| Author | Message | ||
     Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Two literary universes of epic dimensions are morphing into one in my consciousness, to hallucinatory effect these nights, as I near the halfway mark of one and pick up the threads of the second half of the other. Must keep repeating, "there are Seven Worlds and Five Dominions, Seven Worlds and Five Dominions, Seven and Five, Worlds and Dominions...". Lord knows what shattering of reality would result if I were to confuse Hapexamendios with Elysion in my dreams!  'Imajica' (1991) by Clive Barker - I can now state with some confidence that this monumental work of allegorical fantasy/horror is the man's towering masterpiece. A quest for identity that plays with notions of gender and sexuality as a cat would play with a mouse and that grows like a Mandelbrot set from being a simple heterosexual love story into an emotional ménage à trois of lust and jealousy that explodes into inevitable violence allowing entry to the darkest and most vile horrors of the human psyche driving our heroes on a spiritual journey of enlightenment and redemption through all Five Dominions of the Imajical cosmos. This vast outpouring of unfettered imagination brims over with unforgettable images of soul-shattering horror and jaw-dropping beauty. It really is a remarkable achievement that dwarfs even 'The Books Of Blood' and 'The Books Of The Art' in the clarity of its unified vision. Not for the faint of heart or the easily disturbed but for all those wanting transported to another plane of existence - in which anything goes - hop on for the ride of your life! 'The Wizard Knight' (2004) by Gene Wolfe - plays a similar game of sexual awakenings and experiential growth in the form of the most gloriously beautiful playing with classical fantasy imagery since Tolkien completed his immortal trilogy. I stated last year that 'Full Dark House' (2003) by Christopher Fowler was the greatest work of genre fiction I had had the joy to read in the new millennium so far (and I meant every word) but its reign lasted barely a year. When the great works of fantasy fiction are pored over and analysed at the end of this century (if such a thing as published fiction still exists) then I have no doubt that this majestic allegory, perhaps the finest ever written about the painful passage from childhood innocence to the responsibilities of adulthood, will be ranked as highly as anything that could possibly follow. This is great literature, it is myth-making by reconfiguring of mythic symbolism (not least of the Freudian variety), it flows with the true essence of great poetry and it is as wondrously, effortlessly entertaining as any popular adventure ever written. Gene Wolfe has it all! Reading simply doesn't get any better than this... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Also still forging my way through the varied delights of 'The Complete Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe' (1938) but, by heck, there's an awful lot of inessential "filler" material in there that, if it weren't for his deservedly vaunted historical status, would have long since been consigned to the dustbin of history. The tales I would select, thus far (at just over halfway through), as amongst the finest and most revolutionary works of genre fiction ever written would be (along with some of those authors he passed the baton to): The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall (SCI-FI) - Verne & Wells The Gold Bug (MYSTERY) - Doyle & Christie Mesmeric Revelation (HORROR/FANTASY) - Hodgson, Machen & Lovecraft The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar (HORROR) - Hodgson, Machen & Lovecraft MS. Found In A Bottle (FANTASY/HORROR) - Hodgson A Descent Into The Maelstrom (SUSPENSE/HORROR) - Hodgson The Murders In The Rue Morgue (CRIME/HORROR) - Doyle (Holmes) The Mystery Of Marie Roget (CRIME) - Doyle (Holmes) The Purloined Letter (CRIME) - Doyle (Holmes) The Black Cat (HORROR) - Le Fanu, Bierce & James The Fall Of The House Of Usher (HORROR/FANTASY) - Machen & Lovecraft The Pit And The Pendulum (HORROR/SUSPENSE) - Haggard & Rohmer The Premature Burial (HORROR) - Le Fanu, Bierce & James The Masque Of The Red Death (HORROR/FANTASY) - Dunsany & Lovecraft The Cask Of Amontillado (HORROR) - Le Fanu & Bierce The Imp Of The Perverse (HORROR) - Kafka The Oval Portrait (HORROR) - De Maupassant The Assignation (HORROR) - De Maupassant The Tell-Tale Heart (HORROR) - Le Fanu, Bierce & James The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether (COMIC/HORROR) - Huxley & Vonnegut A Predicament (COMIC/HORROR) - Carroll The Angel Of The Odd (COMIC/HORROR) - Carroll Loss Of Breath (COMIC/HORROR) - Le Fanu & Bierce The Man That Was Used Up (COMIC/HORROR) - Le Fanu & Bierce The Conversation Of Eiros And Charmion (SCI-FI/FANTASY) - Wells Shadow : A Parable (FANTASY/HORROR) - Dunsany & Lovecraft Silence: A Fable (FANTASY/HORROR) - Dunsany & Lovecraft The Man Of The Crowd (HORROR) - Kafka Never Bet The Devil Your Head (COMIC/HORROR) - Le Fanu & Bierce Those authors were the first to pop into my head when thinking of each tale but in truth the influence of all of them is incalculable. As for the rest they range from the dated satire of 'The Literary Life Of Thingum Bob, Esq.' to a frankly torpid discussion on 'The Philosophy Of Furniture', imho. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
You, sir, have way too much time on your hands. Fancy selling me some? I could do with about 27 hours in a day right now...  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
What's bizarre to me, Stevie, is that you compare Poe to all these classic horror writers... but then you're coming to Poe last?!... Doubt you could find one person in 10,000 who fits that category, my friend.  And amen to all the stuff you say about THE KNIGHT. You're really whetting my appetite for THE WIZARD! (And IMAJICA. By accident I re-read a lot of early Barker last year, maybe I should do what you do, keep going chronologically, in this year....) Wait'll you ever get round to the SOLDIER IN THE MIST series - that'll blow your mind to the next level!  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Tell me about it, Zed! It's called trying to maintain one's sanity in an office environment... Finished 'The Knight', Craig, and would love to discuss the events of the last few chapters but it would involve too many spoilers. Maybe you could message me on Facebook or chat via email? Has ever the sound of hooves on cobblestones raised more expectations?! And you must read 'Imajica'. Imagine a fantasy every bit as immense and detailed with all the extreme in-your-face "adults only" imagery of 'The Books Of Blood' and you'd be halfway there. 'Weaveworld' was a hurried draft compared to this beast. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Steve - just thought I'd grab your attention while you're on this thread. Have you read the Yahoo article about Kim Novak blasting The Artist for pillaging Vertigo and 'her body of work?' I didn't read all the article because my internet connection keeps going every ten minutes (will be fixed on Friday, thank God), but I thought you'd be interested to read it. Oops, the connection is about to blow once again... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'd read 'Tales Of Mystery And Imagination' a couple of times previously, Craig, but to read every word the man wrote has been a long held ambition. The stories are incomparable but some of the lesser known material, articles written for newspapers and that kind of thing, really is a drag to get through. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Hiya, Frank! I'd heard mutterings of the Novak controversy but they pale into insignificance beside the artistic perfection of the finished film. 'The Artist' is as flawless a movie as you will ever see. To put that in perspective it would have finished above 'Midnight In Paris' had I seen it in 2011. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'd be terrible to talk with about THE KNIGHT right now, Stevie, me being so far removed in comparison to you to it, and not having caught up on the synopsis. But once I/we start the next part, then yes, it shall be fun... it shall be an adventure.... I've read only the most famous of Poe's stories myself, or most of them. And what I haven't read, I've seen through Corman's eyes.... (not really) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I remember starting to read 'Arthur Gordon Pym' way back in my misspent youth and getting bogged down with it about a third through. Looking forward to completing it now as it's probably the biggest gap in my reading of the "Great 19th Century Horror Novels". So many books, so little time... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
There's a film about Poe coming out soon. Starring John Cusack as Poe on the trail of a serial killer copying some of the murders from his stories. Hmmmm. I can already hear the wave of protest. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Those Poe projects have been floating around Hollywood for years, and I think this particular script is, well, one in particular that's a decade or more old. All I can say is, if it's the one I read, I sure hope they improved on it.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.145.133.110 |
I have now started from Blue to Black and I'm loving it. More comment when I've read more. I was late back from lunch today because I was engrossed. that's always a good sign for a book (if not my job). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Must get a copy of that myself and some more of Joel's books, Weber. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 143.238.239.100 |
'Three Miles Up', by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Fantastic. Will read the rest of her 'strange stories' shortly, once I've finished 'Cold Hand in Mine'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Sometimes Clive Barker really pushes the envelope too far. Rarely have I come across an author as brazenly unconcerned at thrusting unspeakable sexual horror in the reader's face but what happened to the wide-eyed and innocent little girl, Huzzah, at the hands of the hideous Nullianac is something I'd rather put behind me. Bloody hell but this man has a warped imagination! It's what makes 'Imajica' such a fearsome read - turning each page is like an act of bravery in itself. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.35.191 |
Just finished the wonderful MISS HARGREAVES by Frank Baker, and now well in to THE SHAPE OF SNAKES by Minette Walters. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Well blow me down!! I've reached the BIG REVELATION point in 'Imajica' (at lunchtime) and still trying to get my head around it. At nearly two thirds through, suddenly, everything that has gone before, every epic inch of all the many characters' journeys, has been turned upside down. Demons have become misunderstood angels, villains have become either puppets or rebels and main protagonists have become... illusions. Genius!! For all its positively Dickensian free-flowing picaresque unpredicability it is now clear that Clive knew exactly what he was doing all along. Wonderful, indescribably multi-faceted and subtle storytelling - for all its extremity of vision - of a kind that beggars belief. Well done, sir! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
I know it's SF so-called. And the latest INTERZONE #238 has four great stories, including Ray Cluley and Carole Johnstone. MY RTR: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/interzone-238/ | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.192.94 |
Stevie - talk about warped. I came (not literally) by a book in the library for sale yesterday called 'Story of the Eye' by George Bataille. Talk about mucky! And strange, and cruel, and completely unlike anything I've ever read before. I think it's changed my mind, and made me realise I haven't had a proper mucky thought in my whole life. Wow! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.35.191 |
It's never too late to start, Tony! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.21.155 |
Perhaps what I love most about the kind of gargantuan multi-character, multi-plot epics, like 'Imajica' or 'The Wizard Knight', are those moments far into the story when the fate of one of the characters touches me like a sledgehammer blow to the emotions - be it the surprise death of a much loved protagonist or the reintroduction of one thought lost or characters long parted finally meeting again, with all the weight of intervening events between them. I experienced another such moment of powerhouse literary invention on Friday evening down the pub with 'Imajica'. Anyone who has read the book should easily be able to identify the passage I mean. I was in pieces, choking back sobs, like an idiot in the corner. Incredible, emotionally draining, writing of a wholly higher order than anything I have experienced from Clive Barker before and the pivotal moment of the book and possibly the man's entire writing career. I know when I can detect the sting of real personal tragedy in a passage of literature and it was here in spades. I wonder who he said goodbye to? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Whizzing through the climactic chapters of 'Imajica' and reckon I should finish it this week so get ready for 'The Wizard', Craig. I'm getting stuck straight in as soon as the Fifth Dominion is Reconciled... or not, as the case may be. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.145.135.65 |
