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Jedit posted:Sorry for the double post, but Never apologize for double posting. And congratulations! That is some dedication you have! Enjoy your book!
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Feb 2, 2024 18:07
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value-brand cereal posted:Never apologize for double posting. And congratulations! That is some dedication you have! Enjoy your book! I did. I've been waiting fifteen years for the planned sixth Castor novel and while this isn't it, it definitely sets it up. It's also a good story in its own right. But it doesn't stand alone, so you'd need to read the other books.
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Feb 2, 2024 18:44
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The House of Last Resort by Christopher Goldenquote:Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild—selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years. Ok I had a bout of insomnia and made the poor choice of reading this in the hopes that the 'high concept horror' was something incredibly tedious and awful florid prose that would put me to sleep. NO! But it was decent enough. Spoilers are for major plot spoilers, of course. It was interesting but did not warrant the high concept horror blurb at all. Well written, had some creepy parts, nice body horror, wish they did more with the crypts. I wouldn't mind reading a longer book if it included further crypt scenes. We already had the town locals obviously hiding secrets. What if there was something more to that? The entire town knows that house was were extremely possesed people went to be tortured to death. Surely that could be expanded on. What if the alleged demons tried influencing the town, sending down bad luck and plagues of rats and insects? Everywhere has folk lore that goes along the lines of 'oh dont go to or near X place, someone died there and it's haunted. The ghost of Y will kill you just like they died!!' Hell, the idea of tainted neighborhoods because X Y Z live(d) there is not uncommon. What if the taint is now spreading to the main characters and there's a sudden social divide between them, other ex pats, and the local town people? I feel like that has potential commentary worthy of a 'high concept horror' blurb. What if the antagonist was classism and xenophobia the entire time? Hell even a identity divide. Old school italians with centuries of history versus baby americans with very sparse ties to a country. I suppose the high concept horror was the literary bits about the familial relationships? There's some themes about familial ties and cycles of not quite abuse but the grandparents and the grandchildren mimicking the same relationship of 'wife and possessed husband'. The part of Franca being a member of a totally not at all mentioned Satanic / demonic cult came out of no where in a bad way. Felt really underdeveloped, imo. I wish there was more from that. Like the cult members breaking into the house to set up weird demonic creepy poo poo to drive the homeowners insane or divide and conquer their relationship. They literally had a doorway to the crypt into the house. And the crypt is where the demons were, so like.... There was potential for that!! And honestly isn't it a common thing for possession horror to need people be weakened before full or the start of possession to happen? Like I swear that's a thing. People's faith need to be in question, people need to be physically or mentally weakened, etc. The house being haunted by catholic priests were odd. I thought catholics were guaranteed instant entrance to heaven?? No? Why are priests the ghosts? Anyways, good interesting book. Not groundbreaking. Decent addition to religious horror. I did appreciate the italian setting. I don't know if it was accurate or not but hey, different culture, cool setting, I think it was treated fairly respectfully. Golden can write pretty well.
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Feb 5, 2024 17:33
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The high concept horror was the Golden Visa's eroding of the native area's identity and culture. Also, incentivizing the type of people who can afford to uproot their loves leads to the type of people who don't care about where they're headed and, as soon as they have the red passport in hand, gently caress right off. Leaving behind either empty buildings that are as bad if not worse than they were previously and are unsellable, thus driving prices up more. Or they rent them for a premium thus driving up prices more. There's a whole lot of discourse about this. So I guess it's really just, oops we did another colonialism.
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Feb 5, 2024 18:05
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Jedit posted:Sorry for the double post, but I had no idea there was a new Felix Castor thing out. Is this a novel? A short story? ETA: poo poo. Never mind—didn’t see the new page!
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Feb 5, 2024 23:45
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Wait. That was it? I was looking for trees in a forest, I guess. Well rip. I guess I just didn't vibe with what Golden was trying to do.
