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Both Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber and Greg Stolze's Mask of the Other are great. Our Lady of Darkness, is one big tribute to Lovecraft and Ashton Smith set in 70s San Francisco in which an alcoholic author discovers the dark secrets and entities behind the city. Mask of the Other follows a group of ex-soldiers as they try to deal with the implications of their looting of Saddam's extremely under funded occult weapons program in the first gulf war. Think Three Kings crossed with Shadows over Innsmouth.
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Feb 18, 2012 23:56
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Greg Stolze writer of the excellent cosmic horror novel, The Mask of the Other is running a kickstarter for a pseudo-sequel called Whatever Happened to Lala?. If you haven't read The Mask of the Other, it's an excellent "Three Kings" meets Call of Cthulhu type novel. You can get an electronic copy just by pledging over 6 dollars, which since the book is 5 dollars on Amazon, works out to be a buck for the short story.
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Apr 14, 2012 06:53
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Ninja fetus posted:Hope you guys don't mind me asking for something related. I've been looking to get into horror again and I'm not sure what's popular these days. I'm not necessarily into cosmic horror. Got any recommendations? Brian Evenson is probably one of the best writers writing horror at the moment. Get Windeye, its got most of the really good stuff in it.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:27
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Also checkout Windeye by Brian Evenson, it's amazing.
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Mar 7, 2014 09:18
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm looking for more horror short stories. I really, really liked Windeye, by Evenson, and then moved on to Imago Sequence, which felt really lacking or unfocused after how brief and effective Evenson's work seemed. I liked Hallucigenia, but felt like it could have been about half as long and would have been much better. I really like old pulp horror, like Horror of the Heights, Novel of the White Powder, Irwin Cobb's Fishhead, stuff like that as well. You're probably looking for Jeff and Anne Vandermeer's The Weird, the most comprehensive anthology of 20th century weird fiction ever assembled, it's also the best place to start when looking for new authors to read, as anyone included there will be at the very least readable.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:45
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DFu4ever posted:I don't think I'll really dig through his other stuff at this point. I know he seems relatively popular around here, and he seems to have cool ideas, but he just doesn't tell the story well. I have never liked anything Laird Barron has written, he's kind of Steven Kingy and mid-70s to early 90s horror but without the redeeming aspects of either. A lot of dissolute men piss farting around for ages. And who finds witches scary anyway? After the Wickerman there's nothing you can do with them. There is very little that is compelling about his stuff at all.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:54
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Goddamn IT! To avoid turning this thread into the Laird Barron and others thread, I want to say I've been reading Michael Cisco's Member. The best way I can describe it is Harry Potter if before Harry enters the magical world of wizards he had spent most of his time systematically estranging himself from not only his humanity but from the very concept of humanity. It has an interesting technique in that the weird world of hostile inimical aliens and shooting bio-tape at stars on buildings is far far more lucid and comprehensible than the ordinary, mundane world which always appears to be under a fog obscuring what is happening. Also I read Brian Evenson's The Brotherhood of Mutilation which is hosed up, disturbing, horrifying, weird, and fantastic in a way that Barron wishes he could be. No witches here, nor even more than a hint of the supernatural and its still ultra loving creepy.
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Apr 16, 2014 10:32
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Friendless posted:It'd be a real coup for Bennett to score a second Shirley Jackson award. Had to look it up, but his debut Mr. Shivers won in 2010. Seriously though, check out that nominees list. You couldn't fit more Laird Barron on there if you tried. I'm pretty sure that speaks more to the overall stagnation of the genre than to Barron's skill. Frankly, it speaks to how bad that year was for nominations, because Mr. Shivers is almost as legendary as Johnny 'Five Aces' for being bad goon fiction. There was a legendary FYAD mock thread, who knows where it is now. A ton of fedora fetishism in that book. This year's noms look pretty good.
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May 25, 2014 11:16
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I'm going to recommend Michael Shea's The Color Out of Time because it's basically the Cosmic Horror Jaws or Piranha. Not exactly the same beats, but near enough to imagine it as the summer hit of 1982. If you enjoy scenes of people screaming at other people to get out of the water, the police drastically underestimating the threat, and a small band of men going out into the water to confront the menace of an indistinct blob color at the risk of their lives, then maybe consider read this.
