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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 07:35 pm:   

We all know they are writing horror but they pretend it's a different genre. I recently reviewed John Connolly's The Lovers http://talesfromtheblackabyss.com/2010/02/15/the-lovers-by-john-connolly/ and if that's not horror I'll eat my hat. Anybody got any other examples of writers we can move into the horror section?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.27.30.20
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 07:53 pm:   

Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine: Live Flesh, Sight For Sore Eyes, Brimstone Wedding, The Bridesmaid, etc. Terrifying.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.236
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 08:45 pm:   

Kuzuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And I'd agree with Gary's call of Barbara Vine.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 09:26 pm:   

William Golding, Chuck Palahniuk, Brett Easton Ellis...

I'm erring very much towards Douglas E Winter's assertion that horror is not a genre at all. The ghost story, of course, is a genre with its own conventions, but I'm not sure horror is.
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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 10:02 pm:   

Natt, I agree genre boundaries are largely meaningless and crossovers should be encouraged but given that Waterstones don't apply that policy then this is just a bit of hypothetical store re-organisation. Lets see how big we can make the "horror" section
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 64.180.64.74
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 10:19 pm:   

Large chunks of Margaret Atwood can be termed 'horror' or 'Speculative Fiction', and sometimes both simultaneously. The Blind Assassin even has some slip-stream elements to it.

She claims to write 'fiction; just fiction', and then tells you to go away. I like her approach to further categorization, myself, and wish that more authors would be able to successfully resit it.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.236
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 10:38 pm:   

I think the supposed boundaries of horror can do more harm than good. A large percentage of the mainstream audience would never dream of reading horror, yet they'd enjoy a great deal of the genre if they did because it probably doesn't suit their perceived notion.

From a writer's point of view, I think this is exactly why you should read inside and outside the genre.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.153.238.223
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 10:46 pm:   

I, too, will go with Ian McEwan and Barbara Vine.

But according to 'The Ominous Imagination', all fiction is Horror!

(This is the first internet post I've written on my new computer. The first of many, I hope.). :-)
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.153.238.223
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 10:50 pm:   

PS: More info on the Ominous Imagination here: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/201/3085.html
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 11:00 pm:   

I think I started a thread on this here a while ago - entitled something like "Is horror everywhere?"

I totally agree with what Steve says. I know people who've poo-pooed the genre and said "Oh no, you'd never catch me reading horror" when much of what they read IS actually horror. Unfortunately, many people think "horror" equates with "slasher/gore" and nothing else.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 11:10 pm:   

Atwood is a good writer but her spurning of the SF genre - especially around award season - is particularly galling. She usually claims that she doesn't write SF because that would somehow be beneath the work she is producing, as though SF (ar any genre for that matter) is beneath the fiction she writes and not capable of producing 'serious' works. Jenette Winterson was also saying things along similar lines regarding the release of her SF novel a few years ago. I understand the need to avoid catagorisation, but to openly insult the genre you're widley borrowing from is a bit much. The shame is that these two are actually very very good writers. I don't get snooty around any genre and read as widely as possible but it would be nice if that went both ways sometimes.
For spurning of genre, and general bloody-minded ignorance, Newsnight Review used to be the tops.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 11:12 pm:   

But yes, sorry, to get back on top. Horror that's not horror? The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. That rather unique vision of hell always gets under my skin. Also Lesley Glaister has written a few very disturbing novels.
This could all lead into horror is a tone not a genre debate, but after proof reading epic fantasy all day my brain is now crying out for sleep.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:24 am:   

I'm not sure I disapprove of someone's wanting to disavow their genre credentials. If you honestly think you've written a good book, where do you want it in Waterstone's? On the tables at the front, or wedged in between row after row of Warhammer 40K tie-in novels?

There's both a practical point and an aesthetic one that a lot of genre readers don't want to recognise: a lot of genre fiction is poorly-written rubbish. A lot of literary fiction is poorly-written rubbish, too, but those things tend to be ephemeral, and not to stand the test of time. In the genres, we pretend that we still haven't noticed that H.P. Lovecraft was not a very good writer, although he had a good sense of the awful image and a pleasingly bleak view of man's importance.

