| Author | Message | ||
     Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Kate's lovely post got me all nostalgic.  It was 'The Nameless' did it for me too, back in the early 80s, when I was a wide-eyed spotty teenager gobbling up every piece of pulp horror nonsense that came my way... I was into them all, irrespective of quality; Guy N. Smith, James Herbert, Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Michael McDowell, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, David Morrell, Charles L. Grant, Anne Rice, Richard Laymon, Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, the Pan Horrors, even (lord, help me) the early days of Shaun Hutson - while Stephen King was my God!! I knew a lot of the stuff I was reading was rubbish but it was a golden time and I was hopelessly addicted. Then I read 'The Nameless', and something lit up in my brain... I went round raving to all my mates [ask Sean] about this weird horror novel that had really got under my skin, in a way I could barely articulate. There were no gory deaths every chapter and not really any kind of a monster, or visible villain for that matter, rather, there was the intense emotional terror of a poor woman seeking her lost child and being taunted by rumours of a shadowy cult that might have abducted her, while there were hints of something nightmarish, beyond imagining, skittering in the background, and all around the edges of the story. Most of my mates looked at me like I'd lost my marbles – generally after asking “How many killings?” and being dissatisfied with my embarrassed reply and feeble attempts at justification - but I knew I had found something important, a type of horror fiction that was truly frightening, rather than sensationalist fun, because the unspeakable things it hinted at refused to go away, and continued to eat at the corners of my mind long after finishing the book. From there I went on to discover other modern masters of truly literary horror/fantasy, like Jonathan Carroll and Clive Barker, and was driven to delve backward to the wondrous old tomes of H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, Stoker, Blackwood, Hodgson, Machen, et al… and the further joys of classic literature like Dickens, Kafka & Dostoevsky, that I’d have turned my nose up at in school, and probably never have had the patience for, if it wasn’t for Ramsey Campbell & ‘The Nameless’ [though he does have to share some of the credit with William Golding’s ‘Lord Of The Flies’ & Graham Greene’s ‘The Power And The Glory’]. I think people can tell by now that I’m fiercely loyal when I find an author whose works I love, and Ramsey is at the top of the list, and has been for a very long time. Hence my presence here, as opposed to any other message board, and my reading of all his novels in chronological order – an exercise I recommend to any serious fan of horror fiction and great literature. Finished ‘The One Safe Place’ last night, with my heart racing and eyes popping out of my head - he hasn’t let me down yet… So a very big and heartfelt Thank You from me as well. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
Might have been a good idea just adding this to the other thread, mate. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.69 |
For me it was Dark Companions when I was about 13 or so. Been with him ever since and I'll say it's little exageration to say that when I was seriously ill and locked away from the outside world for five years or thereabouts, Ramsey's fiction - particularly Midnight Sun, which I read over and over again, along with Robert Holdstocks Mythago books - kept me this side of the life death divide. It would've been so easy to give up on thinking and sink into a couch potato dumb vegitative existence (at best) or lie down and never wake again. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Hey, thanks to you folk as well! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks, Ramsey!! Next up it'll be 'The House On Nazareth Hill' - a spooky sounding tale I've long been looking forward to. Gary, I didn't feel I should intrude on Kate's very personal and touching thank you. But she put me in the mood. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
I got stuck into the Landlord after a trip to a seaside town in North Wales (the name escapes me). They were having a book fair and there I found a copy of Demons By Daylight. I had never read anything like it in my life. Of course there was probably much I didn't understand, I was only 13 years old, but it was probably that which made it all the more a tremendous experience. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.31.223 |
OK, Steve. It's just that we now have several million threads up here. Just trying to encourage folk to use existing threads when the material fits. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I'm going to start replying to people in different threads. Just for a laff. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 207.6.255.47 |
She does that with everyone, Frank. ...erm, I mean... damn, never mind; I'll just make it worse if I try to get... [mutters to himself and wanders away to the corner] | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Ian - twas not me, but Steve who wrote that. Steve's the nice one, I'm the absolute shit.  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Me, nice...?!?!  You should see inside my mind, Frank! | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Let me have a peek, there might be good material going to waste in there, pal (: |