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Jul 23, 2014 08:58
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NickRoweFillea posted:What Laird Barron collection would you guys recommend None, don't read Laird Barron read Brian Evenson.
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Sep 28, 2014 11:47
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Origami Dali posted:Are there any modern weird writers that use florid prose? I know Lovecraft was the king of purple, as well as Poe, but these days it seems writers stick to the most common words and terms, and are terrified of adjectives. The reading I enjoy the most is done in admiration of a particular identifiable writing style, and so many new writers seem interchangeable. Michael Cisco and Caitlin R. Kiernan might be what you're look for. Also Joyce Carol Oates if you want to push it.
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Oct 2, 2014 13:08
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Helical Nightmares posted:This is a good idea.  Be aware that this is THE opinion of a whole bunch of people who post in this thread, and it's mainly low taste trash (Ligotti is good). I probably need to work on a new OP but in short, the first thing you want to get is The Weird the most comprehensive overview of the field available edited by Jeff and Anne Vandermeer, and make up your mind from there, any writer (including Barron but then only grudgingly) anybody will mention in this thread is included, except for Sticks by Karl Edward Wagner which is the anthology's only really notable omission. I always recommend Brian Evenson as the best of modern weird, as his stuff is extremely well written but retains a smidgen of the pulps, check out his collection Windeye.
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Nov 1, 2014 00:42
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Ornamented Death posted:
Read my posts, I HATE the constant repetition of Laird Barron as a recommendation in this thread, it shows a lack of imagination and investigation into the genre as he's the current nerd king of horror and I will be a dick to anyone who mentions him as their go-to author. It's like some people just stop with him and never read anything else. By the way have you read George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Fire and Ice? You might like it.
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Nov 1, 2014 01:15
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Dyscrasia posted:Speaking of vandermeer, I just finished the ambergris books and loved them. Anyone know anything similar? I read the southern reach books first and was really only into the first one. Ambergris is very heavily influenced by M. John Harrion's Viriconium sequence and has not a little bit of Fritz's Leiber's Lankhmar of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and The San Francisco of Our Lady of Darkness. Maybe Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, but that is set in a castle, not a city, until the last book.
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Nov 1, 2014 01:22
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Daveski posted:I just finished The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron. I liked two of the novellas, the title one and also "Procession of the Black Sloth", but I thought pretty much everything else was kind of crap. He has some neat ideas, but most of the stories were so focused on the abstract/weird poo poo that they failed to tell any sort of story other than "guy encounters unknowable horror, goes crazy then dies". Has he written anything else worth reading? Nope, read Brian Evenson. Windeye is a great place to start.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:21
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C2C - 2.0 posted:I've read nearly every bit of Ligotti that I can afford; I'm having trouble agreeing with your sentiment about his writing. Sunk cost fallacy is a bitch. Brian Evenson is a much clearer writer.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:41
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God Of Paradise posted:I'd go further by saying he is the greatest living horror writer. Cool, have you read Brian Evenson or Josh Simmons?
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May 4, 2015 11:16
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k-uno posted:I figured I'd ask this here since I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere on the forums: can anyone recommend something else in the vein of the Southern Reach trilogy? I read it over a week last month and absolutely loved it-- I found the characters to be moving and relatable (often not a strong point in weird fiction, in my experience), especially Control (writing an otherwise serious novel set in an intelligence agency where the main character is likable but profoundly incompetent, and "Control" itself is not a job title but a derisive nickname given to him for said incompetence, is just great), and a couple of the passages, particularly in the second book, were among the most genuinely unnerving things I'd ever read. Particularly the sequence in the recovered videos from the first expedition to Area X where Lowry is staring at two copies of the expedition leader, both screaming at him to "Make her stop, make her stop!"... are there any other books out there that have that same kind of atmospheric dread and fascination, without totally losing focus on the humans in the story? Are Jeff VanDerMeer's other novels similarly good, or is Southern Reach unique among his work? Other people's suggestions are good, but you should check out the VanDerMeer edited The Weird http://www.amazon.com/The-Weird-Compendium-Strange-Stories/dp/0765333627 and follow up any of the authors you like there.