The best modern SF writers aren't in the SF section: David Mitchell, Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephenson. Who goes to the SF section to find George Orwell or H.G. Wells?

That's not to say that there aren't great writers in all of the 'genres', and there is certainly a lot of work that deserves to be more widely-read. The way to get them more widely read is to stop having a separate section for them where most people never go...

Genres have failed both their adherents and the general reader. They have become a place to file things that don't have powerful themes, or compelling characters, or even good writing but do have face-eating rats, lasers, and long-lost orphan kings. Hidden there is some great literature, but we tend not to be able to see it for all of the rats, lasers, and kings.

There is a great tradition of fantastic literature, and I'm coming to the conclusion that if we submit to its being labelled and defined and genrified we stunt the creativity and excellence we demand of those writing it. We create a crowd for people to play to, we ghetto-ise ourselves. If people want to save horror literature, they should start by burning down the Horror section in their local Waterstone's.

There's also a weird sense of bipolarity in genres. In some instances they revel in how inaccessible they are ('splatterpunk', much 'hard sf') and then complain that they are not readily understood by the general public, or that authors aren't queuing up to label themselves as genre authors.

Sorry, I appear to have ranted. I've been thinking about this a lot today, having written an expanded review of The Birthing House (expanded from a comment I made here to Mick Curtis): http://inthegloamingpodcasts.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/gr5-the-birthing-house-by- christopher-ransom/ which exemplifies all that is wrong in genre literature, to me.
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 86.169.163.57
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 07:37 am:   

Beautifully said, Natt! I wholeheartedly endorse your rant. (And your review - I was just as disappointed.)
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.167.138
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:15 am:   

Very well said, Natt. A lot of the time, what's rated as 'good horror' isn't actually that great. The best stuff in the genre- in any genre- shoudl be able to bear comparison with the best. The landlord's work does (imho), as does Graham Joyce (but do we still see him listed in the horror section?) and that Mr Lane, among others.

It shouldn't even need pointing out that whatever you plan on writing, you should be reading outside your chosen genre. Currently I'm reading The Grapes Of Wrath. Not horror by any stretch of the imagination, but it's bloody fantastic. If I can write something, someday, anywhere near as good, then I will die a happy man. Or at least fulfilled. (If I died having my face eaten by rats, I doubt even a Nobel Prize for Literature would sweeten that experience enough to make me die happy...)

Not read The Birthing House, so I can't comment on it... but by the sound of it, I wouldn't want to.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:30 am:   

Simon: you'll die fulfilled when Cradle of Filth tell you to and not a moment sooner!
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.167.138
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:39 am:   

Ha! It's been a long time since I bothered listening to them. You were right; they're crap.:-)
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:42 am:   

Simon: Steinbeck is the man. Try Tortilla Flat next; and then Cannery Row. Superb!

This assumes you haven't already read them. If you have, ignore the above suggestions!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:43 am:   

If you have - reread them more like...
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.167.138
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:46 am:   

The only other Steinbeck I've read is 'The Moon Is Down', which was OK, but I get the impression was something of a minor work. Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row go on my shopping list now...
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:50 am:   

I think the most underrated Steinbeck (or undeservedly-least-well-known, anyway) is The Long Valley. It's semi-novel, semi-linked short stories, each of which will break your heart.

It was a sad day when I realised there was no Steinbeck left to read (although I do have Cup Of Gold in my TBR pile - anyone a big fan of his pirate novel?)...
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:00 pm:   

Oh yes, I love that book! The action of Cup of Gold begins in Wales!

The poetic language of that superb book influenced me deeply; and in fact it was the main influence on the 'Henry Morgan' stories that I included in my book The Smell of Telescopes.

It may well be the best-written pirate novel ever!
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:24 pm:   

Thanks, Simon and Katie, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I had a feeling I might be expressing terrible horror heresies that would leave me shunned...

The rant was half-prompted by a post on John Scalzi's site after Salinger's death about how he had preferred the active, muscular heroes of Heinlein's juvenile novels to Holden Caulfield's moping. That would have been fine if that was where he had left it.

