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- Apr 15, 2025
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
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- Oct 2, 2017
With no bias or offense intended, what makes him different from other edgy authors? That he was ahead of his time with OUOOHROOO IM GOING CRAZY, SQUID MAN!!! creepy pasta?
MaxPayne
kiwifarms.net
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- Mar 19, 2021
I've been reading a lot of Clark Ashton Smith stories. His stuff is like a perfect fusion of Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft. IMO the writing is excellent
Now, after his journey (whose reason he could not quite remember) and after the curious dream in which he had imagined himself as Francis Melchior, Antarion was once more admitted to the presence of Thameera by slaves who were invariably discreet, being tongueless. In the oblique light of beryl and topaz widows, in the mauve and crimson gloom of heavy-folded tapestries, on a floor of marvelous mosaic wrought in ancient cycles, she came forward languidly to greet him. She was fairer than his memories, and paler than a blossom of the catacombs. She was exquisitely frail, voluptuously proud, with hair of a lunar gold and eyes of nocturnal brown that were pierced by flunctuating stars and circled by the dark pearl of sleepless nights. Beauty and love and sadness exhaled from her like a manifold perfume.
'I am glad you have come, Antarion, for I have missed you.' Her voice was as gentle as an air that is from among flowering trees, and melancholy as remembered music.
Antarion would have knelt, but she took him by the hand and led him to a couch beneath the intricately figured curtains. There the lovers sat and looked at each other in affectionate silence.
"Are all things well with you. Thameera?' The query was prompted by the anxious divination of love.
'No, all things are not well. Why did you go away'? The wings of death and darkness are abroad, they hover more closely than ever; and shades more fearful than those of the past have fallen upon Saddoth. There have been strange perturbations in the aspect of the skies; and our astronomers, after much study and calculation, have announced. the imminent doom of the sun. There remains to us but a single month of light and warmth, and then the sun will go out on the noontide heavens like an extinguished lamp, and eternal night will fall, and the chill of outer space will creep across Phandiom. Our people have gone mad with the predicted horror; and some of them are sunk in despairing apathy, and more have given themselves to frenzied revels and debaucheries... Where have you been, Antarion? In what dream did you lose yourself, that you could forsake me so long?"
Antarion tried to comfort her. 'Love is still ours,' he said. 'And even if the astronomers have read the skies aright, we have a month before us. And a month is much.'
'Yes, but there are other perils, Antarion. Haspa the king has looked upon me with eyes of senile desire, and woos me assiduously with gifts, with vows, and with threats. It is the sudden, inexorable whim of age and ennui, the caprice of desperation. He is cruel, he is relentless, he is all-powerful.'
' I will take you away,' said Antarion. 'We will flee together, and dwell among the sepulchers and the ruins, where none can find us. And love and ecstasy shall bloom like flowers of scarlet beneath their shadow; and we will meet the everlasting night in each other's arms; and thus we will know the utmost of mortal bliss.'
'I am glad you have come, Antarion, for I have missed you.' Her voice was as gentle as an air that is from among flowering trees, and melancholy as remembered music.
Antarion would have knelt, but she took him by the hand and led him to a couch beneath the intricately figured curtains. There the lovers sat and looked at each other in affectionate silence.
"Are all things well with you. Thameera?' The query was prompted by the anxious divination of love.
'No, all things are not well. Why did you go away'? The wings of death and darkness are abroad, they hover more closely than ever; and shades more fearful than those of the past have fallen upon Saddoth. There have been strange perturbations in the aspect of the skies; and our astronomers, after much study and calculation, have announced. the imminent doom of the sun. There remains to us but a single month of light and warmth, and then the sun will go out on the noontide heavens like an extinguished lamp, and eternal night will fall, and the chill of outer space will creep across Phandiom. Our people have gone mad with the predicted horror; and some of them are sunk in despairing apathy, and more have given themselves to frenzied revels and debaucheries... Where have you been, Antarion? In what dream did you lose yourself, that you could forsake me so long?"
Antarion tried to comfort her. 'Love is still ours,' he said. 'And even if the astronomers have read the skies aright, we have a month before us. And a month is much.'
'Yes, but there are other perils, Antarion. Haspa the king has looked upon me with eyes of senile desire, and woos me assiduously with gifts, with vows, and with threats. It is the sudden, inexorable whim of age and ennui, the caprice of desperation. He is cruel, he is relentless, he is all-powerful.'
' I will take you away,' said Antarion. 'We will flee together, and dwell among the sepulchers and the ruins, where none can find us. And love and ecstasy shall bloom like flowers of scarlet beneath their shadow; and we will meet the everlasting night in each other's arms; and thus we will know the utmost of mortal bliss.'
LordOfZhbagva
kiwifarms.net
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- Jun 18, 2024
I wouldn't call Lovecraft edgy. As for how he's different from other "edgy" authors, well, simple, he's way better read, smarter and more creative than most of them.
He certainly was ahead of his time, so much so that his influence is still felt today and his style and themes are still being replicated. Also, Lovecraft isn't the "Squid tentacle man", he's a "let's push the spooky horror tale further".
