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NickRoweFillea posted:God drat Thomas Ligotti is depressing Yeah, I've said it before, but he is the only writer that leaves me in a consistent down mood after reading his works. And it's not like they're particularly drenched in human misery, but they just create this sort of oppressive atmosphere that is just absolutely heavy. God I love it. Dude needs to be miserable more often so he can write.
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Mar 28, 2014 04:10
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GrandpaPants posted:Yeah, I've said it before, but he is the only writer that leaves me in a consistent down mood after reading his works. And it's not like they're particularly drenched in human misery, but they just create this sort of oppressive atmosphere that is just absolutely heavy. As bad as it is to agree with this sentiment I totally do. If misery is what makes him write then be miserable
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Mar 28, 2014 04:45
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GrandpaPants posted:Yeah, I've said it before, but he is the only writer that leaves me in a consistent down mood after reading his works. And it's not like they're particularly drenched in human misery, but they just create this sort of oppressive atmosphere that is just absolutely heavy. Iirc he actually gets the most writing done in his manic phases.
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Mar 28, 2014 04:56
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NickRoweFillea posted:God drat Thomas Ligotti is depressing Does Ligotti have some chronic pain condition or something?
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Mar 28, 2014 05:35
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Helical Nightmares posted:Does Ligotti have some chronic pain condition or something? I believe he would say that he does, and that it's called consciousness.
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Mar 28, 2014 07:32
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He has a whole mess of psychiatric problems, rather than physical pain.
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Mar 28, 2014 08:41
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Is there anywhere to buy The Nightmare Factory graphic novels in ebook format? I'd much rather read them on my tablet.
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Mar 30, 2014 08:07
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Neurosis posted:He has a whole mess of psychiatric problems, rather than physical pain. But all the pharmacists and psychiatrists are on the payroll of Q. Org  I actually just started reading Ligotti, with Teatro Grottesco, and I can sort of understand now what the thread was talking about earlier. That monologue in "In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land" is some pretty weapons-grade despair.
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Apr 2, 2014 03:39
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So Steven King, I vaguely recall a mythos short story he wrote about worms in the earth (likely Chthonians) where the protagonist discovers an underground church where there was an inverted golden cross on the altar. The story may have been bound in a mythos anthology. Anyone know the name? Apologies if I've asked this before. I highly recommend King's short story "The Crate" (1979). While primarily character driven, it does have a Lovecraftian back story. It is also the first work I read of King that convinced me he is actually a brilliant literature writer when he bothers to take the time. ----- Just got Teatro Grottesco. Read "Purity", "The Town Manager" and "The Red Tower". Goddamn. This poo poo is good. Also it occurred to me "The Town Manager" and "The Red Tower" alone are more Carcosa-esque than most explicitly King in Yellow stories. I can't get the image of the fat black woman dipping uncooked hotdogs into mayo and licking her fingertips out of my head. Some people live like that. The atmosphere of broken decay and degradation is unsettling. Also "The Town Manager" is a pretty amusing satire. The "The Red Tower" too I guess but it works much better as a horror story. ----- Laird Barron recommends Simon Strantzas and Scott Nicolay. Thoughts on these guys? ----- Minorty Report: I didn't like The Light is the Darkness Part of it I'm sure it that Barron really likes to recycle themes and since I read it after Imago Sequence, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, Occultation and The Croning, I found the story all too familiar. I do appreciate it when Barron tries new experiments within his myth cycle, for example getting into the skin of a gay protagonist in "Mysterium Tremendum" or a lesbian protagonist in "The Carrion Gods In Their Heaven" (though I don't like "Carron Gods" as a story because I think its just a dumb werewolf tale). However I think The Light is the Darkness is a failed experiment. Specifically in that Barron was trying to write a pulp story in a Lovecraftian world that ends in cosmic horror and I don't think the two genres mix, at all. I don't mind that most of Barron's protagonists are two-fisted hard-bitten men of action...because presenting the helplessness and confusion of the very best mankind has to offer against Barron's carnivorous cosmos accentuates the horror. It is the same reason why you give guns to Call of Cthulhu investigators. Once a roleplayer realizes their metal security blanket of a tried-and-true weapon does nothing against the true nature of the universe, terror is that much more acute. In The Light is the Darkness you could argue the protagonist "wins". He is able to sort of hold his own against at least one of the Elder Dark antagonists, and then goes on to achieve his goal of reuniting with his sister (and what a reunion it is!) by completing his transformation. Now from another perspective, most of Barron's work features transformation as a fate worse than death, and he delivers on that promise. Even if that is the case in The Light is the Darkness, the protagonist features too much 'control' of his transformation into a monster for it to really to be horrifying to the reader. And he beats the poo poo out of one of his inhuman antagonists in a scene that came off like a superhero fight, and a bland one at that. Also, seriously Barron. Why did you make the climax of the book a WWE match between two giant Goya-Saturns? That was just dumb. I think "The Jaws of Saturn" is a better exploration of all the themes in this book. Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Apr 6, 2014 |
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Apr 6, 2014 03:50
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Helical Nightmares posted:So Steven King, It's "Jersualem's Lot".
