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I don't believe it has been mentioned in this thread, but Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas is a very interesting piece of Lovecraftian/weird fiction. It's a mashup of Lovecraft's mythos and Jack Kerouac's On the Road. In it Jack witnesses the rise of R'lyeh off the coast of California. He then heads on a road trip to save the world from unspeakable horrors. Very curious read, especially if you've read both Lovecraft and Kerouac (or are at least familiar with Kerouac.) The author released the ebook for free and you can read it here, either on the site or in pdf: http://www.moveunderground.org/
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Sep 26, 2012 20:03
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KomradeX posted:Also Book of Cthulhu I and II are awesome. I am this close to buying the first one on my Kindle and I need a second opinion. Most of the time these "post-Lovecraft" anthologies are mediocre and trite poo poo, so I'd rather not be completely disappointed with it. I am in the mood for reading some contemporary takes on Lovecraft's mythos, just as long as they bring something new and fresh into the mix.
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Jan 16, 2013 10:51
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I haven't read all of it yet but so far I haven't regretted the purchase. There's both older stuff (like T.E.D. Klein's "Black Man With a Horn") and fresh takes on the mythos (the much-praised "Shoggoths in Bloom") as well as some that aren't really Lovecraft-related at all ("The Men from Porlock" by Laird Barron). Some of the stories are mediocre but I'm yet to come across a horror anthology where I enjoyed all of it equally. Brilliant, thanks for that! I have read none of the stories you mentioned (haven't even heard of them, eeheeeh), so I'll give it a try! After reading Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts, which I loved, I'm in the mood for some more horror short stories.
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Jan 16, 2013 12:53
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Just bought The Imago Sequence because of this thread. Look forward to checking it out, not familiar with the author. I've not read Ligotti, but years ago I got an unexpected gift (as I didn't know the author at all): the graphic novel version of The Nightmare Factory. Liked it but had some difficulties tracking down other books at the time. Good to see that Ligotti has some ebooks available on Amazon. I'll be picking up either short story collection next (too broke now). Also, wanted to back another poster up here: Check out Fatale. It's an absolutely brilliant graphic novel, very noir, very Lovecraftian. So good that I've been collecting issues of it, but I usually wait for the paperback volumes. Also, I've started listening to King Crimson because of the discussion about them and Ligotti. Well done, thread. Very well done. You should go and give In the Court of the Crimson King a listen if you haven't already.
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Nov 1, 2013 10:54
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Glad this thread went into some Barron talk since I've recently started reading The Imago Sequence and am having a hard time getting interested in it. Note that I've just read the first two stories, but they were so dreadfully bland and predictable that I'm hesitant to continue. Only first impressions however, I'm aware of that. The first story, Old Virginia, was so straightforward and characters so ungripping that I kind of felt like I was reading an plot overview rather than a short story. It was a few days until I started again reading the next story and I found that I completely forgot what Old Virginia was about. Not a good sign. Shiva, Open Your Eye was better but still very lacking in the former half. The protagonist is an eternal avatar of a hateful, incomprehensible God, some sort of Nyarlathotep, and all he does is make people look at statues and disappear to the eternal voidbowel-dimension of Azathoth-Sothoth? Ok. Great. Now I'm on Procession of the Black Sloth, a story this thread seems to dread. Look forward to it! I'll give it and a few more stories an honest go.
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Feb 26, 2014 12:21
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Ornamented Death posted:The Kindle versions of Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe, and Noctuary are on sale for $2.99 through the 7th. This is a crazy good offer. Already had Songs so just got the rest, plus The Spectral Link. On bizarro fiction, then I have only read Satan Burger. I quite liked it, even willing to go far enough to find it great. It was humorous, pulpy, wild and rough. It had lots of fun ideas, as well as some dreamlike/nonsensical ones. The concept of Earth being a destructive, hateful child and God giving it life to kill and torture like toys really stuck with me. Sometimes it reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, if the story was told from the perspective of a deranged citizen of Wonderland. Everything felt so surreal, like a dream. The ending was (I'm very vague, but spoiler-tagged anyway) especially memorable, bleak and filled with hopelessness, almost like something you would find in cosmic horror. It doesn't seem quite like the other entries mentioned, which sometimes look like ironic shitposting in fiction form. Recommend giving it a try if any of this interests.
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Jul 6, 2014 19:07
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Barron's stories are flat and predictable, with usually quite dull main characters (agree wholeheartedly about the manlyman thing said above - ugh). It just feels kinda boring and for horror, not creepy/scary/anything at all, really. I gave up on Imago Sequence and might give it a chance later on, but I doubt it. Checked out some story recommendations from this thread and they just fell flat.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:28
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redreader posted:I'm reading the imago sequence right now (on the final story, 'the imago sequence') and some of them are just terrible. What's up with the guy who reads weird stuff in graffitti? I skipped that story. Some of the stories are good (the first one, with the weird witch person and the army guys and scientists) but of the first, I think three stories in the book, two of them basically end with the first-person protagonist saying or at least heavily implying 'and then I died'. I mean, that's playschool-level stuff here. If you're writing it you can't die. On a positive note, I previously read the tales of cthulhu anthology and most of those were pretty great. I thought the first story was just terribly bland and underwhelming, like the rest of the book. I can't say much though, I gave up after a few stories. There was just nothing in them. Everything felt so bland and watered-down. I've been reading Ligotti and like another poster here, am excited to talk about Teatro Grottesco when I finish it. I'm taking it real slow, only one story at a time with some intervals. It's absolutely terrific so far. The apathy and the dreamlike reality of every story really gets to me like nothing else. I recently read the first Southern Reach novel and really liked it. Everything about it was just great and I really liked how nothing was overexplained or made dull. It felt very fresh and exciting. When starting the second novel I found myself unable to continue somehow, the leap from the narrator of the first book to the beginning of the second one was too jarring. I'm going to take a short break and then give it another try, because I know this is something I want to explore further. Maybe I'll try the Ambergris stuff in the meantime.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:35
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El Miguel posted:Yeah, it's a weird book that makes you feel dirty in your soul, but probably not quite the same thing. On a shameless-self-promotion note, my band put out a heavily Lovecraft-influenced record a few years back: Weird Tales & Gonzo Sleaze . Some people might find itinteresting or enjoyable. I'm not sure about the shameless self-promotion, but this reminded me of a book I've always wanted to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10796760-the-damned-highway Anyone read it? Also recall a Kerouac Lovecraft fusion that was quite decent, as I remember it.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:36
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hopterque posted:I liked them a whole lot, yeah. I feel the exact opposite. I'd have preferred just the surreal and mysterious trip of the first one.
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May 22, 2015 11:38
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Humanity ending because an alien race can teleport their minds across time and space to take over other beings is absolutely terrifying. I always liked that mankind only was spared because of some fluke, making the Great Race prefer some antpeople in the distant future or whatever, underlining how powerless and insignificant mankind is. We could have done nothing to prevent this horrible, pod-people invasion and everyone taken over would have been sent to an alien body in another time to be torn apart by horrible, alien things. To a modern reader then Lovecraft is perhaps not exactly scary at most times - but his stories are unnerving. Cosmic horror isn't scary like traditional horror. It gives you the sense that your perception of reality and your life is just a thin veil, waiting to be lifted. It's something that pokes at an underlying sense of the wrongness of reality deep in your mind and brings it to the surface. That is way worse than something that will want you to keep the light on for one night (although that makes for a very fun reading experience as well).
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Jun 6, 2015 01:54
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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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