Unfortunately, he decided to make an argument, at a man in his late-thirties that his taste as a teenager had been right. What followed was a weak critique of Catcher In The Rye, which he obviously hadn't read in twenty years. Holden was 'not my kind of hero', and 'I don't choose to spend time with people like HC in my professional or personal life. Why would I in my leisure time?' And there was another defense of heroes who actually got up and did things about their problems. There was lots of SF fanboy whooping from the peanut galleries, as their penchant for still preferring books about spaceships to books about human emotions was being validated by an actual author.

It saddens me when what is supposedly the thinking genre, the outsiders genre, the one that deals with huge concepts can think it all right to wallow in its puerile nature, and at the same time complain that everyone thinks it's puerile.

In the horror genre, there are some great writers who deserve to be better known: Glen Hirshberg, the landlord, Graham Joyce, Michael Marshall Smith, and you know that I'm a big fan of 'The Narrows', Simon. However, it seems we're unable to say that Stephen King doesn't write with the power, effectiveness or clarity of any of these writers without someone pointing out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:24 pm:   

Right. It's moved to the top of the TBR pile...
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 02:52 pm:   

"In the genres, we pretend that we still haven't noticed that H.P. Lovecraft was not a very good writer..."

I don't pretend. He was.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:09 pm:   

By saying you don't pretend, are you saying you have noticed that he's not a good writer?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:10 pm:   

I agree, Ramsey... the man had a unique style and vision that is easily parodied but does not imply he was a bad writer.

Personally I think originality of imagination and the ability to capture the reader with pure storytelling ability are just as important as the quality of the prose. Some supposedly "great writers" I find unutterably boring which is a far worse "crime" than being lumped in with pulp fiction.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:47 pm:   

I'm afraid I can't agree with you. The problem I have with Lovecraft's prose is not that it's easily-parodied. It's the prose itself.

Interminable, adjective-sodden descriptions of abandoned cities; a love of internal rhymes so extreme that it turns some sentences into meaningless doggerel; the fact that he never met a qualifying phrase he didn't like; these are the things that mean that I can quite happily say that he is not a very good writer in the way that Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Philip Roth, George Eliot, Dickens, or, you know, any very good writer is.

(Anyone who points out that the above sentence is interminable, adjective-sodden, or points out the half-rhyme in 'rhyme' and 'extreme' is just not playing fair...)

I find it odd that you'd characterise him as having 'pure storytelling ability'. It seems to me that he's often so enamoured with his creations that he forgets to tell stories about them at all. It's like reading Vathek over and over again.

In fact, that's the writer I'd most liken him to. William Beckford, for me, is like Lovecraft. There is the occasional striking image or well-drawn horror, but the prose you have to wade through to get to them makes the whole thing rather a chore.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.255.91
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

Like all things in life, it's probably not so simple cut-and-dried "good" or "bad." Lovecraft does a certain kind of story well - it wouldn't have been done that well, written in a Hemingway style (Hemingway penning a Lovecraftian Cthulhu-mythos tale: surely someone has done a parody like this by now...). He is of a time and place, and I mean of the reader's. There is a time and place for "Hamlet," where nothing else will do. There's a time and place for a Hugh Grant rom-com, where nothing else will do. (There is, isn't there?)

Even when it comes to your genre-displacement in bookstores, Nathaniel: Gene Wolfe, say, is finer than almost all the others with which he shares shelf-space. And yet, his stuff is SO genre-bound, quite often, that it simply does not belong on the general fiction shelves. Maybe we need qualitative sectioning in bookstores: "Good Fiction," "Poor Fiction," "Whatever Fiction."

There is the occasional striking image or well-drawn horror, but the prose you have to wade through to get to them makes the whole thing rather a chore.

You've just described Henry James quite aptly. But would that then be the sum-total of Henry James?...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

Not being a professional writer I'm not gonna get into technical discussions of prose technique, etc...

I get the same satisfaction from reading Lovecraft that I get from any great fantasist - his writing (for me) summons up vistas of the imagination of incredible potency and an overall mood of creeping horror and claustrophobic dread that I personally find exceptionally powerful.
He is also a damn fine storyteller with a knack for background mythmaking that is comparable to Tolkien or Frank Herbert at their best and makes us share the sanity threatening terror of his characters with an intensity rare in fiction (e.g. 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth').

