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Kerbtree posted:If you're having trouble reading HPL, how about listening? Man I thought this was possibly the best thing ever when I thought it was professional sounding readings of all the stories so I downloaded like 30 episodes and then realized that only like 8 stories were straight readings. The rest are just snippets of story then 2 guys bantering about the story. My excitement plummeted through the floor. I guess it's not so bad a thing in and of itself but it could have been a treasure if they just had full readings with no banter.
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Jan 23, 2012 22:31
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Ornamented Death posted:Yeah, The Night Land is a tough read because of idiotic manner of writing Hodgson adopts to make the protagonist seem like a 17th century guy. But, it's totally worth fighting through because the story is just absolutely wild. Thats kind of like saying that having your hand crushed by industrial machinery is worth it for all the morphine you get to have at the hospital. Yes, I found the writing to be THAT bad. Dont get me wrong I agree the story is great, but I will be waiting for the re-write to be completed before continuing to read, I can't bear to read the original.
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Jan 23, 2012 23:18
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I'm reading through the Night Land rewrite and I keep thinking how this would make a loving epic movie or miniseries.
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Jan 24, 2012 05:14
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Mr.48 posted:Man I read the whole of the re-write that is currently available in one reading and it was really great. I really wanted to know what happed after the most recent re-written chapter and switched over to the original. I cannot express in words just how terrible the original is compared to the re-write. I gave up after about 5 more minutes because reading the original was like hammering nails into my own head. I didn't know a re-write existed, and when I went to see if it was available on Amazon, I was greeted with one of the worst covers I have ever seen: http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327380136&sr=8-1 That is actually sort of making me hesitant on getting it even though everything I have heard makes me think that I will like the book.
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Jan 24, 2012 05:47
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Kerbtree posted:If you're having trouble reading HPL, how about listening? I've occasionally considered doing something like this-- I've run into audio adaptations before, and the vast majority of them seem to come off dry and uninteresting. There are good ones out there, though. Just not always the ones that I think work best read aloud.
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Jan 24, 2012 06:08
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GrandpaPants posted:I didn't know a re-write existed, and when I went to see if it was available on Amazon, I was greeted with one of the worst covers I have ever seen: http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327380136&sr=8-1 Well I mean it is basically a love story set in a weird, hosed up future. That cover is awful, yes, but it's not totally out of place.
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Jan 24, 2012 15:00
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GrandpaPants posted:I didn't know a re-write existed, and when I went to see if it was available on Amazon, I was greeted with one of the worst covers I have ever seen: http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327380136&sr=8-1 Holy poo poo, I didnt realize the full version was already available! And $3 for the kindle version is a great deal, gonna buy the poo poo out of it!
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Jan 24, 2012 20:31
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C'mon guys no love for House Of Leaves? It is kinda subjective though on that but still its a bloody ace read.
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Jan 25, 2012 04:33
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MyNameIsAlex posted:C'mon guys no love for House Of Leaves? It is kinda subjective though on that but still its a bloody ace read. It is, though it strays pretty far from the sort of "weird tales" template I'm thinking of. The Minotaur and the House itself definitely qualify as "cosmic horror" though. I definitely didn't trust my walls after reading it.
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Jan 25, 2012 07:19
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MyNameIsAlex posted:C'mon guys no love for House Of Leaves? It is kinda subjective though on that but still its a bloody ace read. I have no idea how anyone has ever managed to read House of Leaves. I've tried three times and failed to get more than five pages in before wanting to gouge my own eyes out. Horrible, terrible book.
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Jan 25, 2012 09:30
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I kept a page of two of the more absurd pages of House of Leaves bookmarked. A few months ago my brother came snooping around looking for books to "borrow" AKA never return, and he asked me about this. I flip open to my chosen page and it has prose running up, down, sideways, in a little box in the corner that persisted for like a chapter, and a ton of footnotes. Not to mention there's at least three colors in play and a paragraph of footnotes.
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Jan 25, 2012 14:51
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Jedit posted:I have no idea how anyone has ever managed to read House of Leaves. I've tried three times and failed to get more than five pages in before wanting to gouge my own eyes out. Horrible, terrible book. Most people disagree with you on that. It's confounding as gently caress but if you can break into the baffling set ups its actually very good. I will say though the authors other main book ain't too great. Hmmm trying to think of choices not mentioned here already...