Finished From Blue to Black last night. Those final chapters were certainly a rollercoaster. Very Very Very good book and highly recommended. What to read next is a problem. My TBR pile is out of control. Either Embassytown by China Meiville, Keeping Britain Tidy by Steve Hollyman (if only just for that Nick Royle quote on the back cover), Blind assassin by margaret atwood, In the Country of Last Things by Auster or Storm Front by Jim Butcher... Or any one of several hundred others. But scanning the room quickly, those are the titles that caught my eye first... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Sure thing, Stevie. Meanwhile, I'm chipping away at another giant tome crime anthology I have, an older one: City Sleuths and Tough Guys(1989), edited by David Willis McCullough. I don't just pick up any anthology to read, being SO picky... but the presence of solid stories I've read from authors I know (Poe, Hammet, McDonald, etc.) made it a safe bet for quality in those I wasn't familiar with. And yes, I discovered some fine writers here I was not familiar with previously, particularly (so far) a 30's Brit Roy Vickers; and Yoh Sano and Loren Estelemen, two more contemporary writers. There was the intense, disturbing opening to a 1978 novel by one William Marshall, Gelignite, that makes me want to seek out that book. And another story by this Janwillem van de Wetering makes me think he's worthy of pursuit, too.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've heard nothing but great things about 'The Blind Assassin' - said to be a mixture of pulp mystery and sci-fi - and as Atwood's the only one of those authors I've read, and she's brilliant, I'd go with that one, Weber. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.156.184.158 |
Through sheer laziness I went with the closest one - Keeping Britain tidy. Brand new author - this is his first novel but judging by the 40 pages I read on the bus it's a pretty damned good one. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
SPOILERS FROM HERE, COS STEVIE IS SILLY} After the visionary odyssey through fantastical dominions of the middle half of the book the final quarter of 'Imajica' has retracted back into earthbound supernatural horror and intimate human drama - as was the first quarter - with very much the flavour of Barker's earliest fiction. The fact that the action is set mostly in the squalid underbelly of London, rather than sunny California, makes the return to horror imagery all the more satisfying. This is one of the best books I have read. End of story. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Dear Lord! How could I have been so dense? I experienced another example of gob-smacking synchronicity at lunchtime today, on reading the latest chapter of 'Imajica', on the back of 'William Wilson' last night! This whole heady fantasy has been Clive's spin on the doppelgänger story! Only he went one further to show us the dark fantasy realm from which such entities emerge. Devils and monsters, yes, even gods and angels, in human form, as our identical doubles, besporting themselves among us with a dagger in one hand and an admonishing finger in the other. The difference between the Reconciled Dominions and Unreconciled Earth!! He even used the D word for the first time in that chapter. They're here... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Shit!! **** IMAJICA SPOILERS - DO NOT READ THE ABOVE!!!! **** | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.74.137 |
Sorted, squire. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.59.201 |
Just finished Keeping Britain Tidy and I highly recommend it. A story of masculinity in a vaccuum, the Nick Royle quote I quoted in a previous post sums it up better than I could. Just about to start Life ad Fate by Vassily Grossman. Why the hell can't Russians write short books? This is a behemoth at nearly 900 pages and I need to find time to learn the script for Tomb with a View before the end of the month as well. My next theatrical venture will be A Tomb with a View at the end of March with the Halliwell Theatre Company up in Bolton. If anyone can make it, please come along. When I find their website again I'll post a link. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Only pages of 'Imajica' left and I'm already in bits, counting the minutes until I can get out of here and complete the book. In this behemoth of a visionary masterwork of wordsmithery Clive Barker has married the metaphysical fantasy epic of Tolkien & Lewis to the Jamesian/Kingian tradition of physically tangible horror and given us perhaps the most perfect allegory of "what it's all about" - the One big question and All it encompasses - that has ever come out of these islands!! Seriously, the man got it all down pat here and my only concern now is that even 'The Books Of The Art' (completed last year) now seem repetitive and redundant by comparison - entertaining adventures rather than transcendent literature. I can't imagine where he could possibly go from here... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'Imajica' last night and the ending is sheer perfection. It had me shivering with emotion and gutted to be saying goodbye to these characters and this world in a way few other books can manage. In the final chapters Clive ties up every one of the myriad of plot threads and character arcs - ala Dickens - and in the final pages delivers a monumental set piece that stamps itself on the consciousness as a perfect metaphor for everything that has gone before. The final image has to be one of the most haunting and supremely beautiful in genre fiction - as satisfying and succinct a conclusion as it is possible to imagine. I fear he may have peaked with this one but that it exists at all, that he was able to distil all his talents into a single work of such perfection, is cause for nothing but celebration. This is one of the great ones and now hovers just outside the old Top 10 list, rubbing shoulders with 'Melmoth The Wanderer' and the 'Illuminatus!' series. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Time for 'The Wizard', Craig, and I'm ready to start... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
nearly 50 pages into Life and fate (not even one twentieth of the way into this behemoth of a book and so far nothing of interest has occurred. That's not quite right. some incidents which could be interesting HAVE happened, but because of the tedious style of the writing, they imparted nothing interesting to me, the discening reader. This may be one of those that I give up on on the basis that life is too short. It's got till page 150 to improve and that's it. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay, Stevie, sounds good. (So does Imajica... will find and place on TBR pile....) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Three chapters into 'The Wizard' already and how Wolfe continues the story, keeping all the old familiar characters after what just happened, is a masterstroke that has changed the entire tone of the book. There was a straightforward progression to 'The Knight', as it followed Able's quest to become a knight and find the sword, Eterne, but where this one's headed is beyond me. At first I thought this would be hard to get used to but I can already feel the new style settling in. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Hey! I didn't think you'd start it this second! You're going too fast! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Started it at lunchtime today and been reading it all evening. When a story hooks me, Craig, there's no stopping me. And I only read novels that hook me. Just finished Chapter 7. It's brilliant, so get stuck in! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.117.96 |
I gave up on Life and Fate on page 83 - still not even a tenth of the way in. The writing style is just too sterile and already repetitive. The chapters skip at random between very badly drawn characters qwith no warning, no distinction between one section and the next. Especially with the long Russian names this ads a slightly confusing and annoying element to the book. Each chapter is only a couple of pages long, there were 3 or 4 chapters set in a death camp (which should have been a fascinating locale but was dry and sterile and impossible to picture from the dull and lifeless descriptions) and a sudden switch to a battle site in Stalingrad (which once more was nowhere near as interesting as it could be) then there was another switch to a location that I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be. Each new set of characters was duller and more lifelessly drawn than the last and I eventually gave up. If I'm going to read a behemoth of a novel, let's make it a good one so I picked up Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin instead. After an hour, I'm already 50 pages in, intrigued, amused and generally loving it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
As I still can't find 'His Last Bow' - no doubt it will be in the last box I open - I've decided to start Robert Heinlein's other Hugo Award winning novel, 'Double Star' (1956), to read in tandem with Gene Wolfe's opus. Been too many months since I've had a fix of Bob. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Bloody hell! I've just read Chapter 1 of 'Double Star' at lunchtime and can't stop grinning. It's bloody mental. Words fail me... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The first person narrator is one of those insufferably precious and irresistibly funny act-or lovies, who goes by the moniker of The Great Lorenzo, and is perhaps the most deliriously camp character Bob ever dreamed up, who, after being picked up in a bar by a strapping space pilot and brought back to his hotel room, finds himself accosted by a giant mushroom shaped alien, spouting green ichor, and subsequently has to dismember and flush away three corpses in the bathroom (don't ask), while avoiding security and fleeing the scene, using his improvised mastery of disguise, before being tricked into boarding a rocket that blasts off for Mars, with himself co-opted into a desperate plan to avert interplanetary war, whereupon he gives up the ghost and mercifully blacks out... and I can't imagine what the hell is going to happen next! And that was only the first chapter ffs!! This book already has all the action and suspense and bonkers characters of the greatest pulp fiction and is bloody hilarious. Lorenzo's narration, by turns pompous, terrified and witheringly witty, is a joy to read. You've done it again, Bob. Start one of this man's books and I swear, within pages, you're in another zone of reality altogether. Brilliant stuff!!  | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Currently reading... TALES FROM THE NIGHTSIDE by Charles L Grant SEVEN DAYS OF CAIN by Mr Campbell And IMPERIAL BEDROOMS by Bret Easton Ellis First one is my to/from work book. The latter two are on the Kindle. Because it has a light, and the lamp in my bedroom has conked out... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Loved TALES FROM THE NIGHTSIDE, John, lots of great stories in that one! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Lorenzo Smythe (Larry to his friends) continues to grow in my affections as one of the funniest first person narrators I've come across. This flamboyant acting genius, currently "resting", finds himself shanghaied to Mars in order to impersonate one of the most important political leaders in the galaxy, who has been kidnapped by slimy mushroom shaped Martian renegades. Realising this will make him a target for assassination he refuses the part until they tell him that his great rival, Orson Trowbridge, or "That ham!", is all set to step into the breech, whereupon, "The show must go on!" I'd love to have seen Vincent Price play this part. I love it when Heinlein is in this kind of madcap comedy form - as in 'Job' or 'Glory Road' - as his ability to make the reader laugh out loud is second to none. As a writer he had it all and I'm beginning to suspect that he may have been one of the major influences on Gene Wolfe! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Just finishing up The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom. A much-maligned (by genre people, anyway) novel that's actually a neat little haunted house drama. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it's an entertaining potboiler. Which is, of course, why it was so commercially successful - the general public doesn't want anything groundbreaking. They want familiar stuff they can relate to. The massive advertising budget obviously helped, too. As a friend who works in publishing recently told me: the public buy what they're told to. You put enough copies of a book and a till-side display in Tesco and Asda, it's going to sell hundreds of thousands. Anyway, I digress. Next up: The Faceless by my good mate Mr. Bestwick. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.21.155 |
'Double Star' is one of the finest comic novels I have read, working as fast paced pulp adventure that is both thrilling and thought provoking in its pointed political, social and sexual satire. Absolutely wonderful top notch entertainment that respects the reader's intelligence, as ever, and that one can see pointing the way to Bob's masterwork, 'Stranger In A Strange Land' - which he was working on through most of the 50s anyway. | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.182.184.225 |
Picked up IMAJICA Stevie. The day after getting your txt from the pub!! Looking forward to getting stuck in right after I finish 'Dark Matter' by Michelle Paver. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204 |
I loved Dark Matter! Currently reading Long Lankin at John Forth's suggestion and loving that too. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204 |
...and I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but I also recently read Barbara Roden's Northwest Passages, which is a wonderful collection, one which I can't recommend highly enough. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Tis a wondrous tome, Sean. I'm kicking myself I didn't read it way back when. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204 |
Finished Long Lankin, and loved it. Next up is Eric Stener Carlson's The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires... | ||
| Greg James (Greg_james) Username: Greg_james Registered: 04-2011 Posted From: 86.163.94.135 |
Currently reading W.H. Pugmire's Gathered Dust - the opening and title tale is very good. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. A slim book that consists of a series of essays on how running affects his work. Recently I've started getting back into running, so I'm finding this book fascinating. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.4.197 |
