|
End Of Worlds posted:Wow Robert Aickman's short The Swords disturbed me more than any story I've read in a long, long time
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:26 |
|
|
Ligotti is such a great writer - his prose is so much better than any one else in the genre. But I wonder, is his persona for real or is it all just an elaborate joke? The Conspiracy Against the Human Race just seems way too grim and over the top to take seriously, especially when stories like Our Temporary Supervisor and The Shadow, the Darkness display a pretty awesome sense of humour.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 21:09
|
|
|
Ex-Priest Tobin posted:Ligotti is such a great writer - his prose is so much better than any one else in the genre. But I wonder, is his persona for real or is it all just an elaborate joke? The Conspiracy Against the Human Race just seems way too grim and over the top to take seriously, especially when stories like Our Temporary Supervisor and The Shadow, the Darkness display a pretty awesome sense of humour. I think he struggles with anxiety and depression, so when he's in horribly unbelievably grim mode he probably just has to let his inner monologue out without trying for levity or self-awareness.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 21:47
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:The Yith are cuddly, though. To the extent of allowing their captives to go off holidaying on road trips, so long as they'd promised to be good, if I remember correctly.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 21:51
|
|
|
The Vosgian Beast posted:Man, don't be such a Eosinophiliac about this. *rings buzzer* What is "Chinese Horse Lover"? Ooooh, I'm sorry that is incorrect.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 22:58
|
|
|
Ex-Priest Tobin posted:Ligotti is such a great writer - his prose is so much better than any one else in the genre. But I wonder, is his persona for real or is it all just an elaborate joke? The Conspiracy Against the Human Race just seems way too grim and over the top to take seriously, especially when stories like Our Temporary Supervisor and The Shadow, the Darkness display a pretty awesome sense of humour. Well, apparently the only way he found the inspiration to write The Spectral Link was because he was sick and miserable (with some stomach thing?). He literally became one of his own characters. Is True Detective Season 2 plagiarizing more of his work?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2015 23:50
|
|
|
GrandpaPants posted:Well, apparently the only way he found the inspiration to write The Spectral Link was because he was sick and miserable (with some stomach thing?). He literally became one of his own characters. Season 2 is abandoning everything interesting about Season 1.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 03:27
|
|
|
There are some hints of weird poo poo in the corners of the show - another well staged ritual murder, a couple odd bits of iconography and surreal poo poo. It's not as good as S1 so far, and in a lot of respects it feels like it's aping without understanding (the landscape shots aren't used nearly as well yet), but it's still got a bit of that crawling dread thanks to good sound design. I'm hopeful it'll stand up as its own weird brand of horror.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2015 05:16
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Season 2 is abandoning everything interesting about Season 1. I don't agree at all, that first episode really scratched the James Ellroy epic noir itch for me. It's just a different, larger in scope flavor than last year's James Lee Burke like season. If I was comparing it to movies, I'd say this season is LA Confidential, while last year was Angel Heart
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2015 19:56
|
|
|
I have an extra copy of the signed, limited edition of Brian Hodge's Whom the Gods Would Destroy and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in it before I toss it up on eBay. It's a PC copy, but still signed by Hodge. I'm not looking to make a fortune, just  + shipping + paypal fees (so I end up with a tenner, basically). If someone is interested, I'll create a thread over in SA Mart so that everything is on the up and up.I also have copies of Deadlock by Tim Curran, Conduits by Jennifer Loring, and Bloodeye by Craig Saunders, but the first wasn't well received by folks in here, and the other two authors are probably largely unknown around here. Same price as Hodge's book.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2015 03:11
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:I have an extra copy of the signed, limited edition of Brian Hodge's Whom the Gods Would Destroy and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in it before I toss it up on eBay. It's a PC copy, but still signed by Hodge. Hey, I'd love the Hodge book. Just sent you a PM.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2015 17:52
|
|
|
Today's front page is pretty goodWeird Horror Master Thomas Ligotti's Review of the Hotdog Pizza from Pizza Hut posted:Down in the musk of a refinery, where even on a dry night the gutters sang with effluent, I found what I had come to find. Among the rust, the Pizza Hut. It seemed all windows and its light spilled across a desolate blacktop. A single figure stood with his back turned to the counter and his face to a kitchen no more or less dirty than a spoon found in an alleyway. He did not turn to face me. There was a certain pubescent bristle to his cheeks, a redness as though a ring of acne surrounded his face, but he would not turn to show me the extent of his disfigurement.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2015 13:10
|
|
|
I thought Whom The Gods Would Destroy was pretty good. Nicely ambiguous without leaving you thinking "oh come on". Fully goone-recommended for an hour or so's reading.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2015 14:39
|
|
|
Crashbee posted:Today's front page is pretty good Thanks for this, it was a fantastic read. Very funny if you're familiar with Ligotti's style.