These qualities make him a great genre writer in the same rank as Poe, de Maupassant, Wells, Hodgson, Kafka, Leiber, Wyndham, Heinlein, Garner, Aickman, Campbell, etc, etc... irrespective of the accepted ideals of "prose quality" imho.
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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 07:17 pm:   

The excellent H.P.Lovecraft literary podcast has some fine examples of best and worst lines from Lovecraft here http://forums.hppodcraft.com/user/Discussion.aspx?id=205105
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Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 98.220.97.79
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 07:49 pm:   

>> If you honestly think you've written a good book, where do you want it in Waterstone's? On the tables at the front, or wedged in between row after row of Warhammer 40K tie-in novels?

You'd want it in the YA section, surely. That's where above-average genre fiction is shelved these days, innit? With the implication that all genre fiction is for kids and not something adults should bother with (although they do, don't they, when they read their kids' books -- that way they don't have to face the humiliation of having to admit that they like such material: "It's my daughter's book, actually. Saw it lying around the house and gave it a go. I wouldn't have read it otherwise."

Anyway, Natt, I'm with you about Lovecraft. And I catch heat for it all the time around here.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.160.100.209
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 07:57 pm:   

Early Lovecraft, no.

Later Lovecraft, yeah!
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 08:06 pm:   

Lovecraft is the best!
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.10.77
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 08:33 pm:   

I think the strength of Lovecraft, for me, is that I keep going back to him, and certain stories again, and again. I still like The Dreams in the Witch House...Lovecraft supposedly attended a lecture, THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE, before writing it. Different timescale, but I wonder if Carl Sagan read Lovecraft?
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 09:02 pm:   

I keep going back to him, and certain stories again, and again

I have kept going back to him at different points in my life. Surely one of the hallmarks of good art?
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.10.77
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 09:55 pm:   

I think so, Hubert :>)
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:09 pm:   

I do like Lovecraft. Sure not all of its works, but the best stuff is very good indeed. Re-read The Color Out of Space the other month and was struck by just how damn bleak it is.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:13 pm:   

I believe there are hidden messages in a Lovecraft text if one can work out the secret of decoding them.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 09:32 am:   

Thinking about what I said above - overnight - it seems an appropriate enough statement to make in view of the thread title: "Secret Horror Writers"! Even though I was only half-serious. :-)

However, it is true to say that my real-time reviews have a tendency to seek codes in syntax, graphology and phonetics as well as semantics ... all very relevant to magic fiction and fiction as reality.

The parthenogenesis of reality from artifice
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 09:34 am:   

"I believe there are hidden messages in a Lovecraft text if one can work out the secret of decoding them."

Read only every 5th letter of the text and rearrange the letters... you'll be amazed at what you find
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 11:52 am:   

"By saying you don't pretend, are you saying you have noticed that he's not a good writer?"

No.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 12:12 pm:   

"There is the occasional striking image or well-drawn horror, but the prose you have to wade through to get to them makes the whole thing rather a chore."

Not for me. I think in his best work everything contributes to the total effect, following Poe's example in his own way.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 12:19 pm:   

Clark Ashton Smith was the Weird Tales man for me. Some of his story-cycles (especially Xiccarph) feature tales that are not only bizarre, exotic and disturbing, but also curiously ecstatic (in the coldest, most remote way possible!)

I first discovered his work when I was lying in bed slightly delerious with fever; and I've never forgotten the effect his prose and visions had on me at that time. In fact I don't think I've ever had a reading experience quite so intense... Since then, the only stories that have filled me with the same emotions are some of those found in J.G. Ballard's Vermilion Sands, especially 'The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D (which in fact is probably my favourite short story ever!)
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 12:47 pm:   

I think in his best work everything contributes to the total effect, following Poe's example in his own way.

Hear, hear.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 01:36 pm:   

Sorry, Colin, I didn't mean to hijack your thread, and turn it into a discussion of Lovecraft.

He was also incidental to my argument that I think the existence of a 'genre' is a trap, and one that allows too much poor-quality material to pass unchallenged.

I don't think a comparison with Poe holds at all. Poe is aware of the music of every word he uses. Yes, his prose is rich and loaded with imagery, but never to the point where it threatens the sense of what he means.

