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This is a thread for discussing the work, ideas and life of  Howard Phillips Lovecraft Wikipedia says: “ Howard Phillips Lovecraft (/ˈlʌvkræft, -ˌkrɑːft/;[1] August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) — known as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre.” He spent most of his life in Providence, RI and apart from a short period in NYC/Brooklyn, he lived there all his life. As well as publishing stories in pulp magazines, he published extensively in the amateur journalism movement of the period and continued extensive correspondences with many colleagues. Almost all his writing has been republished in the last few decades and now available widely. Here is a good biographical page by ST Joshi, leading HPL scholar: http://www.hplovecraft.com/life/biograph.aspx So, this is the place to discuss HPL’s writing. Experts and newcomers welcome.  permitted (within reasonable limits). I don’t think there is any point in using spoilers in this thread because in the end all the characters wind up mad or dead. There is a lot to read, most of it in the form of short stories (various collections and editions). There are one or two novellas (depends how one wants to classify them): The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and At the Mountains of Madness. Don’t forget numerous letters, journalistic articles and some poetry. We can discuss adaptations, films, TV, comics, RPGs, music, conventions, plushies and all the geegaws of modern life that HPL loved so dearly.…aaaannnd yes, HPL was a massive racist, anti-semite and misogynist. There is no getting around it and none of his fans would deny these aspects though it is worth remembering that HPL lived in a different time and wished he lived 200 years earlier (pre-dating letters to 1720s etc) and no one here is excusing his attitudes, which form the core of a lot of ideas and plots. It is worth mentioning that this antisemitic misogynist also was briefly married a Jewish woman, had Jewish colleagues and towards the end of his life moderated some of his more extreme views on race theory. Any discussion of HPL’s writing inevitably raises some concepts that are strange, outdated and not very popular today. That said, please don’t poo poo up this thread with trolling. The post below will list recommendations and editions. I am not an HPL expert, so a lot of you guys will know more than me. Please recommend and suggest particularly good stories, books and online articles and they will be added to the second post. I’ll revise it as you contribute. May your sanity not desert you, seekers of knowledge! Edit (18/01/15) From now on  any discussion of racism/sexism should be associated only with specific instances in HPL's writing and you should have something interesting to say about it. From now on all low-content "He wasn't so racist!"/ "He was such a racist!" posts will be reported. And if it continues I will close this thread. Josef K. Sourdust fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Dec 24, 2014 20:06
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Placeholder for a list of HPL’s major writings (please check for regular updates): Fiction: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (novella) At the Mountains of Madness (novella) various short story collections Complete/Collected editions: Poetry: The Ancient Track: Collected Poetical Works, ed. ST Joshi Letters: Journalism: 5 volumes of Collected Essays, ed. ST Joshi, Hippocampus Press covering Journalism, Travel, Philosophy & misc., Literary Reviews, Science Volume 1: Amateur Journalism Do you want to read HPL delivering sick ice burn by way of Latin epigram? Do you want to read HPL correcting the grammar of a poem you will never read? Do you want to read HPL’s mini-biographies of fellow amateur writers, especially ones who have not seen print in the last 100 years? Do you want to read HPL’s report on his organisation’s rummage sale? Do you want to read HPL’s solicitations for contributions to the amateur association’s journal? Do you want to read HPL’s petty put-downs of forgotten writers? Do you want over 400 pages of that? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions then – apart from revealing yourself as a fanboy – you’ll find this is the book for you. HPL was a prolific contributor to amateur journals and was an official in one of the associations. This collects most of HPL’s criticism of amateur writing – so not even comments on Poe, Dunsany, etc. Lot of this is official business and notices and discussions of association matters. Unless you are an HPL completist or writing a paper on amateur journalism in the 1910-1920s then there’s no reason for you to even look at this book. This volume is one of the most tedious books I’ve ever read. It is hugely tiresome. Oh, hope you brought a spare set of eyeballs with you, because you’ll need them. This book (like all in the set) is printed in 8pt. type. Yes, approx. 