THE DEEP ONES: "The Megalith Plague" by Don Webb

"The Megalith Plague" by Don Webb.

Discussion begins September 18, 2024.

First published in Black Wings III (2014).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1880633

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft
Black Wings of Cthulhu 3

ONLINE VERSIONS

No online versions found to date..

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://tangentonline.com/print-other/collections/through-dark-angles-works-insp...
https://lovecraftzine.com/2014/09/28/lovecraftian-weird-fiction-author-of-the-we...
https://www.teemingbrain.com/interviews/interview-with-don-webb/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Webb_(writer)
https://tinyurl.com/4r48mnyj

Just read it out of Black Wings 3. The series has proved a sound investment.

Jeeze, I didn't know when I nominated this one that it would feature palmetto bugs! I used to live in central Texas, and I will say they are really a different category of vermin from roaches. It's more like having mice. Flying mice.

There's a bit of Wicker Man here.

Only the phrase "the gentle pops of the eyes of the mealy little humans around me" indicates that the apocalypse is not confined to the narrator.

Was it the sheer density of megalith circles that brought about the apocalypse? A couple millennia of prehistoric construction evidently didn't do the trick.

I rather liked the self-admittedly incompetent narrator (though I wouldn't want him for my GP!). 1st person narrators tend to be Competent Men, or be woefully ignorant that they aren't.

I think it might be the refinement of megalith arrangements: Done often enough, somebody got the angles just right. "I mixed an old Baptist hymnal with the Typhonian Tablets with simple diagrams showing the angles. Humans picked up where they had stopped four thousand years ago."