― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 February 2003 20:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 6 February 2003 20:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 6 February 2003 20:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
Clark Ashton Smith - He was a much better writer in the traditional sense than HPL, but he didn't have the ideas that Lovecraft had. Still, "The City of the Singing Flame" and "The Master of the Asteroid" are classic.
― fletrejet, Thursday, 6 February 2003 20:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
what do people think of the "Call Of Cthulhu" roleplaying game?
― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 6 February 2003 21:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 6 February 2003 21:11 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 6 February 2003 21:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Christopher (Christopher), Thursday, 6 February 2003 21:44 (twenty-one years ago) link
i'd certainly go for classicness. The case of charles dexter ward is grateness. At the mountains of madness is pretty good and they do a great roleplaying one based on that too but i don't think they have one based on charles dexter ward.
I like reading his short stories and stuff late at night when i'm too tired to decipher poe, not that' they're really grately similar i guess. except for the whole slow build, terror brimming at the seams kind of thing.
― jeffrey (Danny), Thursday, 6 February 2003 22:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
― the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 February 2003 22:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
― duane (doorag), Friday, 7 February 2003 00:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 7 February 2003 01:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
― duane, Friday, 7 February 2003 01:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
...uses more than one adjective in a row, i.e.: "Molded by the dead brain of a hybrid nightmare, would not such a vaporous terror constitute in all loathsome truth the exquisitely, the shriekingly unnamable?" ("The Unnamable")
...uses a purposely vague description. (i.e. "unspeakable horror")
...refers to an other-worldy location. (i.e., Sarnath, Kadath in the Cold Waste, and the like. "The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath" will put you under the table easily.)
...refers to an other-worldy entity by proper name. (Remember, Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep are proper names of single entities, but Mi-Go and shoggoth are not; they are types of entities.)
...states anything racist, sexist, fascist, or generally non-PC. This rule makes "The Horror at Red Hook" particularly nasty to get through. Don't debate too much about what is racist or sexist, though... When in doubt, drink.
...uses the "British" spelling of any word, such as "colour" or "favour".
...any time a character winds up at a temple or church.
...any time a "forbidden" book is mentioned in the story. This includes De Vermis Mysteris, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and, of course, The Necronomicon, among others.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 7 February 2003 01:34 (twenty-one years ago) link
the funniest bit in the documentary is the letter Lovecraft wrote before going to volunteer for the first world war ("The blood of the fjords flows through me!") and then the letter he wrote after being classed as permanently unfit for any military service.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
or does it?
― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:08 (twenty-one years ago) link
DV: But Asenath wasn't really Asenath, her father(?) exchanged minds with her. He found out that a female brain was somehow inferior to a male one, and that is why he went about seducing Edward Derby in order to mind-switch with him. Implying, of course, that women were dumb.
As pointed out, in person Lovecraft was said by all to be a nice and well-manned and charming individual. And later in life he dropped most/all of his reactionary beliefs and even began to lean toward socialist politics. So his racism/sexism/anglophilia was mostly just protracted adolescent nonsense.
― fletrejet, Friday, 7 February 2003 15:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
Or maybe that makes it more funny??
― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:39 (twenty-one years ago) link
― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jeffrey (Danny), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:44 (twenty-one years ago) link
This person also stayed up all night on two occasions freaking about the implications of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in relation to whether or not he had any of the massacrists personality traits and if it made him a terrible person. The last episode of Twin Peaks also set him off in similar fashion about "dirty" versus "clean" and various personality traits he was certain he shared with Windom Earle. So maybe the whole Cthulhu thing was relative to a bigger issue than HP Lovecraft.
In retrospect, it implies more about my sanity than his that I put up with it, but regardless it was obviously the workings of a completely unhinged mind. Monty Python quotes would've been the saving grace of nonseriousness.
― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 7 February 2003 18:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
Occultists will, generally, believe anything they want to believe in.The Necronomicon is no more fake than any other "real" occult book of forbiden knowledge.
Ned: If Lovecraft survived, I believe he would have continued his trend of writing more science-fictiony type stuff. He became disenchanted with his more occult/magical stuff, which he refered to as "Yog-Sothothery".
― fletrejet, Friday, 7 February 2003 18:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
The stories are great, also; the best editions are the hardbacks put out by Arkham House. They also published his letters, which are often quite interesting--to the likes of R.E. Howard etc.
― Ian Johnson, Friday, 7 February 2003 19:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
Makes sense. "At the Mountains of Madness" certainly showed the way (and was plenty chilling enough without that sheer freakout at the end, a little bit of the ol' Yog there).
Yeeps, Ally.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 7 February 2003 21:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 7 February 2003 21:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
I know nothing of Lovecraft's works besides this, of course. He was referred to as sort of a scientist by the ex, imagine my surprise to read this thread.
― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 8 February 2003 02:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
Actually though, I think most of Lovecraft's stories aregood. I never read any of the novels. And I also disagreethat he was a bad/good author; sure his language wassensationalistic and overblow, but it still has a great flow to it. And he is archaic but the first books I ever read were Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lang's ColouredFairy Tale series, so I think I've always been verycomfortable with that type of language.
― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Saturday, 8 February 2003 19:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
I understand these trends intensified as his life continued. One of his last manuscripts was destroyed except for a single page, and on that page only one sentence appears in full:
"It was with a terrible and dawning horror that I realised that something unsmurfy had taken place."