1,500 pages of type so small your eyes will bleed. It can’t be as dull as all that? Well, yes it can but…there are some nice parts. HPL reviews his wife’s journal and announces their marriage. He writes a handful of short articles which are approachable and insightful about the value and drawbacks of the amateur journalism movement (essentially printed blogs – amateurs writing and printing their poems, stories, comic sketches and political ideas in print runs of 12s or low 100s, mainly to be read by friends and fellow writers). There is brief piece on the Irish Question (HPL pro-Brit, anti-Irish). There is one obituary that relates slightly to the Dunwich Horror and nothing else related to HPL’s fiction in the whole book….. The footnotes are useful….. Erm….. Verdict: Crushingly dull Lovecraftian appeal: 0/5 Volume 2: Literary Criticism Okay, this is the real stuff. If you set aside essays on how to write verse and guidance to young writers, this volume has a lot of good material. It contains his long essay discussing weird fiction and the gothic, another on interplanetary fiction, a guide to writing horror stories. It includes summaries of favourite and typical plots devices and themes, break downs of popular horror stories and long critical overviews of Belknap Long and Dunsany. There is a guide to Roman literature and an attack on TS Eliot. There are handful of short discussions of amateur writers which you can skip. Some of the texts have appeared in recent collections. On balance, this is a very interesting and stimulating collection for anyone interested in classic horror fiction and HPL’s own writing. Verdict: Largely engaging and informative; easy to read Lovecraftian appeal: 4/5 Biographies and literary studies: HP Lovecraft: A Biography, by L. Sprague de Camp (1975) - a very readable and informative biography including a lot of original research I am Providence, by ST Joshi - very large biography available in one or two-vol. versions (2 vol. is longer). Very divisive - see the comments on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Providence-Times-Lovecraft-Volume/dp/1614980519/ref=pd_cp_b_0 Weird Realism, by Graham Harman - a fascinating deconstruction of the logic and philosophy underpinning HPL's writing Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, by Michel Houellebecq - noted French novelist interprets HPL's nihilism Here is the documentary Fear of the Unknown, available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spoz_1KyZiA Websites: http://www.hplovecraft.com/ http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ (thanks to Pigs Feet on Rye) Oddities/collectables: The Shadow Over Innsmouth was HPL's one of only book publication during his lifetime (1936). Only a few copies were printed so to pick up a signed copy will cost you $16,500 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1134835166&searchurl=sortby%3D1%26an%3Dlovecraft the other book is The Cats of Ulthar (1935), only 42 copies of this. This copy is priced at $18,000.http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1103039220&searchurl=sortby%3D1%26an%3Dlovecraft Letters to Frank Bellknap - a cache of 52 original letters, mainly unpublished, will cost you a cool $100,000 http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1103039280&searchurl=sortby%3D1%26an%3Dlovecraft Josef K. Sourdust fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Dec 24, 2014 20:07
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Maybe I'm alone in this, but I sort of feel like Lovecraft just isn't scary to modern audiences. It seems that so much of the horror in his works relies on a belief in a well-ordered universe in which humanity is important. Nobody really believes that anymore, so I dunno if HPL can really have the same impact as he did in the 20s. That said, I still enjoy reading his works from time to time-- I dig the rich, musty early-20th-century flavor. Pickman's Model is probably my favorite. I actually think that Algernon Blackwood was better w/r/t "weird" fiction, though. Speaking of adaptations, has anybody played the board game Eldritch Horror?
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Dec 24, 2014 22:08
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It... depends. Horror in literature doesn't work very well for "scaring", good horror is more about pressure and inevitable doom. A couple of Lovecraft stories do this (in my opinion, obviously) very well - Color Out Of Space comes into mind - but a lot of it depends on the mood and setting; you read it alone in an empty dark attic or something, a lot of HPL stories is perfectly serviceable as scares, at least until the absurdity starts kicking in. Still, I imagine most fans are in it for the mythology; Lovecraft's imaginary worlds and gods still inspire awe and kind of an otherworldly beauty. His monsters are genuinely cool even nowadays.
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Dec 24, 2014 22:24
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It's been a few years but I recall really liking The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The old fashioned correspondence between his ancestor and his ancestor's weirdo European necromancer buddies was neat. I don't remember being frightened, but there were a few moments of sinister dread when I realized what the antagonist was up to.