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Apr 6, 2014 04:14
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I'm probably late to the party on this but True Detective on HBO has some serious mythos themes. Cohle gives monologues that could have come straight out of The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, and The King In Yellow is referenced a number of times.
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Apr 6, 2014 10:25
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So guys where would one start with Laird Barron or Thomas Ligotti? I'd prefer a short story collection but could probably slot a novel into my reading pile at a push.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:09
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EdBlackadder posted:So guys where would one start with Laird Barron or Thomas Ligotti? I'd prefer a short story collection but could probably slot a novel into my reading pile at a push. For Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco is perfect for someone whose never read his stuff before.
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Apr 7, 2014 00:30
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I wish they'd reprint the rest of his stuff and put it on Kindle. The prices on a couple of them are really high even for a bog standard used copy.
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Apr 7, 2014 04:27
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EdBlackadder posted:So guys where would one start with Laird Barron or Thomas Ligotti? I'd prefer a short story collection but could probably slot a novel into my reading pile at a push. The Imago Sequence is where to start for Laird Barron. It's a short story collection. It and Occultation and Other Stories are considered his two best works. He's written one novel, The Croning, which is related to a bunch of short stories in Occultation. I'd read it after reading Occulation and The Imago Sequence. The most recent collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits us all, is not of the same quality. He's also written a novella, The Light is the Darkness, which has received mixed reactions. I liked it, but I'd leave it until after the first two collections and The Croning.
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Apr 7, 2014 12:03
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I just listened to this Fresh Air interview. I thought it had a bit of a cosmic horror vibe when this woman speaks about her odd "mystical" experiences. http://www.npr.org/2014/04/08/300520210/a-nonbeliever-tries-to-make-sense-of-the-visions-she-had-as-a-teen
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Apr 9, 2014 16:39
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There's a tribute anthology to Laird Barron coming out later this year. I don't know that Barron has done enough or been around long enough to warrant a tribute like this, but the list of contributing authors is good so I'l pick up a copy. The bonus chapbook that comes with the deluxe pack sounds pretty cool if you're in to collecting books. It's not really described on the order page, but one of the editors posted this at ligotti.net: quote:Paul Tremblay wrote a "found notebook" story with the title of Notes for the Barn in the Wild. Adding a sense of realism, he did the story by hand, complete with sketches and notes scrawled in the margin. Due to formatting and layout reasons, the version of his story included in the anthology is a typed version with footnotes and italics, so it still works! The exclusive chapbook will be scans of the handwritten edition. It's a real treat, Ross concocted the chapbook because it would be a crime if we couldn't share the handwritten version with readers. I'm a sucker for "found notebook" stories to begin with, so I'll probably spring for the deluxe edition.
