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MockingQuantum posted:Or maybe it's better to say that I know there's lots of Lovecraft-esque authors out there, but are any of them good? There are a rather large number of good authors that would fit this description. IF you want a nice sampling, check out some recent anthologies. The Book of Cthulhu is arguably the best starting point, though Black Wings is also a strong contender. AS for specific authors, you simply cannot go wrong with Laird Barron. Caitlin Kiernan is also very good, though her short story collections are harder to find since they're all from Subterranean Press. Simon Strantzas is one of my favorite authors, though only his first collection would fall squarely under the cosmic horror label. Jeffrey Thomas has also written some drat fine Mythos stuff. Also, The Weird comes out later this year, you may want to check it out. The table of contents is simply amazing. Ornamented Death fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 21, 2012 |
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Jan 21, 2012 02:59
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I just noticed you said you had some Derleth on the way... I'd advise against reading it. August Derleth completely misunderstood the point of Lovecraft's fiction and shoe-horned in a bunch of good versus evil and elemental affinity bullshit.
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Jan 21, 2012 03:18
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pixelbaron posted:As far as Black Wings, what would you recommend? Beyond skimming through it, I haven't really sat down and read any of the stories yet and I know with these sorts of compilations it can be hit or miss. Pretty much all of it. I mean, you're probably not going to like every single story, but that will be more due to personal taste than any failings of the authors because inclusion in Black Wings was pretty exclusive since Joshi was the editor, and he has high standards when it comes to Mythos fiction. The best story, in my opinion, is "The Broadsword" by Laird Barron. I was also fond of "Pickman's Other Model" by Cainlin Kiernan and "Lesser Demons" by Norman Patridge. quote:That being said, I am currently reading through Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series which kicked off in '74 with The Burrowers Beneath. It's a nice blend horror and action/intrigue as it follows the adventures of the title character amid a backdrop of Lovecraftian beasties. It doesn't drag, is a lot of fun, and the writing is more than competant. There's so much wrong with this post. I enjoyed the Titus Crow books, but for the exact opposite of the reasons you gave. It's an absurd take on the Mythos, the hero is basically Superman (something wholly out of place in a Mythos story), and there is absolutely no horror. Basically the Titus Crow books are a road map of what not to do when writing Mythos fiction. Edit: I see in the 52 books thread that you're still going through The Burrowers Beneath. That is, far and away, the best of the Titus Crow books, and you haven't really encountered all the weird stuff that people complain about; that starts in book 2. Ornamented Death fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 21, 2012 |
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Jan 21, 2012 16:22
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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.
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Jan 23, 2012 20:58
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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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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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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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abske_fides posted:There's been a few mentions of Thomas Ligotti already who's quite an amazing author but sadly most of his works are incredibly expensive. Is there anyone who knows about another author who's more along his lines? Instead of having cruel gods like The Old Ones, Ligotti just has a really dreadful world and he's less gratifying when it comes to the horror. I don't remember him often going into big huge monsters with tentacles everywhere and such which was what made his work so terrifying. Simon Strantzas, especially his first collection Beneath the Surface.
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Mar 25, 2012 17:57
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Ligotti is certainly a talented writer, but the way he approaches keeping his poo poo in print is loving infuriating. I'm all for signed limited editions, god knows my shelves are full of them, but put out a drat trade paperback or an ebook, too. I've never seen an author as popular as Ligotti that is so seemingly against having people actually read his stories. I think I mentioned it before, but I essentially don't recommend Ligotti anymore because it only irritates people when they learn they're going to have to drop $40 (if they're lucky) for just one of his books. There are numerous writers that are just as good as Ligotti and that have the added bonus of being constantly in-print and affordable.
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Mar 27, 2012 04:10
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Iacen posted:I've read en enjoyed both Cthulhu 2000 and Lovecraft Unbound. Both are collections of short stories and both hit that particular "Cosmic horror" itch I sometime have. You should check out the table of contents for The Book of Cthulhu. If there isn't much overlap between it and the two books you mentioned, absolutely pick it up. Hell, even if there is overlap, pick it up because "The Men From Porlock" by itself is worth the price of admission.