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Feb 6, 2024 19:04
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I haven't read this one so I can't speak to it, but in my experience all of Golden's books I've read (which might only be a couple, I can't remember) all tend to sort of sniff at the edges of something really unique/interesting, but in the end tend to be the most obvious plot twist or outcome to follow from everything before it. Like he introduces some interesting concepts or plays with a weird or unique setting, but it tends to be little more than window dressing for an otherwise pretty straight-ahead horror plot. I think some more conventional horror/thriller publishers treat anything that isn't just "it's a murderer/ghost/whatever in a spooky house/old place" plot as "high concept"
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Feb 6, 2024 20:02
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I think that was my problem reading it [poorly] the first time. A lot of the scifi genre tackles themes like colonization and nobody really slaps on the high concept label on them. Ok maybe 'space opera' or 'military scifi' or whatever they call Dune. So I was expecting something more than yet another colonization exploration shindig. Imo if a horror genre novel can be called high concept because it tackles political issues, Dead Ends by Marc E. Fitch does that well enough. ymv quote:Four lives are thrown into chaos after a disturbed young man sets fire to an abandoned house with a chilling history, setting off a chain of events rooted in paranoia, powerlessness, desperation and tragedy that will ultimately converge in a day of horror.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:12
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Quick question: should I get the Klinger or Joshi annotated collection of Lovecraft's works?
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Feb 9, 2024 15:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:Quick question: should I get the Klinger or Joshi annotated collection of Lovecraft's works? I don't know that Lovecraft needs annotating, but if you're going to buy one then under no circumstances buy the ST Joshi. Joshi has repeatedly attacked authors who dare to point out that Lovecraft was racist and claims that it was unimportant to the man's writing. There is absolutely no way that he could provide an accurate or balanced annotation of the work.
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Feb 9, 2024 15:38
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StrixNebulosa posted:Quick question: should I get the Klinger or Joshi annotated collection of Lovecraft's works? Neither, imo. As Jedit said, Joshi's a paranoid hack and a terrible person, and only really came to prominence because he was the first person to really take an in-depth and scholarly look at Lovecraft but he's so biased and shortsighted that it's not worth reading anything he's written about Lovecraft at this point, not to mention the knock-on effects of financially supporting someone who was basically abusive to a lot of writers over the years. He's trash. If you absolutely have to have an annotated version, Klinger is fine but not great, I didn't think his notes really added much to the stories I read and honestly a lot of the extra material felt like it got in the way more than anything. And if you're posting here in 2024 I doubt you need a "scholar" to tell you that HP Lovecraft was extremely racist/antisemitic/xenophobic even for his time. I wouldn't drop the extra cash on a collection of stories that are (almost? idk) all in the public domain anyway.
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Feb 9, 2024 17:10
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MockingQuantum posted:Neither, imo. As Jedit said, Joshi's a paranoid hack and a terrible person, and only really came to prominence because he was the first person to really take an in-depth and scholarly look at Lovecraft but he's so biased and shortsighted that it's not worth reading anything he's written about Lovecraft at this point, not to mention the knock-on effects of financially supporting someone who was basically abusive to a lot of writers over the years. He's trash. Joshi is out, Klinger is tentatively in. Thank you. fwiw I know I can just plop Lovecraft on my kindle for free or read in my browser but I want a nice paperback / hardback if I must edition so I can lounge around in a fancy chair and feel like some old-timey rich rear end in a top hat as I read about fear of the other (while being queer/female/disabled/etc myself) Or: I watched this recently and I've been thinking about Lovecraft's works again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI ps it makes me mad, yet in a fitting "of course" way to find out that Caitlin R Kiernan, who I think of as the modern successor to Lovecraft, has fallen down the reactionary hole. gee. this seems to be a trend for this genre!
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Feb 9, 2024 17:52
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StrixNebulosa posted:Joshi is out, Klinger is tentatively in. Thank you. Given that video, you might be looking for Kenneth Hite's Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales and The Destinations. I'll let Tim Powers do the commentary for the original volume: Tim Powers posted:“Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft is indispensable. Thorough, insightful, and compellingly readable, it’s a perfect introduction for newcomers to Lovecraft and an endlessly fascinating review for long-time Lovecraft addicts. This is the companion-book to Lovecraft’s fiction—I read it entirely in one sitting, and I know I’m going to read it again many times over the coming years.” Hite is a serious Lovecraft scholar and a regular guest speaker at Lovecraft-related functions, but also one of the people who does the most adaptation of Lovecraft these days, being an RPG designer. Tour is a series of commentaries on "all 51 of H.P. Lovecraft's mature works of prose fiction," which range from short essays (on the works that deserve more coverage) to what feel more like Hite having a chat with the reader at a book club. This is not hundreds of pages of dense, ponderous scholarship: it's novella-length and the tone is pretty conversational, so it's well-suited to being a companion volume to actually reading the stories.