To me, Lovecraft is arrhythmic, overloaded, as if he is not in control of the words he's using. Rather than showing us things, it feels to me as if he tries to overwhelm us with the force of his prose.

Essentially, I don't think he's the best introduction to weird fiction, and his prominence as something people new to the genre are encouraged to read, I believe, probably puts as many people off as it entices.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 01:40 pm:   

Still, I should add as a caveat that I haven't read all of Lovecraft. My assessment is based mainly on what is in 'Dagon and Other Macabre Tales'.

I should read the rest before commenting further, but I'm not expecting any huge surprises.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 01:53 pm:   

I don't think a comparison with Poe holds at all. Poe is aware of the music of every word he uses. Yes, his prose is rich and loaded with imagery, but never to the point where it threatens the sense of what he means.

Seek out a few of the countless articles on the Lovecraft-Poe connection. Four Decades of Criticism (ed. Joshi) comes to mind, as well as Steve Mariconda's "Lovecraft, Consummate Prose Stylist" in an earlier issue of Lovecraft Studies. I can't be more precise because all my books are in boxes right now - I'm moving in another week or so.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 01:58 pm:   

Books of criticism, in my view, don't prove anything about fiction texts, but are merely interesting in themselves.

I think Nathaniel ostensibly has a point, although I would concede that HPL has a 'magic' that cannot be proved or disproved. His work has featrured large in my reading life.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 02:25 pm:   

Poe influences abound in Lovecraft: one frequent 'trick' I do recall is the recurring mantra of a string of words, like the waning, gibbous moon.

There are subtleties one is bound to miss. Mariconda's essay was a real eye-opener to me, I can heartily recommend it.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.49.191
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 02:39 pm:   

Nathaniel, the best Lovecraft book to start with is The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories. The stories in Dagon, for the most part, just aren't of the same quality.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 02:45 pm:   

imo, the Gollancz DAGON AND OTHER MACABRE TALES is wonderful, but only slightly better than their 'Shadow Out of Time' and 'At The Mountains of Madness'. I have the excellent Panther 'Haunter of the Dark' to supplement these. I think they all have the HPL raw 'magic' in equal degrees.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.49.191
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 03:20 pm:   

Ah, maybe I am talking about the wrong book then, Des. I was assuming Nathaniel meant the Arkham volume.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 03:29 pm:   

Yes, The Arkham House Dagon was conceived to contain Lovecraft's 'lesser' tales, as Derleth states on the dust jacket.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.247.214
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 04:01 pm:   

I don't think a comparison with Poe holds at all. Poe is aware of the music of every word he uses. Yes, his prose is rich and loaded with imagery, but never to the point where it threatens the sense of what he means.

And yet, as I've stated here before: eminent critic Harold Bloom would (has!) describe Poe, in pretty-much the same exact way you've earlier described Lovecraft. So who's right in the end, on these judgments?...
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 04:08 pm:   

Exactly the point, I feel, Craig.

It is one's own view of a text that counts, not critics'.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.238.109
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 04:17 pm:   

I did mean the Arkham House 'Dagon', just to be clear...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 04:47 pm:   

It is one's own view of a text that counts, not critics'

Sure, but I for one prefer an informed view; e.g. I would never have thought that certain bits in "The Colour out of Space" were written according to a metrical plan. A trained scholar can pinpoint things like that, adding to the overall appreciation of a text.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 04:56 pm:   

Well, there may be rare times we need the help of a scholar, but I feel a text was meant to be read by a reader and the reader enjoys it (or not). If there was meant to be add-ons, the author would have added them on??
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:25 pm:   

As far as I'm concerned any good criticism adds to one's appreciation of the text and sends one back to look afresh. That's why I was enthusing elsewhere on here about Robin Wood.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:28 pm:   

That's why I do real-time reviewing. :-)

But critics can spoil as well as enhance.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:33 pm:   

I don't think the average horror reader would know about the Magna Mater Cybele or about Jung's dream about a mult-layered cellar, and he certainly doesn't need those explanations to read "The Rats in the Walls" as a fine horror yarn. But when he delves just a tad deeper, the understanding is so much more profound than what is engendered by the shock of the cannibalistic end. These devices aren't merely add-ons, they're invitations.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:38 pm:   

