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MrMojok
Jan 28, 2011

Ornamented Death posted:

If you can find a copy, Lights Out by Nate Southard. The publisher recently folded so copies are a bit scarce; hopefully he brings it back into print soon. (It's not one I can find, so don't PM me :v: ).

This sounds great from reviews I’ve read, but oh man does it look to be a tough find

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Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo

MrMojok posted:

I have come to ask for recommendations, for good vampire fiction. I’m not interested in anything like Twilight, or any sort of romance-type stories.

Some Vampire stuff I have read and enjoyed:

Stoker’s Dracula
Enter, Night
‘Salem’s Lot
Let the Right One In
Interview With the Vampire


Can anybody recommend anything else? One thing I saw on Amazon that sounded interesting was a book called The Shake, by Mel Nicolai.

In addition to LeFanu's "Carmilla" (FYI: don't get the edition edited by Carmen Maria Machado, the 'annotations' are all "playful" inventions and the book gives no indication that they're completely fictional), check out his "Schalken the Painter."

the first version i read of Schalken the Painter wasn't strictly speaking a vampire story, but another edition i read included a line about the undead bugaboo of the piece having fangs, which is enough to make it count; and the story is really good and creepy

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo
similarly, "Count Magnus" by M R James is often referred to as a vampire story even though its revenant doesn't suck blood, so you can count it as a vampire story based on critical precedent and the fact that there's a count

it's also very good

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Bonaventure posted:

similarly, "Count Magnus" by M R James is often referred to as a vampire story even though its revenant doesn't suck blood, so you can count it as a vampire story based on critical precedent and the fact that there's a count

it's also very good

I completely, unironically love the idea of trying to justify “rounding up” to what genre something is : look, he sort of comes back from the dead to do violence and he’s a count ; The Count of Monte Cristo is basically a vampire story.

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo
The Count of Monte Crisco eats lard and is therefore a certain type of vampire that South Americans call a pishtaco

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


I took a vampire lit course in university and the main book we read was Perfume. I think it's fun when you look for "not quite but the right general idea" kind of fits like that

MeatwadIsGod
Sep 30, 2004

Foretold by Gyromancy

Xiahou Dun posted:

I completely, unironically love the idea of trying to justify “rounding up” to what genre something is : look, he sort of comes back from the dead to do violence and he’s a count ; The Count of Monte Cristo is basically a vampire story.

IIRC a few nobles refer to Dantes as "Lord Ruthven" when he appears in society, which is the name for the Byronic vampire in Polidori's The Vampyre

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


Most Balkan (and probably other areas, don't quote me) folklore vampires originally were just the undead that would kill your goats or curdle your milk or whatever, so technically any undead creatures except zombies are vampires.

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo
many debates in folklore studies about what can properly be called a vampire . . . not helped by the precedent that most foundational writers like Augustin Calmet used a wide definition, because he and others like him were more interested in the "coming back from the dead" part and whether it was permissible to believe in such things as a Christian, than doing taxonomy, so they would pull precedent from all kinds of sources like Greek myth and traditions from places where anything related to the word 'vampire' wouldn't exist until the 18th century

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo
i fall in with Michael Bell's broader definition which runs something like "any corpse that is blamed by the community for causing some kind of mischief or calamity which is supposedly arrested by its denigration or destruction" but i do understand the arguments of the camp that say it should only apply specifically to Slavic bloodsucking corpses

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


Bonaventure posted:

i fall in with Michael Bell's broader definition which runs something like "any corpse that is blamed by the community for causing some kind of mischief or calamity which is supposedly arrested by its denigration or destruction" but i do understand the arguments of the camp that say it should only apply specifically to Slavic bloodsucking corpses

I guess I was thinking of the Greek Vrykolakas that ate flesh rather than blood. I always thought it was the same root as Vurdalak.

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo

ravenkult posted:

I guess I was thinking of the Greek Vrykolakas that ate flesh rather than blood. I always thought it was the same root as Vurdalak.

it does! both words come from the same root, related to wolves, and was originally used to denote werewolves or wolf-demons. at some point during the mixing and development of beliefs throughout the ages, its meaning shifted to come to mean the vampire (or vampire-like) creatures for which it is now mostly used; but i don't think that there is an actual etymological connection between that word and the "true" vampire words: upir, vampyr, etc.