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Dec 25, 2014 01:27
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For the OP: a website with HP's writings. I'm not sure how complete it is, but there's a lot. http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/
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Dec 25, 2014 03:03
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My favorite moment was in 'The Whisperer in Darkness' when the old man says 'we' instead of 'they' once when describing the Mi-Go. The first time I read that was on a dark night alone in the barracks. I re-read that sentence two or three times and was like ohfu-
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Dec 25, 2014 07:20
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Falstaff Infection posted:Maybe I'm alone in this, but I sort of feel like Lovecraft just isn't scary to modern audiences. It seems that so much of the horror in his works relies on a belief in a well-ordered universe in which humanity is important. Nobody really believes that anymore, so I dunno if HPL can really have the same impact as he did in the 20s. That said, I still enjoy reading his works from time to time-- I dig the rich, musty early-20th-century flavor. Pickman's Model is probably my favorite. I actually think that Algernon Blackwood was better w/r/t "weird" fiction, though. I dunno about this. While people don't seem to believe in an ordered universe any more, most people have a deeply held belief that humanity matters. I think the cosmic dread thing still works pretty well because of that. I don't think HPL's at his strongest with that stuff though, I really prefer the stories that are more about (in the words of Terry Pratchett) normal stuff gone wrong (or nearly-normal stuff made horrible) than about big giant monsters or ancient races from spaaaaaace or whatever. Pickman's Model is probably my favorite too, perhaps tied with The Thing On The Doorstep and followed by Cool Air and The Tomb. The Music Of Erich Zann is up there too.
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Dec 25, 2014 07:48
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What I love about HP Lovecraft is that his works are essentially scooby doo in reverse. You start out with what looks like simple crime and then it turns out to be a civilization shattering conspiracy at the hands of world devouring alien gods.
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Dec 25, 2014 10:25
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Here's a query for you. I have read a fair bit but want to get a complete(ish) edition. Any recommendations among these? Library of America, very classy, cloth cover but expensive and not complete: http://www.amazon.co.uk/H-P-Lovecra...brary+lovecraft Knickerbocker Classic, cloth HB and slipcase, is it complete? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Fi...plete+lovecraft Barnes & Noble, eye-scorcher of a cover (leather? surely leatherette?), claims to be complete: http://www.amazon.co.uk/H-P-Lovecra...plete+lovecraft Liveright, large, illustrated and annotated but not complete: http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Annotat...ected+lovecraft
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Dec 25, 2014 11:53
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The Music of Erich Zann is my favourite Lovecraft story. I agree that he probably isn't as scary to us modern audiences as he might have been, but by far my favourite thing about him is his prose, and when his eccentric writing style comes together perfectly with the insanity of what he's writing it all clicks together and gives me chills. The Music of Erich Zann does just that!
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Dec 25, 2014 14:50
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My favorite parts of Lovecraft stories are the ones in which the story comes to an ending and... The twist ending is displayed like this! My main problem with Lovecraft is that I recently steamrolled through a "complete collection", and a good amount of his stories for a time followed the format of "I received a letter from someone that was crazy > I investigated > I found terrifying things > I'm in a mental institution now!" Having said that, they're awesome and he's one of my favorite writers 
SgtScruffy fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 15:54
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I've heard there's some great lovecraft audio books with good voice acting, can anyone point me towards them? It seems like a lot of his stories would be fantastic to listen to more like a radio drama maybe even with music/sounds.
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Dec 25, 2014 18:01
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Baronjutter posted:I've heard there's some great lovecraft audio books with good voice acting, can anyone point me towards them? It seems like a lot of his stories would be fantastic to listen to more like a radio drama maybe even with music/sounds. Most of the longer ones have professional versions. At the Mountains of Madness Herbert West, Re-Animator The Call of Cthulhu The Dunwich Horror The Horror at Red Hook The Shadow Over Innsmouth An important part of Lovecafts work is powerlessness. That no matter how much you struggle you are just an insect compared to the vast power of the dark ones. It's none of this "resist the dark ones influence" You can resist all you like but the dark ones can break your mind and bend you to their will with nothing more than a thought. And the only reason that your entire world and everything in it still exists is because they haven't glanced in your direction yet. But they will. Zephyrine fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 18:32
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Falstaff Infection posted:Maybe I'm alone in this, but I sort of feel like Lovecraft just isn't scary to modern audiences. It seems that so much of the horror in his works relies on a belief in a well-ordered universe in which humanity is important. Nobody really believes that anymore, so I dunno if HPL can really have the same impact as he did in the 20s. That said, I still enjoy reading his works from time to time-- I dig the rich, musty early-20th-century flavor. Pickman's Model is probably my favorite. I actually think that Algernon Blackwood was better w/r/t "weird" fiction, though. anilEhilated posted:I imagine most fans are in it for the mythology; Lovecraft's imaginary worlds and gods still inspire awe and kind of an otherworldly beauty. His monsters are genuinely cool even nowadays. I think this is quite true. My personal favourites are the Dream Cycle stories, which are Dunsany pastiche fantasy rather than straight horror. It's worth noting that when Lovecraft was writing the boundaries between horror, fantasy and sci-fi weren't as defined as they are today, particularly with regard to fantasy and horror. HPL's stories are much better if you're in it for Weird rather than straight scary.