Exactly, Hubert. Invitations from within.

we don't need no criticks.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:40 pm:   

Ah, but then we're not average readers
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 06:14 pm:   

'invitations from within'
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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 06:15 pm:   

>>Sorry, Colin, I didn't mean to hijack your thread, and turn it into a discussion of Lovecraft.<<

No worries Natt, it's much more interesting now
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 08:28 pm:   

Interestingly, i just popped into Waterstones and thought i'd have a quick look in the Crime section at the John Connolly novels but they didn't have any. They did, however, have a John Connolly in the Horror section, Nocturnes, which i gather is a short story collection and may be more overtly Horror.

It took me a while to find the Horror section though as they'd moved it into a corner and reduced it down to one set of shelves. In its place, covering two sets of shelves was the spanking new Dark Fantasy section complete with huge goth purple sign. Snazzy! The bottom two shelves were the erotica section.

I didn't buy anything though. They didn't have the book i went in for, Collected Stories of Paul Bowels. Speaking of which, perhaps Bowles would be a good candidate for the Horror section. His stories have a wonderful heavy sense of dread and of the narrator gradually slipping out their depth, sometimes with just a hint of the supernatural but you're never quite sure. Wonderful writer.
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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 08:35 pm:   

Buy Nocturnes Clive it's an excellent collection. Bloody Paranormal Romance..comes over here, taking our shelves and our films..
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 08:53 pm:   

>>Buy Nocturnes Clive it's an excellent collection.<<

I might well do that tomorrow and order the Bowles online.

>>Bloody Paranormal Romance..comes over here, taking our shelves and our films..<<

It's funny distinction really. Vampires and werewolves over there in the small Horror section. Kissing Vampires and Werewolves over there with the erotica.
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Colin Leslie (Blackabyss)
Username: Blackabyss

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.164.67.73
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 08:55 pm:   

>>The bottom two shelves were the erotica section
<<

Didn't erotica used to be on the top shelves?
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.48
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 09:01 pm:   

Another recommendation for Nocturnes. Btw, my local Waterstones has Connolly's horror comedy for kids, THE GATES, in the horror section.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 09:17 pm:   

>>Didn't erotica used to be on the top shelves?<<

You'd have thoughts so wouldn't you. Who knows what's going on in these big book chains. I once found Bill Drummond and Mark Manning's 'Wild Highway' stocked in the 'Black Interest' section of Waterstones. Anyone who has read that book will know thats maybe not the best of ideas!
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.236
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 10:54 pm:   

I enjoyed Connolly's The Book of Lost Things. It's probably classed as fantasy, but there are a few moments of pure horror.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 11:08 pm:   

Oh God, Waterstones new 'Dark Fantasy' section. Yes, that one's giving me headaches as a publisher. It doesn't bug me quite as much as the term Urban Fantasy however.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.156.171
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 12:20 am:   

Going back to Lovecraft... I'm sure that if he'd been able to put a collection or two together for a publisher in his later years, most of the early stories would have been discarded. There's not enough sense of hierarchy in Lovecraft collections: really bad stories appear alongside very fine ones. And the utterly piss-poor 'Herbert West, Re-Animator' appears over and over because of the film link. Lovecraft should not be judged by that story, or by the sick and hysterical 'The Horror at Red Hook', or by his anaemic and tiresome Dunsany imitations (almost as anaemic and tiresome as Dunsany himself, though never quite).

S.T. Joshi argues that Lovecraft's 'The Hound' is a self-parody because of certain absurdly pompous expressions in it. But similar expressions appear in stories whose seriousness is beyond doubt. In 'The Call of Cthulhu' there's a mention of "that glimpse of forbidden eons". Forbidden by whom, and under what legislation? Is the entire eon forbidden or just particularly offensive millennia? And in 'The Haunter of the Dark', a church is described as "almost eldritch". On what criteria does it fail?

Lovecraft had a unique ability to structure imaginative metaphors in geographical and historical terms. I particularly love 'The Shadow Out of Time', which more and more seems to me the most poignant and thoughtful of his stories. But it's easy to find examples of clumsy, stilted, turgid prose in almost any Lovecraft story.

