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Bass Concert Hall posted:Aside from the original Lovecraft short stories, are there any works from this genre on audiobook? I haven't been able to find anything on audible, which is a shame because I have a lot more time for listening (ie car/work) than reading right now. Charles Stross's Laundry Series is on audiobook, if you like that. I like the horror in it, but his attempts at comedy always grate on me.
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Apr 23, 2012 18:21
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SlaveTrader posted:Don't do this. The Adversary Cycle has some nifty ideas wrapped in a blanket of crappy writing. With Repairman Jack, the blanket is infested with small pox and is made of asbestos. Wilson writes Repairman Jack as some libertarian ubermensch with all of the secondary characters being hilarious racist stereotypes. It gets incredibly grating. I had heard great things about the Repairman Jack series, but reading the first novel put me off anything further, for the exact reasons you've just mentioned.
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Aug 17, 2012 19:21
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Hedrigall posted:Equoid was great. It was like reading Johnny-English-style wacky spy parody, then all of a sudden you're in Laird Barron territory and throwing up your lunch. I read it based on this, and while I liked it, I felt it was a lot of work for Charles Stross to go through just to make the same joke that Cabin in the Woods made in 2012.
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Jul 14, 2014 17:44
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JerryLee posted:It reads to me like you used the word perfectly properly and God of Paradise just parsed it wrong. 'The nameless protagonist overcome with nameless dread' doesn't indicate that the protagonist is overcoming anything if one reads it correctly; rather, it says just what you intended it to. I'm halfway through Teatro Grottesco and I'll be excited to talk about it when I finish.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:57
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Bolverkur posted:I've been reading Ligotti and like another poster here, am excited to talk about Teatro Grottesco when I finish it. I'm taking it real slow, only one story at a time with some intervals. It's absolutely terrific so far. The apathy and the dreamlike reality of every story really gets to me like nothing else. That was me, and I just finished. Teatro Grottesco was fantastic, and while people like to compare Ligotti to Lovecraft, I think he's a lot closer to being the David Lynch of print. Teatro Grottesco has a lot of stories concerned with turning the mundane, daily grind into a thing of horror (or exposing the horror in capitalist existence, if you prefer), much the same way Eraserhead does. People like to say that things are "nightmarish" when they really mean scary, but Ligotti and Lynch both deal in horror that uses actual elements of nightmares in the way they're presented. Time is questionable, and most of the stories take place more in a strange everyplace rather than any country in the real world. Characters end up in menacing situations without any linear narrative of how they got there. I can't help but think that this would make an amazing horror anthology film, because all the stories work together, but each stands alone really well, and so many of them deal with working environments rather than, say, the plateau of Leng.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:01
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Ornamented Death posted:I guess Patreon is the new hotness for indie horror writers. A few people dipped their toes in it last year, but Brian Keene jumped in and is making a reasonable chunk of change for letting patrons read chapters of his books as he writes them (he still plans to do a traditional release once they are complete). Now it seems like everyone is rushing to get their account set up. Are any other horror writers doing this? I'd put into a patreon for more Zack Parsons horror.
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Jan 12, 2015 17:55
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Pope Guilty posted:I only ever read Your Next Door Neighbor is a Dragon, what horror has he done? Like Rough Lobster pointed out, he did the horror-comedy series, Conex Convict Connections, which actually had a couple of sequel articles: http://www.somethingawful.com/series/conex-convict-connections/ http://www.somethingawful.com/news/conex-last-meals/1/ http://www.somethingawful.com/news/clavo-pageant-conex/1/ He also did the Instruction for a Help series, which you see referenced on the forums occasionally: http://www.somethingawful.com/series/instruction-for-a-help/ http://www.somethingawful.com/d/daily-dirt/instruction-for-america.php And my personal favorite, That Insidious Beast http://www.somethingawful.com/series/that-insidious-beast/ They're all fantastic. LIMINAL STATES had some great horror elements, but I didn't like the overall story. I suspect it didn't sell as well as My Tank is Fight, and I hope he doesn't give up horror altogether. I'd put into a patreon if it meant another That Insidious Beast or even a couple more clavo adventures.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:07
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Are there any writers like Phillip K Dick, but uncontaminated by being a subhuman schizophrenic? Are you doing a thing here?
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Jun 8, 2015 17:52
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I'm guessing "aspie" is the part that he's taking issue to but honestly "snark" was the operative word in echopraxia's post. Oh, yeah, I didn't even read echopraxia as hatin' on disabilities, so I thought Vosigan was serious. Now that you point it out, though, aspie is a weird tag to hang on snark.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:03
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What do people think of Andersen Prunty? Does he belong in a thread about weird fiction?
