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I liked the Call of Cthulhu but the Whisperer in Darkness was not that great. It was good up until the third act, where they tacked on an escape sequence as some bullshit actiony climax and ugh. 
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Jan 4, 2015 19:33
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Are all of Lovecraft's writings considered in the public domain yet?
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Jan 5, 2015 12:36
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chonz posted:Are all of Lovecraft's writings considered in the public domain yet? Good question. I'd like to know that too. For a while there was a copyright struggle over the unpublished stories but as stuff seems to be appearing under a variety of imprints, does that mean the copyright issues have been settled? Here is a link to a discussion of the matter but I wonder what the current actual status is... http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft
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Jan 5, 2015 14:20
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Good question. I'd like to know that too. For a while there was a copyright struggle over the unpublished stories but as stuff seems to be appearing under a variety of imprints, does that mean the copyright issues have been settled? Yikes, figures the rights in the USA are all messed up. So, it looks like it's all good in the EU though. I'd love to see someone compile a definitive set of books with everything he's ever done. I know there are compilations out there that claim to be complete, but if you look into it, you'll see it lacks letters (where a lot of interesting mythos information is talked about) or memoirs and the like. What I'd really like to see is someone compile all of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique and Hyperborea cycles together again. I know it was done in the past by Necronomicon Press, but it's out of print and way too expensive for me to buy.
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Jan 5, 2015 14:45
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It's something of a shame August Derleth will probably never be given the appreciation he deserves, not just as an editor and publisher, but also as a writer. His works are really no less divergent than most neo-Lovecraftiana when it comes to Lovecraft's basic philosophy, and while they're admittedly less interesting to me than, say, Ramsey Campbell's eight great essays into the Lovecraftian atmosphere or T.E.D. Klein's two excellent novellas, they're hardly worse than what you can read in the typical anthology of new Lovecraftian works.
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Jan 5, 2015 16:50
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If anyone has a kindle or a nook, or even a kindle app for an ipad or something, you can download this: http://arkhamarchivist.com/free-complete-lovecraft-ebook-nook-kindle/ Which is a free collection of what it says is the complete works.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:56
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AFewBricksShy posted:If anyone has a kindle or a nook, or even a kindle app for an ipad or something, you can download this: thank you! 
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Jan 5, 2015 21:17
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I haven't read Lovecraft's works in quite a while. Anyone have a particularly good story to suggest?
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Jan 7, 2015 04:36
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Groupees just launched a Lovecraft-themed game/music/ebook bundle, any opinions about this stuff? https://groupees.com/lc
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Jan 7, 2015 19:26
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Doc Friday posted:I haven't read Lovecraft's works in quite a while. Anyone have a particularly good story to suggest? I've yet to hear anyone ever mention it but I really enjoyed The Curse of Yig. And At The Mountains of Madness is also great.
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Jan 7, 2015 22:32
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Doc Friday posted:I haven't read Lovecraft's works in quite a while. Anyone have a particularly good story to suggest? The Colour Out of Space is his finest work by some distance. On the more obscure side of things, Beneath the Pyramids was impressively scary and atmospheric for a celebrity tie-in about Harry Houdini being menaced by scary Egyptians.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:57
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Cobra Commander posted:I've yet to hear anyone ever mention it but I really enjoyed The Curse of Yig. And At The Mountains of Madness is also great. "The Curse of Yig" is really drat good and easily the best of his "collaborations." Aspects of it in the sanitarium with the snake-man have a Silence of the Lambs quality and it has some great plot elements. As for other recommendations, "The Thing in the Moonlight" is really short, pure atmosphere, and one I recommend to someone who is considering reading more Lovecraft. It's a good, short sample of his strengths as a writer. Another deep cut from him I'd definitely recommend is "The Temple." It's probably the first horror story set on a submarine and is really, really excellent. My pipe-dream is for a filmmaker like Ridley Scott to adapt it. I might be in the minority of Lovecraft fans in that I really don't care for the mythos or whatever you want to call it. Whenever his stories get bogged down with histories of ancient alien races it really bores me. I like it when they're used as an excuse for a plot element like the brain cases in "The Whisperer in Darkness" or the brain-stealing/amnesia in "The Shadow Out of Time." To me, Lovecraft is at his best setting a mood of dread that slowly gets corroborated by lots of seemingly disconnected facts or, in stories like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" or "The Shadow Out of Time" building up a paranoid sense of fear. His stories are often stronger conceptually than in their execution, but almost all of his stories have some interesting insight or device that rises above the story as a whole. As an example, there are Poe-like dissertations in "The Picture in the House" about how Puritans and there descendants were incredibly pious but also solitary and self-loathing in a way that gradually, over generations, bred secretive people whose religion perverted them in strange and violent ways. The old man exemplifies this through the sick compulsion he has to look at images of slaughter in an ancient book, which is better than just hearing about sermons on Biblical slaughter where he has to imagine it all rather than see it on the page. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 00:54
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Personally, I felt The Shadow Out Of Time was one of his weakest. You could see the twist coming a mile away, to the point where trying to sell it as a twist felt rather silly, and he didn't adequately convey why we should be scared by all this as he did in his other stories. Mind you, I also felt that The Shadow over Innsmouth had a moderately happy ending. Dude overcomes his racism, reconnects with his estranged family, and becomes a rad immortal fishman. 