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Apr 3, 2012 01:36
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oldpainless posted:I didn't enjoy "Black Man With a Horn" at all, but everything I've read just loves it to death. And I will agree that "The Men from Porlock" is a loving awesome story which everyone should read. Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of "Black Man With a Horn." It was the wrong kind of weird in my opinion. And basically everyone in this thread should be reading Laird Barron. His first full-length novel is coming out next month. Everyone go preorder it.
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Apr 4, 2012 18:22
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Yeah, Beneath the Surface has a very strong Ligotti vibe. Strantzas' second collection, Cold to the Touch, is a lot different and is very heavily influenced by Robert Aickman. Unfortunately, it's out of print and quite expensive nowadays (Tartarus will most likely release a TPB sometime this year, though). His latest collection, Nightingale Songs, is easily his best, though, because he firmly establishes his own voice. It's influenced by Ligotti and Aickman, of course, but it is also unique. Another recommendation for this thread is Joe Pulver with one caveat. He is very, very in to cosmic horror and his works are interesting to say the least. I phrase it that way because Pulver's writing is often kind of weird. He likes stream-of-consciousness and non-linear stories. His fiction can also be incredibly brutal; he does not shy away from violence, but it always fits with the story and never seems gratuitous. This guy puts it better than I ever could: Thomas Ligotti posted:Let us posit that Bukowski is the sun. Or Brautigan, Burroughs and the Beats—a solar Coney Island of the Mind where Timothy Leary’s dead and dead Cthulhu waits and sings the live long daydream believer. Then Joe Pulver’s Portraits of Ruin would be the burst of planets, Big Bang-Bang, Marquee Moons hanging on for what they got, scream of consciousness—in Outer Space no one can hear it . . . except Coffin Joe, Monster Mash Potato that big ol’ Portraits of Ruin—Mars needs it, you need it, so just open the lid and shake your fist—then say: “They kill horses, horses, horses, horses.” Thank you. Come again?
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Apr 12, 2012 00:02
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I recommended that back one page one. The US hardcover comes out next month.
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Apr 14, 2012 01:43
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Falloutboy posted:Can anyone recommend any books similar to the movie "The Mist"? I'm looking for something where aliens/creatures from another dimension come to earth. About 75% of the stuff posted in this thread would at least vaguely fit that description  .
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Apr 16, 2012 04:40
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fez_machine posted: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?. I just finished reading Mask of the Other and it's a damned fine book.
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Apr 22, 2012 06:23
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End Of Worlds posted:How's Innocents Lost? I need something light and creepy in between textbooks. I haven't read that one, but I've liked everything I have read by McBride. I imagine it'll be a bit gruesome, as is his wont, but if that doesn't bother you it should fit the bill perfectly.
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Apr 23, 2012 02:12
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I'm working my way through Laird Barron's The Croning now, and really everyone needs to go buy this book right now.
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Apr 30, 2012 03:09
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Hey guys, maybe Amazon has recommended you check out an anthology called Future Lovecraft and you're considering it because who doesn't love sci-fi horror, right? Don't loving do it. It is a terrible anthology. There's a reason the vast majority of the writers included have only been published by super-small publishers that are probably run by their friends (or themselves). There is literally only one good story in the whole book. Avoid at all costs.quote:Reading more of Simon Strantzas' Beneath the Surface, I get the impression that I really like the build up that he does in his stories, but the end result is pretty disappointing. I just read the story of the guy who has to work at a new job, and it did a pretty good job leading up to the ending, which just sort of happened and was kind of goofy about it at the same time. I imagine it's sort of like a movie that does a great job building a tense atmosphere, only to reveal that the monster is some dude in a rubber suit. Maybe I am just sort of weary of tentacles and malformed shapes being the "horror." Well bear in mind you're reading his first collection of short stories and comparing it to something Ligotti wrote towards the end of his fiction career. Strantzas shows a marked improvement between each collection. Once you finish BTS, be sure to pick up a copy of Nightingale Songs. Edit: Just a reminder that The Weird, edited by the Vandermeers, comes out next week. You couldn't ask for an anthology more perfectly tailored to this particular thread; it's almost 1200 pages (110 stories) of weird fiction. Ornamented Death fucked around with this message at 01:40 on May 3, 2012 |
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May 3, 2012 00:16
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Laird Barron is a burly dude. Aside from the eye patch (he lost his eye when he was a kid), he also used to live in Alaska and race the Iditarod. He also loves his dog which is cool with me.
