May 7: “Unrooted Voices: Weird Vegetation in Contemporary Weird Fiction Audio Drama”

The presentation explores the motif of weird vegetation in contemporary weird fiction audio drama, focusing on how plant life (and un-life) is rendered through sound rather than sight. I will examine how human bodies are cultivated into flowers in episode 171: “The Gardener” of “The Magnus Archives” and how the paths of life are transformed into root-like vegetation, acting as a harbinger of death in the entity of The End in the same series. The talk will also focus on the invasive coral-like organisms that overtake a human host in “The Magnus Protocol”, and the sentient forests and creeping Appalachian landscapes of “Old Gods of Appalachia”. Particular attention will be given to how these vegetal horrors are constructed in an audio-only medium, through narration, soundscape, and sonic intrusions into the listener’s own embodied imagination. The talk will be accompanied by illustrations based on these audio-constructs to visualise the forms these audio narratives evoke but do not show, in an attempt to open a discussion about the relationship between sound and the imagination of vegetal horror in contemporary weird fiction.