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Drunken Baker posted:It's rumoured, and almost a poorly kept secret, that Scarlet Gospels was ghost written. Not sure who (not read any of Paul Kane's work, but I know he's close with Barker), but the style and... well, everything is so far from Clive's style* that yeah, "embarrassing" is the word I'd use. Even some of the most hardcore Hellraiser fans I know have trouble defending Pinhead going super saiyan(?) and shooting fireballs at Lucifer. The going super saiyan was kinda dumb, but more than that the whole book read like the author wasn't up to date on anything in the Hellraiser mythos and was just treating it like regular hell, with demons and lakes of fire and whatnot.
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May 17, 2018 17:58
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Drunken Baker posted:Unfortunately that's pretty much what Hellraiser devolved into with the later films. With an actual angel showing up in the latest film. Everything cool and weird and good about the idea of this parallel realm dedicated to extreme experience was just flushed down the bog. "Angels to some, demons to others..." nah, they're just demons now. The Labyrinth is ACTUAL Judeo-Christian hell where the dead go and the box is a shortcut. Haha, what? Really? I liked some of the the direct-to-video sequels, but I honestly thought they were done after releasing Hellraiser: Revelations just to fulfill their contract. I guess not 
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May 18, 2018 16:01
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Len posted:I dont know how i felt about Universal Harvester. It certainly wasnt a horror book so im not sure why it popped up so often. Even the unsettling bits went away by the halfway point. I think i enjoyed it though although Wolf in White Van i think i liked more. I just read this also and I agree with everything you just said.
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May 25, 2018 16:05
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GrandpaPants posted:Has anyone heard of the judges before? I'm not as well read as my Tinder profile says I am. This list got problems. I've heard of three of these names before, though all I've read from Stephen Graham Jones was Demon Theory, a novel that was either douchey in the extreme, or doing it as a parody in a way that just made it unreadable. Then again, I also didn't think Cyclonopedia was readable, so ymmv.
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Aug 21, 2018 17:05
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pospysyl posted:What are some good horror novels that deal with institutions? I'm thinking of schools, corporations, or other organizations with strict hierarchies and rules. Authority from the Area X trilogy would count, as would the darker parts of Kafka's The Trial. I'm also looking to check out Andres Barba's Such Small Hands, which is about a girl's orphanage. Do you specifically mean institutions not counting the military or clandestine services?
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Aug 29, 2018 18:07
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pospysyl posted:Good question! No, I'm not really interested in military or espionage horror. Well, would you consider the work sites and town management in Thomas Ligotti's stories to be this kind of thing?
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Aug 29, 2018 18:18
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grobbo posted:I don't think he ever quite strays into horror, but since you mentioned Kafka - Kobo Abe's books often feature a hapless hero trying to navigate a mysterious institution with its own set of bizarre and unbreakable rules (The Woman In The Dunes, but also Secret Rendezvous and Kangaroo Notebook) Has a translation of Rope come out since the last time I checked?
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Aug 29, 2018 19:27
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pospysyl posted:I've only read Ligotti's "The Town Manager" and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I'm not aware of his other work. It's definitely worth looking into! Would you consider the Three-Body Problem scifi horror? It spooked me more than Southern Reach but I don't know if it's what you want. Either way, it's worth a read, because it is excellent.
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Aug 29, 2018 23:11
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Gertrude Perkins posted:I've read very little horror fiction, and even less that's really spooked me. So, as part of my Booklord challenge, I'm going to ask someone here to suggest a (shortish) horror book as a wildcard for me to read before the year is out. The more obscure the better! Thank you in advance! The Cipher by Kathe Koja
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Oct 24, 2018 18:36
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Gertrude Perkins posted:I've added all three of these to my to-read list, since they all sound pretty rad in their own ways. Thank you! Yay!
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Oct 24, 2018 22:11
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Gertrude Perkins posted:gently caress me, finding a print copy of The Cipher seems to be basically impossible. drat. I wish I could help you, but I only have it on ebook.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:01
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Zartosht posted:Man that cover sucks. Ah, wow, that's sure a redesign that... did anyone want that? I mean, I guess this book might sell if they started stocking it in hot topic.
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Nov 14, 2018 16:42
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Pththya-lyi posted:It's doesn't tie in with a media property aimed at teenagers so I doubt they'd be interested I wasn't a hot topic goth growing up, but I'd assume that most YA "I'm clumsy and relatable but also way paranormal, I have exactly two men from opposite sides of the tracks to choose from!" is not a thing they're into? I feel old having to ask that.
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Nov 14, 2018 16:58
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Loutre posted:I just read 14 because I saw it earlier in this thread. Any other recommendations for really out-there mystery horror like that, but maybe more general horror than 14 was? For people who didn't read it, what was it about 14 that you want more of?