I just finished The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill. A bit disappointing unfortunately. Lots of mysterious build-up but an unsatisfying and rushed ending that didn't really resolve anything. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Will be finished 'Double Star' (1956) tonight. A brilliantly entertaining whizz-bang comedy adventure across the solar system that also works as cleverly subversive political satire. The following passage is probably the most clear cut summary of Bob Heinlein's own pragmatic liberal/libertarian political views I have read to date and demonstrates how this complicated but passionate free thinker was able to reconcile writing such diametrically opposed works as 'Starship Troopers' & 'Stranger In A Strange Land' over the next few years. Ham actor extraordinaire, Lorenzo Smythe, finds himself impersonating political maverick, J.J. Bonforte, and grows to respect the man while cribbing for the part, even though he opposes everything Bonforte stands for, being a dyed in the wool conservative traditionalist: "At first I simply soaked myself in Bonforte's public utterances. True, I had done that on the trip out, but then I was studying how he spoke; now I was studying what he said. Bonforte was an orator in the grand tradition but he could be vitriolic in debate, e.g. a speech he made in New Paris during the ruckus over the treaty with the Martian nests, the Concord of Tycho. It was this treaty which had knocked him out of office before; he had pushed it through but the strain on the coalition had lost him the next vote of confidence. Nevertheless, Quiroga had not dared denounce the treaty. I listened to this speech with special interest since I had not liked the treaty myself; the idea that Martians must be granted the same privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars had been abhorrent to me - until I visited the Kkkah nest. 'My opponent,' Bonforte had said with a rasp in his voice, 'would have you believe that the motto of the so-called Humanity Party, "Government of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings," is no more than an updating of the immortal words of Lincoln. But while the voice is the voice of Abraham, the hand is the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. The true meaning of that innocent-seeming motto is "Government of all races everywhere, by human beings alone, for the profit of a privileged few." 'But, my opponent protests, we have a God-given mandate to spread enlightenment through the stars, dispensing our own brand of Civilisation to the savages. This is the Uncle Remus school of sociology - the good dahkies singin' spirituals and Ole Massa lubbin' every one of dem! It is a beautiful picture but the frame is too small; it fails to show the whip, the slave block - and the counting house!' I found myself becoming, if not an Expansionist [Bonforte's party], then at least a Bonfortite. I am not sure that I was convinced by the logic of his words - indeed, I am not sure that they were logical. But I was in a receptive frame of mind. I wanted to understand what he said so thoroughly that I could rephrase it and say it in his place, if need be. Nevertheless, here was a man who knew what he wanted and (much rarer) why he wanted it. I could not help but be impressed, and it forced me to examine my own beliefs. What did I live by? My profession, surely! I had been brought up in it, I liked it, I had a deep though unlogical conviction that art was worth the effort - and, besides, it was the only way I knew to make a living. But what else? I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them - public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash - but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law's kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything. I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a 'good' child is one who does not disturb mother's nap and a 'good' man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks! But even a dog has rules of conduct. What were mine? How did I behave - or, at least, how did I like to think I behaved? 'The show must go on.' I had always believed that and lived by it. But why must the show go on? - seeing that some shows are pretty terrible. Well, because there is an audience out there; they have paid and each one of them is entitled to the best you can give. You owe it to them. You owe it also to stagehands and manager and producer and other members of the company - and to those who taught you your trade, and to others stretching back in history to open-air theatres and stone seats and even to story-tellers squatting in a market place. Noblesse oblige. I decided that the notion could be generalised into any occupation. ‘Value for value.’ Building ‘on the square and the level.’ The Hippocratic oath. Don’t let the team down. Honest work for honest pay. Such things did not have to be proved; they were an essential part of life – true throughout eternity, true in the farthest reaches of the Galaxy. I suddenly got a glimpse of what Bonforte was driving at. If there were ethical basics that transcended time and place, then they were true both for Martians and for men. They were true on any planet around any star – and if the human race did not behave accordingly they weren’t ever going to win to the stars because some better race would slap them down for double-dealing. The price of expansion was virtue. ‘Never give a sucker an even break’ was too narrow a philosophy to fit the broad reaches of space. But Bonforte was not preaching sweetness and light. ‘I am not a pacifist. Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay – and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Mr Speaker, life belongs to those who do not fear to lose it. This bill must pass!’ And with that he had got up and crossed the aisle in support of a military appropriation his own party had refused in caucus. Or again: ‘Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong – but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted.’ (This last was in a closed caucus but Penny had caught it on her mini-corder and Bonforte had saved it – Bonforte had a sense of history; he was a record keeper. If he had not been, I would not have had much to work with.) I decided that Bonforte was my kind of man. Or at least the kind I liked to think I was. His was a persona I was proud to wear." Hidden in amongst all the pulp space opera action and intrigue this was about the most serious passage in the book and a fascinating glimpse inside the author's own mind when he was just starting to find the mature voice of his later more ambitious and controversial works. And next up I've decided to start another award winning sci-fi classic from the same era; 'More Than Human' (1953) by Theodore Sturgeon, for the first time. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Having now finished 'Double Star' I have to say the last two pages, after all the excitement and frivolity that had gone before, left me feeling sad and oddly unsettled - setting up the book for an even more meaningful re-read, much as Bester did with 'The Stars My Destination' (1956). I seem to be haunted by doppelgängers at the minute as this book has revealed itself as another clever spin on the concept, and one in which the doppelgänger is the actual hero, first person narrator and eventual victim in a role reversal comedy with a rather ambiguously disturbing ending. The eventual fate of poor "Lorenzo Smythe" (Larry to his friends) was by no means a triumphant standing ovation. And as for J.J. Bonforte and the political machine behind him - never have noble intentions, with the good of the majority at heart, been so compromised by the eclipsing of the individual. I can see now why this novel won the Hugo... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Wow!! Just read the first chunk of Theodore Sturgeon's 'More Than Human' (1953) and now I know where Marvel got the idea for The X-Men from!! I only hope Stan Lee, and those people who made 'Heroes' and the mutant episodes of 'The X Files' [see 'Squeeze' or 'Pusher'], are paying his family royalties ffs! This isn't sci-fi, it is literature. Here's the opening paragraphs: "The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctured by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear. His clothes were old and many-windowed. Here peeped a shinbone, sharp as a cold chisel, and there in the torn coat were ribs like the fingers of a fist. He was tall and flat. His eyes were calm and his face was dead. "Men turned away from him, women would not look, children stopped and watched him. It did not seem to matter to the idiot. He expected nothing from any of them. When the white lightning struck, he was fed. He fed himself when he could. When he could do neither of these things he was fed by the first person who came face to face with him. The idiot never knew why, and never wondered. He did not beg. He would simply stand and wait. When someone met his eyes there would be a coin in his hand, a piece of bread, a fruit. He would eat and his benefactor would hurry away, disturbed, not understanding. Sometimes, nervously, they would speak to him; they would speak about him to each other. The idiot heard the sounds but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken. His eyes were excellent, and could really distinguish between a smile and a snarl; but neither could have any impact upon a creature so lacking in empathy, who himself had never laughed and never snarled and so could not comprehend the feelings of his gay or angry fellows." The book continues introducing, in this effortlessly beautiful prose, a cast of peculiarly gifted individuals who don't quite fit and sometimes suffer prejudice, sometimes adoration as a result - and we just know they are all destined to meet up and change the human race forever. At least that's my take, so far... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204 |
This isn't sci-fi, it is literature. Are they mutually exclusive then? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Apparently so... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
You know what I mean! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.14.87 |
More Than Human is one of my favourite SF novels, a brilliantly imaginative and offbeat story that fills your head with shotgun pellets of insight. I went through a big Sturgeon re-read a few years ago and it was the best thing I read then, though Some of Your Blood was strong competition. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished the first part, Joel, and really enjoying it. I'm assuming there is some reason why this group of people in such a small area all have superpowers; mind control, telepathy, psychokinesis, teleportation, etc. I reckon they're all alien-human hybrids or mutations caused by something in the environment. Sturgeon would appear to have invented a whole sub-genre with this book. Very impressive and beautifully written. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.1.171 |
Keep reading, Stevie.  | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 123.98.138.2 |
Re-reading 'The Nameless' at the moment. It was the first Ramsey novel that I read, in the early '90's. Forgot how good it is - and how gut wrenching! 'White Pointer South - The Story of the White Shark in Tasmanian Waters'. Fascinating read, and some incredible photo's. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Reading Andrew Humphries intense and marvellous "Alison". Whatever happened to Andrew Humphries? Startled to see my own name in the acknowledgements! It's a very well written and compelling "serch for the truth" novel. Recommended. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Part 2 of 'More Than Human' is reminding me very strongly of one of my all time favourite horror stories, "The Grey Ones" (1953), by J.B. Priestley. Does anyone else get where I'm coning from with this? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Finished Part 2 of 'More Than Human' and it's a brilliant self-contained horror/sci-fi novella, narrated in the first person from a psychiatrist's couch, that was originally published on its own as "Baby Is Three" (1952). The first part of the book, "The Fabulous Idiot", couldn't have been any more different in style or tone, as it introduced us to to each of the superhumanly gifted central characters, and showed them coming together and bonding in a poignant but heartwarming fashion. The action then jumps forward to a time of trauma and disharmony that ends on a marvellously sinister note, setting up Part 3, "Morality", for god alone knows what? A fascinating multi-layered fantasy that is as beguilingly easy to read as it is beautiful and ominous and reminds me of the kind of powerfully resonant poetic allegories William Golding was writing at the same time. Sturgeon is something special! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I dare say I'll have finished 'More Than Human' and 'The Wizard Knight' over the next few days and to replace them I've decided to dig out 'His Last Bow' even if it means dying under an avalanche of boxes in the attempt and to read the last of Derek Raymond's extraordinary Factory Series of crime novels, with 'Dead Man Upright' (1993)... I think seven months is long enough to have got over the trauma of the last one! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
And I'm still chipping my way through 'Arthur Gordon Pym' but finding it rather heavy going. Almost a third through again and determined to finish it this time. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