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2015 03:11
|
|
|
Ex-Priest Tobin posted:Ligotti is such a great writer - his prose is so much better than any one else in the genre. But I wonder, is his persona for real or is it all just an elaborate joke? The Conspiracy Against the Human Race just seems way too grim and over the top to take seriously, especially when stories like Our Temporary Supervisor and The Shadow, the Darkness display a pretty awesome sense of humour. There's a short story (I think by Laird Barron?) that pokes fun at Ligotti's seriousness.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2015 16:10
|
|
|
muscles like this? posted:There's a short story (I think by Laird Barron?) that pokes fun at Ligotti's seriousness. More Dark in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2015 16:14
|
|
|
So Charles' Stross latest installment of the Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score, came out. This one takes place from Mo, the wife of the series main protagonist, so it had a nice change in form, unfortunately Stross decided to keep up with his "spend 75% of the book on bureaucratic circlejerking" balance of content from the Rhesus Chart. I guess it's naturally goes in hand with the protagonists being in management positions as opposed to the lowly IT job Bob was working at the beginning of the series. Stross intends to use Alex the Aspie Vampire from Rhesus Chart as the protagonist for the next book so I'm guessing Stross will hold in his desire to write about British Government Bureaucratic form and satire, hopefully. The horror was more psycho-sexual this time around than usual, even moreseo than the Equiod novella. Have to say Stross has to be doing a great job if he can make the reader hate and even pity a violin.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 04:02
|
|
|
Dr. Killjoy posted:unfortunately Stross decided to keep up with his "spend 75% of the book on bureaucratic circlejerking" balance of content from the Rhesus Chart. I kept hoping that Case Nightmare Green would be his excuse to stop this. I get the feeling that his fanbase doesn't hate this as much as I do, but I don't understand why, it is legitimately unfunny and a distraction from the actual horror that is ostensibly the point of the books.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 06:08
|
|
|
The books started as, and continue to be, a balance of bureaucratic circlejerking and cosmic horror. If you have a problem with the basic premise of the books then maybe you should stop reading them?
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 06:41
|
|
|
Prop Wash is right, it worked for me!
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 06:44
|
|
|
Prop Wash posted:The books started as, and continue to be, a balance of bureaucratic circlejerking and cosmic horror. If you have a problem with the basic premise of the books then maybe you should stop reading them? I'd argue that while they definitely started that way, Bob's promotion track from minor IT guy to Junior Manager and beyond have only made the office politics stuff more ingrained in the plots of the last few novels. Heck, I'd say Jennifer Morgue had some of the better pacing of the series (worst being Atrocity Archives, because it was Stross' first book and all and man has the dude improved in 15 years' time) mostly due to Bob's separation from a lot of office hullabaloo. And yeah, the more distant from the civil service procedure is the better the horror works out, especially given Apocalypse Codex, and the Equoid and Concrete Jungle novellas. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy Stross' dry satire on Brit government, but it's kind of a bore after too much.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 08:06
|
|
|
I agree, the Laundry books are all poo poo.Prop Wash posted:The books started as, and continue to be, a balance of bureaucratic circlejerking and cosmic horror. If you have a problem with the basic premise of the books then maybe you should stop reading them?
