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Forgall posted:kerb But that's just the correct spelling?  (Also only 1 word.)Read The Cipher that someone mentioned in this thread a while back. I really loved how bleak it seemed and just how 'empty' the main character was.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:06
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Geokinesis posted:But that's just the correct spelling? Over here in Americaland we spell it "curb." Pththya-lyi fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 19:18
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Goblin posted:The Penguin Classics reprint of Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe will be out on the 6th, just in time for some October/Halloween themed reading. Do we know yet if these are the original stories or the ones he recently edited, apparently for the worse?
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Sep 30, 2015 19:35
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GrandpaPants posted:Do we know yet if these are the original stories or the ones he recently edited, apparently for the worse? Unfortunately, yes. ligotti.net posted:> Do we know if the Penguin edition will use the SubPress versions of the stories? From http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=10027&page=3
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Sep 30, 2015 20:24
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Forgall posted:kerb I think there's a 'motorway services' in there too
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Sep 30, 2015 22:08
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Geokinesis posted:Read The Cipher that someone mentioned in this thread a while back. I really loved how bleak it seemed and just how 'empty' the main character was. Cool, always glad to hear when people like my more obscure recommendations  .
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Oct 1, 2015 02:22
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Ornamented Death posted:Cool, always glad to hear when people like my more obscure recommendations Yep, I'm enjoying it too BUT I HAVEN'T FINISHED IT YET SO DON'T SPOIL IT OR DOWN THE FUNHOLE WITH YOU Right now I just feel bad for Vanese.
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Oct 1, 2015 03:51
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Some of you gents may be interested in this. ------------------  PST posted:The Delta Green Kickstarter has gone live:  Delta Green Kickstarter update. Funded to 40K in less than four hours. New objectives to unlock! quote:Stretch Goals    quote:Developers and Key Personnel  Q: What does a Delta Green game sound like? Look no further than "The Lover in the Ice" :http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/05/systems/call-of-cthulhu/call-of-cthulhu-delta-green-lover-in-the-ice/  Q: What is the Delta Green world like? Here are three excellent short stories written by one of the authors and professionally narrated. http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/2014/11/unspeakable-episode-16-intelligences-a-story-by-dennis-detwiller/ http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/2014/12/unspeakable-episode-17-philosophy-a-story-by-dennis-detwiller/ http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/2014/10/unspeakable-episode-15-drowning-in-sand-a-story-by-dennis-detwiller/  Q: Is there a podcast where I can listen to what's new in Delta Green moderated by the authors? Why yes there is! quote:News about the upcoming Delta Green book! http://www.delta-green.com/
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Oct 1, 2015 18:51
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Helical Nightmares posted:Some of you gents may be interested in this.
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Oct 3, 2015 23:43
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Has anyone read The Deep by Nick Cutter? It's pretty loving weird.
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Oct 5, 2015 21:07
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Noam Chomsky posted:Has anyone read The Deep by Nick Cutter? It's pretty loving weird. No, but I have read The Shallows by John Langan. It's the one that someone mentioned earlier in this thread, about an old man recounting stories of his life to a little crab-thing as he tends to a garden in the post-Old Ones apocalypse. It was part of his collection The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies but I got it in audiobook format as part of The Book of Chulhu. That anthology was a real mixed bag, but The Shallows was definitely the highlight for me.