Dr. Jerrold Coe
Feb 6, 2021

Is it me?

MrMojok posted:

I have come to ask for recommendations, for good vampire fiction. I’m not interested in anything like Twilight, or any sort of romance-type stories.

Some Vampire stuff I have read and enjoyed:

Stoker’s Dracula
Enter, Night
‘Salem’s Lot
Let the Right One In
Interview With the Vampire


Can anybody recommend anything else? One thing I saw on Amazon that sounded interesting was a book called The Shake, by Mel Nicolai.

Two classics:

The Hunger, by Whitley Strieber. Very grounded, wrenching story of a being who lives on a timescale that renders her human lovers as mayflies (not a "romance" type story but it is about relationships). Some great grue and "realistic" vampire lore - the vampire lead Miriam is a hominid that evolved to prey on homo sapiens in more ways than one, natch.

The Space Vampires, by Colin Wilson. Was adapted into the wonderful mess of a film Lifeforce. The book is much more conceptual.

MrMojok
Jan 28, 2011

Ahh, I know The Hunger, but only the film. Honestly I didn’t know it was a novel, I will have to check that out.

Thanks to everyone for the recommendations!

nate fisher
Mar 3, 2004

We've Got To Go Back
I just finished and enjoyed Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. In the near future a disease has made animal meat poisonous. This has led to the government making the consumption of human meat legal. What made the book so horrifying to me is how it just presents that society has accepted this. We are given peaks into the new human slaughterhouses, human game preserves, and humans replacing animal when it comes to testing/experiments. The book is well written and never exploitive in a way that I incorrectly assumed it would be. The only real issue I found is the belief that society is at this dystopian point,. That said you can say that about a lot of dystopian fiction. I will say most would consider this book more dystopian than horror, but there is a conclusion in the book and the given subject matter that I have no issue saying it has a foot in both genres.

edit:

I am curious if anyone else has already read this (I might of heard of this book here, but I can't remember)? If they have any thoughts on the end? It is one of the few times that the end surprised, because I never saw it coming. I do question if it was a cheap trick by the writer since we have been conditioned to believe certain thing about the main character until that point.

nate fisher fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Nov 2, 2021

Segue
May 23, 2007

Just finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and it's very solid. He's actually a very good writer with deeper characters than a lot of horror writers and the Indigenous setting and characters added a nice freshness to what can be a stale white man terror genre. Plus basketball!

Having read Night of the Mannequins too, which is absolutely gut-wrenching but relies on a similar paranoid madness, I'm interested in seeing if he's a solid one-noter given his incredible prolificness or a bit more creative. But in terms of good writing and weirdness he's definitely one of the best out right now.

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord

Segue posted:

Just finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and it's very solid. He's actually a very good writer with deeper characters than a lot of horror writers and the Indigenous setting and characters added a nice freshness to what can be a stale white man terror genre. Plus basketball!

Yeah! My wife and I binged through the audio book on a road trip last month and it was really good. SGJ writes fantastic characters, and the underlying mythology of the whole thing (if that's even a fair word to use, since it's based in Native folklore) is expressed wonderfully.

Skyscraper
Oct 1, 2004

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming



What ever happened to Zack Parsons? I just found his book, Liminal States, on Audible, and I remember he had some of my favorite horror content on the SA front page back in the day. Did he retire? Is he making SCP's under another name?

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



I can’t tell you about his recent activity but I’m also curious.

What I can say is that Liminal States is a loving great piece of writing that bounces across genres in truly impressive ways and I’m excited to hear literally anyone else’s thoughts on it.