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Apr 15, 2014 02:32
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Disappointed it's not called Two-fisted Tales of Monster Punchin'
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Apr 15, 2014 08:09
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Goddamn IT! To avoid turning this thread into the Laird Barron and others thread, I want to say I've been reading Michael Cisco's Member. The best way I can describe it is Harry Potter if before Harry enters the magical world of wizards he had spent most of his time systematically estranging himself from not only his humanity but from the very concept of humanity. It has an interesting technique in that the weird world of hostile inimical aliens and shooting bio-tape at stars on buildings is far far more lucid and comprehensible than the ordinary, mundane world which always appears to be under a fog obscuring what is happening. Also I read Brian Evenson's The Brotherhood of Mutilation which is hosed up, disturbing, horrifying, weird, and fantastic in a way that Barron wishes he could be. No witches here, nor even more than a hint of the supernatural and its still ultra loving creepy.
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Apr 16, 2014 10:32
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A couple of recommendations for this fine thread. I'm stretching the "Cosmic Horror" umbrella a bit to include them, but both feature protagonists struggling to endure an uncaring world beyond their understanding. Both were put out by ChiZine, a press dedicated to promoting Canadian writers of weird fiction, which is something I can get behind. The first is People Live Still in Cashtown Corners by Tony Burgess. I had recently seen Pontypool, the movie adaptation of his book "Pontypool Changes Everything" (which I loved despite a disappointing ending), and I'm a sucker for first-person accounts of madness. The jacket blurb doesn't really do the story justice. Bob Clark knows he isn't doing so well, and that things are getting a little out of hand, but he's doing his best. His account of what happens is very honest, full of all the confusion he feels. The second is The Thief of Broken Toys by Tim Lebbon. It's a very small, intimate story about a father whose son has died and whose marriage has ended because of it. He's drifting, directionless, and then he meets the title character and is given a strange hope. I read it through in one sitting and felt that rare satisfaction when I finished. Nothing about it felt rushed or out of place, and it ended just when it needed to.
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Apr 25, 2014 22:02
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Friendless posted:Both were put out by ChiZine, a press dedicated to promoting Canadian writers of weird fiction, which is something I can get behind. Isn't Lebbon British?
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Apr 26, 2014 08:01
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PateraOctopus posted:Isn't Lebbon British? He is. Chizine doesn't publish only Canadian authors, that's just their focus. Of the top of my head they've also published stuff by Mike Carey (another Brit) and Christopher Golden (an American).
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Apr 26, 2014 22:20
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PateraOctopus posted:Isn't Lebbon British? He is indeed. ChiZine don't exclusively publish Canadians, they just do a lot of work to promote Canadian writers.
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Apr 26, 2014 22:24
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I've made a hobby of reading Lovecraftian anthologies, from old school ones (Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos) to the ones Chaosium puts out. At some point I got in the habit of penciling in a star rating based on the quality of the story and its, uh, Lovecraftianity. I should probably post reviews at some point, because there's a lot of dross out there hiding some really beautiful gems. (For example, I give China Mieville's "Details" five stars. Zero stars would be the one where some librarians read a file from a cart catalogue database and accidentally summon Nyarlathotep, who gloats like Skeletor and casts Dungeons & Dragons spells at them.)
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Apr 27, 2014 15:37
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Just a reminder that Authority by Jeff Vandermeer comes out Tuesday. Annihilation was a damned good book, so I'm looking forward to diving in to the sequel.
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May 4, 2014 05:11
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I finally read some Laird Barron stories and I don't get it. He's 1. Not that good. 2. writing Lovecraft fanfiction. I like how pulpy some of it is, but I don't really get the high praise.
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May 6, 2014 07:50
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There's plenty of people who don't care for Barron, in this very thread even. Personally I like (most of) his stuff! I have to admit that based on Teatro Grottesco, Thomas Ligotti doesn't really do it for me. Maybe I should have calibrated my expectations differently but I found most of it hard going. These days I do most of my reading in bed before going to sleep, and while some books keep me up, TR was perhaps the most effective literary sleeping pill I've had since Gravity's Rainbow.
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May 6, 2014 08:56
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Fire Safety Doug posted:There's plenty of people who don't care for Barron, in this very thread even. Personally I like (most of) his stuff! Agreed regarding Ligotti. Some of the concepts and ideas are interesting but it doesn't work for me as horror. I also like Barron a lot, but can see how some people wouldn't - sometimes his stories can seem to harp on familiar setpieces and protagonists too much.