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Dec 25, 2014 21:07
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I actually don't care for Lovecraft's mythology at all and I get really annoyed by nerds who equate Lovecraft with Cthulhu because the non-Cthulhu, one-off stuff is probably his strongest writing. But maybe that's just because I'm so tainted by Derleth's 'Cthulhu Mythos' and think it's a horrible bastardisation of what I liked about Lovecraft.
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Dec 25, 2014 21:46
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SgtScruffy posted:My main problem with Lovecraft is that I recently steamrolled through a "complete collection", and a good amount of his stories for a time followed the format of "I received a letter from someone that was crazy > I investigated > I found terrifying things > I'm in a mental institution now!" I love the ongoing implication that this poo poo that happens all the time and the general population just writes it off as "lunatics are lunatics, thrown them in the asylum and don't worry about it".
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Dec 25, 2014 23:12
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Baronjutter posted:I've heard there's some great lovecraft audio books with good voice acting, can anyone point me towards them? It seems like a lot of his stories would be fantastic to listen to more like a radio drama maybe even with music/sounds. Here's an adaptation of The Colour Out of Space, which has some pretty good parts. And while just narration, I like these readings of The Dunwich Horror, and The Thing on the Doorstep.
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Dec 25, 2014 23:14
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I remember reading 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' late at night, in a bed, in a house by the sea. The scene near the end where the protagonist turns around, as he's trying to make his escape, to see a bunch of things swimming rapidly after him across the moonlit water chilled me to the bone. As I recall, and it's been a few years now, he'd only met, at that point, relatively 'normal' people, so the feeling that he'd finally provoked something completely alien and implacable was overpowering. I didn't want to look out the window, just in case I'd done the same by reading about it. A lot of his stuff is just plain weird, a lot distasteful, and he's often not all that 'scary', but whether it was context or not, Lovecraft really did for me then.
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Dec 25, 2014 23:58
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Baronjutter posted:I've heard there's some great lovecraft audio books with good voice acting, can anyone point me towards them? It seems like a lot of his stories would be fantastic to listen to more like a radio drama maybe even with music/sounds. The Lovecraft Historical Society has done a number of old-time radio-style adaptations of stories, and they've also done two movies. They did the silent Call of Cthulhu movie, which was pretty good, and a movie of The Whisperer in Darkness, which I really disliked. The audio plays usually stay close to the original stories, though they make some changes. Usually they create a character that the narrator is talking to, basically so he won't be talking directly to the audience. Sometimes these framing sequences intrude on the story too much, and in their version of "The Colour Out of Space" they add a framing sequence even though the original story already had a framing sequence, so there are two.
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Dec 26, 2014 01:54
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Barry Foster posted:I remember reading 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' late at night, in a bed, in a house by the sea. The scene near the end where the protagonist turns around, as he's trying to make his escape, to see a bunch of things swimming rapidly after him across the moonlit water chilled me to the bone. As I recall, and it's been a few years now, he'd only met, at that point, relatively 'normal' people, so the feeling that he'd finally provoked something completely alien and implacable was overpowering. I didn't want to look out the window, just in case I'd done the same by reading about it. Yeah, I listened to this while driving out in the middle of nowhere on the I-5 sometime after midnight. Really liked this story and recommend everyone try and listen to it while driving in darkness somewhere.
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Dec 26, 2014 04:46
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The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Out of Time are my two favorite Lovecraft stories. The former, because it captures his creepy fictional New England perfectly and is a legit awesome sci-fi invasion (sort of) story. The latter, because it doesn't ever make a ton of sense and is super pulpy (the beetle race!) and the setting is way outside of Lovecraft's normal comfort zone of writing. I got this for Christmas: http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Annotated-H-Lovecraft/dp/0871404532 And am pretty excited to delve back in to Lovecraft (although it's only been 6 months since I last read him). The book is really, really big and heavy and has lots of full color photos and annotations, a steal for $25!