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 09:20
|
|
|
I like the bureaucratic stuff (and loved The Annihilation Score), so idk. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 09:54
|
|
|
Dr. Killjoy posted:So Charles' Stross latest installment of the Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score, came out. This one takes place from Mo, the wife of the series main protagonist, so it had a nice change in form, unfortunately Stross decided to keep up with his "spend 75% of the book on bureaucratic circlejerking" balance of content from the Rhesus Chart. I guess it's naturally goes in hand with the protagonists being in management positions as opposed to the lowly IT job Bob was working at the beginning of the series. Stross intends to use Alex the Aspie Vampire from Rhesus Chart as the protagonist for the next book so I'm guessing Stross will hold in his desire to write about British Government Bureaucratic form and satire, hopefully. Unless the book picks up in a major way in the last 20% I'm kind of getting the opinion that Stross really fell off with this. It tips the balance way in the direction of the bureaucratic nonsense, and though I liked that aspect a lot in the previous novels apparently it's gotten a bit much for me. There's a lot less cosmic horror going on, and he immediately takes the wind out of Case Nightmare Green's sails. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jul 18, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 15:49
|
|
|
Stross has a habit of writing himself into corners when it comes to large story arcs (See: The Eschaton series) and has admitted as much on his blog in the past. The first two books were mearly meant to be pastiches to his favorite cold war spy authors LeCarre and Fleming respectively. Once the stories took on a life of their own he followed what he thought was a suitable progression which unfortunately resulted in Bob becoming an eldrich Superman. Not really many places to go after that. I really do enjoy his sense of humor and kind of miss young Bob whose lack of experience would lead to some pretty amusing calamity. Couple that together with Charlie's recent desire to drop SF altogether to pursue his fantasy series and I don't think I'll be reading much of his work in the near future.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 18:27
|
|
|
Talking about Jeff Vandermeer City of Saints & Madmen which is some novellas and short fiction bits all about the city of Ambergris is definitely weird but the story 'The Cage' is definitely horror as well. Also very fungal.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 22:15
|
|
|
I'm kinda torn on Vandermeer since I loved Southern Reach but almost equally hated Verniss Underground (how can you even turn a setting this cool into so dull a story, ugh) so I'm honestly not sure how the rest of his work is. Any books stand out?
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
I loved the When Swords Had Names short story by Stephen Graham Jones I read on that Dark Magazine website. Has anyone read any of his novels? I'm definitely gonna check one out, just wondering if they're are any opinions on which is best, or closest in style to his story on that site
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 00:15
|
|
|
The Laundry novels continue to be worth reading but I agree that the balance between bureaucratese and cosmic horror has gotten out of whack from where I preferred it. There isn't as much of a sense of adventure to the two most recent ones. I fell in love with the series because it took me places like a frozen Nazi planet in a collapsing universe, a pyramid on an alien plain with something horrible inside it, a graveyard where a horrible rite was being performed to bind the Eater of Souls, a cult compound being buffeted by an apocalyptic blizzard as they invoked powers beyond human comprehension. The Rhesus Chart at least had something substantial to offer the Laundry universe, conceptually. But the superhero plot adds so comparatively little to the universe or the novel and I'm left completely blueballed by the relatively scanty attention given to the place in the mythos of The King in Yellow. I'm hoping that this was a one-time deal caused by Stross hanging his hopes on something that turned out to be just a little too much of a tonal mismatch for the Laundryverse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 06:51
|
|
|
The emergence of superheroes pushes forward CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN- it's the widespread increase of occult power that has been predicted as part of the early stages of CNG since the beginning.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 08:06
|
|
|
Finished Annihilation Score. Gonna say I enjoyed it more than Rhesus Chart, but it's definitely one of the weaker books in the series. I liked the finale a lot, though; while the cutoff was abrupt, there's some hope going into the future.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 08:32
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Finished Annihilation Score. Gonna say I enjoyed it more than Rhesus Chart, but it's definitely one of the weaker books in the series. I liked the finale a lot, though; while the cutoff was abrupt, there's some hope going into the future. There's not a surprisingly lengthy aftermath chapter in which the protagonist returns to the Laundry and the impact of the book's events is examined, which is weird for a Laundry book.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 09:43