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Jan 8, 2015 01:14
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I'm not a huge fan of "The Shadow Out of Time" but I do like that it's one of those rare cases where a Lovecraftian protagonist has a real, human crisis in addition to whatever supernatural stuff is going on. It's really sad to think about the protagonist's wife and sons leaving him forever because his mind was gone and replaced by something inhuman, only for him to regain control of himself and his family still be estranged to him. You get a hint of that in "The Rats in the Walls" with the protagonist being a widower whose only son is maimed by The Great War or in "The Thing on the Doorstep" watching a friendship be strained by a literally controlling wife. But Lovecraft never lingers on these crises, just sort of leaving them for the reader to ponder or gloss over. One thing that's cool about Lovecraft's collaborations (even though they're almost entirely poor) is the change of setting. Reading most of his primary work in New England gives you the impression that he's fixed to that setting, but the collaborations have settings in Africa, the American southwest, and Venus! MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 01:23
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I've read a few of Lovecraft's stories here and there through the years, and I've always been partial towards "Pickman's Model" and "The Outsider," probably because they were some of the first of his I read. I'm not sure how they've stood up after so long, I should give them another reading and see how I feel. While his stories aren't really "scary" in a sense to me they do give a good creepy vibe, and as others have mentioned it's really amplified by a proper setting while reading. also loved Lovecraftian Journal back in the day good gimmick poster
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Jan 8, 2015 07:42
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My favourite is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath but then, I'm also a huge fan of Dunsany.
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Jan 8, 2015 22:15
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My favorite HPL story is The Outsider. I mean, okay, it's dumb, you'll see it coming from miles away but there's something adorable about the whole thing. For actually good ones, I'd go with Color Out Of Space. Thing disturbs me even on rereads.
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Jan 8, 2015 22:28
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Has anyone else here read Michel Houellebecq's "Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life"? Just re-read it last night and it still holds up as the best analysis of Lovecraft I've come across.
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Jan 9, 2015 20:14
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The Rat posted:Has anyone else here read Michel Houellebecq's "Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life"? Nice one. I'll add that to the OP. Isn't that one with crits by Stephen King and Houellebecq and stories by HPL all in one volume? I can't remember it in detail but I thought it was an intelligent approach. There is a critical analysis of H. coming out and I wonder if it will mention HPL's influence on H. H. is a fantastically nihilistic (though also moral) writer and I can see HPL's misanthropic tendency would appeal to him. Initially you would say H. and HPL are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to sex but I think they are both as suspicious about women. You should have a look at Harman's book, if you haven't already.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:15
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Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:20
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Nice one. I'll add that to the OP. Isn't that one with crits by Stephen King and Houellebecq and stories by HPL all in one volume? It's got an intro by King, then Houellebecq's stuff, then a couple Lovecraft stories. I think "Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness."
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Jan 9, 2015 21:33
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The Rat posted:It's got an intro by King, then Houellebecq's stuff, then a couple Lovecraft stories. I think "Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness." That's the one. Nanomashoes posted:Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer. You are objectively right. We will revise our opinions accordingly.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:59
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Nanomashoes posted:Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer. I disagree. The Weird Tales crew were, by and large, poor writers and massive racists, but their influence on the genre grants them enormous historical importance. It's the same reason why you can't ignore Birth of a Nation despite it being literal Klan propaganda.
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Jan 10, 2015 00:28
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The Rat posted:Has anyone else here read Michel Houellebecq's "Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life"? It's fantastic. It's one of my comfort reads, I'll pick it up at least once a year. Nothing else of Houellebecq's I've read comes close, with the exception of "Extension du Domaine de la Lutte". Dude shot his literary wad early. "Si le style de Lovecraft est deplorable, on peut gaiement conclure que le style n'a, en litterature, pas le moindre importance--et passer à autre chose." Nanomashoes posted:Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer. "Il ramène brutalement la racisme à sa source essentielle, sa source la plus profonde--la peur." Clipperton fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 07:16
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Nanomashoes posted:Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer. Wow! Major slam on Tennessee Williams out of nowhere!
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Jan 10, 2015 15:10
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...and Ray Bradbury.
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Jan 10, 2015 15:26
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Darth Walrus posted:I disagree. The Weird Tales crew were, by and large, poor writers and massive racists, but their influence on the genre grants them enormous historical importance. It's the same reason why you can't ignore Birth of a Nation despite it being literal Klan propaganda. How exactly was Robert E Howard a bad writer?
