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Re: Barron's Swift to Chase Finished LD50 and almost completed Termination Dust. What do you guys think so far?
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Oct 11, 2016 14:30
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Helical Nightmares posted:Re: Barron's Swift to Chase Haven't picked it up yet, what's your impression so far?
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Oct 11, 2016 19:39
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hopterque posted:Haven't picked it up yet, what's your impression so far? It's pretty different from his first three short story collections. Very much a primal survival - cosmic horror (?) often in Alaska. A refreshing change and I'm still mulling it over. If you've read "Frontier Death Song" there are common elements of that but the stories I mentioned are trodding their own ground. I like it and some of it stayed with me for some reason and there is no real reason while those elements should since on the face of it they seem non-creepy.
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Oct 11, 2016 19:54
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I finally started reading lovecraft despite buying the book months ago. Dagon was great, Night-Gaunts was neat little poem. Statement of Randolph Carter was cool but its not spooky anymore in TYOOL 2016, seems kinda like a pulpy scary story but Lovecraft's construction of spooky scenes and atmosphere are fantastic. One complaint though, besides coming off as dated, does Lovecraft's name-dropping of random made up places bother anyone else? Im reading The Cats of Ultgar and The Destruction of Sarnath and hes just dropping names that are obviously made up and dont mean anything. When he talks about Sarnath or Ib or Thok or whatever it just sounds like Possessed Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters talking about the Giant Slor.
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Oct 18, 2016 16:07
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Hey if you like Dagon and can tolerate the Statement of Randolf Carter, just wait until you get to the good stories! Sarnath was a real place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnath The places you stated are in the Dreamlands . Lovecraft is world building and he refers back to them in a future story Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Otherwise, yes welcome to weird fiction. Clark Ashton Smith and August Delereth are SO MUCH WORSE with that poo poo.
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Oct 18, 2016 16:48
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I actually liked Randolph Carter even though its a pretty cliche story. Lovecraft elevates it by really good description of the spooky tomb. Although "you fool - winston is DEAD!" Is like a spoopy skeleton pops out level of writing but I guess some beatnik in 1917 or whatever wouldve really poo poo their pants
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Oct 18, 2016 16:54
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Phi230 posted:
Name-dropping of made up places and incomprehensible entities is kind of Lovecraft's thing, and kind of a thing among the early big beasts of the genre as a whole. You can't avoid it or escape it. Roark fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 16:55
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reading literature from another time period with expectations of modernity is not an intelligent way to read literature
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 17:07
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Phi230 posted:I actually liked Randolph Carter even though its a pretty cliche story. Lovecraft elevates it by really good description of the spooky tomb. I want to imagine the shoggoth or whatever spent several minutes warming up before the phone call. "you FOOL - winston is....No no.." Phlegmy cough from a thousand trachea "Harrumph, Harrumph....YOU fool - WINSTON is dead...ok, lacking gravitas there..." "Oh bloody hell I lost reception...*tap tap* is this thing on? Don't you dare give me the red light, Steve. Winston stop laughing back there he will hear you."
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Oct 18, 2016 17:07
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MockingQuantum posted:I have not, actually. I will bump it up my list though. So... I just read this and I'm curious about what you think about the ending. Is it just implying that merry was the possessed one the whole time? I had initially thought that the twist was going to be something like having the narrator end up actually being Marjorie, because of the whole "my older sister hasn't aged in 15 years" line. But I guess merry is just making poo poo up for this writer?
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Oct 18, 2016 23:45
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Roark posted:Name-dropping of made up places and incomprehensible entities is a thing Lovecraft does because he really wants to be Dunsany, and kind of a thing among the early big beats of the genre as a whole. You can't avoid it or escape it. Fixed that for you
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Oct 19, 2016 00:37
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Helical Nightmares posted:I want to imagine the shoggoth or whatever spent several minutes warming up before the phone call. I liked to think of it as the unholy abomination in the spooky alcove was telling Carter to shut the gently caress up. translated to modernity "shut the gently caress up idiot, he's dead. God. "
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Oct 19, 2016 00:56
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:So... I just read this and I'm curious about what you think about the ending. Is it just implying that merry was the possessed one the whole time? I had initially thought that the twist was going to be something like having the narrator end up actually being Marjorie, because of the whole "my older sister hasn't aged in 15 years" line. But I guess merry is just making poo poo up for this writer? That's one of the more common interpretations, and the one i, personally, agree with.
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Oct 19, 2016 01:59
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:So... I just read this and I'm curious about what you think about the ending. Is it just implying that merry was the possessed one the whole time? I had initially thought that the twist was going to be something like having the narrator end up actually being Marjorie, because of the whole "my older sister hasn't aged in 15 years" line. But I guess merry is just making poo poo up for this writer? I actually think it's fairly clear that there was never anything supernatural going on, and the book is largely an indictment of the reader for expecting that. This line pretty firmly solidifies that for me: "What does that say about you or anyone else that my sister’s nationally televised psychotic break and descent into schizophrenia wasn’t horrific enough?" Why would there need to be anything supernatural, in the face of horror like that?