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May 6, 2014 10:02
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GrandpaPants posted:This is the edition. Looks like it cut The Prophets Paradise, The Street of the Four Winds, The Street of the First Shell, The Street of Our Lady of the Fields and Rue Barrée, and adds in The Maker of Moons, A Pleasant Evening, The Messenger, The Key to Grief, The Harbor Master, In Quest of the Dingue and Is the Ux Extinct? Actually, if you're seriously interested in Chambers, you might try "The Street of Our Lady of the Fields" too. Its appearance in the original book actually foreshadows Chambers abandoning weird fiction for the kind of sentimental romance that made up the bulk of his career (and made him rich). Like, you will totally understand why Lovecraft bemoaned losing Chambers' talent to his romance books; it's so saccharine it will make you gag. TOOT BOOT posted:The Poppy Z. Brite one was kinda annoying, I kinda get what she was going for but I don't see why it was included other than her name being stamped on it. Ornamented Death posted:Hey guys, maybe Amazon has recommended you check out an anthology called Future Lovecraft and you're considering it because who doesn't love sci-fi horror, right? Don't loving do it. It is a terrible anthology. There's a reason the vast majority of the writers included have only been published by super-small publishers that are probably run by their friends (or themselves). There is literally only one good story in the whole book. Avoid at all costs. GrandpaPants posted:Neonomicon would have been pretty okay if like half of it wasn't an extended rape scene. The initial investigation part and the mythos interpretation at the end were pretty cool, but then there is just a bunch of uncomfortably explicit rape in the middle and it's like, welp. It's still not a stellar story or anything. Without the monster rape porn, Neonomicon would still be the kind of lame, in-jokey Lovecraft pastiche I never want to read again so long as I live. The story starts with a visit to a patient in a mental asylum and proceeds through a decadent nightclub to a secret underground chamber, all well-worn pieces of used furniture in the genre. And along the way, it appears that someone went to Miskatonic University (oh my), this guy is from Innsmouth (ho ho), someone named King is dressed in Yellow, and Alan, please stay retired. Neonomicon begins as the sort of Lovecraftian juvenalia a teenager would write, and ends as the kind of slash porn a different sort of teenager would write. It's dogshit. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:30 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 19:27
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Halloween Jack posted:like what if someone torrented the Necronomicon? This actually sounds like something that would work in the Laundry Files. By the way, if games are fair play: I'm playing Eldritch right now and it's awesome. Imagine a 3D-version of Spelunky, with randomly generated Minecraft-isch environments. It features monsters from the Mythos, and while they are not all equally terrifying (I killed a starspawn of Cthulhu by throwing a bottle at its head), some of them are scary as poo poo. Shoggoths are best avoided, and there is one enemy I won't spoil that works extremely well. But the best part is exploring the levels, which are random and weird and quite alien. For 11 bucks, it comes highly recommended. Oh, it features these guys from At The Mountains of Madness:  And here's the ska-tastic trailer. Music in the game is a bit more moody.
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May 6, 2014 21:29
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Halloween Jack posted:Future Lovecraft looks like the kind of anthology I refuse to read as soon as I see the cover. I've seen a lot of these "Lovecraft for today" books and the stories too often rest entirely on the most facile conceits, like what if someone torrented the Necronomicon? Am I missing any diamonds in the rough? I'm almost certain there's a story like that in Future Lovecraft. If you want good Lovecraft-inspired stories, get any (or all) of these: The Book of Cthulhu I & II, Black Wings I, II, & III, Lovecraft's Monsters, and Lovecraft Unbound.
