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looks like hodge will be writing a novel in the lost citadel setting. good.
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Aug 31, 2017 01:38
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Neurosis posted:looks like hodge will be writing a novel in the lost citadel setting. good. The original anthology should be available from Nisaba Press, Green Ronin's new fiction outlet, sometime this year.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:53
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i've corresponded with joshi in the past and he's a wackadoo. the only reason he has any preeminence at all is that no other (real) scholars have made a serious study of lovecraft the way that he has; certainly no one has tried to build a career on him the way joshi has. which will change, gradually.
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 03:46
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Proteus Jones posted:People are always bitching about Mo, but I've never really understood why. Well, I *suspect* why, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Mo was cool when she was a demon killing violinist who rappelled out of helicopters to play her +3 Song of Slaying.
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Aug 31, 2017 07:10
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Mo has never annoyed me as a character. But it doesn't do her any favors that the novel where she was the main PoV character is probably the low point of the entire series so far.
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Aug 31, 2017 07:26
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Neurosis posted:without pity, without purpose is a good novella in a similar vein. he ranges all over the horror spectrum. at its lowest key is prototype, which is about a guy who has a weird genetic condition which amps up his levels of aggression to insane levels, but is otherwise a reasonable person. not at all about anything supernatural, just the pain of being cursed with this incredibly antisocial quirk by the roll of the dice. he's also written a bit of dark fantasy horror in the tales of the lost citadel anthology (and there was some talk of him writing a book in that setting) - i still want to get my hands on that book, i think fantasy horror is sadly underdone! and the standard 'friends on a trip encounter something evil' like in oasis. Thanks? He has a 40% hit rate with me, and I'm hoping to get more of his cosmic horror without having to slog through his other stuff. I'll try Without Pity, Without Purpose.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:15
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i've corresponded with joshi in the past and he's a wackadoo. the only reason he has any preeminence at all is that no other (real) scholars have made a serious study of lovecraft the way that he has; certainly no one has tried to build a career on him the way joshi has. which will change, gradually. There is a good academic journal on horror: http://horrorstudiesjournal.com Probably the best thing about academia-housed scholarship is that you get much less "my favorite thing is also the best thing"
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Aug 31, 2017 17:27
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JerryLee posted:Mo has never annoyed me as a character. But it doesn't do her any favors that the novel where she was the main PoV character is probably the low point of the entire series so far. This is how I felt about it. Mo wasn't a problem in The Annihilation Score, but pretty much the entire rest of the book was. It had like 4 plot threads going on and did none of them all that well, and the "main" plot/big nasty especially meandered around doing nothing until it came out of nowhere like 3/4ths of the way through the book.
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Sep 1, 2017 02:23
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:There is a good academic journal on horror: http://horrorstudiesjournal.com oh yeah i know but im not aware of any academics who have tried to build literally their entire career on lovecraft the way joshi has and yeah it goes without saying that the dude has 0 critical distance
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Sep 2, 2017 04:30
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chernobyl kinsman posted:and yeah it goes without saying that the dude has 0 critical distance I don't think that's fair. He's pretty dismissive of certain Lovecraft stories, for instance. And he savages certain Mythos writers (mainly Lumley; hard to argue there) while praising others (Ligotti especially), but always offers reasons.
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Sep 3, 2017 02:50
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Xotl posted:I don't think that's fair. He's pretty dismissive of certain Lovecraft stories, for instance. And he savages certain Mythos writers (mainly Lumley; hard to argue there) while praising others (Ligotti especially), but always offers reasons. And then he goes after other writers by making poo poo up (Laird Barron, William Miekle, Scott Nicolay, Brian Keene, and so on). Joshi is a sad little man that can't accept his fading relevance in the weird fiction field so he's going with the "any publicity is good publicity" approach and torching his own career.
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Sep 3, 2017 04:31
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Ornamented Death posted:And then he goes after other writers by making poo poo up (Laird Barron, William Miekle, Scott Nicolay, Brian Keene, and so on). Huh: didn't know about the rest you have there. Do you have any links?
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Sep 3, 2017 04:40
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Xotl posted:Huh: didn't know about the rest you have there. Do you have any links? A lot of it is buried in FB threads (many of which were ultimately deleted). His comments about Miekle, at least, can be found in a review he wrote earlier this year. To be clear, it's fine that Joshi didn't like the book, but he loses all credibility as a critic when he starts making personal attacks and lying about Miekle. I think a similar review of Nicolay's collection can be found on Joshi's site. I'm phone posting, otherwise I'd look it up. But to circle back to an earlier point, yes, Joshi has criticized some of Lovecraft's stories. But in his mind, only Joshi is qualified to offer criticism of Lovecraft; anyone else is just trying to make a name for themselves by pissing on Lovecraft, you see!