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Oct 19, 2016 03:27
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Oh god I have to force myself to get through The Doom That Came To Sarnath. Its all description with weird, meaningless names for things. Im imagining this place to be like Heavy Metal though. The song has been stuck in my head since he started describing the city. You know what, this reads like a Fortress history out of Dwarf Fortress.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:47
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i just yesterday made fun of a goon for comparing a book to dwarf fortress goons cannot read anything without relating it, ultimately, to dwarf fortress
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Oct 19, 2016 04:35
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chernobyl kinsman posted:I actually think it's fairly clear that there was never anything supernatural going on, and the book is largely an indictment of the reader for expecting that. This line pretty firmly solidifies that for me: Don't really agree – the tension of "is this supernatural or not" is a major element of the book, and at the end, just when you think that it's just an everyday horror story masquerading as the supernatural, a mysterious chill (mentioned earlier as a sign of possession) runs through the café. It leaves you guessing, which I think is better than just making it either/or.
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Oct 19, 2016 08:32
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i just yesterday made fun of a goon for comparing a book to dwarf fortress Well that particular story was as nonsensical as a procedural generation.
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Oct 19, 2016 15:32
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http://mockman.com/2012/05/01/the-doom-that-came-to-sarnath-page-1/
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Oct 19, 2016 15:46
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Don't really agree – the tension of "is this supernatural or not" is a major element of the book, and at the end, just when you think that it's just an everyday horror story masquerading as the supernatural, a mysterious chill (mentioned earlier as a sign of possession) runs through the café. It leaves you guessing, which I think is better than just making it either/or. I'm with you here. I just ordered a print copy of the book, as I liked it enough to re-read it and want to be able to page back through it. I'm curious to see what comes up on a second reading, especially whether there's a specific and tangible moment at which it's possible the "possession" could have moved from Marjorie to Merry. Or, on a similar note, if there's any strong evidence of weird poo poo happening to Marjorie when Merry isn't present. I definitely agree that the book's strength and what makes it really interesting to me is that there's a continual question implied about whether something truly supernatural is happening or not. Talking about A Head Full of Ghosts in that spoiler, for those of you who don't want to scroll back through the chain of spoiler tags. On another note, I just read Thomas Olde Heuvelt's Hex yesterday, and drat if that didn't really impress me too. It's surprising how many good horror books have cruised right past my radar in recent years. The author does mention that in the original Dutch version, the ending was different. He apparently rewrote the ending when it was translated into English. I'd be curious to find out what the original ending was, because honestly the way it ended felt pretty perfect. Keeping up with my streak of borrowing popular horror novels from the library and having to finish them in a short window of time, I'm reading Disappearance at Devil's Rock right now. Really pumped for this one after Head Full of Ghosts. I think Tremblay is going to be one of my new favorite authors.
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Oct 19, 2016 16:18
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After seeing the chatter in here I just finished reading A Head Full of Ghosts and yeah, drat. One of those books where I finished it and actually felt a chill go up my spine, extremely good poo poo.
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Oct 19, 2016 17:53
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Phi230 posted:
I'm afraid you can expect a severe shortage of plump-breasted female adventurers in chainmail bikinis in HP Lovecraft. and of female characters generally, let's be honest. Robert E. Howard should be right up your street, though!
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Oct 19, 2016 20:46
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Is lovecraft inspired by Howard cause I can see some Conan in that story.
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Oct 19, 2016 20:48
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Phi230 posted:Is lovecraft inspired by Howard cause I can see some Conan in that story. Howard riffed off Lovecraft a lot, and vice versa, he was one of Lovecraft's really major collaborators.
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Oct 19, 2016 20:53
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Phi230 posted:Oh god I have to force myself to get through The Doom That Came To Sarnath. Wait til you get to Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:09
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Phi230 posted:Is lovecraft inspired by Howard cause I can see some Conan in that story. It's Dunsany. The answer is Dunsany
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Oct 20, 2016 00:24
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MockingQuantum posted:On another note, I just read Thomas Olde Heuvelt's Hex yesterday, and drat if that didn't really impress me too. Is it worth reading more Thomas Olde Heuvelt if I thought The Day the World Turned Upside Down was dogshit? That's a different genre entirely, so I'm thinking maybe cosmic horror is what he's good at, and I don't want to write off a writer because the only story of his I've read happened to be terrible.
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Oct 20, 2016 06:45
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Solitair posted:Is it worth reading more Thomas Olde Heuvelt if I thought The Day the World Turned Upside Down was dogshit? That's a different genre entirely, so I'm thinking maybe cosmic horror is what he's good at, and I don't want to write off a writer because the only story of his I've read happened to be terrible. Couldn't tell you. I haven't read any of his other stuff, and Hex really isn't cosmic horror in any way. Very supernatural horror, but not cosmic.