"Arthur Gordon Pym"? embarrassingly I can't remember who wrote this, damn, it' on the tip of my tongue. Please put me out of my misery. Terry | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Ah, I've scrolled back and...um...it's Poe isn't it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It is indeed. In Poe's defence he states himself in the intro that the early part of the book is radically different and more mainstream than the later sections, which he states to be more "true" to Pym's own experiences, that he had misguidedly attempted to "fictionalise". I get the impression this was Poe's attempt to break into the novel writing big time with a straight adventure novel - of the type that the public were lapping up at the time - that he subsequently got bored with, or decided he didn't have the talent for, and decided to turn into a weird melange of his own innermost obsessions, that informed all the best of his tales. I feel I'll soon be getting into darker waters with this book and look forward to the experience. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I found it!! Sherlock Holmes rides again! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
Just finished Andrew Humphrey's "Alison" which has left me feeling very satisfied. Recommended. Does AH still write? Does anyone know? I haven't seen or read any of his work for a long time. And it is time for me to dust down my "Collected Poe" and take another look. Regards Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'm also about to get back into my chronological (re-)read of all my horror anthologies, having set them aside for over a year now. Next up is 'The 22nd Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (just unpacked) followed by 'New Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos' edited by the man himself. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Halfway through Part 3 of 'More Than Human' and the story has veered off at an unexpected tangent yet again, being a bittersweet and touching love story, swathed in a central mystery, that is apparently far removed from the rest of the book. The whole reads very much like a collection of three linked novellas and structurally isn't far removed from Dashiell Hammett's 'The Dain Curse' (1929). The prose, however, is of a beautifully flowing poetic nature that illuminates every page and I'm finding myself having to stop and re-read certain paragraphs in awed wonder. Witness: "The girl was spooning fragrant bacon grease over and over three perfect eggs in a pan. When he sat down on the edge of the bed she slid the eggs deftly onto a plate, leaving all the grease behind in the pan. They were perfect, the whites completely firm, the yolks unbroken, liquid, faintly filmed over. There was bacon, four brief seconds less than crisp, paper dried and aromatic. There was toast, golden outside, soft and white inside, with butter melting quickly, running to find and fill the welcoming caves and crevices; two slices with butter, one with marmalade. And these lay in some sunlight, giving off a colour possible only to marmalade and to stained glass." I don't know about any of you but I can smell that bacon. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.145.8.177 |
Reading the new "Black Static" and was absolutely blown away by a story called "Little Things". Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
**** SPOILERS **** Finished 'More Than Human' over the weekend. What a strange, beautiful little novel. At no time does the plot - of superhumanly gifted mutants banding together to form the next step in human evolution - follow the traditional path we've all become accustomed to from the likes of 'X-Men' or 'Heroes'. This is a tale of remarkable restraint and subtlety in which little incidental details, almost forgotten, go on to form major plot threads in later sections. The author is more interested in his characters' growth, as flawed human beings who only want to belong, than on the world-changing import of their frightening abilities. The result, given the effortless beauty of his prose, is of a shimmeringly delicate modern day fairy-tale, a moral allegory with all the clarity and resonance of William Golding. This book would be the perfect accompaniment to Golding's similarly understated but emotionally devastating tale of one race being supplanted by a superior one on the evolutionary scale, 'The Inheritors' (1955). Like Golding's, the power of Sturgeon's tale is in all that he refuses to spell out but leaves patently clear for the reader to infer. The path ahead is left open and can be taken as heartrending tragedy or gloriously uplifting ode to the human spirit... depending on the reader. I can also see how this book must have been a huge influence on Robert Heinlein's similarly themed cry for tolerance, 'Stranger In A Strange Land' - Bob being on record as a profound fan of Sturgeon's work. A wonderful novel touched by real magic and insight. And the fact that we are left none the wiser as to its central mystery makes the ending all the more haunting. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Finished The rather splendid Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood last night. I'll admit I guessed the big twist ending about 300 pages early but it's still a damned fine read. About to start on Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies and I'll follow that up with Wayne Simmons' Drop Dead Gorgeous to make a change from the literary stuff. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Finished 'Strange Tales' from Tartarus - loved it so much that I ordered the other two volumes in the series. Now reading Christopher Fowler's Hell Train, bought after JLP's review. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Really enjoying being back in Sherlock Holmes' world of voodoo cults and gruesome packages sent to harmless old ladies. The first two stories in 'His Last Bow' have been more than worth the wait. Can't see this book taking me too long and then it's back to Bryant & May with their first outing, outside of the official series, 'Darkest Day' (1993). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Speaking of Sherlock Holmes... another example from my "The Age of Spectacle" file.... http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/lucy-liu-to-play-watson-in-cbs-modern-sherlock-h olmes-pilot-elementary/ | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Ditto the third story, "The Red Circle", just read at lunchtime, which involves an early manifestation of the Mafia, already spreading their tentacles of crime (via the fruit importing business!) from Naples to New York to London... until our Sherlock stumbles upon their nefarious schemes. This is a sublime collection so far with subject matter of a decidedly more adult nature than the earlier tales with even the spectre of illicit sex raising its head! This ties in with what I said about 'The Valley Of Fear' as representing a new level of maturity for Holmes and the times in which Conan Doyle was writing. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Are you looking forward to the American remake of our new Sherlock series with Lucy Liu playing Watson? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Is this another one of your jokes, Weber? With a particularly unfathomable punchline! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Nope. I wish it was. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
And no doubt she'll be a fecking kung fu expert as well! Bloody Yanks! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
An American Sherlock Holmes television series? Why the whole thin is outrageous, intolerable. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 109.144.18.122 |
Sadly, it's apparently true. Ye gods. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
So Holmes & Watson have now moved beyond immortality into the realm of timeless, genderless, nationless archetypes it would seem... These stories suddenly seem all the more precious and cherishable! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'd have no problem with a US remake of the show - it's the casting of a female famous more for being better endowed than your usual asian/american than for any acting ability as Watson that's galling. It's like when they remade Fawlty Towers and cut the character of Basil because they thought he was irritating... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.142.153 |
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/lucy-liu-to-play-dr-watson-in-sher lock-holmes-pilot-2012282 | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
This makes me want to become an ex-patriot even more. | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
Getting the thread back on track... I'm reading Mondo Zombie as edited by John Skipp. This is one awesome antho and I'm happy to finally have this in my collection. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.54.91 |
Is it actually a remake of the BBC show or just another Holmes adaptation though? That article isn't too clear. I never knew she was in Southland though, must be a season that hasn't been on over here yet. That's one of the few cop shows I've ever been able to get into. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.54.91 |
From a quick Google search it appears CBS tried to get the remake rights from the BBC, failed, then went ahead with their own modern-day version instead. 'Apparently, Elementary will see Johnny Lee Miller’s Holmes – breathe easy, everybody, he’s still English – as a former consultant to Scotland Yard whose drug addiction brings him to a rehabilitation center in NYC. Post-rehab, Holmes moves in with a “sober companion” in Brooklyn, Joan Watson, a “former surgeon who lost her medical license after a patient died while consulting with the NYPD.”' http://screenrant.com/elementary-cbs-johnny-lee-miller-lucy-liu-benm-156745/ | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.54.91 |
And just to try and stay relevant to the thread I'm currently reading what I thought was the second of Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels (pretty good urban fantasy stuff about a freelance exorcist in London) but turns out to be the third, and Gladiatrix by Russell Whitfield, a man who had the genius idea of improving the swords'n'sandals genre by adding gratuitous lesbian sex scenes. God bless you, sir. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
TV Producer: "Okay, picture this: a reboot of 'Ironsides.' Only the main character isn't physically paralyzed anymore - he's emotionally crippled. Oh, and he's not a detective, but a lawyer. And he's not actually a man, of course, but a woman - some crossover comedy actress who wants to break into drama, like Whitney Cummings, or Melissa McCarthy. Oh, and wait - her malady gives her psychic powers, so that she can see the very moment of the crime through the perpetrator's P.O.V. - and we won't call it 'Ironsides' at all, but... 'Murder Eyes' - yeah, 'Murder Eyes,' based on the hit 70's TV detective series 'Ironsides,' it's perfect...." | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Having just finished 'The Wizard Knight' I'm now onto the fifth and final of Derek Raymond's Factory Series, 'Dead Man Upright' (1993). It's turning out to be every bit as frightening and psychologically punishing as the rest of the series. With prose and insight like this there is no way Raymond was left "creatively burnt out" after 'I Was Dora Suarez'! | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.182.184.225 |
At long last I've finally gotten around to Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. Several pages in and the atmosphere of dread is just stunning. I never realised 'Dandelion Wine' and its sequel 'Farewell Summer' are both set in the same fictional town as 'Something Wicked'. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.142.26 |
Half-way through Brooklyn Follies and Auster is magnificent as usual. I know if I wasn't supposed to be learning my script for Tomb with a View (that's on in 4 weeks now) I'd have finished the Auster days ago. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
This rarely happens to me but always heralds something special when it does: 'Outside The Dog Museum' (1991) by Jonathan Carroll arrived in the post this morning and, as I am wont to do, I read the first page to get a flavour of the work. 25 pages later I stopped. Now I'm halfway through Part 1. Very little has happened apart from a series of in-depth and engrossing character introductions, reminiscences and anecdotes by the first person narrator - who is an arrogant shit - but Carroll's beautiful prose and subtly unsettling accumulation of odd little details has me hopelessly hooked. I remember the same thing happening with 'Bones Of The Moon' and then reading three of his novels in quick succession. I've been puzzling out all day why this should be so? My answer: the sheer what-the-fuck-is-going-on unpredictability of the narrative coupled with the compulsive beauty of Carroll's sentences. He is one of the few authors I feel compelled to read aloud. Spellbinding stuff that has cheered me up no end as I've been in bed with the flu all day. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I thought after finishing Wolfe's novel, I'd take a breather by reading Hammett's three Sam Spade stories... but after finishing this first one, "A Man Called Spade," I don't think I can go on to the other two. Perfectly dreadful, or at least, about as far a cry from the Continental Op stories as you can get. These were published in the early 1930's, so they post-date the C-Op tales; but this one read like it was a first attempt at writing by anyone. There's nothing to recommend this tale whatsoever, and I wonder, anyone out there who knows... do the other two improve in any way?... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Just finished 'Outside The Dog Museum' and I'm sitting here filling up. Maybe it's because I've been dosed with flu the last three days and sharing my bed with this book but so many weird coincidences and synchronicities have been sparked within these walls while reading this story that I feel Jonathan Carroll was speaking directly to me and that in some unfathomable but strangely comforting way the weirdness of the story has been leaking out of the pages into my own reality. I love this book. It is the best of his I have read to date and has gone straight into my Top 10. I felt empathy, I felt humour, I felt confusion and I ran scared from the Universe while reading this book. But the words that followed every experience made it all alright again. I am in awe of this man's gifts as a storyteller and as an artist. I don't think he's human. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
