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ravenkult posted:Bargain bin Dean Koontz. "Bargain Bin" by Bentley Little
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May 8, 2016 00:57
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Finished the Illuminatus trilogy by Shea and Wilson and I gotta say it was pretty fuckin great. If you're looking for a mix of 60s counter-culture + alt-history + Lovecraft mythos + conspiracy culture + postmodernism + quantum theory + talking dolphins + eroticism + comedy + just about everything else-- it might be a good pick for you.
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May 8, 2016 01:30
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:Finished the Illuminatus trilogy by Shea and Wilson and I gotta say it was pretty fuckin great. If you're looking for a mix of 60s counter-culture + alt-history + Lovecraft mythos + conspiracy culture + postmodernism + quantum theory + talking dolphins + eroticism + comedy + just about everything else-- it might be a good pick for you. R A Wilson is legit good reading imho, but if you've not got a couple dozen hours of hallucinogenic experience under your belt you're probably going to miss a *lot* of his in-jokes. His "non-fiction" "self-help" stuff is pretty fun and funny as well but it largely involves a man who makes Joe Rogan look like Nancy Reagan, coming up with his own theories of reality
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May 8, 2016 07:04
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coyo7e posted:I can't feel good about dissuading anyone from reading a drug-fueled parody of Atlas Shrugged however, it's not really horror, or suspense - although it's definitely pretty weird since half of Illuminatus! involves everyone cruising around in a yellow submarine. At the end of Cosmic Trigger (one of those non-fiction works) when he talks about his daughter's murder nearly had me in tears. But the way him and his family worked through it, with the help of Tim Leary and his other friends, nearly choked me up because of the sheer beauty of humanity depicted in those moments. His fiction and non-fiction alike are fascinating reads.
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May 9, 2016 17:11
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Some dude on r/NoSleep has a pretty decent horror bit on being a park ranger at some undisclosed national park that exists in some kind of liminal space in reality. It's heavily influences by the research of David Paulides, a former park ranger who documented some really peculiar missing persons cases within parks. It reminds me of some of the best aspects of Laird Barron's work, mainly that the woods is a horrifying place that noone should ever go, also watch out for stairs. https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h (just follow the links for succeeding parts) Also evidently he has had to stop idiots from harassing various park rangers and missing persons theorist David Paulides ahahaha
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May 16, 2016 21:21
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Some dude on r/NoSleep has a pretty decent horror bit on being a park ranger at some undisclosed national park that exists in some kind of liminal space in reality. It's heavily influences by the research of David Paulides, a former park ranger who documented some really peculiar missing persons cases within parks. It reminds me of some of the best aspects of Laird Barron's work, mainly that the woods is a horrifying place that noone should ever go, also watch out for stairs. The stairs thing is intriguing, but it feels to me like he hinges a lot of the emotional impact of his stories on dead kids. It's a writing crutch he can't let go of because yeah, dead kids and grieving mothers is a horrifying concept, but it's like every other story. I even read one of his other stories from his blog and that turned out to be the core of the story also. Pretty hilarious/sad that he had to break character to tell people not to harass actual park rangers though. Now I'm curious what people were writing to this David Paulides guy; they're probably more unsettling than anything on r/NoSleep. The 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 stuff is getting good, I think it's all coming to a climax soon. There's a recent story thread about a feral cat discovering a crazy cat lady that is very well written. I think it's a metaphor for everything else that's going on in the "main" story, i.e. our understanding of the universe paralleling the feral cat's understanding of the human world.
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May 20, 2016 21:37
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Some dude on r/NoSleep has a pretty decent horror bit on being a park ranger at some undisclosed national park that exists in some kind of liminal space in reality. It's heavily influences by the research of David Paulides, a former park ranger who documented some really peculiar missing persons cases within parks. It reminds me of some of the best aspects of Laird Barron's work, mainly that the woods is a horrifying place that noone should ever go, also watch out for stairs. 
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May 20, 2016 23:57
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BJPaskoff posted:
Oh poo poo, I didn't know there was going to be more of it, gonna have to catch up
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May 21, 2016 04:57
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Yeah, it's good poo poo. There's only one thread I don't think has performed well, but it's all coming together nicely. The cat story was pretty  If you're enjoying that I think Fine Structure by Sam Hughes is a pretty fun read. Less horrific, still cosmic and weird. Ignore the dumb logline, it's not about superheroes.
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May 21, 2016 05:14
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Seen it mentioned a billion times here, so I bought the first book of the Southern Reach trilogy. About 1/3 of the way thru & it's pretty good so far.
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May 23, 2016 21:44
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Thread's going pretty great so far. I'd like to add The Sick Land to it. It's pretty good.