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May 4, 2012 01:17
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Evfedu posted:Is there any way to get The Croning as an ebook? Buying it in the UK consists of giving amazon £13 and hoping they decide to stock some more at some point. Any way I can give Laird my cash directly and actually receive a copy? Night Shade will ship to the UK, so buy from them. And I'd do it quick, apparently they're still running their 50% off sale; you'll have to buy three more books (there's a four-book minimum), but they have a very nice library to choose from - get The Imago Sequence if you don't have it, for example. Or all four volumes of Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year anthologies. Or Southern Gods. Or hell, all of the above  .
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May 8, 2012 23:52
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Evfedu posted:Hahahah $40 shipping cost for one book. Guess I'll be waiting this one out then. Haha, it was like $85 for four books. Jesus, it's like they don't want international customers to buy their books direct. Try here instead.
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May 9, 2012 01:03
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Evfedu posted:Blazed through the croning and enjoyed it a massive amount with a couple of reservations about pacing and the purpleness of the prose. Are Laird's short stories as good or better? Generally speaking they're better, likely because he's had a lot more practice writing short stories. The Imago Sequence is readily available, and while it looks like Occultation is sold out at a lot of places, that's most likely because Night Shade is about to release the trade paperback edition.
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May 22, 2012 04:19
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Dyscrasia posted:Where are you finding the Imago Sequence? I picked up Occultation no problem on Amazon, but they canceled my Imago Sequence order. Huh, weird. You can get The Imago Sequence direct from Night Shade (don't bother if you're not America, though; see above), but not Occultation - I'm assuming because they've sold out of the hardcover and will be releasing the TPB soonish.
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May 22, 2012 15:21
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Dyscrasia posted:That must be it, I was hoping for The Imago Sequence hardcover edition, I just see the paperback version on NightShade. That was an extremely limited run; I very, very rarely see copies for sale.
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May 22, 2012 17:13
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Thomas Ligotti's Grimscribe is now available as an ebook. Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Noctuary will follow soon.
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May 24, 2012 13:57
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I'm going to guess either a lot of nonsense being passed off as ~*~spooky black magic~*~ or a collection of HP Lovecraft's stories. Based on the blurb about the author, I'm leaning towards the former; you probably wasted your money, bro. Yeah, the first review on Amazon basically spells that out. It's a fake spell book. Ornamented Death fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 02:20
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I just wanted to remind everyone that The Weird came out a few weeks ago. It is, for lack of a better term, the bible of weird fiction. You can also use it to stop a bullet or beat someone to death if you really need to (it's almost 1200 pages long).
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May 30, 2012 16:59
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Vertigus posted:God bless eReaders for making anthologies practical. Carrying around a massive tome is a hell of a commitment. The Weird is a "house book" for me; it won't leave my house, I'll read it here and put it back on the shelf.
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May 31, 2012 03:47
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Yggdrassil posted:Is there any other resource that is worth getting in regard of HP Lovecraft? It sounds like those two collect pretty much all of his fiction and poetry, so you should be good to go. The only other thing I can think of is The Horror in the Museum, which collects stories Lovecraft edited and revised for other people. His level of involvement varies from simple edits to basically re-writing everything. I'm not sure if the stories in here are included in the two volumes you bought, but generally speaking these stories are kept separate from the main body of Lovecraft's work. To go any farther with Lovecraft, you'd need to start picking up the pricier volumes annotated by Joshi, but frankly unless you're doing a major research paper on HPL, you don't need those.
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Jun 12, 2012 03:22
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Mr.48 posted:Was about to buy it for my kindle and found out amazon wants $16. What the gently caress amazon? It's $13 now. Also, place the blame for the ridiculous pricing where it belongs: quote:This price was set by the publisher. There was actually a big dustup a few months back where Apple and a handful of publishers got bitch-slapped by the government for colluding on ebook prices. Hopefully that means prices will begin to come down.
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Jul 5, 2012 04:54
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JerryLee posted:e: If you want to see some attempts at writing what happens when the apocalypse doesn't get averted, you might check out Cthulhu's Reign. If memory serves, it wasn't an entirely unmixed bag (as genre anthologies tend not to be) but it was worth a read for me. Don't do this. Get The Book of Cthulhu instead. It most (or all) of the worthwhile stories from Cthulhu's Reign, but the remainder isn't made from complete crap, as is the case with the Cthulhu's Reign.