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Oct 5, 2015 22:40
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I found The Outer Dark podcast.  Scott Nicolay started this podcast at the end of June it and currently has 15 interviews with authors of new Weird Horror. He's got the work ethic of a professor. Maybe he is. This is a fairly academic podcast. Basically it is two writers sitting down and talking about elements of the stories of the interviewee but there will be references to Steinbeck and Classical literature. Anyone who enjoyed discussions of literature professors in grad school will be right at home. Some might find it dull and a bit dry at times (in part because of the tone of some of the people speaking). As an example from the Daniel Mills interview. quote:Daniel Mills, author of the 2014 critically acclaimed collection The Lord Came at Twilight, discusses how his writing engages with historical voices such as Hawthorne, Chambers and others, rediscovering obscure authors of the 19th and 20th centuries who delved into weird, ghosts and the supernatural, the tendency among contemporary weird writers to be archivists/archaeologists digging into old sources for forgotten gems, his wistful yearning for past eras such as Colonial America versus confronting the spiritual corruption of American history in his stories, presenting a mannered lyrical approach to storytelling in a fresh and contemporary application, the artistry of depicting grotesque material with beautiful prose, modern cinematic writing versus language itself as “a world where you can disappear,” narrative restraint and the horror that happens offstage, courtships that reflect the intersection of deeply repressed desires and warped worldviews, clerical characters and the contradictions of America’s Christian mythos, creative misremembering, balancing presentism and historicism, discovering a shared New England sensibility with Matthew Bartlett, NecronomiCon Providence and the excitement and critical mass of today’s Weird Renaissance, the resounding influence of John Bellairs, upcoming projects including short stories, a novella and a second novel inspired by the spiritualism and theosophy movements of the late 19th century, and his current recommended reading including Reggie Oliver and Orrin Grey. I do have to say though, after listening to how the interviewer reviews a particular story I have found my self very excited to read the story, with varying degrees of approval so he does make the listeners enthusiastic about the authors. I enjoyed the John Langan interview to reference Skyscraper's post. The audio quality can vary because some of the interviews are carried out over skype. For some reason Scott Nicolay's voice is very quiet too in more than one podcast. There is also a panel from Necronomicon addressing Racism in HPL's work and why it can be appreciated and still be literary despite those flaws. http://scottnicolay.com/category/outer-dark-podcast/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-outer-dark/id1011456737?mt=2 Through this podcast I found the author Jayaprakash Satyamurthy. Try his free short story "Empty Dreams" here: http://pratilipi.in/2011/11/empty-dreams-jayaprakash-satyamurthy/ He is a Bangladeshi native and seeks to build a mythology of Bangladesh somewhat in the vein of what Gaiman, China Melville and others have done to London. I picked up Kate Jonez's Ceremony of Flies based on the interview and well.... it was ok. It really felt to me like an abbreviated imitation of American Gods than a cosmic horror novel. She can write well but I can't recommend the story.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:06
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I read Ceremony of Flies back when it came out and did not enjoy it; probably the low point of DarkFuse's novellas last year. On the topic of horror podcasts, I can't recommend The Horror Show with Brian Keene enough. The format tends to be 15-30 minutes of news that pertains to the horror world, then an interview that's around half an hour, then a wrap-up segment. The sound quality is phenomenal as far as podcasts go for several reasons: a) Keene refuses to do anything over Skype, b) Keene has a background in radio broadcasting, c) Dave Thomas, the cohost, has a background in sound engineering of some sort, and d) they use high-quality equipment. Even when they do interviews in public places, you can clearly understand what everyone is saying and, at worst, have to adjust the volume slightly. I bring this up because so many podcasts are loving terrible to listen to from a sound quality standpoint; Three Guys With Beards, for example, an otherwise entertaining podcast, can't go ten minutes without either horrible echoes, inexplicable and drastic drops in sound quality, and all kinds of dings and whistles and whatnot because no one will turn their loving phones on vibrate. Content-wise, The Horror Show is has introduced me to a lot of new authors. Most don't necessarily fit within the weird fiction and/or cosmic horror niche, but I pride myself on being fairly well read within the horror genre and Keene is constantly mentioning or interviewing people that I've never heard of, and I'm not just talking about fresh, young authors. Keene himself is endlessly entertaining. He has a reputation as being an rear end in a top hat, and in a lot of ways he is, but he's the lovable kind of rear end in a top hat that, generally speaking, only attacks people that deserve it (inasmuch as anyone deserves to be attacked). For example, he went after Rob Labbe pretty hard earlier this year, but then Rob Labbe said stupid poo poo like most female horror authors "look like hags anyway," so gently caress that guy. Mostly Keene is a guy that's been in the business and the genre for a long time and really cares about both. He offers a lot of insight and advice on how to develop stories and how to have a better chance at getting published.
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Oct 6, 2015 03:43
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Were any other DarkFuse novella's any good? Are any of them cosmic horror?