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May 26, 2016 15:18
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Ben Nevis posted:Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff - This focuses on a black family in Jim Crow America who becomes the focus of machinations by a secret cult. It hits a lot of the classic tropes with cults, forbidden books, windows to other worlds and more, but also focuses heavily on racial issues of the era with sundown towns, redlining, and a Safe Negro Travel Guide. It's the sort of thing where maybe the scary monster in the woods isn't the shoggoth, but the sheriff. This was a good, rather different, take on things, though the racial focus probably leaves it lacking solely as a means of scratching a Lovecraft itch. Picked this up from the library based solely on the cover. I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem to meld the themes of race and weird fiction as well as it could. The book is in an episodic format, with each section focused on a different member of an extended family on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s. There is a plot connecting all of these stories, but individually they each introduce a different weird scenario. These stories seem to settle into a pattern of a character being threatened because of racism, which they escape from before they stumbling into a shoggoth or other beast. The characters' struggles with racism and discrimination are intense and well-written, but their interactions with mythos weirdness is much more dreamlike. Multiple times I found myself hoping characters would bump into a mi-go because it would be less stressful than worrying about beat cops. Two of the later stories in the book, the cousin who gets a serum to turn white and the boy cursed to be hunted by racial caricatures managed to tie race and weirdness together in a way I found much more satisfying. My point of view might be skewed because I just finished up the last Area X book right before this, and the "real issue" of environmental collapse it examines is an essential part of its weirdness and horror.
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Jun 4, 2016 21:54
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I read The Cipher based on earlier discussion in this thread. I enjoyed the process of reading it but was almost disappointed in the ending. The buildup of the hole and Nakota's driving obsession with it, the experiences Nicholas is an unwilling conduit for and the eventual cult following that forms around it was all really great and left me with a huge sense of dread and foreboding. The final scenes didn't resonate with me much though, probably because everyone involved had it coming by virtue of being thorough assholes. I agree with the poster earlier (sorry, I'm phone posting or I'd go back and find out who!) who said the hole works well as a metaphor for abusive relationships. v Yeah no idea what happened there, thanks for catching it - fixed. Mode 7 fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jun 9, 2016 |
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Jun 5, 2016 03:42
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Sodomy Non Sapiens posted:I read The Crucible based on earlier discussion in this thread. I enjoyed the process of reading it but was almost disappointed in the ending.
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Jun 7, 2016 18:07
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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.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:08
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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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Not a mention of Cthulhu anywhere but firmly in the space of cosmic horror The Nothing Equation Tom Godwin This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December 1957 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25628/25628-h/25628-h.htm quote:The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except—
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Jun 26, 2016 03:35
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A bunch of issues and articles from “Weird Tales” (1923-1954) available for download in the public domain. http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/download-issues-of-the-pioneering-pulp-horror-fantasy-magazine-weird-tales.html  quote:Debuting in 1923, Weird Tales, writes The Pulp Magazines Project, provided “a venue for fiction, poetry and non-fiction on topics ranging from ghost stories to alien invasions to the occult.” The magazine introduced its readers to past masters like Poe, Bram Stoker, and H.G. Wells, and to the latest weirdness from Lovecraft and contemporaries like August Derleth, Ashton Smith, Catherine L. Moore, Robert Bloch, and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian). ---------- Decent Bibliography of Mythos stories http://www.epberglund.com/RGttCM/cmnet01a.htm Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 03:43
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That bibliography has stories I hadn't read before, thank you.
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Jun 27, 2016 01:30
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Just finished The Nightmare Stacks. Having a Laundry book out every year has spoiled me and now I have to wait two years, I think? At least there's no cliffhanger as such, aside from wondering what will be next in the gradual escalation of the metaplot. That ending though... I wish we'd gotten a 'debrief' like we do in some of the other books. e: Actually, Charlie on his blog has posted that The Delirium Brief is supposed to be out next July. Could have sworn they were going to go back to every 2 years after Stacks, but I'm happy to be wrong! JerryLee fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 02:25
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JerryLee posted:Just finished The Nightmare Stacks. The Auditor report at the end of Rhesus Chart is one of my favorite Stross bits and is gut-churning despite being clinical and detached. 
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Jul 1, 2016 06:41
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GreyjoyBastard posted:The Auditor report at the end of Rhesus Chart is one of my favorite Stross bits and is gut-churning despite being clinical and detached. I'd say because it's clinical and detached and it sets the tone, since you know something is going to be beyond awful if Bob can't bring himself to talk about it and just pastes in the report. Speaking of gut churning and setting the tone, just started Stacks and man. The Pratchett dedication really hit me harder than I would have expected.
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Jul 1, 2016 16:22
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I read Matthew Bartlett's Gateways to Abomination which I believe was recommended here. It's a collection of loosely related short horror fiction. It was very short, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I ended up wanting more.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:29
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Rough Lobster posted:I read Matthew Bartlett's Gateways to Abomination which I believe was recommended here. It's a collection of loosely related short horror fiction. It was very short, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I ended up wanting more. He's written a novel in the same setting... The name is eluding me right now. I liked it, too, its structure was something I haven't seen in horror before and it worked well. Also it had some good prose. I especially liked the bit in the story near the start of the guy describing his neighbour's arse.