That book has left me emotionally drained and a little bit scared. I haven't had such an intense and disorienting reading experience in years. Like a white lightning bolt to the pleasure centres of the brain. I wonder did Claire go back to him? So it's strangely relaxing to get back into the cosy charms of Holmes & Watson and, even more oddly, the romantic horror of Derek Raymond again. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I'm in the mood to be terrified so starting into 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' (2002) as well. Do your worst, Mr Campbell. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.10.168 |
That's a good one, Stevie. One of Ramsey's most thoughtful and atmospheric novels, quite low-key but beautifully integrated. And it's quite Lovecraftian without doing any predictable 'mythos' things. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Funny you talking about 'mythos' things, Joel. 'Outside The Dog Museum' [a novel you're all going to get sick of hearing me talk about] is just about the most atypical Cthulu mythos [misspelling intentional] novel I have ever read - yet it remains essentially true to Lovecraft's vision. The use of that name, at a time when I was thinking how different from Lovecraft the likes of Carroll is, was just one of the many spooky moments I had when reading that novel. Maybe he was subliminally influencing me that time, but not every time... I'm still getting that "there are more things in heaven and earth" feeling every time I think about that incredible novel. The first couple of chapters of TDPOTW are indeed wonderfully atmospheric, filled with subtly creepy intimations of doom, and how pleasing it is to see Ramsey return to the world of Brichester after all these years! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.145.215.43 |
Darkest Part of the Woods is awesome. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.145.215.43 |
Literally. Not in the modern lazy usage of that word. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Incidentally, is it Britch-ister or Bry-chester? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
**** SPOILERS **** Just finished 'Dead Man Upright'... Jesus, what a sick, fucked up book! I think this one might even top 'I Was Dora Suarez' as far as getting inside the mind of the killer goes. Where the hell did Raymond do his research for this? The final chapters comprise a series of dispassionate in-depth interviews with Ronald Jidney (alias Henry Cross/Drury/Rich) and represent the closest thing I have read to creating a truly believable psychopathic monster in print. This is a harmless looking little old man well in his sixties, one of those grey individuals who blends into a crowd without being noticed, who has been seducing and murdering vulnerable single women all his life. Doing the most unspeakable things to them, after months of winning their trust, none of the sickening details of which does the author spare us. I feel like I need a bath after reading this book. It's magnificently written and full of shattering insights and deep humanity but, Christ... That's the Factory Series completed but I know it's not the last time I'll read these books. Horror literature has never been more devastating and in the unnamed Detective Sergeant narrator Derek Raymond created one of the most immortal, and painfully human, heroes in crime fiction. I will miss his voice. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Replacing DMU with that Australian horror novel I came across the other day, 'The Doubleman' (1985) by C.J. Koch. It sounds fascinating. Like a cross between 'Faust' and the classic tale of the doppelgänger mixing elements of aboriginal mysticism and set in 1950s Tasmania and 1960s Sydney it follows the career of a mysteriously gifted folk-rock band called The Rymers who: "Offered access to a world of illusion and enthralment. Marrying the ancestral energies of immigrant ballads to the faeryworld of the European occult, they seemed to embody the questing religious spirit of a decade. But as the group stood on the threshold of international stardom, the darker side of enchantment started to assert its presence." Graham Greene loved it and the opening pages are beautifully written and not a little haunting so I've high hopes for this one. Meanwhile I'm 8 chapters into 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' and absolutely bloody loving it! This is what Ramsey does best. Slow build, insidiously creepy supernatural horror shot through with an overwhelming sense of dread that has one fearing desperately for the beautifully drawn characters. Quite wonderful so far and joyously retro in style. Love the Lovecraftian chapter headings. Reading this book is like getting reacquainted with an old friend - who happens to scare the crap out of me! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.20.64 |
Sorry, Stevie - missed your question! It's britch, not bry. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Thanks, Ramsey. Loved the little girls' description of "the sticky man". A childhood bogeyman of my own was Peter Geekie, the stick man, that my grandad used to frighten us kids with. Your description is almost exactly as I imagined him, his twig fingers scraping at the windowpane during the night. I reckon that's why Jan Svankmajer's film 'Little Otik' frightened me witless. Animated wood, twig fingers, shudder... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
A good chunk of the way through 'The Doubleman' and it's a beautifully written epic, with all the captivating immediacy and attention to detail of Stephen King and the dense literary quality, seeming to lay bare the characters' souls, of Graham Greene. The opening encounter with the mysterious man in black, with the odd limp, happens to the first person narrator as a boy in Hobart, Tasmania, in the late 1940s, as he is recovering from a paralysing attack of polio that leaves one of his legs permanently wasted. We then follow him and various friends through their brutal school years, taught by Christian Brothers and the terrifying Brother Kinsella, to the verge of entering college, with attention paid to his hero-worshipping friendship with rebellious older boy, Brian Brady, and various odd little incidents that show the hero glimpses of the Otherworld beyond our own - a state of existence he finds both bewitching and frightening but cannot help but be drawn to. Fascination with magic and the occult follows until the reappearance of the dark man, revealed as a Mr Broderick, or just Brod, who introduces his best friend, Brady, to music through the gift of an expensive Spanish guitar made by one of the great masters. Private lessons for Brady follow that our hero is forbidden from and his feelings of ill omen increase as he witnesses the gradual withdrawal and growing obsession of his previously fun loving friend. I can't emphasise enough the richly beautiful quality of the prose here and the overpowering sense of place and time the author achieves. You can smell the salt spray and hear the gulls in Hobart harbour and feel the sting of the leather strap, Doctor Black, cracking down on those boys' hands. This is a marvellous book! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Finished 'His Last Bow' (1917) and found it as thrilling as ever, containing at least three of my favourite stories so far. The title story was a bit lightweight and obvious I thought but with a poignant ending. Will shuffle the eight stories into their respective places when I get a chance. Now it's back to Bryant & May with their supernatural horror debut, 'Darkest Day' (1993). Fowler doesn't include this book in the official series and completely rewrote the bones of it for 'Seventy-Seven Clocks' (2005). Should be interesting. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
"The Clearing" by Tom Gautreaux, a novel set in a timber-felling camp near New Orleans in the early 1920s. I finished it this morning. Just read it, nuff said. Cheers Terry | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Reading about Hollywood developing THE GALTON CASE into a film put me into the mood for some Ross McDonald, so I picked up one of his that revolves around Hollywood: THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE (1951). Already 1/3 of the way through it, and eating up every page. To me, the way it will always go, is: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald.... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.249 |
Tons of criticism on . . . art criticism, for an assignment. Gawd, what drivel. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'm taking longer than I ever have done to finish a Paul Auster novel. Mind you that's not the fault of the Auster - it's because the lines for my next play (Tomb with a View 28th - 31st March at Harvey St Methodist church Bolton) weren't sticking so I had to force myself not to read anything but my lines for the past week and a half. It's been agony, not being able to read for pleasure; combine that with not drinking (given up alcohol for Lent) and I've had a torturous couple of weeks. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
"Tomb With a View"...I saw that a few years go. it made me think of "The Addams Family". so all he best.I know what you mean about lines. I used to read the amatuer boards and learning lines was always the bad bit of an otherwise fantastic exeprience. I Directed as well, has its own heartaches but at least you can keep hold of the script throughout! Cheers Terry | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
The last play I did was a pleasure to learn. The lines went straight in with no problem and I pretty much knew it with 6 weeks to go - an that was a bigger part than the one I'm doing now (despite the fact that I'm one of only 3 characters still alive on the final page). This one's a real struggle. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.214 |
Gotta suffer for our art, Marc! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Did I mention that Tomb with a View is on from 28th-31st of March at Harvey Street Methodist Church in Bolton? Tickets are a very reasonable £6. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
http://halliwelltheatrecompany.com/page2.html | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I agree that one must suffer for one's art, Weber. So if you'd like, I can beat your head in with a Jackson Pollock. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
can you make it a battered pollock from Jackson's chippy round the corner instead, and just let me eat it? I'm bloody starving. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Mr Fry, Can you edit Craig's post so it says he'll batter me with the painting, then the joke works even better. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
How's about I just bust your head in? (Get it? "Bust"?) | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
At least I don't have to point out when I'm making a joke... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Finished the Ross McDonald. I'm tempted to list it in the top 3 of all the novels I've read by him, but perhaps it's just sheer ecstasy at the freshness of the experience. Chandler spun nicely what Hammett in essence created... but McDonald honed it, and I'm tempted to say, perfected it. I do so hope Hollywood does a good job with this author.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.102.68.98 |
Weber, no amount of editing can make Craig funny. We all know that. We just have to tolerate him. Mind you, that joke he tells about Michael Bay being good is pretty hilarious. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
It ws my joke I was looking to improve - just gives it a more relevant feed line before my already epically funny punchline. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Nearly finished 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' and it's been the most purely pleasurable of Ramsey's supernatural horror novels since the 80s, imo. A real compulsive page-turner and a masterclass in the subtly escalating terror of suggestion. The man is on fire in this book! Quite wonderful!! Also nearly two thirds through the equally addictive and sublimely beautiful Australian dark fantasy, 'The Doubleman' by C.J. Koch. The action has moved to Sydney where the narrator now works in radio production and has completely lost touch with his boyhood friend, though he hears talk of him doing well on the folk music circuit. Strange incidents and individuals still haunt him in a way that is not unlike the effect of a Jonathan Carroll story but more subtle and ethereal. The perceptions of the Otherworld and dark forebodings about Mr Broderick could all be the invention of a troubled mind, given over to the world of daydreams by his long bout of paralysis as a child stricken with polio, that fed into his adolescent fascination with the occult and made him the strange faraway young man he has become... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Nearly finished 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' and it's been the most purely pleasurable of Ramsey's supernatural horror novels since the 80s, imo. A real compulsive page-turner and a masterclass in the subtly escalating terror of suggestion. The man is on fire in this book! Quite wonderful!! It's definitely up there with "top Ramsey" as far as I'm concerned. Of his recent books my personal favourite is 'The Grin of the Dark', which is quite magnificent, although that's a hard choice as each one in the last decade or so has been wonderful. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