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Oct 6, 2015 03:47
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Helical Nightmares posted:Were any other DarkFuse novella's any good? Are any of them cosmic horror? I found most of them to be good, if not great. I have everything DarkFuse has published in physical format: here's an exhaustive list. In order of descending quality, their cosmic horror titles are: Whom the Gods Would Destroy by Brian Hodge The Last Mile by Tim Waggoner The Dunfield Terror by William Miekle (novel) Deadlock by Tim Curran Children of No One by Nicole Cushing A Shrill Keening by Ronald Malfi Blackout by Tim Curran Conjure House by Gary Fry (novel) There are a few more that could be classified as cosmic horror, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition, but all of these are very firmly within that niche.
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Oct 6, 2015 03:54
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Skyscraper posted:No, but I have read The Shallows by John Langan. It's the one that someone mentioned earlier in this thread, about an old man recounting stories of his life to a little crab-thing as he tends to a garden in the post-Old Ones apocalypse. It was part of his collection The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies but I got it in audiobook format as part of The Book of Chulhu. That anthology was a real mixed bag, but The Shallows was definitely the highlight for me. Also really enjoyed Whom The Gods Would Destroy, really great little novella about parental abandonment/neglect told via space monster with a thoroughly ambiguous, downbeat ending.
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Oct 6, 2015 13:59
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Evfedu posted:If you haven't got it yet I would utterly recommend The Wide, Carnivorous Sky because that poo poo was fantastic. I'd recommend it as well. There are some parts where the protagonist goes on and on about  science to the point where it's like you're on Reddit but it's really good.(don't get me wrong I think science is great and everything but he was preaching to the choir)
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Oct 6, 2015 17:50
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Evfedu posted:If you haven't got it yet I would utterly recommend The Wide, Carnivorous Sky because that poo poo was fantastic. It's unfortunate that so many cosmic horror authors don't get audiobook releases. I first heard one of Thomas Ligotti's short stories on a Best New Horror audiobook, and ended up making time to read the ebook of Teatro Grottesco, which was totally worth it. I know, first world problems, but it galls me that I can hear Dean Koontz audiobooks for days and the best Ligotti or Langan can do is a short story in someone else's anthology.
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Oct 6, 2015 22:26
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Noam Chomsky posted:Has anyone read The Deep by Nick Cutter? It's pretty loving weird. Reading it now and finding it a bit 'meh'. In his previous work, The Troop, which had the setting of a bunch of scouts camped out in the wilderness, Cutter clearly knew what he was talking about and had done his homework for the plot points he was less familiar with. Creepy horror works best when it's crazy events taking place in an otherwise completely realistic scenario. With The Deep, he's just making technology and stuff up whenever he needs it for the plot and it rather grates on the believability of the book.
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Oct 8, 2015 08:47
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I finished Crooked and would recommend it. Weaponized Constitutional pacts and espionage. It is pretty dry though, and the climactic scene being a deadly game of hide-and-seek is Nixonian as hell, while also being really dumb.
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Oct 8, 2015 11:39
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I just finished Gateways to Abomination by Matthew M Bartlett. It's a series of loosely connected vignettes set in the same general geographical area over a long period. Grisly murders, insanity, etc. Some parts are as short as a paragraph. It's in a kind of hazy hallucinatory style. I enjoyed it, usually I find that kind of fever-dream style to be off-putting and frustrating to read, but because of the pace with which you're traveling through stories it never grates before you're offered something different. I particularly enjoyed the prose, which was very uncomfortable to read. He's recently released a novel set in the same locale, which I'll probably pick up at some point. Worth picking up and a fast read - I think I got through it in a couple of hours or less.
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Oct 11, 2015 15:08
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Finished The Deep. It could be simplistically, but not misleadingly, described as Event Horizon but at the bottom of the ocean with biologists, instead of in space with a physicist. For most of the book it seems to be more general horror than cosmic/alien in the Lovecraftian sense, but 1) that's not bad in itself 2) there is some payoff at the end with a glimpse of the Lovecraftian trope of something transcendent and sublime that comes across to humans as merely malevolent. I can see what Pistol_Pete is talking about with the technology being a little handwave-y, but ultimately it didn't come close to stretching my suspension of disbelief. I'd say it's worth a look.