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Feb 9, 2024 19:51
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Seconding Kenneth Hite, ironically as a classical live and let live Eisenhower Republican, he's one of the least objectionable Lovecraft scholars.
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Feb 9, 2024 22:42
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Did you guys know that lovecraft was racist?
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Feb 9, 2024 22:49
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gently caress I had no idea, unfollowing now, and I'm reducing my patreon contributions by one tier.
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Feb 9, 2024 22:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Joshi is out, Klinger is tentatively in. Thank you. I didn't find anything on a cursory Google and Reddit search for Caitlin Kiernan....
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Feb 9, 2024 23:13
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edit: no as authoritative as I thought
fez_machine fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Feb 9, 2024 |
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Feb 9, 2024 23:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:fwiw I know I can just plop Lovecraft on my kindle for free or read in my browser but I want a nice paperback / hardback if I must edition so I can lounge around in a fancy chair and feel like some old-timey rich rear end in a top hat Oh, well in that case just get this. 6-volume hardback box set of most of HPL's stories without annotations. You could also get the Gollancz "Necronomicon" collection for a few quid less, but it's not clothbound so you won't feel quite as 1930s private library.
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Feb 9, 2024 23:27
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Just describe the indescribable horror imo
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Feb 9, 2024 23:28
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ScreenDoorThrillr posted:Did you guys know that lovecraft was racist? The most tedious dead horse in horror literature discussion.
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Feb 9, 2024 23:28
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fez_machine posted:edit: no as authoritative as I thought I was gonna say I mostly see fossils and climate change posts?
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Feb 9, 2024 23:32
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Despite being extremely reactionary and racist, I've most often seen Lovecraft's stories having more impact on liberal to left leaning individuals, and adaptations have borne out that way too with stuff like Lovecraft Country. One would think his back catalog would be catnip for far right wing loonies the way the Turner Diaries are, but it's not really panned out that way. I just wonder why not.
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Feb 10, 2024 04:14
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"As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead." This quote from one of his letters is kinda fun. I like how he's still writing like that in correspondence.
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Feb 10, 2024 04:33
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Whale Vomit posted:Despite being extremely reactionary and racist, I've most often seen Lovecraft's stories having more impact on liberal to left leaning individuals, and adaptations have borne out that way too with stuff like Lovecraft Country. Conservatives aren't really known for their imaginations
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Feb 10, 2024 04:36
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I know there are a lot of Brian Evenson fans here, so a heads up: Do not buy In the Shadows. Evenson didn't write it, it's AI generated. https://twitter.com/iGregGreene/status/1755809699239182405
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Feb 10, 2024 04:53
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Whale Vomit posted:One would think his back catalog would be catnip for far right wing loonies the way the Turner Diaries are, but it's not really panned out that way. I just wonder why not. That Which Should Not Be by Brett J. Talley, HPL mythos played completely straight but God definitely exists and faith in him saves the doomed priest at the climax. I found that book through the Stoker award noms, and then after I finished it I got as far as checking the author's wikipedia page to see what else he'd written and then spent like half an hour going what the gently caress, this is the same person? quote:In September 2017, he was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. His nomination drew controversy due to his lack of judicial experience, partisan personal blogging, and failure to disclose that he was married to Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to White House counsel Don McGahn. He became the third judicial nominee since 1989 to receive a unanimous rating of "not qualified" from the American Bar Association. quote:Brett Talley ... is a 36-year-old ghosthunter who has never tried a case... He also seems to have written 16,381 posts—more than 3½ per day—on the University of Alabama fan message board TideFans.com. Slyphic fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Feb 10, 2024 |
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Feb 10, 2024 15:55
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That sucks, capital G God existing within the Mythos universe was a little story idea I had, like what if the first Commandment was a warning for humans not to even think about looking further than the one higher entity that pays attention to them? Then the first time I hear about someone writing something in that vein is a CHUD.
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Feb 10, 2024 16:25
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When I read it, I thought the concept was that the god of Abraham was merely the dominant elder god for our world, moving pawns in reaction to Cthul not staying down after losing the fight in aeons past. Subsequently, I think that was me reading a better idea into the story than what was actually on the pages.