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Jan 25, 2012 17:25
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I really felt compelled to post in this thread, there are two modern books that namedrop lovecraft a lot: Cyclonopedia, and The End of Mr. Y. I haven't read the latter, but Cyclonopedia is really weird. I wouldn't say that it was good, there were a few interesting ideas obscured with really bad writing. It's a made up of some phony manuscript written about occultist archeology, but it degenerates into chatlogs of internet people talking about horror movies, so... I've found that there's a lot of really good pre-modern fiction that Lovecraft took his ideas from. Fantasy, horror, detective fiction were all genres created primarily by German authors around the turn of the 19th century. But they don't have much of a presence in discussion. Of the top of my head, here are some books that may interest Lovecraft fans in one way or another. Frederich Schiller - The Apparitionist, The Criminal of Lost Honor: A True Story ETA Hoffmann - The Devil's Elixir, The Sandman Heinrich von Kleist - The Marquise of O Novalis - Heinrich von Ofterdingen William Beckford - Vathek Charles Brockden Brown - Wieland James Hogg - The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan Algernon Blackwood - The Willows George Macdonald - Lilith
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Jan 25, 2012 22:07
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Mr.48 posted:A Colder War by Charles Stross is a pretty much a must read for Lovecraft fans. You can read it for free here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm Thanks for this. just finished it and was very excellent.
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Jan 26, 2012 20:54
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If you don't have trouble with heightened language, just about any Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood that is readily available is great, though less on the order of "Mythos" horror. Both of them were major influences on Lovecraft, and it's pretty apparent when you read them. Ambrose Bierce had some that he drew influence from; The Damned Thing comes to mind.
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Jan 27, 2012 06:28
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I love the old timey language. I sometimes put on audiobooks of Lovecraft stories to fall asleep at night.
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Jan 27, 2012 06:54
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There's a handful of okay stories in it, but Will Murray's The Sothis Radiant in this out of print anthology is really goddamned good and does Lovecraftian cosmic nihilism as well as anything I've seen.
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Jan 27, 2012 12:59
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Ogmius815 posted:I love Lovecraft. Lovecraft is decades ahead of his time. I'll always think reading Lovecraft is worthwhile. That said, Lovecraft is a pretty lovely writer. I couldn't imagine reading that much of him at once.
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Feb 13, 2012 20:07
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arinlome posted:This sums it up perfectly. Lovecraft had an amazing imagination, and he's definitely worth reading, but his writing borders on abysmal. At the Mountains of Madness is pretty brilliant though. The quality of his writing really is dependent on when he wrote it. The quality has been steadily improving as I've progressed through his works. It'd make sense that AtMoM would be better than most, it being one of his later ones.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:15
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You should also look up Clark Ashton Smith. He was a contemporary of HPL, and Lovecraft supposedly considered him to be a better writer.
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Feb 17, 2012 19:38
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:You should also look up Clark Ashton Smith. He was a contemporary of HPL, and Lovecraft supposedly considered him to be a better writer. Weren't they actually friends and corresponded with each other, along with Robert E. Howard? Some of Lovecraft's stories even refer to some wizard or something named Klarkash-Ton.
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Feb 17, 2012 20:26
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CAS was indeed a better writer. He was also the originator of the Dying Earth genre, if I recall correctly. Emperor of Dreams has some really good stories in it. I wouldn't really call him that good at the horror thing. He did have some horror stories but the Zothique and Hyperborea ones were always much more interesting.
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Feb 17, 2012 20:39
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GrandpaPants posted:Weren't they actually friends and corresponded with each other, along with Robert E. Howard? Some of Lovecraft's stories even refer to some wizard or something named Klarkash-Ton. They were. Them, along with August Derleth, Robert Bloch (at a very late point) and a couple others were called the "Lovecraft Circle" at one point.
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Feb 17, 2012 21:38
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MockingQuantum posted:...August Derleth... Twitch...twitch... Don't read anything remotely related to cosmic horror if it was written by Derleth. Check out his ghost stories, or his Solar Pons stories. Those are good, but he completely and totally missed the point with cosmic horror.
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Feb 18, 2012 03:09
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I am a huge fan of Lovecraft. When I get bored with him, I like to go back to his big inspirations, especially Lord Dunsany (get this collection! and Robert Chambers get this, even though most of it is kind of lame, The King in Yellow is utterly brilliant. Dunsany has the absolute best prose of anybody, period. I went on to buy a lot of his other works, and while nothing really touches Pegana, it's still fascinating. Ornamented Death posted:Twitch...twitch... I hate Derleth with such a passion. Not only did he pervert Lovecraft's mythos to suit his own stupid neo-Christian scheme, but he made up so much bullshit that is now thought to be canon it makes me sick. Every time somebody calls Hastur the King in Yellow, I want to go dig up Derleth's corpse and spit in his face. Cthulhu's 'half-brother?' C'mon, you stupid poo poo, the Great Old Ones have no need for relations - they always have been, and always will be. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn! CornHolio fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 04:52
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GrandpaPants posted:I didn't know a re-write existed, and when I went to see if it was available on Amazon, I was greeted with one of the worst covers I have ever seen: http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327380136&sr=8-1 I actually bought a copy of this after reading most of that retelling someone linked earlier and I was really reluctant to because of that horrible cover. I mean, I can understand a cover like that for a e-reader edition but jesus.
