Episode 119: Behind the Cosmic Curtain: On Stanislaw Lem's 'The New Cosmogony,' with Meredith Michael

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 10:30:00 -0400

Over the last several centuries, there has been one thing on which science and religion have generally agreed, and that is the fixity of the laws under which the universe came to be. At the moment of the Big Bang or the dawn of the First Day, the underlying principles that govern reality were already set, and they have never changed. But what if the laws of nature were not as chiseled in stone as Western intellectuals on both sides of the magisterial divide have assumed them to be? What if creation was an ongoing process, such that our universe in its beginning might have behaved very differently from how it does at present? This is the central conceit of Stanislaw Lem's story "The New Cosmogony," the capstone of his metafictional collection A Perfect Vacuum, originally published in 1971. In this episode, Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss the metaphysical implications of the idea that nature is an eternal work-in-progress.

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REFERENCES

For more information JF's new course, Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic, visit Nura Learning.

Stanislaw Lem, “A New Cosmogony” in A Perfect Vacuum
Weird Studies, Episode 118 The Unseen and Unnamed
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude
M. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Stanislaw Lem, His Master’s Voice
David Pruett, Reason and Wonder
Andrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Solaris
Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”
Andrew W.K., “No One to Know”

Special Guest: Meredith Michael.

Episode 81: Gnostic Lit: On M. John Harrison's 'The Course of the Heart'

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 10:30:00 -0400

The British writer M. John Harrison is responsible for some of the most significant incursions of the Weird into the literary imagination of the last several decades. His 1992 novel The Course of the Heart is a masterful exercise in erasing whatever boundary you care to mention, from the one between reality and mind to the one between love and horror. Recounting the lives of three friends as they play out the fateful aftermath of a magical operation that went horribly wrong, Harrison's novel gives Phil and JF the chance to talk contemporary literature, metaphysics, Gnosticism, zones (see episodes 13 & 14), myth, transcendence, history, and arachnology. Together, they weave a fragile web of ideas centered on that imperceptible something that forever trembles at the edge of our perception, beckoning us to step into its world, and out of ours.

REFERENCES

M. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
M. John Harrison, "The Great God Pan"
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan
Philip K. Dick, Ubik
Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Weird Studies, Episode 14 on Stalker
Jonathan Carrol, American novelist
Robert Aickman, British writer
Magic Realism, literary genre
Phil Ford, “An Essay on Fortuna, parts 1 and 2,” Weird Studies Patreon
John Crowley, Ægypt
Jorge Borges," The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"
Strange Horizons, Interview with M. John Harrison
M. John Harrison on worldbuilding
Thomas Ligotti, American horror writer
Weird Studies subreddit
Albert Camus, French philosopher
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Spiders’ nervous systems
Valentinus, gnostic theologian
Simon Magus, religious figure
Wiccan goddess and god
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
Weird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Gnosticism”

Episode 119: Behind the Cosmic Curtain: On Stanislaw Lem's 'The New Cosmogony,' with Meredith Michael

Episode 81: Gnostic Lit: On M. John Harrison's 'The Course of the Heart'