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Sep 3, 2017 04:51
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scholars ought not to be involved in weird facebook drama; it is Written
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Sep 3, 2017 04:58
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Xotl posted:I don't think that's fair. He's pretty dismissive of certain Lovecraft stories, for instance. And he savages certain Mythos writers (mainly Lumley; hard to argue there) while praising others (Ligotti especially), but always offers reasons. Lumley understands the Mythos perfectly, he just uses that understanding to satirical effect. Joshi can't handle someone not taking Lovecraft seriously and still writing perfectly Lovecraftian pastiches. Joshi is a failed academic.
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Sep 3, 2017 05:02
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Lumley leans heavily on Derleth's vision of the Mythos in a lot of his work, which is itself fatally flawed in that it completely missed Lovecraft's entire thesis, so questioning him (Lumley) is perfectly valid.
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Sep 3, 2017 16:28
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Wow that dude is cranky:quote:That same Guardian article quotes the eminent Jeff VanderMeer as stating that changing the bust was a “no-brainer.” Pardon me for suggesting that Mr. VanderMeer reveals a certain deficiency in brainpower by failing to grasp the immensely complex social, political, cultural, and historical factors surrounding this entire issue. He, like so many other crusaders, doesn’t wish to be confused by complexity and nuance. I could see VanderMeer being especially threatening to Joshi. Too bad the Southern Reach books loving slay
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Sep 3, 2017 19:27
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Wow that dude is cranky: Them changing the bust was a bit out of nowhere but then it also wasn't like the weird fiction awards or cosmic horror awards or whatever so it was weird to have the bust be Lovecraft in the first place. I definitely understand why they changed it, and feel like its not even really worth giving a poo poo about. If it was the best 'cosmic horror' award and it was a bust of Lovecraft and they wanted to change it then, yeah, ok, that might be worth having an argument about, but it never really made sense in the first place. ST Joshi is a big time psycho; that said, I like a lot of the collections he's put together and he does have interesting things to say about the genre, when he's not busy being incredibly lovely towards everyone.
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Sep 3, 2017 20:09
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It's an inappropriate choice for all sorts of reasons, although I do think the Lovecraft bust is a more striking and pleasing design than the tree statuette that replaced it. Funnily enough, wikipedia reports: quote:A minor controversy about the trophy occurred in 1984, when Donald Wandrei refused his Life Achievement award as he felt the award bust was a demeaning caricature of Lovecraft, whom he had known personally. Wandrei's rejected trophy was later recycled and given to another award winner.[26][27] Joshi has a blog post from just a few days ago revisiting this topic, where he also complains about the fact that many of the people "attacking" Lovecraft for his racism are white, when he of course is not. But I feel like maybe he doesn't get it because he hasn't lived white supremacy from the inside. White people ("not all white people...") have genuinely expressed a fearfulness of certain places in their towns and cities, of the contamination that certain people can bring on as neighbors ("Nothing against the blacks but trouble seems to follow them wherever they go" or romantic partners, of the bodies of people of other races ("Do Chinese girls really have sideways vaginas?"). And that horror is present in Lovecraft in spades in ways that are really worth exploring and feeling out, not just rejecting as "of its time" or only present in his lesser stories.
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Sep 3, 2017 20:29
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mmm yeah idpol. fuckin love that poo poo. wanna swim around in it
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Sep 3, 2017 21:02
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tho I am legit impressed that you just mounted an argument around the thesis that this brown guy doesn't "get" racism because he's not white. that's a new one for me personally
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Sep 3, 2017 21:05
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I am sure that Joshi has many experiences with racism in his life and a very good understanding of it. What I doubt he has is an experience of the enactment of white supremacy from a first hand, subjective perspective
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Sep 3, 2017 21:11
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i understand what you're saying but it's very stupid and you should be embarrassed for saying it
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Sep 3, 2017 21:14
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i understand what you're saying but it's very stupid and you should be embarrassed for saying it Why? Spell it out for me
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Sep 3, 2017 21:15
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because it doesn't require inside knowledge of The White Experience to understand intimately that white people are afraid of the ghetto or don't like miscegenation. if we're going to play the postmodern micronarrative game about this then joshi, as a non white dude, is almost certainly much more intimately and feelingly familiar with those things than your average white guy, as he would be actively affected by them. what he doesn't have is white guilt. so, and by the rules of idpol, if he says 'lovecraft's racism is overplayed/doesn't bother me/is negligible' or whatever it's astoundingly stupid to say something like 'well he doesn't get it because he's not white'. Like you can disagree with him, that's fine, I do too, but you gotta do better than than that
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Sep 3, 2017 21:23
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I'm hardly approaching this from a "postmodern" perspective; if anything what I'm suggesting is embarrassingly pre-postmodern, in that I'm looking at fiction as a site for imaginatively engaging with the experiences of others, including the author who despite being dead appears to lie eternally, dreaming. Lovecraft's work is not DEVALUED by his racism, which seems to be Joshi's problem with the interest in Lovecraft's racism. An expression of what racism can feel like from the inside is clearly one of the values of Lovecraft's work, why it should be read, preserved, and reread. I don't think Joshi is in some ontological way incapable of learning this from Lovecraft because of his identity position, but it does seem like he doesn't want to know too much about it. Probably being a skeptic/rationalist contributes too. White people have gross and weird feelings about race and that is something that it would be cool if everyone could share and explore. But yes, you're right that it's stupid to say that Joshi doesn't get it because he's not white; he doesn't get it because he's not white and an rear end in a top hat in ways that makes it harder for him to get. Dr. Video Games 0081 fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 3, 2017 |
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Sep 3, 2017 21:37
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"Sit down darky the whites are telling you why they're racist"
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Sep 3, 2017 21:42
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chernobyl kinsman posted:"Sit down darky the whites are telling you why they're racist" oh come on
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Sep 3, 2017 21:43
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Either what you're calling "idpol" is right and all people of color or (or working class, disabled, LGBT, whatever) must be given a place of privilege from which to speak, or it's not true and not all contributions are of equal value, even if they are made by a poc, etc.