8 chapters into 'Darkest Day' and finding it a weird experience with all the differences from the official Bryant & May series. The story is set in the early 90s and the two leads are much younger than he was to subsequently make them. The rewrite, 'Seventy-Seven Clocks', was reset in 1973. Also there is no Peculiar Crimes Unit and, so far, only one of the familiar supporting characters that make the series so wonderful - the creepy, death-loving coroner, Oswald Finch. Add to that less emphasis on character comedy and the introduction of incontrovertibly supernatural horror - of the undead variety - from Page 1 and the whole tone of the book couldn't be more different. This is still a wildly enjoyable and genuinely scary horror yarn, that is different enough to be re-read easily, but that isn't the Bryant & May I have come to know and love. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
And now it's time to round up those Sherlock Holmes rankings: 1. The Valley Of Fear – 4th NOVEL 2. The Hound Of The Baskervilles - 3rd NOVEL 3. A Study In Scarlet - 1st NOVEL 4. The Copper Beeches - ADVENTURES 5. The Musgrave Ritual - MEMOIRS 6. The Speckled Band - ADVENTURES 7. The Bruce-Partington Plans - BOW 8. The Six Napoleons - RETURN 9. Charles Augustus Milverton - RETURN 10. The Cardboard Box - BOW 11. The Greek Interpreter - MEMOIRS 12. The Sign Of Four - 2nd NOVEL 13. The Dying Detective - BOW 14. The Abbey Grange - RETURN 15. The Dancing Men - RETURN 16. Silver Blaze - MEMOIRS 17. Black Peter - RETURN 18. The Gloria Scott - MEMOIRS 19. The Second Stain - RETURN 20. The Naval Treaty - MEMOIRS 21. The Devil’s Foot - BOW 22. The Final Problem - MEMOIRS 23. The Yellow Face - MEMOIRS 24. Wisteria Lodge - BOW 25. The Boscombe Valley Mystery - ADVENTURES 26. A Scandal In Bohemia - ADVENTURES 27. The Missing Three-Quarter - RETURN 28. The Resident Patient - MEMOIRS 29. The Golden Pince-Nez - RETURN 30. The Priory School - RETURN 31. The Norwood Builder - RETURN 32. The Red Circle - BOW 33. The Three Students - RETURN 34. The Beryl Coronet - ADVENTURES 35. The Reigate Squires - MEMOIRS 36. The Five Orange Pips - ADVENTURES 37. The Engineer's Thumb - ADVENTURES 38. The Disappearance Of Lady Frances Carfax - BOW 39. The Stockbroker’s Clerk - MEMOIRS 40. The Blue Carbuncle - ADVENTURES 41. The Solitary Cyclist - RETURN 42. The Crooked Man - MEMOIRS 43. The Red Headed League - ADVENTURES 44. The Empty House - RETURN 45. His Last Bow - BOW 46. The Man With The Twisted Lip - ADVENTURES 47. A Case Of Identity - ADVENTURES 48. The Noble Bachelor - ADVENTURES Only 'The Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes' (1927) left to read and that's your lot. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
...I'm beginning to think I'm turning into gcw... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
TDPOTW is magnificent, Mick. I'm into the closing chapters and almost afraid to read on. Ramsey hasn't affected me this intensely since around the time of 'The Influence' or 'Midnight Sun'. And now I'm off to brave the finish. Pray for me... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Finished 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' in bed last night and that penultimate chapter has to be one of the most nightmarish passages of literature Ramsey has ever written, with a marvellously Jamesian denouement of flesh-crawling physical horror. And that chilling coda with the story come full circle... Needless to say I didn't sleep too well afterward. I have no doubt it'll be insidious frighteners like this one that Ramsey's future reputation will rest upon. One of his very best! As that's put me in the mood to be scared witless some more I've decided to re-read Robert Marasco's 'Burnt Offerings' (1973) and already started back into my Horror Anthos last night with 'Oriental Tales Of Terror' (1971) edited by J.J. Strating. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.51.159 |
Where do you buy your Campbells, Stevie? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Amazon Marketplace & AbeBooks, Hubert. I am now looking for a copy of 'The Overnight' to continue my chrono read of the great man's works. | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 193.113.57.161 |
I rate 'Darkest Part of the Woods' as one of Ramsey's best Stevie (That I've read so far). That wonderful Lovecraftian climax in the Woods when the cosmic 'thing' is trying to cross over was bone chilling. Then there was the stick man !! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Totally agree, Sean. It's the best traditional horror novel I've read in a while and perhaps the finest modern channeling of Lovecraft's vision. Loved the reference to M.R. James' Count Magnus as well. I think if Heather had carried that hideous child-thing out of the woods that would have completed the transference and it was the sticky man (or "scrabbly" lol) wearing Sam's face that lured her along. A really great read! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
A few chapters into 'Burnt Offerings' and it's every bit as good as I remembered. A genuine horror classic of its period that is as effective and well written as 'Rosemary's Baby', 'The Exocist' or 'Harvest Home'. Wonderfully chilling in ways that the excellent film version could only hint at. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.26.174 |
The Life of My Choice - Wilfred Thesiger | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
I think we've put enough distance between now and these later Ramsey novels to judge them well. And frankly, The Overnight, DPotW, Creatures of the Pool, GotD and Thieving Fear burn in my mind more powerfully than much of his earlier stuff. I think it's the prose more than anything else than elevates them. They're just plain weird, with a language to match. Neither Lovecarft nor Blackwood got anywhere near matching this command of prose. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.18.209 |
Just finished the Paul Auster - brookly follies - and as usual it was an excellent and engrossing read. Not quite up there with Mr Vertigo which is by far and away my favourite of his books that I've read so far but still up there with the best that fiction has to offer. Stevie, if Jonathan Carroll has the effect you decribed earlier this thread, you have to read Mr Vertigo and New york trilogy by Auster. You have no choice in the matter. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I'm waiting till I get paid again to order the last two of Carroll's sextet along with 'The Overnight' and some of the later Alan Garner works I haven't read yet, Weber. And, thanks to Ramsey, I'm also going to seek out the three 1940s novels of John Franklin Bardin. Also got 'A Voyage To Arcturus' to read, thanks to Craig, and the last of Sherlock Holmes and Bryant & May ('The Memory Of Blood' is out in paperback at the end of the month!!) along with a chrono read of the Jim Thompson novels I have and Gene Wolfe's 'Soldier Trilogy' (again need to order 2 & 3). Then 'Dombey And Son' is looming large in my mind of late as a personal tribute to Dickens on his bicentenary. Sheesh... Auster may get a once over at some stage but it won't be anytime soon. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.154.251.239 |
The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.130.85.219 |
Just about to start on Drop Dead Gorgeous by Wayne Simmons. I need a fix of some uncomplicated zombie action. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 119.56.127.48 |
Enjoying Alastair Reynolds' novels these days. Mindblowing stuff, well plotted and often rather dark. I am experiencing a sense of fatigue with the weird/horror genre and Reynolds offers a welcome change of scenery for me | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I got that feeling about this time last year, Tom, and largely gave my horror reads a rest for most of 2011 by concentrating on crime and high fantasy. I've now come back to horror refreshed and would recommend regular breaks to any fan. Variety is the spice of life. Works like 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods', 'Burnt Offerings' & 'Oriental Tales Of Terror' have me wanting to overdose on the macabre again. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Only pages left of 'The Doubleman'. It is a fantastic book, unlike anything else I have read and almost unclassifiable. At a push I'd describe it as a dark psychological fantasy dealing in the hinterland of the imagination where faery lore and western occultism meets aboriginal myth in the mind of the troubled narrator. Everything we see and experience is through the senses of a young dreamer - left physically and mentally scarred by a long bout of polio as an over-imaginative child - and he sees the world and everyone in it as Double. He sees people, places and objects as made up of their surface reality in the world of matter and their true nature as they exist in the Otherworld. His judgements are all dangerously skewed by this over-reliance on reading symbols in everything and the people he cares about are one-by-one sucked into this whirlpool of illusion and double meaning, while certain manipulative individuals play ruthlessly on his "weakness". There is an intensity of characterisation throughout and an overwhelming sense of dread and impending tragedy in these final chapters that is the equal of anything Graham Greene achieved - including 'The Heart Of The Matter'. Comparisons are entirely justified and I would now rank C.J. Koch as one of the great novelists of modern times. This masterpiece is chilling and profound in a way that far transcends the boundaries of genre. It's a right brick of a book but I got through it in a week and a half. Highly recommended!! Will start straight into 'Red Shift' as soon as I've finished it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Finished it. Elevate what I said a couple of notches. I don't think I've ever experienced the supernatural in literature dealt with so delicately, ambiguously and definitively. Nor with such insight as to how it affects the human spirit and each individual differently. Will I re-read this book? I won't be able to help myself. Who was the Fool and who was the Elf-maiden but most importantly who was the Devil? A magnificent feat of the imagination. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It was also profoundly moving. The scene in which the narrator finally gives up his innate prejudice against the Catholic church of his boyhood and goes to mass in a state of heartbroken confusion had me quietly sobbing in recognition. The responses come back to him automatically after more than 20 years and the sense of community he experiences, and knows his intelligence can never let him rejoin (reality has come crashing in by this stage and fantasy has fled screaming), make him bow his head to hide his silent weeping, while the congregation parade past him to receive their piece of bread. He envies these people the comfort of their fantasies and their God. Literature doesn't get any better than this. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Speaking of Harold Bloom: I've secured and started his latest, THE SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK, Bloom's critical along-side reading of portions of the King James Bible. Probably dry reading for some, but to me, this is like candy! (I'm of course hiding the slumming I've emerged from, reading Sara Paretsky's DEADLOCK [1984], a brain-on-hold, thoroughly undistinguished, convention-bound and [stale, but still] popcorn V.I. Warshawski mystery. I don't want to admit publicly I give in to such lit, and enjoy it, so I read it on the sly and don't say anything to anyone, only popping up to tout the highfalutin' stuff later on... I have a reputation to uphold, after all....) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Cripple Creek by James Sallis. Dived straight into this after reading Cyprus Grove. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Just over halfway through 'Burnt Offerings' and things are really starting to crank up. This is a masterclass in how to shamelessly scare the wits out of the reader. From the spine-chilling scene setting of Chapters 3 & 4 - the interview with creepily eccentric Roz Allardyce & "Brother" - to Marian's first visit to "Mother's room" with that ominous unseen presence behind the strangely carved door. And all those oddly posed photos and the low, insistent humming. I'd forgotten how unmistakeably Lovecraftian the book is and what about those strange shapes seen swinging and loping through the trees as they gradually converge on the long drive through the estate that separates them from the civilisation of New York... just a couple of hours drive away and in another world completely. A criminally neglected masterpiece of raw, terrifying Horror at its most primally effective!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'Red Shift' at lunchtime with a quivering lip and that feeling of the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Except I haven't quite finished it yet and will be rummaging for my complete Lewis Carroll tonight to find out whether... you know. Mag-fucking-bloody-nificent!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
And now the time is long overdue to start into 'The Right Hand Of Doom And Other Tales Of Solomon Kane' by the one-and-only best pulp fantasy writer who has ever lived, Robert E. Howard. This will be a first complete read of all the SK stories for me, so I'm rather excited. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'Burnt Offerings' last night in a page flicking frenzy, hair on end, sweating, wide-eyed, terrified, inwardly screaming for them to escape... don't remember going to bed. Strangely, this morning, the book doesn't seem to have as many creases as when I rescued it from that bin for 50p. And I'm sure I remember warped pages and water stains. The spine is still broken at least. But maybe it can be repaired... where's my iron? Nothing else seems important. Weird. Maybe it needs a new owner... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Send it to me, I'll trade you a sturgeon | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
That's a cheap price you put on your soul, Weber. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
