THE DEEP ONES: "Roaring Tower" by Stella Gibbons

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THE DEEP ONES: "Roaring Tower" by Stella Gibbons

3housefulofpaper
Mag 15, 2022, 8:59 pm

I had no luck with the question posed in the tellers of Weird Tales blog - link in >1 semdetenebre: - despite having access to Reggie Oliver's essay (reprinted from Madder Mysteries in Dramas From the Depths).

The three stories credited to "Dorothea Gibbons" in Weird Tales aren't mentioned in the essay, nor could I find them on the contents page of the one volume of Gibbons' short stories with a "look inside" on Amazon. The seller of the one copy of Roaring Tower and Other Stories on AbeBooks hasn't uploaded a photo of the contents page.

4AndreasJ
Mag 16, 2022, 12:44 am

The isfdb link is to last week’s story.

5semdetenebre
Mag 16, 2022, 11:10 am

6RandyStafford
Mag 18, 2022, 10:04 pm

Well, that was unusual. The weird creature is only slightly tinged with menace and ends up being a source of long term solace and tranquility.

No explanation offered as to the origin of the "beast" which turns into a rather angelic figure at the end.

I did like Gibbons nod to what a more conventional story, specifically a ghost story, might have done when Clara asks if she should get a clergyman.

7semdetenebre
Modificato: Mag 19, 2022, 11:18 am

If an extraterrestrial origin for the "bear-thing" had been provided, this story could pretty easily slide into a science fiction classification, although BEM-happy 1937 may have been a bit early for that to happen. 1960s TV show The Outer Limits actually kept coming to mind, since it often featured entities that would move from threatening to benign after a sudden breakthrough in understanding/compassion on the part of the humans who encounter them. As it stands, though, "Roaring Tower" does have a fairly unusual denouement for a weird tale of the period.

8housefulofpaper
Mag 21, 2022, 1:01 pm

I wasn't sure where this story was going, which I suppose should be a point in its favour. The mystical turn at the end was a surprise, not lest because I assumed a Stella Gibbons story would be as down-to-Earth as Cold Comfort Farm's Flora Poste.

Actually Reggie Oliver's essay about his aunt reveals that she had a deep interest in mysticism but generally kept it under wraps because people tended to have exactly the same preconceptions as I did.

He also wrote that if she admired a writer, Stella Gibbons would often emulate them in story of her own, and there's a strong sense of the Victorian author Rhoda Broughton in this one.