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Dec 26, 2014 11:11
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A very critical review of the Annotated Lovecraft in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/hideous-unknown-hp-lovecraft/ And a riposte from Joshi: http://www.stjoshi.org/review_baxter.html
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Dec 27, 2014 13:42
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I'm honestly not sure which one of the reviewer's depiction of horror writers or Joshi calling The Shadow Over Innsmouth "worthy of Faulkner" is funnier. I do have a healthy dose of respect for both HPL and Joshi, but these fellows are really overthinking their stuff.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 14:55
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That's a bad article. The author seems to think "The monsters aren't scary, the unsettling stuff is really just the hopelessness and universal alienation" is a new and unique perspective. Nor does he bother to do the basic analysis of linking HPL's prose to his terror of modernity or relate the (rightly praised) disturbing architecture to the fundamental architecture of the world: space and the beings which inhabit it are in Lovecraft as misshapen and disturbing as the architecture.quote:After both world wars and the atrocities of recent history, Lovecraft’s horrors seem like quaint, construction-paper toys created by someone who did not get outside much On the other hand: The Call of Cthulhu posted:The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom Seems to be a pretty prescient description for the atomic age and for WWII and it's assorted horrors, especially from the pov of a pseudo-victorian, at least. The author's criticisms seem especially odd and off-key considering he says "Lovecraft does not write about “horrors” at all but about the worst kinds of clinical depression" then spends the rest of the essay saying that Lovecraft's bleak view is essentially immature and sheltered, leaving me to conclude the author thinks depression and anxiety are essentially a failure to grow up. This insulting and (ironically) immature view of depression is expressed in the closing: quote:But he held on tightly to the truths of adolescence: that the universe does not wish us well Apparently Lovecraft's emotional disturbances and his finding them reflected in scientific knowledge (the earth and the universe were not created to nurture us) are apparently an adolescent whine. Are we expected to believe that thinking "the universe wishes us well" is somehow a defining mark of maturity? Here's Joyce Carol Oates' article about Lovecraft, from the same publication (it's nominally about Joshi's biography). Not only is it a better, more insightful article, she actually gives the impression of having read Lovecraft! Sharkie fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Dec 28, 2014 |
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Dec 28, 2014 03:11
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:A very critical review of the Annotated Lovecraft in the New York Review of Books: This just reads like a low effort troll that rehashes every other criticism of Lovecraft (He uses italics and lots of adjectives) You can tell the author plainly thinks that weird or speculative literature "isn't serious" quote:The new volume of his stories, approximately the size and heft of the Manhattan telephone directory, is a curious production, like something imagined by Borges. Stories that first appeared in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories and Weird Tales are carefully annotated here, with footnoted and illustrated explanations appearing in the margins. Because the bookish Lovecraft had an antiquarian side, along with a taste for the esoteric and the arcane, the explanations—of prolate spheroids, sigillaria, calamites, the Archaeozoic era, Otaheite, the Pilbara region, the Clavis Majoris Sapientiae, and many, many other locales and phenomena—are helpful. But the effect is like having a friendly and obliging professor whispering learned asides all through a blood-spattered grind-house movie.