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Jul 2, 2016 03:50
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Finally got to read Nightmare Stacks and gotta say that I was remarkably surprised that Stross fulfilled every expectation and more on depicting elves as the assholes they'd be (although they did come off a little too much like Eldar from WH40K for my tastes). I hated Alex in Rhesus Chart but gotta say that he was better fleshed out here and dare I say sympathetic. I was expecting a war but I think Stross went a bit overboard on the techno-thriller aspect (though I guess that really can't be avoided - war rooms and switchboards lighting up are nice and dramatic but boring if used too much). Stross did say that there would be Orcs. Wasn't expecting his twist on that Also glad to see the return of equiods Dr. Killjoy fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 2, 2016 |
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Jul 2, 2016 08:22
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Stross did say that there would be Orcs. Wasn't expecting his twist on that I think I'd forgotten where Stross said that and I was too dense to pick up on it as I was reading the book, beyond a general "Hmm, rings a bell..." Now that you've mentioned it, of course, I see it. I was at least clever enough to catch the foreshadowing of the "false" positive in the SCORPION STARE tests.
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Jul 2, 2016 08:41
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Finally got to read Nightmare Stacks and gotta say that I was remarkably surprised that Stross fulfilled every expectation and more on depicting elves as the assholes they'd be (although they did come off a little too much like Eldar from WH40K for my tastes). I hated Alex in Rhesus Chart but gotta say that he was better fleshed out here and dare I say sympathetic. I was expecting a war but I think Stross went a bit overboard on the techno-thriller aspect (though I guess that really can't be avoided - war rooms and switchboards lighting up are nice and dramatic but boring if used too much). I think it helped that it was played slightly more for horror than Clancy technobabble usually is. The loving descriptions of demented weaponry and frantic military preparation were basically a Lovecraft-esque buildup emphasising that holy gently caress a ridiculous number of people are about to die horribly. Stross does that quite a bit - see also, A Colder War and the later parts of Merchant Princes.
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Jul 2, 2016 11:18
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Also glad to see the return of equiods  I didn't even catch that, and it's one of my favorite shorts.
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Jul 6, 2016 05:33
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GreyjoyBastard posted:
Anyhow, I liked most of the books, but the "Stross doing Clancy" bits are I think a bit too close to the dryness and bore of the original. I don't think I've ever read a more yawn-worthy plane fight.
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Jul 7, 2016 10:10
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anilEhilated posted:The elven cavalry rides unicorns with spiral horns. It's a cameo, really. A bit more than a cameo, considering that the cavalry are their main military forces outside dragons that we see in action. We certainly get a better idea of why the Laundry freaks out so badly over unicorns. You know, apart from the severely icky reproduction process.
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Jul 7, 2016 11:36
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The ending is legit the most Laundry ending I can think of.
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Jul 7, 2016 15:07
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I'd never heard of Anders Fager, he's a Swedish mythos writer. Being Swedish, most of his work isn't available in English. The only story I could find that is translated, The Furies From Boras is really well written. There's a Tor article about the story as well, if you like that kind of thing.
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Jul 7, 2016 17:41
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Peztopiary posted:I'd never heard of Anders Fager, he's a Swedish mythos writer. Being Swedish, most of his work isn't available in English. The only story I could find that is translated, The Furies From Boras is really well written. There's a Tor article about the story as well, if you like that kind of thing. Awesome thanks!
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Jul 7, 2016 23:29
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Peztopiary posted:I'd never heard of Anders Fager, he's a Swedish mythos writer. Being Swedish, most of his work isn't available in English. The only story I could find that is translated, The Furies From Boras is really well written. There's a Tor article about the story as well, if you like that kind of thing. Man, I dislike the writing style here. Not sure if it's because it's a translation or what. Also, I just plain dislike the story .
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Jul 11, 2016 11:07
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I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought the style fit the story. It was modern etc. I guess that's how he writes as opposed to a mis-translation though, so if it's not your thing then the rest of his stuff probably won't be either.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:21
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Helical Nightmares posted:Blitz recommendations Is the Stolze one the one about the interrogation
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Jul 12, 2016 19:33
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(Jeff C. Carter) - terrifying and then look up the reality it is based on
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adam nevill's been brought up a few times in this thread. just found out if you sign up for his newsletter you get a free ebook featuring a couple of short stories (as well as chapter excerpts)
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Jul 13, 2016 19:35
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Literally The Worst posted:Is the Stolze one the one about the interrogation Had to look it up. Yeah. A Question of Memory by Stolze has to do with an interrogation.
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Jul 13, 2016 22:57
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Stolze's Mask of the Other is pretty good.
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Jul 13, 2016 23:24
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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. Sorry, I'm a little late to the draw on this one, but have you ever read "Fat Face" by Michael Shea?
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Jul 14, 2016 01:47
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