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Sep 3, 2017 21:46
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:I could see VanderMeer being especially threatening to Joshi. Too bad the Southern Reach books loving slay Another reason Joshi goes after so many authors is that his own attempts at fiction have been universally terrible and he's jealous.
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Sep 3, 2017 22:16
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:"Do Chinese girls really have sideways vaginas?" "Why, are you a harmonica player?"
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Sep 3, 2017 22:23
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Post the earliest bits of Cthulhuanica you can find. I just uncovered a Lovecraftian magazine from Necronomicon Press by digging around in the garage.     In good condition they go from 20-25$ on ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/CTHULHU-COD...X4AAOSwo6lWKah8 I don't recall any of the stories standing out as significantly quality, but I can recheck them again! One of my most prized possessions was a white little chapbook named "Ambrose". It was a King in Yellow tale of the John Tynes Mythos (iirc). Black and white illustrations illuminated the travels of a clockwork maker Ambrose as he explores Carcosa just before he receives the invitation of the King to a ball. The story features a clockwork girl automaton as his companion and a flying orrery. The trouble was, I believe this chapbook was signed and numbered and I cannot find it. Lost like a waking dream. Maybe I will find it by digging further in this garage? Anyone else remember a book like this?
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Sep 4, 2017 02:58
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Rough Lobster posted:Mo was cool when she was a demon killing violinist who rappelled out of helicopters to play her +3 Song of Slaying. Hahahahah. Even when things go weird in the Atrocity Archives it feels like I'm just skimming the surface of how loving loopy things will eventually get. A moon carved to look like Hitler's head seems tame compared to what I'm imagining that scene.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:52
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Any recommendations for good horror novels or short stories set in or around 1600s America? I can imagine there's at least a few centering around the Salem witch trials, but I don't know of any myself.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:27
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MockingQuantum posted:Any recommendations for good horror novels or short stories set in or around 1600s America? I can imagine there's at least a few centering around the Salem witch trials, but I don't know of any myself. Nathaniel Hawthorne has several short stories set in that era. The Minister's Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown (probably the closest to what you're looking for), Rappacinni's Daughter are all good. They're not straight-up horror in the modern sense, but more in the "weird" sense. As far as more modern writers, I don't have any examples 
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Sep 5, 2017 19:07
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Yeah I'm having trouble coming up with anything. Robert McCammon's Matthew Corbett series starts in 1699 but a) moves into the next century and b) isn't really horror. There's a lot set during the late 18th century and after, but it seems that 17th century America is somewhat underrepresented in the horror genre.
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Sep 5, 2017 20:24
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Ornamented Death posted:Yeah I'm having trouble coming up with anything. Robert McCammon's Matthew Corbett series starts in 1699 but a) moves into the next century and b) isn't really horror. There's a lot set during the late 18th century and after, but it seems that 17th century America is somewhat underrepresented in the horror genre. Having spent the day combing for anything that fits, I can agree. It's kind of surprising, given how much American horror entrenches itself in distinctly American folklore or urban legend or whatever. You'd think an era from the US's history where we were literally terrified of the possibility of witchcraft would get some play (I know that's oversimplifying things, I'm no historian)
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Sep 5, 2017 21:17
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Ornamented Death posted:Robert McCammon's Matthew Corbett series starts in 1699 but a) moves into the next century and b) isn't really horror. More importantly, is it any good?
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Sep 5, 2017 22:43
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anilEhilated posted:So I just looked this up and it looks pretty interesting. Care to elaborate on how "it's not really horror"? More of a fantasy, thriller thing? It's historic fantasy. It has some dark themes, but they are all mundane in nature; just the evilness of man and all that. I've only read the first one, which was very good. I have heard that the rest of the series is equally good.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:56
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Ornamented Death posted:It's historic fantasy. It has some dark themes, but they are all mundane in nature; just the evilness of man and all that.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:58
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