JasonZavoda wrote:I was reading somewhere the other day that the guys at Marvel Comics feel that they are the ones that made Conan popular and that if they had gotten to do Thongar like they wanted (Carter turned down the $125 an issue fee they were willing to pay for the rights) then no one would know who Conan was but everyone would want the latest Thongar book.
FormCritic wrote:Lovecraft was such a turgid and eye-rollingly melodramatic writer that it has been fun for generations of writers since the 1930's to parody his style. From a writer's perspective, he can be a maddening author who often uses hyperbole and meaningless adjectives when what he really needs to do is just describe.
His characters are either wooden versions of himself or sneaky, lowlife, halfbreed racial scum. It isn't hard for biographers to jump to the conclusion that Lovecraft himself had mental problems because of both his strange private life and his frequent use of madness as a theme or plot device.
(If I had a dime for every time a Lovecraft narrator cannot explain what he saw because it might drive him mad.....)
darkseraphim wrote:Peeking in for a bit - I wanted to recommend a book I picked up last week, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (ISBN 978-07653-3362-9). It's a phone-book-like compendium dedicated to tracing the thread of uncanny stories from the early 1900s to the present, regardless of language or rarity, and contains over 1,000 pages and over 100 authors, with a lot of original translations and reprints of hard to find stuff that's still in copyright.The more recognizable authors included: Foreword by Michael Moorcock, Afterword by China Mieville, H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Saki, Lord Dunsany, Franz Kafka, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Mervyn Peake, Gahan Wilson, George R. R. Martin, Ramsey Campbell, William Gibson, Clive Barker, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman, and a jillion people you might only know by name or never heard of.It's good stuff.
MetamorphosisSigma wrote:If I have any special problem with HPL's choice of words, it's the repetitive use of the word "cyclopean". When I was 14 reading this stuff, until I picked up a dictionary I kept picturing walls, masonry, etc. with single eyeballs staring back at the narrator... guffaw.
mrmanowar wrote in Favorite fantasy/sci-fi literature other than Tolkien:Resurrecting this old thread to add a debut novel that came out earlier this week. If you get a chance, pick up Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. Best debut novel I can think of since Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's been a while since I read a fantasy novel that has me very riveted and wanting to read and get the series (as it comes out). Very well done, avoids cliches, and definitely keeps one turning the pages. It's not a "bestseller" yet but definitely a true "diamond in the rough" to use a cliche of my own. Check out the reviews on amazon.com for Blood Song and pick it up. It's worth your while.
mrmanowar wrote in Favorite fantasy/sci-fi literature other than Tolkien:I check this out but the reviews on Amazon aren't worth shit.[/quoteOK, I'll grant you this, but don't let this deter you from checking out what is a truly good novel in Blood Song. I suppose I shouldn't have endorsed amazon in light of other issues we all have with them and/or reviewers. I was pointing there based on familiarity with many people, not necessarily people with good taste and/or taste that specifically appealed to the Acaeum crowd.Thanks for the heads up Jason.