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Dec 28, 2014 21:54
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Yeah, I don't feel any shred of concern over coming off as defensive when I say that that critique is embarrassing and suggests the author simply has not read much HP Lovecraft, or if they have, then they read it with a completely shut mind (probably over-eager to write this piece..). Joyce Carol Oates's essay on HP Lovecraft strikes me as a much more engaged and genuine analysis. fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 20:14
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Action Jacktion posted:The Lovecraft Historical Society has done a number of old-time radio-style adaptations of stories, and they've also done two movies. They did the silent Call of Cthulhu movie, which was pretty good, and a movie of The Whisperer in Darkness, which I really disliked. The audio plays usually stay close to the original stories, though they make some changes. Usually they create a character that the narrator is talking to, basically so he won't be talking directly to the audience. Sometimes these framing sequences intrude on the story too much, and in their version of "The Colour Out of Space" they add a framing sequence even though the original story already had a framing sequence, so there are two. Cool trivia: The Call of Cthulhu fan film they made was largely filmed in Nick Offerman's woodshop. He apparently is in pretty tight with that group and plays RPGs with them. I'd say "The Colour Out of Space" is my favorite of his, phonetic writing aside. It's one of those rare sci-fi stories where the alien is truly alien, and it's his best expression of cosmic horror. I really like "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" because it's one of those great examples of Lovecraft slowly building dread through lots of disparate and seemingly disconnected elements. The payoff with the doctor in Curwen's dungeon is really terrifying. The fact that it was a first draft he never intended to publish is pretty crazy. My biggest criticism of him (racism, classism, and xenophobia aside) is that his antiquated style often kills any sort of emotional impact. It's rare that his characters undergo any relatable human conflicts, but even when they do it's just sort of blithely mentioned without elaboration.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:00
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And a riposte from Joshi: http://www.stjoshi.org/review_baxter.html [/quote] Joshi's constant need to gloss over the ugly parts of Lovecraft's racism is weird.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:08
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Rats in the walls was a good story. It had a cat named friend of the family man.
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Dec 30, 2014 21:19
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Rats in the Walls is my favorite Lovecraft story. It's also the first one I read, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I don't think so. It's just such a solid and spooky as gently caress story unencumbered by some of the quirks of Lovecraft that I don't usually enjoy. Just straight awesome scary unnerving story.
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Dec 31, 2014 07:09
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Here's a query for you. I have read a fair bit but want to get a complete(ish) edition. Any recommendations among these? I have this one, and as long as you have the 2011 printing pictured in your link (which has a different appearance to the first one and so is easy to spot), you're good. The original release of this one is full of typos.
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Dec 31, 2014 09:24
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Just read the statement of Randolph Carter and it had the first thing of Lovecrafts to genuinely unnerve me - At the end when the thing shouts back "you fool, Warren is dead!". I'm not sure why it bothers me exactly, maybe its because lovecrafts monsters are usually so far from humanity that I just wasn't expecting something like that
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Dec 31, 2014 22:02
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Stravinsky posted:Rats in the walls was a good story. It had a cat named friend of the family man. This!!!!
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Jan 1, 2015 03:25
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I do like The Color Out of Space, although it left me wondering why the neighbors didn't check on the family early on. What the hell, neighbors? The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is my favourite! I like how it goes back and forth from "normal dream" to "full-on nightmare" throughout. All the stories of his that I read early on were relatively benign on the racism scale. It wasn't until I was in my late-twenties that I read He and was seriously taken aback. The Horror of Red Hook was just disgusting.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:21
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Barnes & Noble, eye-scorcher of a cover (leather? surely leatherette?), claims to be complete: Eh, I wouldn't mind having that in my bookshelf. I'd be much more embarrassed to own these. I'm probably font-spergin' here, but jesus christ Papyrus is ugly  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/necronomicon-h-p-lovecraft/1101955449?ean=9780575081574 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eldritch-tales-h-p-lovecraft/1102418434?ean=9780575099630 I also can't recommend Erik Kriek's Lovecraft comics highly enough. Easily the best Lovecraft comic I've ever read, his rendition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth is especially fantastic. Unfortunately they do not exist in English yet, to my knowledge, only in Dutch and Swedish (?).  
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Jan 3, 2015 02:37
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Those comics look cool as hell. Hopefully they get translated to English sometime. I am enjoying Lovecraft's non-Cthulhu stories more so. I believe the title is The Curse of Yig, the one with the snakes. I like that one a lot, and The Colour out of Space is probably his best work.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:00
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I don't think he's scary in a modern way, but he was crazy creative for his time. I think that was what was so mind-blowing about his work, and it still holds up today.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:39
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When I marathoned Lovecraft's stuff back in my youth there were a few times when I got genuinely creeped out, so I can only imagine that his stories would have been considered straight-up terrifying when he wrote them back in the 20's and 30's. But as mentioned, the average reader today is jaded enough where his work tends to hold up better if you're in it for the weird rather than expecting to have your pants scared off. Has anyone seen the faux-retro movies produced by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society? They're pretty rockin'   edit: and if anyone happens to be looking for Lovecraft audiobooks, check out the outstanding H.P. Podcraft Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 17:50
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I saw The Call of Cthulhu and it was pretty good.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:39
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