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| (Photo: Motoko Shimizu, treatment EC) |
What in Brown Jenkin's Name..?
A Demon and a Genie discuss the collapsed remains of mankind.From Dr. Armitage's Notes:
"Memory" is a brief 4-paragraph text piece written in a poetic-fantasy (Dunsanian) style. It describes vegetation-covered stone ruins lying in the valley of Nis, near the mysterious red river Than. There, the Demon of the Valley tells a moonbeam Genie that these ruins were built by a long-gone race called "Man". The Genie returns to the moon, as the Demon gazes intently on a nearby ape.
This tale has some interesting moments of irony, but seems to end on a pessimistic note. From a Lovecraft mythology standpoint, Nis is never visited again (although it is name-dropped in "The Lurking Fear"), but the idea of lunar creatures travelling by way of moonbeams returns in "The Moon-Bog". In fact, "Memory" could probably act as a good prologue to that story.Essential Saltes:
"And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands. And in trees that grow gigantic in crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure-vaults writhe poison serpents and scaly things without a name. Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank moss, and mighty were the walls from which they fell. For all time did their builders erect them, and in sooth they yet serve nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes his habitation."Read it here.
Follow'd by "Old Bugs".