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Feb 10, 2024 17:24
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RE Kiernan, via the general chat thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1666159533872349184.html
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Feb 10, 2024 17:59
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She's been like that for at least a decade, yeah.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:46
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Pretty wild, I would have had no idea considering the general feel and content of her stories and even the stories she chooses for her collections.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:50
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Last I remember of her she had some weird antivaxx theories and when I told her that the website she's sharing has an url like theRealTruthIlluminatiSoros.net she told me to gently caress off and blocked me. Which, hey, fair enough!
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Feb 10, 2024 18:55
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Caitlin Kiernan’s brain broke when Trump won. She blames leftists and Bernie supporters for I don’t know, not voting harder for Hil. Her blog posts from the time are really clear that she thinks they put her life in danger as a trans person for helping elect Trump. And then when people pointed out this is stupid she started spiraling down the woke cancel culture black hole. It’s sad.
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Feb 10, 2024 20:18
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"Gender fluid trans person writing science fiction with strong progressive themes is actually an open racist and bigot" is a little too unbelievable, what the hell.
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Feb 11, 2024 04:57
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LifeLynx posted:"Gender fluid trans person writing science fiction with strong progressive themes is actually an open racist and bigot" is a little too unbelievable, what the hell. As horrifically frustrating as it is, in a lot of ways it makes sense: Lovecraftian horror is themed directly on fear of the other. Racism and bigotry are directly about fear of the other. Then, as a minority there is that fear of the other (the 'normal', the authority.) It's sick but it's easy to fall into the comfort of the 'they really are out to get me' and turn to hate. This isn't to say it's okay, just that there are running themes.
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Feb 11, 2024 05:19
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Perhaps there's irony in how succinctly it's put by one of the great wordsmiths of our time: "many such cases"
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Feb 11, 2024 05:32
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Y'all. She's white. Being lgbt doesn't protect oneself from being racist or being groomed into racism. Especially when one is first and foremost part of the social structure that uphold / created the racism and oppression in the first place. Here's hoping she has a 'come to jesus' moment, but I won't hold my breath. This is common and it sucks to have your q word sibling back stab you. In other news, Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky is the most slow paced book I've read. Is this what it's like to read Stephen King circa 'IT'? It's a interesting read, the pacing works for it and I love the world setting. But man I'm getting blue balled. The final show down better happen at all, or I'm sending a concerned parent letter to someone.
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Feb 11, 2024 18:20
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I'm double posting and there's nothing you can do about it. The Terror at Miskatonic Falls (2024) An anthology of stories edited by Kevin Lucia quote:This January, winter has fallen hard on the small Massachusetts town of Miskatonic Falls. The icy wind has brought more than ice and snow, however. It has brought something ancient, alien, and evil. As the temperatures drop and the snow drifts build, a creeping horror crawls over the town and its inhabitants, pulsing an insistent mantra into their slowly unraveling minds: The Long Man Cometh. Obvious slenderman jokes aside, its giving that Stephen king short story vibe. What was the one with vampires? Salems lot? Anyways, I've read an anthology from Lucia and cant recall any complaints. The concept does look interesting. But that doesn't always promise decent writing. I hope the Long Long Maaaaaan doesn't get me if I read this  https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/410K450z+HL.SX316.SY480._SL500_.jpg Can I hot link from Jeff Bezos crime against humanity? Not sure. Bullet Tooth (2024) by Grant Wamack [black american man] quote:"With Bullet Tooth, Grant Wamack has created a horror icon for our time. Unlike Freddy and Jason who commit their violent acts with their own two hands, the titular antagonist gorges himself on the violence he encourages in people just like us. The classical sensibilities that made those previous texts work are fully intact here too, but Grant brilliantly reinterprets them for our new dark age in a voice uniquely his. If you like cursed media, iconic horror villains, or urban legends, this book is an absolute must-read." - Lucas Mangum, author of Gods of the Dark Web and Bladejob Posting this because of the creepy cover and the very cool idea of haunted VHS tapes. And a Palestinian character? gently caress yeah! Yes I'm a sucker for them after Darnielle's Universal Havester. And this looks sufficiently yucky disgusting for me.
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Feb 11, 2024 20:22
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Suddenly want to read a kid's horror book called The Long Boi Commeth that's about a dachshund
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Feb 11, 2024 20:34
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