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Jul 28, 2015 22:09
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Since we're talking about Cosmic Horror and Eskimos. I'm going to recommend Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell. A children's author returns to live his ancestral manor, Stargrave, with his family, after having suppressed for his whole life his father and grandfather's worship of dark cosmic beings from up north. Think Kubrick's The Shining if it was just the final scenes outside in the snow The Publisher's Weekly review on Amazon gives it away but plot ain't exactly the reason to read it. "Trees grow," wrote the dying Edward Sterling in the frozen earth of the forest in Stargrave, England, that became his burial ground. As his grandson Ben learns, in Campbell's beautifully poetic horror novel, the elder Sterling was answering a call from a primordial species of snow that devours humans. Ben becomes a conduit for the gluttony of this creeping arctic cold, slowly losing his reason with each victim that the entity claims, as he succumbs to its promise of immortality in exchange for the lives of his neighbors. This icy menace can succeed only through manipulating Ben's consciousness, and he cooperates--until it hunts his family. Campbell's artful use of metaphor paints a frightening portrait of a world tilting into chaos and the price that must be paid to save it. This absorbing novel again demonstrates the author's mastery of the horror genre. And Brian Evenson has a new collection out in early Feburary: http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Horses-Brian-Evenson/dp/1566894131 fez_machine fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Nov 14, 2015 |
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Nov 14, 2015 10:22
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Vastarien posted:Would anybody recommend Michael Shea's The Color Out of Time (or any of his other novels for that matter)? A while back I read his short story The Autopsy and it absolutely blew me away. Since then I've gotten a few of his other shorts (all of Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales and a couple others from various anthologies), and while I enjoyed most of them, none of them come even remotely close to being as good as The Autopsy, sadly. The Colour Out of Time is Jaws meets the Colour Out of Space, complete with disbelieving Sheriffs department/holiday makers and intrepid hunters. It's very much the 70s/80s airport novel version of the Mythos. If you like the sound of that then go for it.
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Nov 21, 2015 22:56
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The most horrific thing Campbell has ever written is "At the Back of My Mind" his autobiographical introduction to The Face That Must Die, a great novel but not Cosmic Horror/Weird Tales, about his childhood and his inability to deal with his mother's paranoid schizophrenia. It's incredibly traumatising and stayed with me for days.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:47
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Evfedu posted:How do I get The Autopsy onto my kindle? Get the forever essential The Weird anthology edited by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer: http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Compendium-Strange-Dark-Stories-ebook/dp/B006E1A68K/
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Nov 24, 2015 20:36
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MockingQuantum posted:Hey so I'm looking for some fairly specific recommendations-- I'm working on a project that's cosmic-horror inspired, and we'd like to track down some good short stories or novellas that have a theme of alien nature or the surrounding environment (a la Southern Reach) or specifically cosmic horror that puts heavy focus on unhospitable or Arctic environements (a la Mountains of Madness). I've read some Laird Barron, but I've been led to believe that a lot of his stuff is at least marginally focused on the Pacific Northwest or settings like that, is that true? I love Ramsey Campbell's Midnight Sun https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/876145.Midnight_Sun Description: Found naked and snowblind in the icy wastes of the far north, where shamans were said to practise ancient rituals, Edward Sterling died soon afterwards. Three generations later, Ben Sterling unwittingly invokes an awesome power For more traditional Yog-Sothery try The Ithaqua Cycle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ithaqua-Cycle-Wind-Walker-Wastes/dp/1568821913 Description: The elusive, utterly supernatural Ithaqua roams the North Woods and the wastes beyond, as invisible as the wind. Hunters and travelers fear the cold and isolation of the north. They fear ten times more the advent of the mysterious Wind-Walker. Its malign power haunts their dreams, and its burning eyes their nightmares. Blackwood's "Wendigo" sparked a trail of influences still apparent in horror fiction today. This collection includes that progenitor tale, three stories by August Derleth, and ten more from a spactrum of contemporary authors including Brian Lumley, Stephen Mark Rainey, and Pierre Comtois. Vladimir Sorokin's The Blizzard might also be what you want: http://www.amazon.com/The-Blizzard-Novel-Vladimir-Sorokin-ebook/dp/B00XHHRX1W/ Description:Garin, a district doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is turning people into zombies. He carries with him a vaccine that will prevent the spread of this terrible disease, but is stymied in his travels by an impenetrable blizzard. You might want to consider the Vandermeer published Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction, It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction, and JAGANNATH if you want some genuine northern weird fiction.
