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anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Zwabu posted:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769902.Sandkings

Have you guys read Sandkings, the horror-scifi short story/novella by George RR Martin? I first read it as a kid over thirty years ago when it was published in Omni magazine and it blew me away.

Please disregard any opinions re Game of Thrones good or bad, very different material here.

PM me if interested in it.
Yeah, that's the worst casualty of GoT: GRRM used to write pretty good short stories.

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Dreqqus
Feb 21, 2013

BAMF!
It's also the first episode of the 90s Showtime reboot of the Outer Limits. It's pretty good as I recall it's on Hulu.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
david vann is one of the authors whose work leaves me emotionally distraught irl. i should probably get aquarium, it's the one everyone recommends and i haven't been able to get my hands on it (i even go to libraries, but... regional libraries :gonk:)

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

R.L. Stine posted:

Is there anything out there like Lake Monsters?

it's tough. lake monsters more than anything feels like the heir of stephen king's early short story collections - very character-focused, not wholly engulfed in weirdness like ligotti or aickman or neville, and very focused on eliciting an emotional reaction besides fear. so, i guess try night shift and skeleton crew if you haven't already, but i don't know of any other voices out there like balingrud atm

and yeah wounds is trying to do something very different than monsters is

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



chernobyl kinsman posted:

it's tough. lake monsters more than anything feels like the heir of stephen king's early short story collections - very character-focused, not wholly engulfed in weirdness like ligotti or aickman or neville, and very focused on eliciting an emotional reaction besides fear. so, i guess try night shift and skeleton crew if you haven't already, but i don't know of any other voices out there like balingrud atm

and yeah wounds is trying to do something very different than monsters is

Yeah I'd second Skeleton Crew, with the caveat that a couple of the stories are very dumb/haven't aged gracefully. And yeah, it's the closest approximation I can think of, but doesn't exactly do the same things. Lake Monsters is unique and I wish there was more out there like it.


In other news, I read my first Ligotti story this weekend and loved it

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
ligotti goooood

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



chernobyl kinsman posted:

ligotti goooood

Yeah I was a big fan. Also I've heard him built up for years which is usually a guarantee I'll be disappointed because I'm a hype sponge, but I wasn't. It was "Nethescurial", no idea how that one compares to his body of work in general, but I really enjoyed it, and found it genuinely creepy at moments, which is rare for me these days

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

MockingQuantum posted:

Yeah I was a big fan. Also I've heard him built up for years which is usually a guarantee I'll be disappointed because I'm a hype sponge, but I wasn't. It was "Nethescurial", no idea how that one compares to his body of work in general, but I really enjoyed it, and found it genuinely creepy at moments, which is rare for me these days

the ending lines of that one whip

"I am not dying in a nightmare"

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
ligotti is an unusual man

nankeen fucked around with this message at 01:18 on May 7, 2019

N-N-N-NINE BREAKER
Jul 12, 2014

chernobyl kinsman posted:

the ending lines of that one whip

"I am not dying in a nightmare"

I dunno, I kinda feel like he went a little too far, really. I have a similar issue with the endings of some of his other stories (The Frolic, The Strange Design of Master Rignolo, etc.). Like it'll be creepy or scary, and then he keeps going and it turns funny (which is good, too), but then he'll keep going and it just becomes awkward? Maybe it's intentional tho

Anomalous Blowout
Feb 13, 2006

rock
ice
storm
abyss



It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars.

*

filmcynic posted:

Just finished reading Michael Shea’s much-ballyhooed The Autopsy, and it deserves every accolade that’s ever been thrown in its direction.

*stumbles towards fainting couch*

Any recommendations for further reading from the author? It sounds like his Polyphemus collection is definitely worth hunting down.

Thanks to your post I finally dug this out and read it since I’ve had an epub of it for ages. drat, that was solid. I saw the ending coming from a mile away but that somehow didn’t make it any less satisfying and boy does he have a gift for turns of phrase.

Unfortunately I don’t have any recs, just wanted to say thanks for reminding me to read it!

filmcynic
Oct 30, 2012

Anomalous Blowout posted:

Thanks to your post I finally dug this out and read it since I’ve had an epub of it for ages. drat, that was solid. I saw the ending coming from a mile away but that somehow didn’t make it any less satisfying and boy does he have a gift for turns of phrase.

Unfortunately I don’t have any recs, just wanted to say thanks for reminding me to read it!

That's very cool, thanks! I first saw it recommended on these forums a while back, and am glad to pay the unpleasantness forward. For those still curious, it looks like Lightspeed Magazine has it up, along with a tribute by Laird Barron https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Lightspeed_47_April_2014.pdf

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
anything new out lately besides wounds?

Sono
Apr 9, 2008




I just read All My Colors by David Quantick based on one cover blurb comparing it to early King, Lovecraft, and Borges and another saying the author cannot be unfunny, which put Christopher Moore in my mind.

I don't see the King comparison, and the Lovecraft and Borges connection is only in that the first thing you think of when you hear "Lovecraft" other than horrific racism and the first thing you think of when you hear "Borges" factor in the plot. It's humorous throughout, but not in the slapdash vein that I was expecting (in the Moore comparison that I made up in the first place).