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Jan 11, 2015 00:56
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Borneo Jimmy posted:How exactly was Robert E Howard a bad writer? Clark Ashton Smith is fantastic.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:11
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Borneo Jimmy posted:How exactly was Robert E Howard a bad writer? Honestly, his prose was pretty clunky, and he was even worse than Lovecraft at getting distracted by his peculiar racial attitudes to the detriment of his stories (that is to say, their views were fairly equally horrible, but Lovecraft was capable of writing decent horror that had nothing to do with howling xenophobia or an elaborate racial hierarchy, which Howard really struggled with). Other writers have done far better work on the same themes - Fritz Leiber is the obvious example from roughly the same time period.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:24
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xcheopis posted:Clark Ashton Smith is fantastic. Yeah I've been reading him and he's pretty good. He has an actual sense of humor and isn't a proto-fedoralord, which is refreshing in a pulp horror writer.
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Jan 11, 2015 13:32
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Effectronica posted:Wow! Major slam on Tennessee Williams out of nowhere! 
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Jan 12, 2015 05:02
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anilEhilated posted: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. Lovecraft's stuff is generally called cosmic horror for a reason. A lot of his stories have a protagonist that is in no immediate and apparent danger at any point. One of the major themes throughout his work is that the universe is vast and uncaring for man, and he carries through with this in many stories with monsters that aren't necessarily antagonistic towards humans but wish to be left alone or are willing to cause harm incidentally. He creates horror, but rather than being scary it's the horror of something weirdly wrong.
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Jan 13, 2015 04:57
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Was Lovecraft misogynistic? I know he hardly featured any female characters in his work and women are largely absent from the world he writes about, but I don't remember any specific instances of him displaying negative attitudes towards them. Granted two of the three women that are featured in his stories are villains and the other is a downtrodden nonentity, but Keziah Mason is a math witch with a demon rat familiar, and Asenath Waite is actually a man. It's been a long time since I've read through them all so I might be way off and there's a bunch of little stuff that I missed last time.
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Jan 14, 2015 04:24
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Croisquessein posted:Was Lovecraft misogynistic? I know he hardly featured any female characters in his work and women are largely absent from the world he writes about, but I don't remember any specific instances of him displaying negative attitudes towards them. Granted two of the three women that are featured in his stories are villains and the other is a downtrodden nonentity, but Keziah Mason is a math witch with a demon rat familiar, and Asenath Waite is actually a man. It's been a long time since I've read through them all so I might be way off and there's a bunch of little stuff that I missed last time. I think you answered your own question.
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Jan 14, 2015 13:30
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Croisquessein posted:Was Lovecraft misogynistic? I know he hardly featured any female characters in his work and women are largely absent from the world he writes about, but I don't remember any specific instances of him displaying negative attitudes towards them. Granted two of the three women that are featured in his stories are villains and the other is a downtrodden nonentity, but Keziah Mason is a math witch with a demon rat familiar, and Asenath Waite is actually a man. It's been a long time since I've read through them all so I might be way off and there's a bunch of little stuff that I missed last time. Does that total include the various female ancestors in Arthur Jermyn?
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Jan 14, 2015 15:28
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Croisquessein posted:Was Lovecraft misogynistic? I know he hardly featured any female characters in his work and women are largely absent from the world he writes about, but I don't remember any specific instances of him displaying negative attitudes towards them. Granted two of the three women that are featured in his stories are villains and the other is a downtrodden nonentity, but Keziah Mason is a math witch with a demon rat familiar, and Asenath Waite is actually a man. It's been a long time since I've read through them all so I might be way off and there's a bunch of little stuff that I missed last time. I think in one of his many thousands of letters he wrote something like, "I don't regard the rise of women to be a bad sign and their traditional subjugation is due to oriental influences" where I think "oriental" is meant to refer to Judeo-Christian religion. It's really odd for him to have that sort of attitude while simultaneously having that big blind spot when it comes to race/ethnicity.
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Jan 14, 2015 17:47
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"Really odd" seems a good summary of Lovecraft's politics. Even given the time he was weirdly intense about race.
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Jan 15, 2015 00:28
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Mr. Squishy posted:"Really odd" seems a good summary of Lovecraft's politics. Even given the time he was weirdly intense about race. It's not just that- he went from fascist in the 1920s (the Yithians in The Shadow Out of Time are meant to seem advanced when Lovecraft describes them as a fascistic technocracy) to a something more akin to a dirigiste economy with overtones of Catholic Distributism by the rise of Hitler, despite his anti-Catholicism.
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Jan 15, 2015 02:31
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Croisquessein posted:Was Lovecraft misogynistic? I would think it depends on how you frame the question. There's active misogyny, which is "upon careful consideration, I am now taking the active stance that women are worthless", and the more common sort of passive misogyny, which is "of course I don't have anything against women", followed by not really giving them any sort of consideration when it comes time to consider roles and positions in society, etc. The latter is much more common, especially in the 1930s. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the latter, but then again so were most of the people on the planet.
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Jan 16, 2015 15:18
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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. Richard Coyle's reading of The Shadow Over Innsmouth is excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJiSK3KW628 He also did At the Mountains of Madness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAd00BM31lk Both are BBC Radio 4 productions and are top-notch.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:19
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