Also it benefits from a second reading and I don’t recommend doing what I did and reading it with a high fever.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


I don't know about actual work but I just checked and he's still actively shitposting on twitter

Skyscraper
Oct 1, 2004

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming



Xiahou Dun posted:

What I can say is that Liminal States is a loving great piece of writing that bounces across genres in truly impressive ways and I’m excited to hear literally anyone else’s thoughts on it.

literally anyone else other than me

Just kidding, I didn't like it but honestly I wasn't expecting to, and it greatly outperformed my expectations, wish I had read it when it was new. I liked the first two stories and the setting from the last story but the narrative from the Reificant read like Zack doing a parody of some random edgelord poo poo. Also I was kind of unhappy that the best punishment Gideon could devise for Warren was throwing him into the pool, which was predictable and required to make this story happen, but, what, really? THAT'S what he came up with?

Reading this made me wonder if Zack is actually the author behind 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Oxxidation posted:

the immeasurable corpse of nature by Chris Slatsky

Starting this tonight, will report back with thoughts as I notice little previous discussion other than this mention. IIRC he's a Ligotti acolyte isn't he?

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Nah I don’t mind hearing criticism of something I liked, especially well thought out and specific critiques.

Like I’m curious what you thought was edgelordy in particular. It definitely had some out there stuff and was violent, but it never had that warhammer look at me dad!! feel that I’d call edgelordy. That’s an honest question cause it’s cool to explore how the same stuff can affect people differently.

Skyscraper
Oct 1, 2004

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming



Xiahou Dun posted:

Like I’m curious what you thought was edgelordy in particular. It definitely had some out there stuff and was violent, but it never had that warhammer look at me dad!! feel that I’d call edgelordy.

WARHAMMER! That's exactly what I was thinking when I was reading this, please someone tell me if this was too much to quote:

:black101: posted:

FLESH soft and weak, lacking chitin or tarsus or limbs enough for the violence of my kind, but, oh, the jaws. They are small and leveraged to rend muscle and sinew, long bone wound with cords, inheritor of power. The liquor of my veins is potent, propelled on shuddering meat, enriched by countless glands, and distilled by reflexive terror. I suck their smell in through my snout, and I know every contour of them, every movement by the vortices in colorless, perfumed smoke.

In the white stone antechamber of the boreal spire of the Sub-Regnant Queen the 702nd, the Cardinal Betrayer, Usurper and Defiler of the ways of true hatching, I faced ninety-nine warriors of her brood. They were strong, honed in the old violence and the old ways, shells scarred from battle, drunk on their queen’s richest honey. Through beam and chisel and, by second moon’s height, through mandible, I extracted the pulp of each warrior. I cored their husks and burned their nerve cords into jelly. I was VIOLENCE. I was a champion of my kind, like Warren Groves, but of the hard shell and inner flesh.

The soft meat of humans does not stoke fear in my mind. Their way is slow and anchored to the soil. There are no venoms or beams, only crude metal tools. I welcome battle. Praise her name, my Regnant Queen, long gone into water. Praise her and answer this TREASON with VIOLENCE.

I discover great speed in this flesh. I leap and seize with rows of curving fangs. Their throats and groins and bellies are soft. Their limbs snap apart into morsels. I strum their tendons with my jaws. Stricken faces, pale, wide-eyed, screaming. I KILL WELL. Humans are gurgling, thrashing for the meat I have taken from them. Their fluid is warm on my face and on these quills that do not speak. One human female runs. She sees me for what I am. She is too slow, too soft.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Hey all! The annual Secret Santa thread is now open for signups! Come join in and shower your fellow book goons with the best offerings from Grimscribe Press or otherwise. I've done it on and off for several years and always enjoy the hunt for gifts as well as reading what my Santa finds for me. I've discovered many new favorites this way!


(gifts from Santas past)

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Nov 5, 2021

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


Bilirubin posted:

Hey all! The annual Secret Santa thread is now open for signups! Come join in and shower your fellow book goons with the best offerings from Grimscribe Press or otherwise. I've done it on and off for several years and always enjoy the hunt for gifts as well as reading what my Santa finds for me. I've discovered many new favorites this way!


(gifts from Santas past)

Link doesn't seem to work

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Retro Futurist posted:

Link doesn't seem to work

weird works for me

just check the stickied post near the top of the forum

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Bilirubin posted:

Starting this tonight, will report back with thoughts as I notice little previous discussion other than this mention. IIRC he's a Ligotti acolyte isn't he?