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Oct 20, 2016 23:23
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I thought the writing was kinda bad in Head Full of Ghosts so I gave up a couple of chapters in. Is it just me?
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Oct 21, 2016 00:24
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ravenkult posted:I thought the writing was kinda bad in Head Full of Ghosts so I gave up a couple of chapters in. Is it just me? Probably. Did you make it past all the blog entries at the beginning? Those were written to be annoying.
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Oct 21, 2016 00:36
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ravenkult posted:I thought the writing was kinda bad in Head Full of Ghosts so I gave up a couple of chapters in. Is it just me? It didn't really grab me til the fourth or fifth chapter, I think. I started the first chapter a couple of times before I really got going.
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Oct 21, 2016 01:45
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Ornamented Death posted:Probably. Did you make it past all the blog entries at the beginning? Those were written to be annoying. Rip-roaring success at that, then. The book wasn't superb, but it was suitably creepy at times.
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Oct 24, 2016 01:19
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ravenkult posted:I thought the writing was kinda bad in Head Full of Ghosts so I gave up a couple of chapters in. Is it just me? Not just you, the writing was amateur hour the whole way through. I finished it but I regret wasting the time. Now I'm reading The Fisherman though and it's awesome like others have said.
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Nov 1, 2016 20:50
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I have a question that's been bothering me for a while that I'd like to put to the thread: why isn't Caitlin Kiernan known much outside of horror/weird fiction circles? I've been reading both her novels and short fiction for a few years know, and it seems like they should be the sort of thing that develops a robust cult. She's got her own set of locations, her own interpretation on Lovecraft's ideas (she's the only one I ever seen succeed in integrating human sexuality with Lovecraftian horror), protagonists that would appeal to the more progressive-minded, to name a few. Heck, she even cut her teeth writing a spinoff comic series for Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics back in the 1990s. And yet, in spite of all this, I've barely seen anyone outside of academics and other writers discuss her work. Even Ligotti gets more play than her these days. Mind you, given that her novels The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl are both being adapted into movies, there might be more of a groundswell around her in the future. Even so, why the obscurity now?
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Nov 3, 2016 22:24
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Marshal Radisic posted:I have a question that's been bothering me for a while that I'd like to put to the thread: why isn't Caitlin Kiernan known much outside of horror/weird fiction circles? I've been reading both her novels and short fiction for a few years know, and it seems like they should be the sort of thing that develops a robust cult. She's got her own set of locations, her own interpretation on Lovecraft's ideas (she's the only one I ever seen succeed in integrating human sexuality with Lovecraftian horror), protagonists that would appeal to the more progressive-minded, to name a few. Heck, she even cut her teeth writing a spinoff comic series for Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics back in the 1990s. And yet, in spite of all this, I've barely seen anyone outside of academics and other writers discuss her work. Even Ligotti gets more play than her these days. It's a niche subgenre that the broader reading public doesn't take a second glance at, and she's generally I would say not considered one of the definitive modern authors in genre like Ligotti or Barron or Campbell or whatever (although I personally like what I've read of her stuff), so she doesn't get a ton of exposure internally either.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:29
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hopterque posted:It's a niche subgenre that the broader reading public doesn't take a second glance at, and she's generally I would say not considered one of the definitive modern authors in genre like Ligotti or Barron or Campbell or whatever (although I personally like what I've read of her stuff), so she doesn't get a ton of exposure internally either. I'll give you the first part, but you're pretty wrong on the second. The real problem with Kiernan is that it's tough to find most of her work.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:58
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Ornamented Death posted:I'll give you the first part, but you're pretty wrong on the second. It drives me loving nuts that the Subterranean Best Of Vol 2 has a Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Oil-...itlin+r+kiernan but Vol 1 doesn't https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1...WHY3NMJ7ZJPVB67
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Nov 4, 2016 03:14
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Kiernan hates ebooks with a passion and is kinda uh...eccentric.
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Nov 4, 2016 08:27
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ravenkult posted:Kiernan hates ebooks with a passion and is kinda uh...eccentric. There was also her blowup with Benjanun Sriduangkaew, in which she initially came across as the victim and then... uhh... less so (long story short, Sriduangkaew was revealed to be a highly vitriolic Internet personality called requireshate, an expose of her won an award for sci-fi journalism, and then it turned out that while she had been a bit of an rear end in a top hat, Kiernan and a cabal of other authors had either distorted or outright fabricated most of her worst offences because they were super mad about being called racist, and were trying to drive her out of the industry). Can't help but wonder if that's damaged her with some publishers.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:13
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Darth Walrus posted:Can't help but wonder if that's damaged her with some publishers. It hasnt. Kiernan is being published the same now as she's pretty much always been. The vast majority of her work is short stories that show up in various anthologies and periodicals, then are collected by SubPress.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:38
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