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:The emergence of superheroes pushes forward CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN- it's the widespread increase of occult power that has been predicted as part of the early stages of CNG since the beginning. I realize Stross tried to do that, but it rang hollow for me. Humans getting weird powers and not knowing how to control them is one thing, but the book gets too deep into the, well, superhero stereotype. The explanation that some people tend to conceptualize their new powers using the narrative framework they're used to (viz., superheroes) is actually quite plausible and I could completely buy it if you were trying to write a novel about how a superhero universe gets started--but Stross is (I hope) trying to write a techno-occult horror novel first, superhero novel second. Given that, there was a little bit too much pervert suit and not enough alien reality incursion. I maybe ought to reread The Rhesus Chart to refresh me as to how I feel about it, but right now it feels as though Annihilation Score is what Rhesus Chart would have been if Stross had decided that the PHANGs needed to devote a substantial amount of time to acquiring and administering a castle in the Transylvanian Alps, just to make it a "proper" vampire story.  That is, I'm sure he would still have been able to drop in the points of relevance to the Laundry and the metaplot, but the tone and pace would probably have suffered.Having said all this, every author ought to be allowed a false note when their body of work is otherwise as good as Stross's. He's 2-for-3 on the new direction of the Laundry narratives (vampires, unicorns,
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 17:03
|
|
|
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the next laundry book about orcs and elves? Anyway I'm making my way through the annihilation score and its a huge slog so far. The Rhesus Chart was similar. It feels like Stross hit a wall or something after the ending of The Apocalypse Codex because after seeing them waking the sleeper in the pyramid these two feel really lowkey and slow compared to the first four novels of increasing tension over who and how they're going to potentially unmake reality. I remember reading somewhere, probably here, that Stross expanded the series from his idea of like five novels, and that's alright but I seriously don't want any more loving books about "Here's a new thing that happens to be a fictional genre staple welding into reality, let's cobble together a new department for it." Get on with bringing on fimbulwinter or something.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 16:38
|
|
|
Prop Wash posted:The books started as, and continue to be, a balance of bureaucratic circlejerking and cosmic horror. If you have a problem with the basic premise of the books then maybe you should stop reading them? The books started as A Colder War which was the best thing he's ever written, and which he keeps hinting he'll get back to. He just doesn't.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 16:46
|
|
|
I agree that Stross should just end it. Rhesus, Annihilation, and his next book from another new PoV should've just been one novel concluding the setup from Apocalypse. I kinda don't get it, why is this the series he's giving the endless watered down sequel treatment? I don't think he's had an issue cutting off his other storylines.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 17:07
|
|
|
He likes money?
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 17:12
|
|
|
Skyscraper posted:The books started as A Colder War which was the best thing he's ever written, and which he keeps hinting he'll get back to. He just doesn't. A Colder War is seriously one of my favorite stories, it's loving killer. Please Charles, we want more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 19:22
|
|
|
0 rows returned posted:Anyway I'm making my way through the annihilation score and its a huge slog so far. The Rhesus Chart was similar. It feels like Stross hit a wall or something after the ending of The Apocalypse Codex because after seeing them waking the sleeper in the pyramid these two feel really lowkey and slow compared to the first four novels of increasing tension over who and how they're going to potentially unmake reality. And as I think I said or at least hinted at, this is why the balance of plots in Annihilation Score was so disappointing, because they had that sort of cosmic catastrophe all set up and then it got relegated to a sideshow. The plot with Lecter and Hastur is the real meat of the NIGHTMARE GREEN threat (e: as far as this novel is concerned). The superhero thing has the weight of a minor plot at best, even if it is something that would plausibly occur during CNG. It actually should have been a silly side piece in the vein of the Christmas special or whatever. JerryLee fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jul 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2015 03:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:26 |
|
|
Personally I'm really looking forward to Stross' next book Nightmare Stacks [working title] if only to see how elves (with TANKS!  ) fit into the Laundryverse  . Not so much looking forward to it being narrated by the  PHANG Alex from Rhesus Chart.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2015 04:13
|
|