OK two stories into this collection.

First, a disclaimer: I just figured out today that I know him (pseudonymously) and have posted with him on another forum for nearly 15 years. So, lol, but also take that into account with what I am about to post because its perhaps it has swayed my opinion.

This is moody, atmospheric, psychological horror. Nothing can torment us like our own grief, guilt, and regret, and these first two stories capture that perfectly.

Ragle Gumm
Jun 14, 2020

Bilirubin posted:

weird works for me

just check the stickied post near the top of the forum

FWIW, the link doesn't work for me either (via Awful app).

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


Ragle Gumm posted:

FWIW, the link doesn't work for me either (via Awful app).

Just tried and it works on my tablet, just not in the app :shrug:

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Retro Futurist posted:

Just tried and it works on my tablet, just not in the app :shrug:

yeah I'm on desktop so :shrug:

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Bilirubin posted:

Hey all! The annual Secret Santa thread is now open for signups! Come join in and shower your fellow book goons with the best offerings from Grimscribe Press or otherwise. I've done it on and off for several years and always enjoy the hunt for gifts as well as reading what my Santa finds for me. I've discovered many new favorites this way!


(gifts from Santas past)

Those are cool books.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

Bilirubin posted:

weird works for me

just check the stickied post near the top of the forum
You have an "l" stuck on the end of the thread ID. This link will work.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Franchescanado posted:

Those are cool books.

Sent by a cool person :c00l:

I've read half so far--the Unnatural Creatures sent me down a few rabbit holes of some of the included authors works. I finished it on a flight that landed in Denver and then got Okorafor's Who Fears Death at the fantastic bookstore there based solely on her chapter in it. So thanks again for the gift that keeps on giving!

Sham bam bamina! posted:

You have an "l" stuck on the end of the thread ID. This link will work.

Thanks, repaired

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Nov 5, 2021

Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

I finished The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher earlier today and enjoyed it. It's a sort of sequel to "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood. It's one of those horror stories where there's a fair bit hinted at but never explored so you don't get a lot of answers (which I tend to prefer, but I know it irritates some folks).

Ceramic Shot
Dec 21, 2006

The stars aren't in the right places.

Ornamented Death posted:

I finished The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher earlier today and enjoyed it. It's a sort of sequel to "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood. It's one of those horror stories where there's a fair bit hinted at but never explored so you don't get a lot of answers (which I tend to prefer, but I know it irritates some folks).

The Willows has some of what I'd almost call foundational statements on what Weird horror is all about. It's over 100 years old, and was Lovecraft's favorite weird tale, as you're probably aware.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul—”

“I suggest just now—” I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his torrent that had to come.

“You think,” he said, “it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is—neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Published in 1907!

SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
now that i think about it the willows, and this part specifically, is very similar to some UAP theories i've seen in the cspam ufo thread.

Like they're simply not apprehensible. Or a 3d "shadow" of higher dimensional phenomena. Or we look at them and see something that is similar to what a cat sees when someone uses a laser pointer to play with them. This vast gulf on the underside of the world, a philosophical abyss. If you could lift the floor tiles you might see that there's nothing underneath at all.

Ariza
Feb 8, 2006
You know, it got stuck in my craw at some point that The Willows was going to be homework so I always skipped over it for something more enticing. Thanks for fixing that for me.

PawParole
Nov 16, 2019

Ornamented Death posted:

I finished The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher earlier today and enjoyed it. It's a sort of sequel to "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood. It's one of those horror stories where there's a fair bit hinted at but never explored so you don't get a lot of answers (which I tend to prefer, but I know it irritates some folks).

thanks for the rec. sounds good.

Anyone know a writer who’s like Bob Leman? His stories were the best I ever read, so is there anyone with a vibe like his?

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Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

I finished up Resume with Monsters by William Browning Spencer last night and it was...something. Imagine if Ligotti's corporate horror stuff was played completely straight and you'll have an idea of what it's like.

This is not to suggest Ligotti's work is humorous - quite the opposite, in fact. By treating the horrors of corporate life as having cosmic sources, but in a matter of fact way, humor is introduced. It's just a really weird little book.

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