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 9 March 2003 22:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 9 March 2003 23:31 (twenty-one years ago) link
― omg, Thursday, 22 January 2004 00:55 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 22 January 2004 00:59 (twenty years ago) link
― pete s, Thursday, 22 January 2004 01:31 (twenty years ago) link
95% of his horror-type writing is beyond classic, especially because the stilted writing makes it sound like it's actual lost antique blasphemies that have been hidden in Stygian tombs for eons beyond count. His Dunsany stuff is crap, "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" is the one thing by him I could never get thru. He has some poetry too which is awful, if you can find it. Have never read his political essays but those are probably pretty un-PC and not really worth reading unless you are ultra-completist.
― sucka (sucka), Thursday, 22 January 2004 04:44 (twenty years ago) link
― sucka (sucka), Thursday, 22 January 2004 04:46 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 16:11 (nineteen years ago) link
― latebloomer: damn cheapskate satanists (latebloomer), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 16:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 17:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 15 March 2005 17:23 (nineteen years ago) link
"As with so much genre fiction, Lovecraft's oeuvre isn't for everyone."
'Look at him, he's too imaginative.' Fuck you, no one's OEUVRE is for everyone. Lovecraft is in a direct line from Nathaniel Hawthorne, EA Poe, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and Stephen King. But I guess the Wall Street Journal writing about literature is like the Wall Street Journal writing about music.
― Carl Solomon, Tuesday, 15 March 2005 17:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 15 March 2005 17:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Friday, 20 May 2005 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 12 October 2006 23:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Friday, 13 October 2006 00:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 13 October 2006 02:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― a portal to squee heaven (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 13 October 2006 02:31 (seventeen years ago) link
My two fave Lovecraft stories are The Colour Out of Space, which reminds me(or it should be the other way around, I think) of Brian Aldiss' The Saliva Tree and
― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Friday, 13 October 2006 11:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― chap who would dare to contain two ingredients. Tea and bags. (chap), Friday, 13 October 2006 12:29 (seventeen years ago) link
A friend of mine who has a kid says that Cthulhu is now in the Beano, which is something.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Friday, 23 October 2020 22:27 (three years ago) link
Can never wrap my head around kawaii + Lovecraftian grotesquehttps://imgur.com/gallery/L76LU
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 28 October 2020 18:25 (three years ago) link
this SCP short, SCP Overlord, (i couldn't find an SCP thread on ilx) is a v good mix of tactical warfare, videocam supernatural perception (think Ringu), and modernised, new england lovecraft:
trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrZUj1fNQL8
― Fizzles, Monday, 23 November 2020 16:34 (three years ago) link
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-discover-strange-creatures-under-a-half-mile-of-ice/
― The Ballad of Mel Cooley (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 17 February 2021 01:16 (three years ago) link
Whisperer in Darkness was dope, even though I felt at times the narrator had to be the dumbest smart person in the history of man
― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal), Saturday, 29 April 2023 05:45 (eleven months ago) link
"Yaddith would be a dead world dominated by triumphant bholes""Below him the ground was festering with gigantic bholes; and even as he looked, one reared up""There were hideous struggles with the bleached, viscous bholes"
OH COME ON
― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 3 May 2023 01:51 (eleven months ago) link
Dud.
― meat and two vdgg (emsworth), Wednesday, 3 May 2023 03:12 (eleven months ago) link
I always thought that story was terribly padded, badly structured and he kind of goes overboard to keep talling you how old the place is, but it's got some cool stuff. Shadow Over Innsmouth will probably always be my favorite.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 3 May 2023 21:30 (eleven months ago) link
I have a collection of other writers (Ramsey Campbell, Gaiman, etc.) expanding on the Innsmouth mythos... it's not all great but it's pretty fun. Lovecraft was known for encouraging other writers in this kind of shared world-building
― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, 3 May 2023 21:45 (eleven months ago) link
N.K. Jemisin wrote a short story (expanded into 2 books) specifically to tackle Lovecraft's racism https://www.tor.com/2016/09/28/the-city-born-great/
She is explicitly not a fan while Victor LaValle takes a more - not sympathetic but maybe more steeped in some level of appreciation to Lovecraft in The Ballad of Black Tom a response to The Horror at Red Hook
― H in Addis, Thursday, 4 May 2023 04:02 (eleven months ago) link
read John Langan's The Fisherman novel and Wide Carnivorous Sky collection late last year, they were some of the better Lovecraftian things I've read that aren't implicitly critical takes on the Lovecraft idea (like The Ballad of Black Tom and Lovecraft Country, I bailed on NK Jemisin's first Great Cities book about a quarter of the way in).
― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 4 May 2023 04:39 (eleven months ago) link
I really wanted to like The City We Became, but I just couldn't.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 4 May 2023 04:40 (eleven months ago) link
I've read The Ballad of Black Tom and The Fisherman and liked both a lot. Keep meaning to read more by LaValle. I loved Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy but read a description of the city book and winced so hard I thought I felt the skin on the back of my head split.
I also read Lovecraft Country and liked it a lot. The series was pretty disappointing, though, and the new sequel book, The Destroyer of Worlds, was kinda weak. I read it, but I can't even remember any of it now.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 5 May 2023 23:32 (eleven months ago) link
Yeah, agreed re: the Lovecraft sequel as unmemorable. Was looking forward to the Atticus divergence, book vs. show, and the sequel book gave him short shrift.
― the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Saturday, 6 May 2023 00:37 (eleven months ago) link
Disappointing, I didn't even know there was a sequel.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, 6 May 2023 01:11 (eleven months ago) link