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Dec 5, 2018 18:49
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Loutre posted:The best I can describe it is a mystery that gets less and less reasonably-explained as time goes on. My horror experience is limited to Stephen King so that may be a hugely broad area of books though. Well, that seems like a good description of Dead Mountaineer's Hotel by the Strugatsky brothers, which I liked, though I'm not sure it's what you want. I don't think it's horror.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:10
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i honestly, and i'm not just trying to be contrarian here, do not understand what people like about The Fisherman. i think it's one of the worst horror novels i've ever read. I wouldn't say it was the worst but I also don't get why people liked it.
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Jan 9, 2019 17:32
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ruby saltbush posted:my reaction to it was exaggerated because i paid $23 for it lol. that's two reregs and a cappuccino! OK yeah well maybe if I paid that much I'd have some stronger feelings.
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Jan 9, 2019 21:19
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lofi posted:I really enjoyed House of Leaves' 'hey your home, your safe place, is now all hosed up and creepy' thing, can anyone recommend me stuff that plays with similar concepts? I liked that it was a very inhuman horror, rather than being a person/ghost/demon, that impersonality made it much more creepy to me. At the risk of being a doctor with only one prescription, have you read The Cipher yet?
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Jan 23, 2019 20:02
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lofi posted:That looks about perfect for what I want, yes! Thankyou! Excellent! Enjoy! I have GOT to come up with a new go-to novel.
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Jan 24, 2019 17:14
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MockingQuantum posted:I mean, as go-to novels go, it's a good'un. It's an excellent book, and really seems to be under the radar for a ton of people, even established horror fans. I've never met anybody outside of SA who has heard of it. It is! That's why it's my go-to novel! But you got to figure, there's a lot more demand for these books than there is supply of these books. It's basically, House of Leaves, The Cipher, ... I don't know, some kind of creepypasta? SCP? If someone has already read The Cipher, there isn't a lot I know of in this particular genre to recommend. Looking For Jake, maybe?
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Jan 24, 2019 19:30
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm sure there's more out there that fits the mold, but I haven't run into it myself. Hell, I'm trying to write a book in exactly that sort of subgenre in part because I wish there was more like it! So if you want a really lovely book to read in, like, 2028, keep a look out Good idea! I hope that works out for you. I see a lot of demand for this genre, but like, most people haven't heard of The Cipher, and it ended up in a Humble Bundle at some point, so... I guess, maybe you'll be House of Leaves, which was on every bookshelf screenshot in SA back in the 2000's? That'd be neat.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:35
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Traxis posted:The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp Jack Sparks is a trip, I was really not expecting that plot. I didn't like the scenes where Jack is an rear end in a top hat, which is all of them. Without dropping plot spoilers, I guess I'd recommend this book for people who liked the Insidious series? Also: Maybe the Laird Barron story The Procession of the Black Sloth for found video?
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Feb 2, 2019 11:12
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julietthecat posted:I finished this last night. It's true, it's pretty amateurish. Beyond the stitled prose, it was clearly (badly) self-edited and has basic mistakes (e.g. confusing lie and lay). It reads like a series on the No Sleep subreddit. It cribs pretty heavily from The Ring, as one might predict, and doesn't do anything interesting. I'd pass on this, unless one is getting pretty desperate for stories about spooky found video/audio. I just read Transmission this weekend, and I'd agree with all of this. I was pretty underwhelmed.
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Feb 4, 2019 17:13
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lofi posted:Just finished this. I actually didn't enjoy it very much, it felt oppressively monotone to me - it was all 'ugh, my hand's hosed up and artists are shits' all the time. I don't know if it was deliberate, I can see how it could be, but I felt like it really could have done with a rest at some point, it just all blended together after a while. Yeah, oppressively monotone fits. Sorry that didn't work for you! If you want another recommendation for some reason, try Looking For Jake.
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Feb 4, 2019 22:59
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Agreed, but if you love the idea of horror involving lost or found footage and numbers stations it's decent. There really isn't much horror in that genre. Yeah, the found footage part was decent, it made me excited for whatever was coming next, but the actual horror content after that was lacking. Someone else compared it to The Ring, and yeah, it was like The Ring but totally toothless, 15 years after the American version. The radio seance was original, at least.
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Feb 5, 2019 00:51
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pikachode posted:anyway i ordered his book today and immediately afterward this happened to me (trigger warning quail death), i thought other horror fans might appreciate it "when you can feel them moving it's not chicks but bubbles of gas shifting inside the rotting eggshell" yeah that's appropriate for Ligotti
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Feb 8, 2019 17:34
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pikachode posted:there's a series of posts, two of the eggs had quail in them but they... they weren't right Those were hosed up too, but less existentially so.