Look at, for an example, the nameless city - a european explorer goes into an abandoned and strange city shunned by native Arabs (perhaps Irem/Iram, a city mentioned in the Quran and destroyed for the evil of its inhabitants). It's an extremely recognizable and popular tale that is immediately familiar to the audience that had been raised on the tales of late colonialist explorers wandering into strange, uncivilized lands to encounter the strange, unfamiliar and alien city, only to then find out that it's a lot more alien than he had even guessed, with the city being built for actually inhuman creatures, giant ruin inhabiting reptiloids dwelling in the darkest and dankest of depths of the nameless city. The extremely interesting part about Lovecraft is the interconnection of his works, where stuff lines up and how it connects, from ancient races to the shifting of the continents and ancient, imagined and modern references he makes, all wrapped around in an epoch of time that is frankly, more interesting than what we have right now.
Old King Koaleamos
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- Apr 26, 2025
He was far better read and better skilled than the majority of them. I've already posted and linked it in this thread, but he did an essay on horror literature in '29 that's still been held up as a premier source on horror genre fiction.
Edgar Allen Poe was the precursor to him and did plenty of work. The 19th century spent a lot of time with gothic fiction and the development of supernatural horror. There's a ton of writers that inspired Lovecraft. Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, etc. Lovecraft had a very deep understanding of horror. He also had a pretty good appreciation for good fantasy, and read Lord Dunsany and A. Merritt, who were pretty influential on his works.
That being said, he was also one of the most influential genre fiction writers of the 20th Century. The fear of the unknown, the idea that we're less than specks of dust on a cosmic scale, that we can barely understand and comprehend our own history and dark forces of creation. He wasn't really the first, but he nailed it in this scale. Other horror writers that came before him hinted at some of these ideas and explored bits and pieces of it. Lovecraft flung open the doorway. His writing's still the pinnacle for a lot of good horror. He mentored and inspired legions of other writers and creators. Arguably, without Lovecraft, we don't get a lot of darker fantasy, there's no Elric, no Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, no "Psycho", no "Who Goes There"/The Thing, etc. Psychological horror as a genre is stilted. We don't get Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery as we know it today, that subgenre develops far differently. And as such, we don't get Elric or the Lankhmar stories. DnD turns out differently.
Without Lovecraft, we get no Stephen King as we know it.
I've been waiting for Hippocampus Press's collections to go on sale because it seems he's best read by theme/setting and not chronologically.
Head Muggle
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Silverhand's Arm
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- Apr 21, 2025
Hey there, I'm finishing up Dance of Dragons and looking to read some of the other George stuff, are the Dunk and Egg novelas any good or should I read some of his other stuff that isn't a Song of Ice and Fire related?
satorrotas
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- May 4, 2025
Teatro Grottesco is by far his best. I think about the "clown puppet" a lot. "Outrageous Nonsense".
Only read Tartar Steppe. Long story short, a promising young man repeatedly tricks himself into wasting his life away in the military. Probably less impactful if you aren't or haven't been staring down the barrel of re-enlisting yourself, but overall I think it was well-written and very well-paced - you can get sucked into the protagonist's same spiral of almost giving up and succumbing to boredom before something mildly interesting happens and you're dragged on for another few chapters. It parallels the story that way.
A lot of talk about Lovecraft here: Has anyone read the book that's a collection of letters between him and R. E. Howard? There's also the bizarre Robert Silverberg novel, 'To the Land of the Living' where HP and REH are the protagonists accompanying Gilgamesh in his search for Endiku through a bizarre underworld that's more of a dumping ground for history.
I think Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is Lovecraft's best single work. He's a good horror writer and a great weird fantasy writer. It has a lot of strange ideas, callbacks to other stories (Pickman's Model) and is the origin point for Lovecraft genre ideas like the Plateau of Leng.
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- Dec 2, 2020
Continuing my Pynchon kick, just finished Inherent Vice and am now starting Gravity's Rainbow (with Bleeding Edge on backup). Inherent Vice was good but the ending was a little lackluster for me, although the climax at the house was amazing. Gravity's Rainbow is already good, Pynchon seems to really like Bananas. His non-fiction stuff like articles for NYT are very interesting. Here are some links for y'all. The birthday one isn't written by him but plays into his ethos really well, and, who knows, could be real. The site it's from is unofficial but a great resource.
Flaming Carrot
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- Oct 8, 2019
I'm not that familiar with Song of Ice and Fire but his other short fiction is pretty good. He has a best of collection called Dreamsongs, and Baen reprinted several of his collections in the 80s, so you can find some of them pretty cheap. He mostly wrote science fiction for magazines like Analog and Omni, so it's definitely a change of pace from Song of Ice and Fire. His novel Fevre Dream is great and his novel Armageddon Rag is fine but has kind of a weak ending. His Wild Cards shared world series starts off well, but I think most people got bored with it after a few volumes. It still gets reprinted, so I guess some people still like it.
Old King Koaleamos
kiwifarms.net
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- Apr 26, 2025
isn't Sand Kings also a recommended reading too?