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Oct 13, 2015 22:18
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Yeah, I enjoyed it too. As for the Lovecraftian stuff at the end - It's not just that the antagonists appear incidentally malevolent, they flat out enjoy being cruel to human beings
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Oct 14, 2015 03:54
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Is there a place where I can see side-by-side comparisons of the original and revised versions of Ligotti's stories? I've heard the revisions are for the worse, but would like to see some examples. I've read most of the stories in Teatro Grottesco, as well as a few others like "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" and have no idea which versions I've read.
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Oct 18, 2015 01:22
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Origami Dali posted:Is there a place where I can see side-by-side comparisons of the original and revised versions of Ligotti's stories? I've heard the revisions are for the worse, but would like to see some examples. I've read most of the stories in Teatro Grottesco, as well as a few others like "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" and have no idea which versions I've read. The Subterranean Press editions and the new Penguin Classics edition have revised stories; any other collections should be original. If you want a side-by-side, you're probably going to have to pony up for the original editions since Ligotti posting such a thing would be giving away a fairly large chunk of his work essentially for free, and anyone else doing it would be pirating the material to do so.
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Oct 19, 2015 04:42
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Ornamented Death posted:The Subterranean Press editions and the new Penguin Classics edition have revised stories; any other collections should be original. If you want a side-by-side, you're probably going to have to pony up for the original editions since Ligotti posting such a thing would be giving away a fairly large chunk of his work essentially for free, and anyone else doing it would be pirating the material to do so. I imagine a person could just post up excerpts of what was changed without pirating it, unless really large portions were changed. Even then, there could be some key examples. Edit: If someone wants to send me an un-revised book or ebook, I'll post comparisons of an appropriate length for fair use. Skyscraper fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 17:14
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Skyscraper posted:I imagine a person could just post up excerpts of what was changed without pirating it, unless really large portions were changed. Even then, there could be some key examples. Given how much of Ligotti is the mood that he evokes, it's probably really hard to notice a tangible difference from a sentence or two vs. reading an entire story and seeing how both are affected by the change in diction or whatever. But here are some examples from a random blog: https://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/ligotti-vs-ligotti-comparing-subterranean-press-vs-carroll-grafs-grimscribe-editions/
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Oct 19, 2015 17:50
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GrandpaPants posted:Given how much of Ligotti is the mood that he evokes, it's probably really hard to notice a tangible difference from a sentence or two vs. reading an entire story and seeing how both are affected by the change in diction or whatever. But here are some examples from a random blog: https://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/ligotti-vs-ligotti-comparing-subterranean-press-vs-carroll-grafs-grimscribe-editions/ Oh, thanks, that's perfect. Those are really really small changes, too.
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Oct 19, 2015 17:55
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Skyscraper posted:Oh, thanks, that's perfect. Those are really really small changes, too. They are small, but they are continuous and clumsy, and -- for me, at least -- they really ruin it.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:41
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Thanks for that link. After doing some more reading, I've learned that Ligotti has revised some of his stories every time they've been republished. Some stories from "Grimscribe", for instance, have been revised three times now. And apparently, for the brand new Penguin Classics edition of "Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe", he's revised them yet again (not sure what the new revisions are yet, but they're supposedly very minimal). From what I've seen, the changes made for the Subterranean press versions in 2011 run the gamut. Some are small revisions that more overtly stress Ligotti's philosophical pessimism. Example from "Drink to me with Labyrinthine Eyes": 1989 version: “They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agonized passion; somersaults into fires of doom; nosedives, if you will, into the frenzied pageant of vulnerable flesh.” 2011 version: "They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agony; somersaults through fires of doom; nosedives of vulnerable flesh into the meat grinder of life." Other times, the revisions are far more substantial, where the exposition is overhauled. Example from "The Frolic" 1989 version: "Their daughter Norleen was upstairs asleep, or perhaps she was illicitly enjoying an after-hours session with the new color television she’d received on her birthday the week before. If so, her violation of the bedtime rule went undetected due to the affluent expanse between bedroom and living room, where her parents heard no sounds of disobedience. The house was quiet. The neighborhood and the rest of the town were also quiet in various ways, all of them slightly distracting to the doctor’s wife." 2011 version: "Their daughter Norleen was upstairs asleep, or perhaps she was illicitly enjoying an after-hours session with the new television she'd received on her birthday the week before. If so, her violation went undetected by her parents in the living room, where all was quiet. The neighborhood outside the house was quiet, too, as it was day and night. All of Nolgate was quiet, for it was not a place with much of a nightlife, save perhaps at the bar where the prison's correctional officers congregated. Such persistent quiet made the doctor's wife fidgety with her existence in a locale that seemed light-years from the nearest metropolis." I guess whether or not these and the rest of the revisions are for the better all depends on your sensibilities.