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Jun 14, 2015 14:53
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End Of Worlds posted:Wow Robert Aickman's short The Swords disturbed me more than any story I've read in a long, long time
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Jun 19, 2015 17:59
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Dr. Killjoy posted:unfortunately Stross decided to keep up with his "spend 75% of the book on bureaucratic circlejerking" balance of content from the Rhesus Chart. I kept hoping that Case Nightmare Green would be his excuse to stop this. I get the feeling that his fanbase doesn't hate this as much as I do, but I don't understand why, it is legitimately unfunny and a distraction from the actual horror that is ostensibly the point of the books.
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Jul 18, 2015 06:08
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Prop Wash posted:The books started as, and continue to be, a balance of bureaucratic circlejerking and cosmic horror. If you have a problem with the basic premise of the books then maybe you should stop reading them? The books started as A Colder War which was the best thing he's ever written, and which he keeps hinting he'll get back to. He just doesn't.
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Jul 20, 2015 16:46
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Noam Chomsky posted:Has anyone read The Deep by Nick Cutter? It's pretty loving weird. No, but I have read The Shallows by John Langan. It's the one that someone mentioned earlier in this thread, about an old man recounting stories of his life to a little crab-thing as he tends to a garden in the post-Old Ones apocalypse. It was part of his collection The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies but I got it in audiobook format as part of The Book of Chulhu. That anthology was a real mixed bag, but The Shallows was definitely the highlight for me.
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Oct 5, 2015 22:40
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Evfedu posted:If you haven't got it yet I would utterly recommend The Wide, Carnivorous Sky because that poo poo was fantastic. It's unfortunate that so many cosmic horror authors don't get audiobook releases. I first heard one of Thomas Ligotti's short stories on a Best New Horror audiobook, and ended up making time to read the ebook of Teatro Grottesco, which was totally worth it. I know, first world problems, but it galls me that I can hear Dean Koontz audiobooks for days and the best Ligotti or Langan can do is a short story in someone else's anthology.
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Oct 6, 2015 22:26
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Ornamented Death posted:The Subterranean Press editions and the new Penguin Classics edition have revised stories; any other collections should be original. If you want a side-by-side, you're probably going to have to pony up for the original editions since Ligotti posting such a thing would be giving away a fairly large chunk of his work essentially for free, and anyone else doing it would be pirating the material to do so. I imagine a person could just post up excerpts of what was changed without pirating it, unless really large portions were changed. Even then, there could be some key examples. Edit: If someone wants to send me an un-revised book or ebook, I'll post comparisons of an appropriate length for fair use. Skyscraper fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 17:14
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GrandpaPants posted:Given how much of Ligotti is the mood that he evokes, it's probably really hard to notice a tangible difference from a sentence or two vs. reading an entire story and seeing how both are affected by the change in diction or whatever. But here are some examples from a random blog: https://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/ligotti-vs-ligotti-comparing-subterranean-press-vs-carroll-grafs-grimscribe-editions/ Oh, thanks, that's perfect. Those are really really small changes, too.
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Oct 19, 2015 17:55
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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'm not sure if it's what you're after, but maybe The Crystal World by JG Ballard?
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Feb 8, 2016 17:52
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ZeusJupitar posted:The Night Land is a full novel, but it definitely has the inhospitable environment theme down. Aw, good call.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:03
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Hey cyclops, howsabout you tell Fido to fetch you a glass eye for the photo shoot, huh?!
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Feb 23, 2016 22:52
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Oh myyy. I don't know anything about John Gwynne but now I want to.
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Mar 7, 2016 20:35
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Hughlander posted:I feel I asked this before. I had a recommendation for a weird tale. Radio telescope finds souls traveling after death to another planet where they are trapped in aliens bodies that drive them crazy due to their sense of id. Really want to reread it. You're asking which one this is, and also recommending it, or you recommended it a while ago and can't remember? I mean, could someone with archives find you posting about it by name?
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Mar 9, 2016 16:48
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Hughlander posted:Sorry phone posting. I asked about it before either here or in the tell me the name of this story thread. However I also found out about it on these forums maybe this thread so I'm hoping someone recognizes it. Searching this thread isn't yielding any quick results. EDIT: But then it wouldn't if the person recommending it didn't also describe the plot like you did.