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Jul 6, 2012 00:27
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Neurosis posted:Do any of Barron's short stories tie into the same world? A bunch of them. "The Men From Porlock" and "Blackwood's Baby" are the two that spring immediately to mind, but I know I caught several more oblique references in The Croning (which may explain why I liked it so much).
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Jul 10, 2012 19:51
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MockingQuantum posted:I know this isn't technically relevant, but I think it's a good venue for this question: Anybody have any recommendations (or whatever the opposite of a recommendation would be?) of good comic book/graphic novel adaptations of Lovecraft? Or any graphic novels with a distinctly Cosmic Horror flavor? Boom! Studios did a whole bunch of comics like this. Someone already mentioned Fall of Cthulhu, which is actually four sequential mini-series. There are also a whole ton of tie-ins and related books: Hexed, Necronomicon, Cthulhu Tales, The Calling, and an illustrated version of Nyarlathotep. Dynamite's Savage Tales comics also frequently had Lovecraftian segments, though they weren't as good as what Boom! was doing. There's the two volume The Nightmare Factory that adapts several of Ligotti's stories, but they aren't all cosmic horror. And, of course, there are the Hellboy and B.P.R.D. comics.
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Aug 24, 2012 03:55
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mdemone posted:Finding a plastic-wrapped first edition of Teatro Grottesco in the local used-book shop...ah, memories- An actual Durtro first edition or the Mythos edition? There's a huuuuuuuuge difference .
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Aug 25, 2012 03:16
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mdemone posted:Mythos (it was only $10) -- I wish I had the Durtro, but it's up there with the Vollmann complete set & signed Infinite Jest 1st-ed. hardcover on the list of "books I'm not allowed to Google anymore". It's really not that expensive anymore. There's a copy on eBay with a $115 buyout price. Most of Ligotti's books have started to come down in price. The only real exceptions are the new SubPress reprints, because they're the hot new thing at the moment, and the truly rare stuff like Death Poems and The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and other Gothic Tales.
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Aug 25, 2012 03:42
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MockingQuantum posted:Wow, I started looking for a copy of the first Fall of Cthulhu TPB and it seems like new copies are quickly soaring above the $200 mark. Used it is! Were the comics that popular when they came out, or is this just taking advantage of a niche market? Its the latter unfortunately.
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Aug 31, 2012 03:09
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Noctuary and Grimscribe ebooks are $2.99 right now.
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Sep 8, 2012 02:03
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Granbar posted:I'm about halfway through my complete collection of Lovecraft's writings Kindle eBook, and I'd like to delve deeper into his letter writings. Any suggestions on where to start? How much are you looking to spend? Hippocampus Press has the most comprehensive volumes, but they are pricey.
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Nov 20, 2012 02:19
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I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that The Book of Cthulhu 2 came out towards the end of September. I finished it the other day and while it isn't quite as good as the first one, it's still one of the best mythos anthologies to come out in recent memory. The last two stories, "Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner and "Hand of Glory" by Laird Barron, are particularly good.
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Nov 26, 2012 06:01
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ravenkult posted:1. I think the kind of backer reward where you get to talk/play/get feedback from the creator is bullshit. Taking money from writers (at the tune of 500$ no less) is just lovely, IMO. The $550 reward is for an hour and a half of Ellen and Brett's time to talk about publishing and editing; I'd say it's geared more towards people aspiring to be publishers (or become bigger publishers) rather than people looking to get published. The same goes for the $350 Ellen reward. The $350 McAllister reward is for time with a writing coach; that was going to cost money anyhow, so I don't think your criticism applies. The $350 Shephard reward, though, is pretty much what you're describing. However, that seems to be obvious as no one has claimed it yet. The only reward that I'd consider lovely is the "bypass the slush pile" one. There's no guarantee that Brett will do anything with your story, just that he'll give it a priority spot on the reading stack. I predict there will be at least 25 terrible writers that are going to be pissed that ChiZine isn't publishing their Lovecraftian opus even though they paid their hundred bucks. In other news, Bad Moon Books is going to be publishing an expanded edition of Ligotti's Death Poems later this year. It's one of the rarer Ligotti titles, so I'm looking forward to it coming back in print.
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Jan 10, 2013 03:50
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