It was with no little measure of relief that I opened Robert E. Howard's 'The Right Hand Of Doom' collection, as a sanity restoring antidote to David Lindsay's weird and wonderful odyssey, and within a few pages I was gripped by the introduction of the 16th Century Puritan avenger of the innocent, and smiter of the wicked, Solomon Kane, in "Red Shadows" (1928). The story begins in rural France with the pillaging of a village and the horrific rape and murder of a young girl by the notorious bandit leader, Le Loup, and his unholy crew, whom Kane then vows to track down and destroy, to a man. From there he comes across as a period proto-Batman figure, whispered of by the bad guys as "no man" but the very Devil himself. A merciless creature of the shadows who tracks the gang from France through Spain to Italy and by ship to the dark coast of West Africa, striking at will and picking them off one-by-one, while encountering voodoo witchdoctors, the walking dead, a negro giant with arms and legs like tree trunks and huge man-killing mountain apes along the way, before the final, brilliantly written, sword fight with the master swordsman, Le Loup, himself. I'm really going to enjoy these sublimely uncomplicated, thrilling and gritty action/adventure stories over the coming nights. The imagery is superb and the storytelling as refreshingly un-PC as is possible to imagine. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
The following three Solomon Kane tales - "Skulls In The Stars" (1929), "The Right Hand Of Doom" (unpublished until 1968) & "The Rattle Of Bones" (1929) - are all short and sweet classically structured gothic horror stories of revenge from beyond the grave, by; a homicidally insane ghost lashing out at all mortals who come within its sphere of influence [as encountered in 'The Woman In Black' & 'Ju-On : The Grudge'], the animated severed hand of a betrayed black magician [as perfected by Guy de Maupassant, William F. Harvey & Clark Ashton Smith] & the reanimated skeleton of another, murdered, black magician [shades of Ray Harryhausen]. Wonderful stuff that I'm surprised none of which have been more extensively anthologised in horror collections. Interestingly, in all three, Kane is cast very much as the observer of supernatural dramas he happens to stumble upon in his wanderings. Although, in the first, his execution of summary justice is every bit as chilling as the actions of the ghost! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.156.186.166 |
Just finished Drop Dead Gorgeous by Wayne Simmons. It's certainly not a contender for any serious literary prizes but it left me wanting more. It's an unusual little zombie noveland I'll certainly be purchasing the new sequel - Doll parts which is released very soon. I need a fix of King next but I'm not sure whether to go for Lisey's Story, 11:23:62 or Dreamcatcher. or even The Colorado Kid... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I must be one of the few people I know who actually rather enjoyed the movie version of 'Dreamcatcher'. It got universally panned but I'd consider it one of the better King adaptations of recent years. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Is LISEY'S STORY the one about the girl lost in the woods? The (relatively, for King) shorter novel? If so, I liked it, it was pretty good. But maybe I'm thinking of another one by him.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Lisey's Story' is a brick of a book. You're thinking of 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon'. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ah, yes. Thanks, Stevie. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.136.143 |
Decided to start on 11:22:63 instead | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.136.143 |
When I finish this it'll be Dexter is Delicious and I'll follow that up with the first of the Dresden Files (either Hunter's moon or Fools gold - I can't remember off the top of my head.) | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.155.216.166 |
100 pages into 11:22:63 and lovin' it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Just read 'The Moon Of Skulls' (1930) from the Solomon Kane collection. While I mostly enjoyed the action of the story as I was reading it - especially the cyclopean imagery and the action set pieces - there was something not quite right about the yarn. Howard was always a populist author but with a fiercely uncompromising vision that raised his material far above the run of the mill. Yet in this story of Kane spending years tracking down a poor abducted little white girl orphan and bringing to an end an aeons long empire of evil in the process I could detect nothing more than a blatant attempt to woo Hollywood. The plot is melodramatic and unlikely in the extreme and beset by miraculous lucky escapes and coincidences to an ultimately unsatisfactory degree but the final quoting of scripture and endorsement of a Christian god, while perfectly in character, as the reason for these lapses of literary logic has me convinced that Howard was going through that period, that comes to all great artists, of being tempted by the big time and attempting to shoe-horn his vision into a box marked "even my mum would like this one". I will forgive him this once. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
My persistence with moldy old detective novels continues - I must be depressed or something - with Ed McBain's Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here (1971), so far actually a superbly written ensemble/multi-storied novel (a new experience for me!). Never read a full McBain/Hunter novel before, but yes indeed, he's quite a writer. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The last two Solomon Kane stories have raised the collection to a whole new level. What went before was wildly entertaining but still somewhat juvenile pulp fantasy but 'The Hills Of The Dead' (1930) & 'The Footfalls Within' (1931) are of an entirely higher order and show a marked leap forward in confidence and storytelling skill for Howard. They represent a dark crystalising of his vision and tighter control over the internal logic of the tales that looks forward to the mature masterpieces of his final years that he will always be remembered for. THOTD is a cracking red-blooded mix of vampire/flesh-eating zombie tale with truly startling imagery for the time that wasn't to be realised visually until Romero's zombie epics turned such scenes of attack by ravening hordes of the undead into something of a cliché. While TFW is pure Lovecraftian horror that reads like a more compact variation on the nightmare climax to 'The Call Of Cthulhu' as a band of Arab slavers break into an aeons old tomb uncovered in the jungles of darkest Africa and unleash the unnameable unspeakable abomination imprisoned within... with which Kane must do battle. Howard's enthusiastic aping of Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror is particularly entertaining but his mastery of the fight sequences makes the story superb. This is turning out very much a book of two halves... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Just read the novella 'Wings In The Night' (1932) - completely magnificent! If Solomon Kane had appeared in no other of Robert E. Howard's stories this one would still be talked about as a one-off masterpiece of blood-drenched and genuinely frightening fantasy/horror. Those cackling, skinny, vicious winged nightmares will haunt my dreams tonight... brilliant!! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.34.133 |
Finished Simon Bestwick's The Faceless, which (as I've said elsewhere) I loved. Now well into Pete Atkins "Rumours of the Marvellous", which is shaping up to be an excellent collection. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Stevie – yes, 'Wings in the Night' is one of Howard's most grim and disturbed (as well as disturbing) stories. Like the Conan story 'Queen of the Black Coast', it reflects the depth of grief that Howard was able to evoke. The closing page is a howl of rage and pain that resonates through the decades. And Howard's sentimental portrait of the innocent tribe, though patronising to a modern reader, contrasts starkly with Lovecraft's hatred of non-white races. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I loved how Howard got inside the mindset of the natives and made it painfully understandable, even to a Puritan like Kane, how they had come to the dreadful decision that sacrificing one of their own each full moon to the bat things was the lesser evil in order to save the majority. The tribal witchdoctor, Goru, was set up to be yet another monstrous black magician but Howard brilliantly confounded our expectations by making him a tragic figure - a kindly man by nature who is haunted by the awful necessity of his actions. Solomon Kane comes of age in this marvellous tale and learns humility... in stark contrast to the dogmatic character of 'The Moon Of Skulls'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Two thirds through Christopher Fowler's 'Darkest Day' and the differences between it and the official rewrite, 'Seventy-Seven Clocks', are becoming ever more stark. This is an extremely dark and disturbing supernatural horror novel with a murder investigation background in which the amateur detective heroine is as central as those venerable detectives, Bryant & May, whereas 'Clocks' was a perfectly balanced mix of police procedural murder mystery, often hilarious character comedy and just the right amount of horror of the "is it or is it not supernatural" variety. For die-hard horror fans DD would be easily the more satisfying work - it really is horrific - but I believe SSC shows greater maturity and mastery of the novel form being the more rounded and entertaining book, rather than the watered down sell-out I could see some of his older horror fans believing it is. It was a brave decision to rewrite and I believe he pulled it off but still there are unrelentingly grim elements from this earlier "draft" that I can't help feeling a pang of regret he didn't incorporate. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished the Solomon Kane collection at lunchtime today. The last two stories, 'Blades Of The Brotherhood' & 'Death's Black Riders' (both unpublished until 1968), couldn't be more different. BOTB is as thrilling a slice of pulp swashbuckling action as Howard ever wrote and is noteworthy as the only one of the tales to be set in Kane's native England and that does not incorporate some element of the supernatural. Instead we have an almost Stevensonian tale of smugglers, pirates, wicked landowners, poor abused peasants and a couple of doomed lovers torn apart by cruel fate... until a mysterious black-garbed stranger appears in their midst and sets about evening up the score. Kane has never appeared more magnificently heroic than here and his pages long knife-fight with the pirate leader, Hawk, is one of the most pulse-poundingly exciting and grim death struggles I can remember reading anywhere. Remember the knuckle whitening knife-fight in 'Saving Private Ryan' and imagine that in prose form x10. Quite wonderful! DBR, on the other hand, is a mere page long haunting little coda to the book that seems somehow an apt way for this indomitable agent of implacable justice to make his final bow. Felled by Death on a mighty steed. Three short poems are included in the appendix that are really only notable for the tantalising extra details they provide of Kane's background. Howard was first and foremost a master of visceral action prose, shot through with a haunting vein of fatalism, and it is for that that he will always be revered as one of the kings of fantasy. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Here's how I'd rank the ten stories: 1. 'Wings In The Night' (1932) 2. 'Blades Of The Brotherhood' (?) 3. 'The Footfalls Within' (1931) 4. 'The Hills Of The Dead' (1930) 5. 'Red Shadows' (1928) 6. 'Skulls In The Stars' (1929) 7. 'The Rattle Of Bones' (1929) 8. 'The Right Hand Of Doom' (?) 9. 'Death's Black Riders' (?) 10. 'The Moon Of Skulls' (1930) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Time to have another go at finishing Poe's 'Arthur Gordon Pym' which I found myself bogged down again with at around the same point as last time. It really is a heavily flawed work, imo. Soon be finished 'Darkest Day' and thoroughly enjoying its reminder of what an uncompromising horror writer Fowler was in his early days. This book reads like Bryant & May trapped in some hellish alternate reality where the laughs are few and death stalks the pages like a blood-crazed predator. Then it's on to the last of Sherlock Holmes. Taking my time with 'Oriental Tales Of Terror' and currently six stories in. A fascinating mixture of modern western tales, fearfully looking in from outside (Maugham's 'The Taipan' & Kipling's 'The Mark Of The Beast', etc), and traditional weird ghost stories of the region that emerge from the mists of time like messages from an alien world ('The Forty-Seven Ronins' & 'The Inn At Ts’ia-Tien', etc). J.J. Strating did an excellent job of editing this one. Also really taking my time with the dense allegorical imagery of David Lindsay's 'A Voyage To Arcturus'. At first sight this appears a slim book that shouldn't take too long to get through but I'm finding that every chapter demands to be read slowly and then re-read or one becomes quickly lost in the plethora of allusions. Or maybe that's just me, being the kind of person who can't casually read a new word or reference without having to know exactly what it means... God help me if I ever get round to 'Ulysses'!! Next up I'm trying to decide between; Jonathan Carroll's 'After Silence' (1992), Ramsey's 'The Overnight' (2004) or a first read of John Franklin Bardin, with his debut, 'The Deadly Percheron' (1946). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
More urgent, Stevie, is the need for you to revise your Solomon Kane story list in order to place 'Skulls in the Stars' among the top three. Everything – the decaying nocturnal scenery, the opening dialogue (that "So?" effectively defines the genre of weird-heroic fantasy at one stroke), the grim mood of the final scene – announces Howard's arrival as the young Godfather of pulp. It's an offer the reader can't refuse. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.78.142 |