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Feb 18, 2012 06:44
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pixelbaron posted:I actually bought a copy of this after reading most of that retelling someone linked earlier and I was really reluctant to because of that horrible cover. I mean, I can understand a cover like that for a e-reader edition but jesus. If I bought that I'd rip the cover off. It's a drat shame, because the imagery that could come out of that book is epic. A giant steel pyramid, burning with a thousand lights, while darkness and huge, weird beasts encroach on all sides? We should get a talented goon artist to do it.
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Feb 18, 2012 07:10
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Yeah, it really just looks like someone just slapped together a couple of stock images in Photoshop and then ran it through some filters and the Smudge tool. The story deserves more than that, I mean c'mon!
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Feb 18, 2012 08:48
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CornHolio posted:C'mon, you stupid poo poo, the Great Old Ones have no need for relations - they always have been, and always will be. I don't know, I hear Yog-Sothoth had a couple of kids. (Derleth can still go fhtagn himself, though.)
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Feb 18, 2012 12:01
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Going to put forward "Southern Gods" by John Honor Jacobs. Also, the short story "N" by Steven King from Just After Sunset is amazing.
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Feb 18, 2012 16:02
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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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I enjoyed the two Tim Curran books, Hive and Spawning. They're presented as unofficial, modern day, sequels to At the Mountains of Madness and do it justice in my opinion. The cover of Hive is a bit hokey, but don't be put off by that.
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Mar 10, 2012 17:10
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Since Gaiman's story was mentioned, I'll put down "Shadows Over Baker Street" which is Holmes in a Lovecraftian world. It contains Gaiman's story and its enjoyable enough on the cheap. http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Over-Baker-Street-Terror/dp/0345452739/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331491209&sr=1-1
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Mar 11, 2012 19:42
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I did this a couple years ago. Try using The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast as a reading guide/book club. It's a great podcast and it's nice to commiserate with someone else when you get to "The Street." http://hppodcraft.com/
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Mar 11, 2012 20:57
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oldpainless posted:Since Gaiman's story was mentioned, I'll put down "Shadows Over Baker Street" which is Holmes in a Lovecraftian world. It contains Gaiman's story and its enjoyable enough on the cheap. There's a couple good stories in here but I couldn't really recommend it. I've read every Sherlock Holmes adventure and nearly every Lovecraft story, but quite a few of these seemed like they didn't really get the spirit of feel of either of those two.
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Mar 11, 2012 22:32
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Gene Wolfe's An Evil Guest is sort of Lovecraftian/pulp/sci-fi/cosmic horror/comic 1920s musical/god knows what - very strange book, and fair warning, a lot of people didn't like it, but interesting and worth looking at. Also, seconding the recommendations for Ligotti.
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Mar 11, 2012 23:10
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The Capm posted:I did this a couple years ago. Try using The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast as a reading guide/book club. It's a great podcast and it's nice to commiserate with someone else when you get to "The Street." Ygh. The Street and its brethren are what make it really tough to read the complete works.
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Mar 13, 2012 01:09
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This is more for horror in general, but I want to toss out a recommendation for the Delirium Book Club. They put out 24 novellas a year showcasing some of the best talent in the horror and weird (and weird horror!) genres - if anyone pays attention to such things in the 52 books a year thread, any of my listings noted as a novella are from this book club. Here's the current lineup for 2012 (it isn't finalized just yet). Of the titles out so far, The Underdwelling and, to a lesser extent, Heartless are monster stories, Subject 11 and Lords of Twilight are just really goddamn weird (in a good way), and The Men Upstairs is...different (it's good, though). I haven't read Thirty Miles South of Dry County yet, but the previous 30 book club novellas I've read lead me to believe it will at least be enjoyable. There's a hardcover membership and an epub/Kindle membership. The hardcover membership can get kind of pricey ($53 a month), but you can get the epub/Kindle membership for like $70 a year, which is less than three bucks a book. They're doing a membership drive right now with bonuses for referrers (credit) and referees (free books), but I don't want to poo poo up this thread with that so if anyone is interested, let me know and maybe we can start up a referral chain in Coupons or something.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:20
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Echoing Clark Ashton Smith. He writes better than Lovecraft and focuses more on abstract settings and concepts than on plot, which in my opinion works much better for the genre. And you can read all of his work for free here! Start out with The Abominations of Yondo perhaps. Here's the opening paragraph: quote:The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts; for Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim; and strange winds, blowing from a pit no astronomer may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the gray dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. The dark, orblike mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own, for some are fallen asteroids half-buried in that abysmal sand. Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells. Some others I would recommend are the The Death of Malygris and The Charnel God.
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Mar 19, 2012 19:56
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Though not exactly Lovecraftian, I'd say the Dead Space novel (http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Space-Martyr-Brian-Evenson/dp/0765325039) could fit this thread. It's based on a game, yes, but I didn't find it too terrible; the writing is bad to mediocre at best, but the plot itself is interesting enough. It focuses around a truly alien artifact found in an ancient crater, and people who don't know better (of course) messing with it until things turn very, very sour.
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Mar 22, 2012 20:49
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