Polybius w/ David Irons

With only a few days left till Halloween, we continue the #ParallaxViewsHalloweenMassacre by turning our attention the urban legend/creepypasta mash-up known as Polybius. According to internet a strange video game, known as Polybius, briefly popped up around arcades in or near Portland, Oregon during the height of arcade-mania in the 1980s. Allegedly the game cause strange, spooky side effect including being highly addictive, causing physical illness, and psychological impacts leading to outcomes like, most frighteningly, suicide. And that's not where the creepiness of this digital campfire tale ends. There also was allegedly mysterious "Men in Black" figures that would check on the game with unusual devices. Moreover, the game's developer was said to be a company called Sinneslöschen, which roughly translated from the German would mean something like "Sense Deletion" or "Sensory Deprivation". As the legend goes the enigmatic game disappeared from arcades as quickly as it had arrived.

The earliest recorded references to Polybius date back to the 2000's vis-à-vis an entry on the arcade game website CoinOp.Org. Since then, Polybius has gained a life its own within pop culture eventually, among other things, being referenced in The Simpsons and a Nine Inch Nails music video. And, although there is no evidence to confirm the existence of the mysterious arcade game, the legend soon grew so great that actual Polybius video games began to make the rounds of the gaming world. There's even, believe it or not, a Playstation 4 game bearing the title that was released in 2017.

But what of the a malevolent game that allegedly haunted Oregon arcades for a short time in the 80s? Most say it is a hoax or a mere myth. Others continue to believe that somewhere the game exists. Some speculate, due to the "Men in Black" referenced in the original legend, that the game was part of a CIA mind control experiment like MK-ULTRA. In any case, Polybius has become a staple of digital campfire tales on the World Wide Web and has certainly captured the imagination of the culture. This should come as no surprise, since details about the supposed game, beyond the original urban legend itself, are extremely sparse. As such it has been left to others to fill in the blanks and from there it's off to the races as imaginations run wild trying to answer the question: What was Polybius?

Filmmaker and horror novelist David Irons, who often dabbles in "retro-novels" drenched in big hair, cocaine, and MTV aesthetics of the Reagan-era 80s, is just one person who asked that question. And he most certainly let his imagination run wild in answering it when writing his new book, Polybius. In this novel Irons, whose previous books include Graveyard Billy, Night Waves: Something Has Been Set Free, Wolf Moon, and Night Creepers, uses the Polybius legend as launching pad for a madcap story that crosses the teenaged coming-of-age hijinks of The Breakfast Club with the gory melodrama of 80s creature feature horror movies Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, and Chopping Mall. And, of course, he does it all with a more general aesthetic of retro nostalgia that is drenched in neon and looking to give Stranger Things a run for its money! He joins us on this edition of the program to discuss the book, horror more generally, and much, much more!

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