It's great and the first book in a long while that I've read straight through in one sitting. There are just enough threads going on to trigger "well, one more chapter so I can see what's going on with X" mode for 270 pages.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
got my lake monsters! wild acre seemed like a pretty boring schlock tale, then i got to "did you tell them we're jewish?!" and laughed out loud and now i can't stop thinking about what the story actually meant

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


nankeen posted:

lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo

right?

Lil Mama Im Sorry
Oct 14, 2012

I'M BACK AND I'M SCARIN' WHITE FOLKS

nankeen posted:

lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo




yeah, that collection ruled.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
seriously excellent tbh

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

nankeen posted:

got my lake monsters! wild acre seemed like a pretty boring schlock tale, then i got to "did you tell them we're jewish?!" and laughed out loud and now i can't stop thinking about what the story actually meant

i appreciated wild acre because the werewolf attack is an afterthought to the financial and spiritual devastation that followed in its wake, to the point where the protagonist returns to the woods with a death wish that's never even fulfilled

feels very appropriate for today, where debt is a constant existential nightmare but if my guts were being chewed into by a slavering man-beast then the one synapse that wasn't dedicated to shrieking in primordial agony would be going "lol this owns"

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
yeah i'll definitely be re-reading the collection in a few days so i can give each story the attention it deserves, i'm used to short story collections fizzling out after the second or third entry so i plough through them but lake monsters stayed red hot all the way to the end. wounds wasn't as good apparently?

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


nankeen posted:

yeah i'll definitely be re-reading the collection in a few days so i can give each story the attention it deserves, i'm used to short story collections fizzling out after the second or third entry so i plough through them but lake monsters stayed red hot all the way to the end. wounds wasn't as good apparently?

Its different as I understand it. Not so much independent stories but more of an exercise of world building with opening and closing stories that tie it all together

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



That's accurate. It's all still solid writing, but the individual stories lack some of the oomph that Lake Monsters consistently had, and the thread tying the stories together also kind of undermines them in a weird way. I think I enjoyed Wounds more, but Lake Monsters is the better book, if that makes sense.

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
balingrud Good

chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 07:24 on May 18, 2019

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
one day with god's help i might even be able to spell his name correctly ont he first go

Dreqqus
Feb 21, 2013

BAMF!
Read the first story in Lake Monsters it loving ruined me. Wish me luck with rest I suppose.

Fire Safety Doug
Sep 3, 2006

99 % caffeine free is 99 % not my kinda thing
Read both Lake Monsters and Wounds in the past couple of weeks. Some real gut-punch moments in the former, while I really enjoyed the latter's original visions of hell. The Black Iron Monks and the demons in The Maw made me wish I was a better artist, because those would be really cool to draw...

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
wounds is just trying to be a very different thing than lake monsters. it leans much more into hellboy-esque dark fantasy than character-centered straight horror

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
i'm on my first reread of lake monsters. a good book is like a good album imo, you skim through it the first time and then go back and engage. it's loving great, it's been a long time since horror fiction got me this excited, thank you all for recommending it

ballingrud's touch with the violence is so deft, he gets just graphic enough that one's skin begins to crawl but always manages to avoid going too far into cartoonishness. i love it

Drunken Baker
Feb 3, 2015

VODKA STYLE DRINK
Not enjoyed reading something as much as Lake Monsters in a long time. I mean the actual act of reading. The dude paints with his words. Just a lovely experience.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


I love it when the forums can agree on something

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
hulu is adapting Lake Monsters intoa series

Big Mad Drongo
Nov 10, 2006

Man, I hope they focus on the human misery that just has a bit of supernatural poo poo boiling in the background instead of putting the spooky stuff front-and-center.

On that note, am I crazy or is Monsters of Heaven is a thinly-veiled allegory for dealing with the fact that climate change is going to probably murder us and definitely all our children?

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Is there anything that has the same eerie wrongness of House of Leaves but doesn't have the footnotes that take you out of the story by being rambling drug fueled rants? House of Leaves I want to like you but the Johnny Truant story has stopped be every time. And I've been assured I can't just skip it because it's important, but I don't care about him

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
you've been assured incorrectly. you can absolutely skip the johnny truant bits, and you will enjoy the book much more if you do

also, steven hall's raw shark texts

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
bought wounds :3: i don't care if it's not as good as lake monsters!

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
the good husband is just... wow.

unpacked robinhood
Feb 18, 2013

by Fluffdaddy

Len posted:

Is there anything that has the same eerie wrongness of House of Leaves but doesn't have the footnotes that take you out of the story by being rambling drug fueled rants? House of Leaves I want to like you but the Johnny Truant story has stopped be every time. And I've been assured I can't just skip it because it's important, but I don't care about him

I've been slowly going through the books that pop up in this thread and House of Leaves is the first one I really don't get.
What really kill it for me is the fake intellectual rambling more than the Johnny Truant part though.
It felt like such a boring drag to slog through for the most part.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


unpacked robinhood posted:

I've been slowly going through the books that pop up in this thread and House of Leaves is the first one I really don't get.
What really kill it for me is the fake intellectual rambling more than the Johnny Truant part though.
It felt like such a boring drag to slog through for the most part.

One of my students lent me his copy and is super keen for me to start it and I'm kinda middling about it given the mixed reviews here.

But he was totally correct about Roadside Picnic so perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt

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Big Mad Drongo
Nov 10, 2006

nankeen posted:

the good husband is just... wow.

:same:

What a note to end on. Great book, but drat.

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