MAG 61: holy cow

rydra_wong has been raving about the podcast The Magnus Archives for, oh, awhile now. I've avoided it because my experience with audiobooks has been mostly mildly negative: I have trouble processing people talking at me. I blank out for five or ten seconds and miss bits.

But I do alright with radio plays. They're generally not something that I'd seek out, but something about, I don't know, multiple voices? The pacing of the story, being written for audio instead of for print? Sound effects? Whatever it is, it takes some effort but I can generally handle audio dramatizations alright. I still miss things but it's less likely to be critical to my enjoyment.

I drove down to Vancouver for last week. I started off listening to Serial Box's sci-fi police procedural Ninth Step Station, because I know a couple of the authors... but given current US events I really couldn't deal with a police procedural. So when I stopped in Williams Lake for gas, I poked at my phone for a bit and eventually loaded up The Magnus Archives.

I listened to it the rest of the way down. And at random times during the week, and all the way back up.

It's really good.

It's a horror anthology. The general conceit: Jonathan Sims is organizing the archives of the Magnus Institute, a task that involves recording statements that people have made about their encounters with the supernatural and attempting to verify those statements. Each episode is mostly one person's story, and at the end Jonathan comments (usually quite skeptically) on any corroborating information the Institute is able to find. In general, episodes are standalone stories: as the series goes on a number of linking threads start to develop. There's a larger plot involving the Institute, and I believe each season (there are/will be five all told) has its own arc as well.

(Relatedly, it turns out that apparently I like horror, at least the more cerebral and unsettling kind.)

I've just finished listening to episode 61 over dinner. Most of the episode's an enjoyable callback to / continuation of one of my favourite early episodes. Then at the end it suddenly veers off into a different branch of the mythos, in a way that I was entirely not expecting. Wow.

I am, I think, having more fun with this than I have with any media in a very long time. I'm deeply curious as to where it's going.