes notes of what he sees of the glider training school. Perhaps he is going to sell what he sees to the highest bidder \\u2013 some sort of freelance spy.Some of the characters I don\\u2019t get. The old man who warns Tallant and whose dog is killed by the Carker. The young man with the beard who is a stranger, the Flight Sergeant on the pinball machine and the construction worker being fleeced at poker. I don\\u2019t get those, apart from Boucher\\u2019s real life love of poker. He only needs one Warner and the bartender really.\\xa0 He is planning blackmail but I don\\u2019t get how the Carker story will help that.\\xa0I wasn\\u2019t surprised when he killed Morgan. I think the dream of him being a superman king narcissist type let me know he was not a bloody good bloke. But it is Morgan\\u2019s murder that leads to Tallant\\u2019s doom. It is his fiendish plan to attribute Morgan\\u2019s death the the Carkers that leads him inside their tumble down adobe. \\xa0 \\xa0It has an unreliable narrator. Remember Boucher was a mystery writer and the unreliable narrator became a staple after Agatha Christie. There is no hint that Tallant is a blackmailer. In a sense he is like the Crakers who have come to Oasis opportunistically in search of prey \\u2014\\xa0as has Morgan, a fellow blackmailer. There is a hint to Tallant\\u2019s shady pastSupport the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"