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Mar 9, 2016 17:30
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mdemone posted:Yeah I read this recently and I had to finish it in one sitting. The last scene is…whew. It really is one of my favorite endings to anything ever.
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Mar 14, 2016 16:40
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mdemone posted:I had to go outside and get some fresh air at like 2AM. One of Koja's pieces of imagery there (Malcolm's face getting turned into viperfish teeth) really got to me for some reason, even though it's not a particularly remarkable idea. I just really liked the conclusion (though I maybe should have figured it out before) of what the hole really IS.
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Mar 14, 2016 17:30
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So right now The Story Bundle says it's doing weird horror as a genre. I've never heard of any of these people before, is this worth buying? The initial titles in the Weird Horror Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are: The Art of Horrible People by John Skipp Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson American Monster by J.S. Breukelaar The Pleasure Merchant by Molly Tanzer Where We Live and Die by Brian Keene If you pay more than $14, you also get: The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones Animal Money by Michael Cisco The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World by Brian Allen Carr Witch Hunt by Juliet Escoria Are these worth money / my time to read?
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Mar 17, 2016 15:49
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Ornamented Death posted:The $5 tier is definitely worth it. Jones and Cisco are aces, but i can't say I'm familiar with the other two in the $14 tier, so I can't in good conscience recommend it. Daveski posted:I've read Skullcrack City and I really enjoyed it. Similar in style to John Dies at the End but with a slightly more mature sense of humor (i.e. less dick jokes). This is high praise, I really liked John Dies at the End.
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Mar 18, 2016 18:39
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Helsing posted:In my paper back version of 'My Work Is Not Yet Done' there are two other Ligotti stories in the back, "I Have A Special Plan for this World" and "The Nightmare Network" and both of those are, in my opinion, much closer to straight up 'corporate horror'. I didn't find either of them to be particularly effective stories and like most of Ligotti's work I found myself admiring their experimentalism without finding them particularly engaging on a visceral level. It's not corporate horror exactly, but I like Our Temporary Supervisor out of Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco more for workplace horror. A number of other stories in this collection have the same kind of feel, but aren't as explicitly work-related. Also, for some less-cosmic workplace horror, Bentley Little's The Consultant was an interesting attempt, and while I liked it, I can see why people wouldn't.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:34
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General Battuta posted:I'm pretty opposite, I wrote a big post earlier about what The Cipher is about (but chickened out of posting it),
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Apr 4, 2016 07:02
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General Battuta posted:
Interesting! Is this process directly symbolic or characteristic of a particular thing in nature or the real world, or is it meant to be read directly as paranormal corruption from without, like the devil?
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Apr 4, 2016 16:33
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General Battuta posted:I don't think it's quite either! But it's not a moral, personified force, and it has no good-or-bad valence in itself: it just transforms things, radically and abusively.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:03
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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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Zartosht posted:So apparently, Thomas Ligotti wrote a script for the X-files. That was awesome. I wish they'd made that.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:03
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Clipperton posted:That was quite good. I've tried reading Ligotti (mostly his early stuff) and it didn't click--if I liked that screenplay, are there any collections/writing periods of his that are similar? I very much liked the stories in Teattro Grottesco, and I'd say that they're similar.
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Jul 18, 2016 21:52
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Ornamented Death posted:Nah, there are some writers doing interesting stuff with more traditional subgenres. Tell us about them!
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Jul 22, 2016 17:44
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Ornamented Death posted:I will when I'm not phone posting Ornamented Death posted:Title change is probably the best option.
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Jul 25, 2016 17:37
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MockingQuantum posted:Plus shy of a small handful of authors, the gap between cosmic/weird horror and "traditional" horror has become so minimal it feels a little silly to arbitrarily separate them into two threads. There's no secret that the vast majority of modern horror writers owe a lot of inspiration to Lovecraft and his contemporaries and immediate followers.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:55
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Neurosis posted:Are they? I recall a lot more 'I read this, and it was kind of poo poo' statements than in other threads. I could be wrong. I think it'd be more useful just to get a set of those one-paragraph or one-line summaries like that in the OP so we can get the warnings too.
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Jul 29, 2016 16:07
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Helical Nightmares posted:Can you recommend a Langan story that really knocked your socks off?
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Aug 9, 2016 21:12
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Helical Nightmares posted:Reading Greg Stolze's Mask of the Other. drat good. I think it's Delta Green. Try the sample. It should hook you. And it's got an audiobook! That part sold me, anyway.
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Aug 29, 2016 19:19
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