Saki

I love a short story, the sort of thing you can devour in one sitting.

At this time of the year, something dark by Saki, like Shredney Vashtar, or Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James.

But technology and our shrinking attention span has led to the rise of the microdrama, storytelling online designed for your tablet or mobile, an episode of which may last for just 90 seconds.

According to The Hollywood Reporter this week, two-thirds of the mini-dramas released outside of China on the top 20 platforms between June and September this year had their content generated by AI.

have you chosen? Well, from one short story writer to another.

I mean, it's funny, we're sitting in a broadcasting house around the corner from Saki House, where the great Saki once lived.

And he was one of the greatest writers of short stories in Britain rather than in America.

And there's a new biography of him by Oliver Soden called Super Beast, which does a fantastic job of actually bringing this very complex man who there's not much known about him to life.

And every single page, there's some brilliant sentence or some fascinating insight.

And

What's so compelling about Saki's story then?

Well, it's very strange because he was essentially unknowable.

I love a short story, the sort of thing you can devour in one sitting.

At this time of the year, maybe something dark by Saki, like Shredney Vashtar, or Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James.

But technology and our shrinking attention span has led to the rise of the microdrama, storytelling online designed for your tablet or mobile, an episode which may last for just 90 seconds.

According to a report seen by The Hollywood Reporter and published today, two-thirds of those released outside of China in the period between June and September on the top 20 platforms have their content generated by AI.

[chuckles] Written a while ago, mind you, so everyone's idea of what was scary back then was far, uh, tamer, we'll say.

[chuckles] I mean, the one I'm reading right now, it's, uh, The Open Window by H.H. Munro, and, uh, I think it was written in 1911 or something.

And, uh, [chuckles] yeah, safe to say spooky isn't exactly what I would, um, attribute it to.

From what I understand, it's just a, a little girl playing a prank on her neighbor.

[laughs] [clears throat] Right.

Yes.

The Open Window by H.H. Munro.

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of 15.

That was a masterpiece.

I think H.H. Munro, uh, known as Saki, was a brilliant...

If you haven't, if your people watching this haven't read H.H. Munro, he's a wonderful short storyteller.

I would say, O. Henry, the American, Maupassant, the Frenchman, Somerset Maugham, an Englishman.

I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way.

Um, so I didn't, I hadn't read any Saki, uh, when I first read,

um,

right.

And chapter five, he is improved.

He is one of those people who is, it would be enormously improved by death, right? HH Monroe.

Um, Saki, they're, uh, what they would call a gay man now or LBGTQ or whatever.

Apparently, I don't know.

In the literature of the time, Pan became that release valve.

Writers like E.M. Forster, Algernon Blackwood, and Saki primarily used Pan as a sinister, terrifying force of vengeance.

Almost like a horror villain?

Exactly.

In Forster's story, The Story of a Panic, an encounter with Pan drives a group of civilized tourists into a state of blind, animalistic terror.

Whoa.

And in Saki's story, The Music on the Hill, a civilized woman who arrogantly disrespects a shrine to Pan is literally chased and gored to death by a stag while she hears a boy's cruel laughter.

That is so dark.

Oh, and mind the saucer.

Here is Tobermory by Saki.

[whimsical music] It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt, unless one is bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red stags.

Lady Blemley's house-party was not bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon.

A few weeks later an elephant in the Dresden Zoological Garden which had shown no previous signs of irritability broke loose and killed an Englishman who had apparently been teasing it.

The victim's name was variously reported in the papers as Opped and Eppled, but his front name was faithfully rendered Cornelius.

"If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got." [upbeat music] Tobermory was collected in The Chronicles of Clovis in 1911 and was written by Saki, whose real name was Hector Hugh Munro.

He was born in Burma in 1870, the son of a colonial police officer.