GRRM seems intriguing, but only to a point.
Wild Cards vol 1 if you can find it should be up your alley. Then look for his short fiction.
If you really want more grimdark fantasy, there's probably more options. Glen Cook's Black Company, Erik Stevenson's Malazan, andJoe Abercrombie's Blades should all be accessible to you. YMMV. If you prefer sword and sorcery, you got options like Moorcock's Elric, Wagner's Kane, and a few others.
Silverberg seems to be someone with a lot of strange material, but his prose is so fluid to me.
I'll add Ligotti and Buzzati to my list of "authors to look out for while at the used books shop".
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- Apr 15, 2025
Hi! I just finished 'Gravity's Rainbow' earlier this year! It was amazing
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- Apr 16, 2025
Have you seen the movie adaptation with Joaquin Phoenix? It thought it was OK.
Attachments
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- Dec 28, 2014
Who was the interviewer? Or just some random guy?
It's a great book. Don't give up if you failed to get started on it. I had to start it three times or so before it finally got me, and even then I had to restart once it did because I finally figured out what was going on.
This also happened to me with The Sound and the Fury, where I had to restart about a third of the way in because I had found it incomprehensible until some things fell into place.
I found both of them very difficult to start, but once they got me, I obsessively read them nearly constantly until done.
Of these, I'd especially recommend Arthur Machen, particularly for The Hill of Dreams, a more dark and decadent analogue to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with very similar stylistic elements. The Great God Pan is a short story of his which prefigures a lot of the sort of cosmic horror Lovecraft later did.
Ambrose Bierce, more well known for his epigrams and specifically The Devil's Dictionary, also is extremely underrated for his psychological horror works. The most famous is probably An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, although things like Moxon's Master, The Moonlit Road, The Damned Thing, The Death of Halpin Frayser, and many others are absolute classics of the short story form. Stripped to the bone in prose style (much unlike Machen and Lovecraft), they are as minimalistic as short stories can get and still be stories at all.
Bierce never wasted a word.
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Poteto
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- May 6, 2025
i've been reading wheel of time lately. i started book 4 about a week ago and am taking a break. after i'm done with wheel of time i'd like to catch up on mistborn. i read the first one and liked it but got bored early on in the second one. stormlight archives looks interesting but i don't want to read it until it's done or close to being done.
there's a YA fantasy series (won't say what because i'm worried i'll be perceived as cringe for liking it as much as i do as a grown adult) i started reading in school around 2010 that is still ongoing, but the alleged final book is the last remaining one and it's been miserable getting through that series since i started reading it. it's split into 3 sub-series. i started it when series 1 was half way done and read like the first 3. a couple years later all of that was out and i tried reading all of that but ran out of steam on like book 8 of 9 of subseries 1. another attempt at reading the series years later i finished it and finished book 1 of subseries 2 and hated it at the time. a couple months ago i did a reread of what is available now and just started with subseries 2 since i know everything that happens in 1 and don't want to waste my limited attention span on it when i'm trying to make progress. finished all of subseries 2 and now book 1 of subseries 3 is out with 2 going to release a couple months later at the time, it might be out now idk. i'm just going to wait until subseries 3 is complete and then pick up on that when that's complete.
i am so glad i didn't get into wheel of time when i was younger and it was still in progress. google says it released over the span of about 23 years. that sounds hellish.
there's a YA fantasy series (won't say what because i'm worried i'll be perceived as cringe for liking it as much as i do as a grown adult) i started reading in school around 2010 that is still ongoing, but the alleged final book is the last remaining one and it's been miserable getting through that series since i started reading it. it's split into 3 sub-series. i started it when series 1 was half way done and read like the first 3. a couple years later all of that was out and i tried reading all of that but ran out of steam on like book 8 of 9 of subseries 1. another attempt at reading the series years later i finished it and finished book 1 of subseries 2 and hated it at the time. a couple months ago i did a reread of what is available now and just started with subseries 2 since i know everything that happens in 1 and don't want to waste my limited attention span on it when i'm trying to make progress. finished all of subseries 2 and now book 1 of subseries 3 is out with 2 going to release a couple months later at the time, it might be out now idk. i'm just going to wait until subseries 3 is complete and then pick up on that when that's complete.
i am so glad i didn't get into wheel of time when i was younger and it was still in progress. google says it released over the span of about 23 years. that sounds hellish.
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- Dec 2, 2020
Me and a friend are going to host a watch party. Frozen bananas will be provided.
This is my second restart, and I'm using the Pynchon wiki spoiler-free annotations. Helps a bit.
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- Sep 3, 2014
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Part murder mystery, part middle ages ecclesiastical politics, part the nature of reading and the gaining of knowledge. Perfect combination of high and lowbrow fiction.
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- Apr 15, 2025
Gaear Grimsrud
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- Dec 29, 2020
I have 3 chapters left on Moby Dick. Shit's about to go down.
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- Jul 22, 2015
So basically all the drama around the formation of Vertigo and other creator ownered properties, and how DC and Marvel absolutely fucked their best creators and founders right up the arse in fictional form.
Might have to look that one up.