Wow – I expected there would be many ZBS fans around here, but meeting a fellow Wellman connoisseur is a pleasant suprise. You just made my night.

As for Lovecraft, since you asked . . .

Lovecraft is pretty popular in Germany, at least amongst horror fans. You may be aware that a company called Audio Realms has started doing comrephensive recordings of Lovecraft’s writing in English. (I ordered a Robert E. Howard collection from them 2 months ago and have received nothing, so be warned.) LPL records in Germany was recording comprehensive Lovecraft audiobooks (translated into German) at least a year or two before Audio Realms started. There are lots of earlier Lovecraft audiobooks by a variety of companies, but as far as encyclopedic attempts go I think Audio Realms and LPL are it.

Wolfgang Hohlbein, Germany’s premier living fantasist (Michael Ende is deceased), has a long book serial called “Der Hexer” (The Warlock) which takes liberally from the Lovecraft Mythos (it features Deep Ones and other Lovecraft beasties etc.). A large tentacled horror reminiscent of Cthulhu features in an audio drama adaptation of the first “Hexer” adventure, “Als Der Meister Starb”, put out by WortArt as part of its Gespenster-Krimi line. I’ll vouch for the quality of that adventure, and that scene in particular has some unearthly sound effects.

There are more direct adaptations of Lovecraft coming out as well. At the Mountains of Madness has been produced recently by a small German label called LauschRausch (not to be confused with another company, Lausch) as an audio drama. I have it but haven’t had a chance to hear it yet. Titania Medien’s Grusellkabinett line, which does extremely high-quality work, will soon be adapting “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” as an audio drama on two CDs.

So yes, the Germans do like their Lovecraft!

There’s also been some Lovecraft activity in English recently. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society put out an old-time radio style adaptation of “At the Mountains of Madness” not too long ago (haven’t heard it yet.) A small British audio drama company called Noisemonster (a spin off from Big Finish) was seriously considering doing a Lovecraftian serial for awhile, but sadly they seem to have shelved those plans.

Now that you raise the point, there’s lots of Lovecraft material to discuss in both English and German, and comparing them would be interesting. I’ll look into doing something with this down the line.

Now if only somebody would adapt some Wellman stories into audio drama, like the Thunstone stories or the tales of John the Balladeer . . .

One more thing for non-German speakers who think Supernatural detective stories sound interesting.

My favorite author in the genre is an American writer named Manly Wade Wellman. His John Thunstone stories are actually much better than alot of German material. A lot of them were originally published in pulp magazines like Weird Tales. There’s a great collection called “The Third Cry to Legba and other Invocations”. Unfortunately it seems to be out of print, but it’s worth it if you can find it.

Another out-of-print book that provides a useful overview of the English language occult detective tradition is “Dark Detectives: Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths” by Stephen Jones. It’s out of print too, but not particularly hard to find as I recall. A warning on this one, though. The occult detective genre isn’t exactly overflowing with superlative talent, and there are plenty of duds in this collection. But it will provide a reasonable overview, and it even has a good Manly Wade Wellman / John Thunstone story (“Rouse Him Not”) too.

One could even argue that ZBS’ Jack Flanders is the U.S.A.’s foremost supernatural investigator audio drama serial. The big difference being that Flanders is about spirituality and enlightment much more than pulp action and terror. It’s also a lot more literate and sophisticated than most Grusel-Krimis, with a few notable exceptions like Edgar Allen Poe or Gabriel Burns.

I get where you’re coming from – if someone wrote an article about the vibrant Chinese tradition of audio drama (I have no idea if one exists), I still wouldn’t be able to enjoy those productions myself.

While I will cover German productions, I’m not going to neglect people like you. After the first 3-part column on German hoerspiel Malleus is going to become a review column. Half the reviews I do will cover English-language spoken arts recordings, the other half German. So if you don’t give a damn about the German stuff, you can still tune in every other week for an in-depth review of an English language American, Canadian, or British production. The first review I plan on putting up is a two-part look at ZBS’ Jack Flanders adventure, “Midnight at the Casa Luna”. I plan to cover a lot of great English language material that you probably won’t see reviewed anywhere else.

As far as German stuff goes, I’m hoping some non-German speakers will find it interesting for a few reasons. (Certainly I have nothing against those who don’t.) First, as Fred says it’s just interesting to see what’s going on in another culture. Second, there may be things American producers can learn from the German success story – I’ll be highlighting some possible lessons in the third column. It’s worth taking Germany seriously partially because they’ve made commercial audio drama thrive in a way we haven’t yet. Third, American producers might get some ideas of things to try or licenses to adapt from what German productions are doing. I’d personally love to see an American or British studio tackle the Forgotten Realms universe like Germany has. Fourth, since Germans generally understand English very well, we may even end up getting a German readership down the line.

But if any non-German speakers are dying to understand German audio drama, I have three points to make. Learning a language isn’t fast or easy, but you have two things going for you. First, German isn’t a Romance language – it’s actually more closely associated to English than Spanish or French are. Second, it’s always much easier to learn to read and understand a language than to speak it. My advice is to get a basis in grammar and then dive into books – the kind that you’d be reading anyway for pleasure. If SciFi is your thing, read German SciFi. Keep at it and you’ll find yourself reading for the fun of it rather than it being a chore. Once you hit that point things really start to roll. Finally, because German audio drama relies solely on the voice to get its message across, actors speak more clearly than they do than on T.V. or in movies. You also get good solid Hoch Deutsch (High or standard German) rather than one of the many difficult dialects.

The German scene has some advantages over others. For one, it’s easily accessible. You can get most everything from Amazon.de. Greek radio drama may be excellent, but I’m not sure how easy it is to obtain.

On the other hand, if you studied a language other than German, see if it has an interesting audio drama scene. You never know. In the age of the internet it isn’t hard to find out. Brazil and Portugal could have a more fascinating and diverse tradition than Germany.
And if you find something non-English and non-German that’s good, let us know!

I feel your pain! In fact, I’m now interested in trying to pick it up, though I foresee much long pain and suffering before I’ll be able to understand a full-flung audio drama production

Even if you’re not likely to dig right into the German productions, I hope you enjoy reading about the history/culture of these plays, as I think it says a lot about the role audio can play in society, even if not so much in America.

Best,
Fred