Rhys... let's talk about Clark Ashton Smith another time. To me he presents similar problems to Lovecraft or Hodgson: great ideas, ambitious narratives, stultifying prose. But I continue to revisit Smith with much enjoyment, and agree that he has unique qualities. A lot of what he's writing about only gets through to the adult reader.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.51.133
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 06:37 am:   

Dunsany had a unique style that either works for the reader or doesn't. Different readers have different tastes, and what Joel pronounces 'anaemic and tiresome' I would call 'magical and enchanting'.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.51.133
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 06:40 am:   

I do agree about the unevenness in many HPL collections, though. That's why I prefer the Arkham volumes - the very best stuff is collected together in one book.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 217.43.29.197
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 09:33 am:   

I agree with Huw about Dunsany.
(BTW, I should announce that a book with real stultifying prose - 'Weirdmonger' - will be out of print imminently).
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 12:28 pm:   

> And in 'The Haunter of the Dark', a church is described as "almost eldritch". On what criteria does it fail?

Thanks for that, Joel! This is one of the things that most bothers me about Lovecraft -- his lack of linguistic logic!

Like some sort of pompous upstart, I once wrote a story with a conceit that is fundamentally based on one of Lovecraft's language mistakes. But instead of treating the mistake as a mistake, I decided to treat it as a coherent logical statement and develop my story accordingly.

The story is available as a free PDF. Here it is:

freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/languid.pdf

I am pleased with it, and regard it as almost typical of myself.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 12:43 pm:   

"They didn't have the book i went in for, Collected Stories of Paul Bowels."

Wouldn't that be in the Health and Body section?
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 12:46 pm:   

Paul Bowels is a crap writer! (Yes, this is a crap joke: pot and kettle (or pot and flush?))
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:06 pm:   

That's a tasty tale of yours at Tartarus, Rhys!
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:14 pm:   

Rhys, I'll read your story later.

With apologies to those RCMB members who've read this comment before (I said the same thing a couple of years ago), my favourite bit of unintentional humour in Lovecraft comes from the opening paragraph of 'The Lurking Fear':

"I had with me two faithful and muscular men..."

Some of us doubt that even one exists.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:20 pm:   

Joel: isn't there a line somewhere in Lovecraft that runs: "The man had long been fascinated by my ring; but even he wasn't prepared for what followed when the great blast was set off!"
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:32 pm:   

Coming back to Clark Ashton Smith, something about his writing habits seemed to guarantee dull openings and great endings. 'The End of the Story' can be taken as a manifesto of Smithism: it all happens when you read the last sentence and close your eyes. And there are few more satisyingly negativistic fuck-off endings than the last sentence of 'The Weaver in the Vault'. But story after story kicks off with a dry, perfunctory bit of scene-setting more worthy of a Council report on environmental services than a weird tale.

I've written two, admittedly hapless, Smith pastiches motivated by my admiration for his 'no prisoners' attitude. Like Woolrich or early Bradbury, he bypasses any notion of evil to go straight to an identification of mortality as the only significant theme.

I read a lot of Smith in my teens and thought he was kind of Lovecraft lite. Later I realised this stemmed from my lack of experience: there's a lot in Smith that will go over a kid's head. I had a real shock when I re-read 'The Death of Ilalotha' in my thirties and understood the ending for the first time. I can't imagine Farnsworth Wright (the editor of Weird Tales) had the faintest idea what was, er, going down in that story.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:35 pm:   

Rhys, that's 'The Transition of Juan Romero'. And yes, that's close if not exactly right. There's no exclamation mark, I'm sure.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 01:38 pm:   

If anyone's interested, I've just written Ray Russell's acceptance speech for the HWA Speciality Press Award, which he is due to receive in Brighton next month. Here it is:
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=39640#post39640
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 02:04 pm:   

You should have titled it 'Up the Rs'.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 03:23 pm:   

What are you drinking, Joel... and can I have some!
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.224.191
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 08:07 pm:   

My favourite line in "The Lurking Fear" is the one about a foul thing "doing a deed."

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