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Feb 8, 2019 17:49
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:By the way, isn't it a bummer that Ligotti's "The Nightmare Network" is such a vivid, accurate representation of our own time? I thought "Our Temporary Supervisor" did a way better job of it
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Mar 17, 2019 10:41
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:CLASSIFIED AD I It's accurate to tech giants today, right up to: quote:Your life need not be a nightmare of failure and resentment. Join us. Outstanding benefits. Which is the part that is no longer true today. I feel like Our Temporary Supervisor probably has the Amazon Fulfillment Center mindset down pretty well. quote:The next morning I returned to the factory along with everyone else. We worked at an even faster rate and were even more productive. Part of this was due to the fact that the bell that signaled the end of the work day rang later than it had the day before. This lengthening of the time we spent at the factory, along with the increasingly fast rate at which we worked, became an established pattern. It wasn’t long before we were allowed only a few hours away from the factory, only a few hours that belonged to us, although the only possible way we could use this time was to gain the rest we needed in order to return to the exhausting labors which the company now demanded of us.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:06
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https://subterraneanpress.com/hellraiser-the-tollquote:Hellraiser: The Toll tells the story of what happened between Clive Barker’s iconic works The Hellbound Heart and its follow up, The Scarlet Gospels. So apparently Clive Barker is having Hellraiser fanfiction ghost-written now, I guess Tom Clancy style. Sounds like they're treating the Scarlet Gospels as canon and now bringing that back to all the previous work that was actually good.
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Apr 14, 2019 11:15
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Ornamented Death posted:Two things: 1) It wasn't mentioned here, which was why I mentioned it here. Did I imply that this was new? 2) Because it was bad.
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Apr 15, 2019 17:49
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Drunken Baker posted:Apparently Millar wrote Scarlet Gospels after the first chapter too and that was dreadful in ways I find hard to articulate. Oh, that explains that book, I guess. Drunken Baker posted:I said this in another thread but my love for Hellraiser is a paradox. I consider myself a massive, massive fan but I hate pretty much everything about the franchise from nearly all the films to the comics to the books. (And other fans... mostly.) I feel the same about a lot of Lovecraft. Maybe there are just some universally good ideas that are poorly conveyed by a lot of the actual content?
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Apr 16, 2019 15:53
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Mel Mudkiper posted:So I just got done reading Kwaidan which is a book of ancient buddhist ghost stories and it owned Have you seen the movie, and if so how did it stack up?
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Apr 17, 2019 15:34
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am gonna watch it on Criterion Channel here in a few days so I will let you know Neat! Thanks!
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Apr 17, 2019 15:52
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chernobyl kinsman posted:you've been assured incorrectly. you can absolutely skip the johnny truant bits, and you will enjoy the book much more if you do I actually liked the Johnny Truant part, and I thought the horror in The Navidson Record was underwhelming, despite being a really good concept.
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May 27, 2019 01:15
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MockingQuantum posted:The only ones I can vouch for are Best of the Best Horror, which in general are pretty good collections, and Book of Cthulhu II. I haven't read either, but I've seen horror writers say that they think Ellen Datlow is good at short story collections, and they like her work.
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Jun 6, 2019 15:44
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bloom posted:So if I don't like Teattro is it fair to assume Ligotti isn't for me? Probably, unless what you disliked was the fact that it was short stories specifically. Any particular reason why you didn't like it?
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Jun 18, 2019 15:44
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Kestral posted:Any recommendations for stand-out horror in audiobook format, either books or short story collections? I have to do most of my reading on audio these days, and horror is especially tricky to do right in that format: I was looking forward to Wounds, for example, but some of the narrators are terrible fits for the material. I really liked the narration and stories in 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill.
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Aug 5, 2019 20:10
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Section 9 posted:I just finished watching it, and only just read the story a couple weeks ago, so it's pretty fresh in my mind and I thought the movie was a pretty close adaptation. To the point that the bar scenes looked almost exactly how I imagined them looking when I was reading it. I remember someone here saying that they didn't like the main character, but I don't think you were expected to in the movie or the story. I think the thing I felt was it's biggest lacking from the story is that the other stories in the book seem to tie together in a pretty interesting and terrifying cosmology that you don't really get until the end, and there's nothing here to tie it back to that. I just saw it, I'd agree with all of this.
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Oct 24, 2019 17:56
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plz dont pull out posted:Just finished reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I never would have thought a blend of True Detective/Silence of the Lambs murder solving with cosmic horror & time travel would work so well but it did! If you're a stickler you might not consider this horror but personally the gruesome murders mixed with sense of doom hanging over everything made it one of the scariest books I've read in a while. Oh yeah I read this and forgot to post about it, it's really good.
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Nov 12, 2019 19:29
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