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Feb 8, 2016 10:44
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Reason posted:Been reading through the thread and I need some recommendations. Based on some of the stuff I've seen in the thread I've read and liked: Library at Mount Char, and The Southern Reach books. I read and absolutely hated The Deep, it felt so formulaic that I nearly didn't finish it. Try Brian Evenson's work, or Robert Aickman, or Michael Cisco.
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Mar 5, 2016 10:01
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Dr. Killjoy posted:I've been on a bit of a Deep Ones bender lately and really loved the anthology Innsmouth Nightmares. Are there any real good stories out there about shoggoths by chance? Sure there's Shoggoths in Bloom but I think that the perpetrators of Earth's most successful slave revolt deserve some more love. Cody Goodfellow's recent collection of Cthulhu Mythos stuff has some choice examples.
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Jun 22, 2016 09:50
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ButtWolf posted:Recommended via the recommenation thread - im looking for fiction regarding ancient religions, demons, cults, hell even happy religions. Im trying to stay away from HPL bc i want something new and not Cthulu. Its hard to explain exactly what im looking for, but you all can narrow it down a lot. Oh boy! Last Days by Brian Evenson, maybe just read everything by Brian Evenson (especially if you count Mormonism as a cult). His latest collection A Collapse of Horses has a story about a guy driving to pick up his girlfriend from a cult, it's really good.
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Aug 28, 2016 09:58
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Solitair posted:He quit when other goons poo poo all over one of his books. Was American Elsewhere the book in question? It was Mr. Shivers, it got completely destroyed by FYAD, and they were right.
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Sep 1, 2016 12:54
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Drunken Baker posted:Never watched that, but maybe someone showed me a clip online once? Clive Barker is on the more acceptable side of Splatterpunk which is why you've heard of him. Jack Ketchum and Richard Laymon are the authors you want to go to for the real sick stuff. I haven't read them because their plot descriptions put me off, but they're out there if you want them.
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Jul 4, 2017 02:12
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Hey guys I'm teaching a class on horror fiction and here's the reading schedule: You're missing Ramsey Campbell from your survey. May I suggest adding “At the Back of My Mind: A Guided Tour,” his autobiographical introduction to "The Face That Must Die", to this section? It's arguably better than book itself and certainly a classic of horror. Completely harrowing. Campbell is one of the missing links between the Lovecraft circle and modern horror, given that he wrote a number of very influential Lovecraftian stories at very young age while in correspondence with Derleth. (There's also Bloch and Jack Ketchum's relationship). The other thing is when you do the EC comics stuff throw in some early Mad as well, in its early days it was just as steeped in doing humorous horror comics as in any other parody, hugely influential on Sam Raimi (at the very least), others have commented on the almost traumatising effects that it had on them as kids in 50s and 60s, it was still rough stuff when I read them as a kid in 90s. (The Mad comics I would consider to have a classic horror structure would be Melvin Mole, Howdy Dooit, Bat Boy and Rubin!, and Mickey Rodent, also check out those covers, it was sold as a horror comic).
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Aug 30, 2017 23:30
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Yeah Campbell is another one I'm aware I'm leaving out but don't know well enough to make an informed selection about, so thanks for the recommendations. That essay might make a good supplementary reading from what I can tell, especially since one of the goals of the course is to have them reading critical work by horror authors alongside the fiction, and also doing some investigation into how the genre was shaped by publication venues, informal networks of fans and authors, etc. I'm not an expert on the genre by any means, but I'm trying to find a way to make it more approachable. As far as I can tell, with the exception of a few major figures and Joshi's scholarship it's been surprisingly "unprocessed" by academia, at the same time a lot of writers and fans have built up their own critical apparatus and canons in small periodicals and online. I completely agree! But even with Joshi, there's the fact that he won't acknowledge the current Lovecraft boom is more directly attributable to the Call of Cthulhu RPG than any literary excellence on Lovecraft's part. Just as D&D created generic fantasy (note not the fantasy genre) by taxononomising and formalising it's influences, so too did Call of Cthulhu, which was further increased by Chaosium's fiction publishing branch re-issuing and creating new anthologies of Lovecraftian literature. Fluffy Cthulhu can be laid right at Sandy Peterson's feet. I mean the True Detective guy is such a nerd that he probably read Delta Green and almost certainly John Tynes' essay on The King In Yellow in it's second supplement, an early version of which exist here: https://web.archive.org/web/20080624072054/http://www.tccorp.com/pagan/pp_tuo1.html#Hali But essentially after the 50s (heck probably since black and white Frankenstein) you can't get a purely literary genealogy of horror, it becomes all mixed up with TV reruns, comic books, monster magazines, video fanzines, New York exploitation cinemas, games and internet sites.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:14
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Dyscrasia posted:Having read the annihilation trilogy and then roadside picnic, what else is there out there in a similar vein? There's The Silent Land by Graham Joyce.
