Episode 16 - Excalibur with Bryan Wigmore

03/30/23 • 122 min

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Chronscast - The Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Podcast

Merlin's Beard! What better topic to talk about as we enter the springtime and the regeneration of the land than Excalibur and the legend of Arthur, King of the Britons, who is prophesied to restore the land to verdance and glory and who knows much about the average velocity of unladen swallows. But we'll not be focusing on that particular cinematic incarnation of the once and future king. We'll be talking about the operatic 1981 John Boorman film Excalibur, which boldly attempts to condense a significant amount of Thomas Malory's 15th century manuscript, Le Morte d'Arthur, into two and-a-half hours of dreamlike cinema.

Joining us to talk through this is the fantasy author Bryan Wigmore, best known for his ongoing fantasy series The Fire Stealers, comprising The Goddess Project (2017), The Empyreus Proof (2018), and the forthcoming third instalment, The Mandala Praxis. With Bryan we discuss Arthur's connection to the land, what the Holy Grail represents, why it appears in the story when it does, and the mysterious figure of the Fisher King. We discuss the explicitly Christian imagery, the use of opera music in the score, the preponderance of Irish accents in a story about the King of the Britons (clue: it was filmed in County Wicklow); the scalable aspect of the Arthurian story, Merlin's pratfalls, and Brian Blessed's head.

We also talk about Bryan's own work and its foundation upon such ancient myths as these; his use of the land and the environment, the question of timing a publication to retain its topicality, and the bones of myth. We also talk about his forthcoming YA fantasy series called Earthwyrms, which leans heavily upon the Arthurian mythos, and we pester him for an update on when The Mandala Praxis will be ready.

Elsewhere, The Judge throws down her own gauntlet and challenges us to trial by combat, and how that strange aspect of the ancient judiciary came to be, and how the trial by combat we see in such films as Excalibur might work in reality.

We also hear Paranoid Marvin's victorious 75-word challenge entry from February, and The Judge's winning entry to the January 300-word writing challenge. Finally, a certain King Of The Britons is perturbed and discombobulated when he is approached by the Lieutenant Bungalow of the Martian space force for a rare interview.

Previous Episode

Introducing Peat Long

2 Recommendations

When Chronscast was originally set up I wanted different co-host folks for different co-host strokes. I wanted my guest today, the blogger Peat Long, to contribute to the podcast particularly in the area of fantasy fiction, in all its guises and possibilities. For various reasons he couldn't commit at the start of the venture, but I'm pleased to say that Peat has agreed to be an occasional co-host with me in the future.

Today Peat and I are having a short conversation to introduce him, his thoughts on genre fiction, his prolific blog, and his own writing habits and capacities. Pete will be joining us later in the spring to discuss books such as Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, and Stephen Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane.

Links
Peat Long's Blog

Next Episode
Our next full episode will see Bean and I joined by the inimitable Bryan Wigmore, who'll be telling us how to make like Michael Jackson and heal the world with the sword pulled from the stone in John Boorman's 1981 Arthurian epic, Excalibur.

Next Episode

Coronation Special! Titus Groan with Toby Frost

It's Coronation Day! Well, not quite. But in the UK we are steadily approaching the moment when the king, Charles III, formally takes the Oath and is crowned.

This month we're tackling Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, the first book in the seminal Gormenghast series. Titus follows the birth of the titular character and the first eighteen months of his life, which culminates in a very strange, ersatz coronation of its own. Joining Pete and me as we clamber across the rooftops and sneak through the dungeons of Gormenghast is the author Toby Frost, best known for his the Space Captain Smith novels, Dark Renaissance fantasy series, and Straken from the Warhammer 40K universe.

We consider the sprawling castle-state of Gormenghast and it means when the old and new clash head-on, and specifically what it means when the ossified state, for so long indulged in its own wilful blindness and ritualised behaviour, comes into contact with the shock of the new, especially when the "new" - in this case, the kitchen boy Steerpike) is violent, psychopathic, and ruthless. We consider the utterly bizarre and grotesque cast of characters, from the wilfully blind, Prospero-like Earl Sepulchrave, who ostensibly rules the castle, to the ensemble of witless, violent, and occasionally noble people who live beneath his crumbling sovereignty. And we consider Titus himself, a marginalised titular character if ever there was one, who only appears as a baby, and yet whose coronation the book slowly builds to.

Elsewhere, The Judge considers the coronation as a way of revivifying the state, just as we mentioned when discussing Excalibur last month). She considers the Crown Jewels, the Coronation Oath, and how the relationship between the Crown and its subjects has changed over the centuries. To see how a real monarchy like the House of Windsor can stop itself from becoming a fossilised version of itself a la Gormenghast, The Judge shows how the coronation is a living, shifting thing, where rituals, symbols and laws either change or stay the same to maintain a crucial balance between antiquity and modernity.

Though Bean is away this month he's still here in spirit as he won the 75 word challenge this March with his entry The Death Of Ageing, and The Martian Space Force find unexpected kindred spirits in the crazy, smelly, stupid inhabitants of Gormenghast.

Next month

Next month we'll be joined by the winner of the British Fantasy Award and one of the brightest lights of modern fantasy, the author RJ Barker, who will be talking with us about one of his greatest loves, Richard Adams's Watership Down.

Index

[0:00:00 - 56:42] Interview Part 1

[0:56:43 - 0:59:59] Skit

[1:00:00 - 1:15:05] The Judge's Corner

[1:15:06 - 1:16:21] Challenge Winner

[1:16:22 - 1:55:25] Interview Part 2

[1:55:26 - 2:00:40] Credits and close