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May 7, 2014 02:22
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Ornamented Death posted:I'm almost certain there's a story like that in Future Lovecraft. For example, Alan Dean Foster's "A Fatal Exception Has Occured At" in Children of Cthulhu. A hacker contacts the FBI, takes responsibility for a series of natural disasters, and demands a huge ransom. There is one agent, of course, who believes him, and later tricks the hacker into casting the wrong summoning spell. The story ends with the punchline, "So, Agent Smith, what's a 'shoggoth?'" Then there is the story I mentioned in my last post. What would happen if someone digitized Miskatonic's entire library, including the Necronomicon? The answer is that someone would absent-mindedly read it aloud (of course) and accidentally summon Nyarlathotep (of course) and he would be on the verge of flinging a fireball spell at them (no, seriously) before they said the magic word to put the genie back in the bottle in the nick of time (hello August, nice to see you). quote:If you want good Lovecraft-inspired stories, get any (or all) of these: The Book of Cthulhu I & II, Black Wings I, II, & III, Lovecraft's Monsters, and Lovecraft Unbound.
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May 7, 2014 14:46
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I don't remember seeing it in the thread, but even if it has already been mentioned, I recently found the Southern Reach books to be good modern weird fiction. So far only the first two in the trilogy have come out: Annihilation and Authority. There's a fun sense of mystery to the story that just kept me turning the page. I definitely recommend them.
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May 11, 2014 10:34
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Gooble Rampling posted:I don't remember seeing it in the thread, but even if it has already been mentioned, I recently found the Southern Reach books to be good modern weird fiction. So far only the first two in the trilogy have come out: Annihilation and Authority. There's a fun sense of mystery to the story that just kept me turning the page. I definitely recommend them. I posted about it earlier in the thread. I liked Annihilation a lot, but I did not like Authority, because I felt far too little happened and there wasn't really much substance. I could probably summarise the novel in a few hundred words and not much would be lost for someone going from Annihilation to Acceptance. Edit: Oops, I posted about it in the general sci-fi thread, not this one. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 14:02 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 13:52
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Neurosis posted:I posted about it earlier in the thread. I liked Annihilation a lot, but I did not like Authority, because I felt far too little happened and there wasn't really much substance. I could probably summarise the novel in a few hundred words and not much would be lost for someone going from Annihilation to Acceptance. I'm kind of disappointed to hear this as I loved Annihilation and have been looking forward to Authority. Ah well, at least it's a short book so I won't kill too much time reading it.
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May 11, 2014 14:57
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Reading The Imago Sequence at the moment (Old Virginia was utterly flesh crawling) and was wondering if anyone could explain "Proboscis" to me? I'm assuming it refers to the heroin needle as they're all red neck junkies, but was that all? Or did I miss some stuff along the way?
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May 12, 2014 00:08
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Evfedu posted:Reading The Imago Sequence at the moment (Old Virginia was utterly flesh crawling) and was wondering if anyone could explain "Proboscis" to me? I came to this thread to ask the exact same question. Maybe I was too tired when I was reading it, but I didn't follow the thread of the plot at all.
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May 13, 2014 18:58
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The title refers to the rostrum/proboscis of the camouflaged bug that the narrator describes to that dude he hitches a ride with. Suddenly, he's surrounded by analogously disguised predatory creatures.
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May 14, 2014 01:04
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Now that I've had a chance to digest Barron's The Imago Sequence, I've decided it was pretty good despite its flaws. For one thing, I felt he over-explained his mythos, and wound up repeating himself about it across the anthology. His writing style hits a few of my pet peeves - he could probably stand to put away the thesaurus. That said, he has some great ideas, and in this genre anything fresh is priceless. When he's at his best, he is excellent, but in this collection his stories felt uneven, and often failed to live up to promising beginnings. The episode that opens "Hallucigenia" outshone anything that came after it. The third act of the title story didn't resonate for me as the first two did. The worst offender was "The Procession of the Black Sloth", which I loved for the most part. It cultivated an atmosphere of paranoia and a hostile world, offered compelling mysteries, and then completely counterfeited that with its conclusion. I give it a cautious recommendation. The less you are expecting, the more you will enjoy it. And speaking of unreasonable expectations, anyone else psyched for Ligotti's The Spectral Link? 96 pages that can't possibly live up to the hype!
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May 20, 2014 00:32
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Yeah I'm definitely on the lookout for it. 96 pages seems pretty skimpy but I suppose it's better than the alternative, which is him not picking up the pen at all.
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May 20, 2014 09:59
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