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Oct 8, 2017 20:56
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chernobyl kinsman posted:no it's exactly what it seems like and I do not understand why that guy recommended it, because it is nothing like roadside picnic or the southern reach trilogy I don't know exploring a weird place you don't understand is like the best parts of roadside picnic and southern reach, but I couldn't think of anything else that fits. But yeah, there's a bit more to it as the main characters being dead ain't even a spoiler. It's like considering the day repeating forever a spoiler for Groundhog Day, it's the loving premise! The interest is in seeing how the characters react. This is the weird fiction thread, if you aren't here primarily for tone and mood, I don't even loving know. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 06:21
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MockingQuantum posted:Ahh that's less concerning to me then. I've read enough meh horror to not be heartbroken when a book doesn't have beautiful and immaculate prose. I'd also say that's sort of par for course with Gemma Files's writing in general; competent and engaging but not a huge focus on prose style. I like Grin in the Dark, it's a slow burn like most of Campbell's modern stuff, but it really did my head in. Campbell really uses his words to propel you into an atmosphere of misunderstanding, aggression and frustration, it's not a pleasant book to read, and I found myself becoming anxious and semi-paranoid myself. It's more about being online than movies, though, although the search for the film sets the action up.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:34
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Read Brian Evenson.
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Nov 20, 2017 20:45
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MockingQuantum posted:I've actually just been discussing with a friend the whole idea of "literary" as a descriptor for a genre... I get how certain books are considered "literary sci-fi" or "literary fantasy" in the sense that they maybe care a little more about language and a little less about worldbuilding infodumps than a lot of their respective genres, but in that light, I'm not sure what you'd call "literary horror" really. I'm genuinely curious what would be considered literary horror, besides The Fisherman, which seems a little contentious. I've also heard Universal Harvester called literary horror, and while I'm only about 80 pages in, I can kind of see what they mean (though I've also heard some say it's not quite fair to call it a horror novel, not sure why yet). Brian Evenson is definitely one. Michael Cisco has literary chops, I think Animal Money is his most literary. Maybe Avram Davidson when he was writing in his horror mode, The Boss in The Wall in particular. There's Henry and M. R. James. Robert Aickman is well respected.
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Feb 8, 2018 06:26
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chernobyl kinsman posted:henry james is not a genre writer lol Neither is Joyce Carol Oates, the question was, "Where can I find literary horror"? There are two types of answers, literary authors slumming it and good to great genre authors. Turn of The Screw is a classic ghost story and a piece of literature, fight me.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:34
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anilEhilated posted:So is there any more of Davidson writing in "horror mode"? I love his fantasy stuff and The Boss in the Wall is wonderfully creepy, but the only other even vaguely horror-ish thing of his I can think of was Manatee Gal Ain't You Coming Out Tonight which ends up being just a tad too absurd. I'd love to see some more, though. Most of the Limekiller stories are horror tinged, but anything Davidson writes is going to be absurd or goofy in some way.
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Feb 8, 2018 21:40
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a foolish pianist posted:I just looked, and used copies of this book go for ~100 dollars. I guess I'm not going to get to read it. I mean you can buy it in paperback new from the publisher for 12 dollars and free shipping in the United States: https://tachyonpublications.com/product/the-boss-in-the-wall/
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Feb 10, 2018 00:14
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NikkolasKing posted:So going back to my original post, can anybody recommend me any good "thinking" cosmic horror/weird tales stuff besides Lovecraft? Brian Evenson
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May 14, 2018 23:53
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