This week’s visit to the Listener Library was requested by two Mysterious Old Radio fans from overseas! Thanks to both Katherine and Stuart for recommending we listen to “The Author and the Thing!” This recording of Arch Obloler’s script served as the final episode of Lights Out in 1943. Of course, the series could never quite stay dead and it was revived again later. But when Oboler said goodbye this time, he did so with all the metafictional gruesome humor he could muster. The story features Oboler himself struggling so hard to come up with one last tale of terror, he may have invoked a real nightmare! Can a person’s preoccupation with stories of darkness manifest a genuine monster? How many family members and friends need to die to finish a script? What series could possibly ever fill the space left behind by Lights Out? Listen for yourself and find out! Then vote and let us know what you think!
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Coincidentally, Oboler worked as a script doctor on the original run of “Big Town.” He apparently had a hand in the 1937 premiere episode, which has hallmarks of his style and features one of his patented Scandinavian housekeeper characters. When I heard it, I remember thinking “I wonder if Oboler wrote this.” So I looked it up and, sure enough, Mr. O was involved. Incidentally, all those techniques we associate with Oboler — the stream-of-consciousness, the self-referential “meta” stuff, et cetera — were all used by Wyllis Cooper in the first two and a half years of the Lights Out… Read more »
Arch Oboler’s fan fiction of himself.
[…] additional material for our Patreon members! For example, at the end of the Lights Out episode, “The Author and the Thing,” we were intrigued by the announcement of the series, BIG TOWN! And so we brought this episode, […]