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Oct 21, 2015 07:23
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Reading through these, he certainly changed it to be far less poetic. Whether or not one thinks that prose approaches purple is probably up to personal tastes, but now I wish I had purchased some version of The Nightmare Factory because drat if I don't prefer the phrase "frenzied pageant of vulnerable fresh" over "meat grinder of life." The former is a suggestion that lets the imagination create the imagery, whereas the other is a metaphor that just feels more real, and thus less disturbing.
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Oct 21, 2015 17:59
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Interestingly relevant to this discussion, while going through a box of books I had bought in college (for something like $10 for an entire banker's box of hardcovers, sight unseen) I discovered I own a 1991 Carroll and Graf edition of Grimscribe. It's particularly funny because at the time I bought this I had no idea who Ligotti was.
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Oct 22, 2015 08:19
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I took the advice of the thread and read "The King in Yellow." I have to say that was probably the worst book I've read in my entire life. Holy poo poo was it boring. I continued through, patiently waiting for the awesome payoff which was sure to come, but then it ended. Can someone explain to me how anyone could enjoy this book? I guess COSMIC HORROR is hiding 5 or 10 creepy, unexplained lines in 200 pages of blahhh, and then never referencing them or following up on anything? Edit: Is the point of the book to actually drive you mad with anger in having wasted your time reading it? Should I just avoid this entire genre? RCarr fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Oct 24, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 17:33
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You could try reading something modern instead of something like 120 years old, the older stuff can be pretty hard to enjoy if you're new to the genre. e: Charles Stross' A Colder War is one of my favorite short stories and has been linked in here a few times, check it out: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm Laird Barron's stuff is also probably a good bet for a first dive into weird fiction. hopterque fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 24, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 17:51
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Thanks. I will check it out. The whole cosmic horror concept intrigues me, but I'm not interested if it's just a tease.
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Oct 24, 2015 18:04
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The issue there is that most authors who decide to go beyond the tease tend to fail spectacularly - I mean, let's face it, Lovecraft isn't scary: he's good at invoking awe, morbid interest and occassionally revulsion or loneliness but not actual horror. Going with the "tease" and leaving the conclusion up to the reader is the easier way out. But yeah, King In Yellow isn't very good on its own.
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Oct 24, 2015 18:52
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RCarr posted:I took the advice of the thread and read "The King in Yellow." No, because I don't like you.
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Oct 24, 2015 19:57
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The Repairer of Reputations is a great story, what the hell.
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Oct 24, 2015 20:25
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anilEhilated posted:Lovecraft isn't scary: he's good at invoking awe, morbid interest and occassionally revulsion or loneliness but not actual horror. To me, it always felt as if one Lovecraft story on its own was curious, three or four were kinda silly, but a dozen or more were terrifying. It's the cumulative power that gets me.
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Oct 24, 2015 20:29
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Ghostwoods posted:It's the cumulative power that gets me. I can definitely relate to this sentiment. Reading a handful of Lovecraft's short stories in a row puts you in a very strange mindset. Especially if it's before going to sleep and your brain is slowly drifting into a dream-state. Reading a story by Ligotti while slowly, almost-but-not-quite falling asleep is a sublime reading experience. I personally never really find fiction to be that scary, not in the same intensity as a movie or a game. It's just such a very different medium and a different experience. If the purpose is really to feel scared, then I'll play a videogame. Thirty minutes of Silent Hill 2 make me more tense and scared than a whole reading of a horror novel. Horror fiction, and especially cosmic horror/weird horror, is however successful in evoking in me a certain type of dread that is way more intense and unsettling than just simply being scared. That sort of feeling stays with you, and can possibly alter your perception of something in a permanent way.
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Oct 25, 2015 00:06
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