Would you believe I've never read "Skulls in the Stars"? I see it's on Gutenberg, so I'll make amends soon. Doesn't seem to be a long text. I remember first reading "Wings in the Night" quite vividly. The picture of the poor victim being tortured to death (but slowly) will stay with me forever. I'm not so sure Howard was any less 'racialist' than Lovecraft, however. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I agree it's easily the best of the short horror stories, Joel, but the five longer tales I placed above it, most of them novella length mini-epics, just have the edge, imo. The quality throughout the collection is exceptional in the field of pulp fiction with even the Hollywood flavoured melodramatic excess of 'The Moon Of Skulls' still providing a surfeit of guilty thrills (the fight on the rope bridge, etc). I believe the three short and more-or-less straight horror tales - 'Skulls In The Stars', 'The Rattle Of Bones' & 'The Right Hand Of Doom' - deserve to be more widely anthologised in horror collections. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.61.55 |
While still racing through 11:22:63 I'm also dipping in and out of Jon McGregor's first short story collection - This isn't the sort of thing that happens to people like you. Some of the storries are fantastic. Keeping Watch on the Sheep left me feeling like I'd been punched in the guts but some of them feel a bit too gimmicky for my taste (The title of the book is longer than one of the stories for example and another story has prose poetry filling all the odd numbered pages while the main narrative fills the even). However, when the experimentalism isn't as much to the fore, there are real treats in here. McGregor is capable of evoking real characters and emotions with deceptive ease. I'm 10 stories through and it's mainly a winner - with reservations though. When I've finished it I will post more. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
In the last few days I've finished TIME AND AGAIN by Jack Finney, and (read in less than two days, something I rarely manage these days) John Christopher's THE DEATH OF GRASS. The former is a fairly unique time travel story in which travel into the past is accomplished not by use of a scientific device, but by steeping yourself in the period in question, then living in a place unchanged by history (the Dakota building in New York in this case) and kind of hypnotising yourself into believing you are now in the era you want to journey to. This, and the extremely well-researched evocation of New York circa 1882 are the book's standout qualities. I did think it suffered from a slightly weak central mystery, though. The latter is, I think, the most savage 50's disaster novel I have ever read. Where John Wyndham's main characters tend to use their English reserve as a weapon against the dreadful situations they encounter, here this is the first thing to go. The main characters descend into murder and the most primal of survival instincts with chilling swiftness. What makes it all the scarier is that their actions are driven mostly by rumour and hearsay (they, and we, rarely see directly the primary threat that drives them to flee London - indeed, the novel remains ambiguous as to whether the threat was real, or if it was carried out at all). An excellent piece of work. No idea what I'll read next... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I read 'The Death Of Grass' for the first time last year and it went straight into my Top 10-20 novels of all time. When I make statements like that they are always considered and honest. Everyone on this site - and who loves genre fiction - needs to read it. One of the defining works of the 20th Century written in cold dispassionate prose that hot-wires each successive scene of naturalistic horror into the memory like the most primal of scary fairy-tales heard as a child. Nuff said. As for what I've decided to start from my new novels... there was never any real competition, and I say that with full respect for the other authors in contention. Jonathan Carroll is a hopeless addiction. The authorial equivalent of crack cocaine. 'Outside The Dog Museum' is the best novel I have read so far this year but not in any way I can begin to quantify... it got under my skin, it fucked with my brain, it opened the doors to perception. I'm about to start 'After Silence' and I'm shivering with anticipation and a very real fear unlike anything I have experienced in literature before. I say again, "the man is not human." | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Continuing on my grand tour of old mysteries, having now finished Tony Hillerman's second novel, Dance Hall of the Dead (1973), winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel from that year. I only decided to read a full book by him, having been so impressed with his editing of Best Mysteries of the Century (2000): anyone who's this finely read, can only be a fine writer himself, I reasoned. I was right: the novel's mystery was a tad predictable (to me), but what sets this apart, is its amazing depth of characters—this is on the other side really from the "mystery" subgenre altogether, crossing really over into mainstream lit; creating desperate and vulnerable people in its brief length, that believe it or not really pull at the heartstrings. The novel paints a strange world of American Indian "gods and demons," and contains a shockingly bleak ending... an ending far darker than I imagined it would be. So: another find! Of an author to put down there on future TBR lists.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
'After Silence' has started off far too cheerfully. Knowing Carroll as I do, and bearing in mind the deceptively matter-of-fact opening paragraph, this fact has me scared fucking rigid. Please let it be okay, please let it be okay... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Cheerful? It opens with the lead character holding a gun to a teenage boy's head and contemplating "How much does a life weigh?" - will the boy lose any weight on the moment he pullds the trigger? How exactly is that cheerful? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
That's what I was talking about, Weber. The opening paragraph primes us for something unimaginable. The narrator is calmly contemplating shooting his son in the head. Then we're into flashback mode and the most funny and life-affirming sequence of events I have read in any of Carroll's novels. It's a beautiful love story and all the characters, particularly Max, the narrator, are instantly likeable in that quirky but convincing way the author excels at. Compare that to the opening of 'Outside The Dog Museum' with its arrogant tosser of a narrator and grim descent into madness and disaster and then think about how that book pans out. I feel my emotions may well be in for a kicking with this one and I would actually like the joy of the opening to continue and everything to work out for these people. That's one of the things that makes Carroll's books so damn addictive... you never know where he's going to take you and his characters next and his endings cover the entire spectrum of life's denouements. When he's being this nice at the beginning of a book I start to quake. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
"The Lovely Bones" just started, 70 pages in and stunned by the tragic beauty and stark unflinching honesty of the novel. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
What did you think of Peter Jackson's film version, Terry? I really hated it. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
The Lovely Bones made me cry more than once. A stunning book (I think I'm one of the few fans of the film and the book). | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
Stevie I haven't seen the film so I'm afraid I can't comment. If I really love a book I usually avoid the film, e.g. "The Time Traveller's Wife" and "Captain Corelli's Fender Stratocastor" Cheers Terry | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Having read Iain Banks' new novel, STONEMOUTH, over the long weekend, I'm now starting Reggie Oliver's THE DRACULA PAPERS Book 1: The Scholar's Tale. Quite the romp so far. Keen to see how it develops. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.128.208.99 |
I struggled to see The Lovely Bones as a horror story when I read the book - despite the fact that it won a major horror award. However, the film contained a few scenes which for me at least were from the realms of a nightmare - particularly her death scene - the escape and realisation as the fields started surging as if they were the sea that she hadn't made it. I could understand teh awards once I'd seen the film. The girl doing the voiceover in the film did grate at times but visually it was stunning. | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 92.26.207.180 |
I was going to read Cabal next, but Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco came in the post, and has jumped the queue. I liked Laymon's Funland, although the end was a bit silly. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
Dear Christopher By "Cabal" do you mean the Clive Barker short novel - for me his best novel, concise, complete,darker than dark and damn good story. Dear Weber Perhaps I will watch the film, give me a year or so. Not read any Ligotti yet, what does anyone recommend as a starting point? } Regards Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
'Cabal' is great but for me 'The Damnation Game' just pips it as Barker's best straight horror novel while his masterpiece is the epic dark fantasy 'Imajica'. I can't see him ever topping that one. Reassuring to hear that someone else on here has yet to read any Ligotti. Must put that right soon. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Meanwhile I just finished Christopher Fowler's 'Darkest Day' (1993). While I enjoyed it immensely, the rewritten version in the official series, 'Seventy-Seven Clocks' (2005), is the superior work. I actually found the undead supernatural elements overbalanced the story in the end and took some of the pleasure away from the central mystery and the character interactions that make the Bryant & May novels such a joy to read. Faced with the physical reality of rotting zombie assassins from Page 1, entertaing as they are, we were deprived of the who-or-whatdunnit element. The rewrite corrects this and gets the balance of horror exactly right, imo. Now starting 'The Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes' (1927) and have to admit to feeling a bit choked up at Arthur Conan Doyle's introduction. "And so, reader, farewell to Sherlock Holmes!" It's been fun. | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 217.33.165.66 |
I'd never read Ligotti, but Ramsey stated "he just might be a genius" on the inside of the cover, so he can't be that bad. And he is pretty good. I've read one story so far, Purity, and it was excellent. I'll have a look and give a bit of a deeper assessment of it when I'm done, if anyone is interested. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I've not read any Ligotti either, although I think I have a copy of Songs of Dead Dreamer at home somewhere that I picked up for 50p at a car boot sale. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Ligotti is very good at what he does, but he plows a narrow furrow. I enjoy his stories individually, but find them repetitive if I read more than two or three in quick succession. | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 92.26.207.180 |
@John That's one thing I'm concerned about with my own writing to be honest; I seem to return to the vengeace/retribution theme with everything I write. Not that I'm comparing myself to Ligotti; I just find it a problem myself. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Good starting points with Ligotti are the UK paperback editions of Teatro Grottesco and the short novel My Work Is Not Yet Done. Or you could try his US paperback 'best of' collection The Shadow at the Bottom of the World. Ligotti is often talked about within horror fandom as a 'pure' weird fiction writer of the old school – but despite the echoes of Poe and Lovecraft in his work, there's a lot more contemporary awareness and satirical edge than such a description captures. I would describe his stories as barbed, sardonic weird allegories about the dangers of money, power, religion and corporate culture, as well as the terrors of physical and mental illness. He is bleak, but he is also angry and ferociously intelligent. 'Teatro Grottesco' and 'The Clown Puppet' are two of the most powerful horror stories I have read. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Finished 'After Silence'. Fuck me but this is a hard book to love. Emotionally it is the equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to a walnut and reads like a reaction by Carroll against charges of airy fairy whimsicality. He really grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and forces us through hell in this book while the central twist, when it comes, is absolutely devastating. I loved how the narrator is forever being given in-roads to the revelatory fantasy realm that suffuses and warps expectations in the rest of the sextet but wilfully goes out of his way to ignore them, head down, plunging onward to disaster and ignominy - while we (the reader) are left silently screaming at him to pay heed to the signs. 'After Silence' marks the dark heart of the series and shows us a disturbing cynicism that undercuts Carroll's by turns charming and terrifying flights of fantasy. I may love some of his other books more but his writing has never been more powerful nor his vision more uncompromsing than here. And now it's time for another dose of supernatural terror from the master: 'The Overnight' (2005) by Ramsey Campbell... <ulp> | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Stevie, have you got/read Black Cocktail? It's pretty difficult to get hold of normally and is linked in with the sextet. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.3 |
Well, not that difficult! When in doubt, try AbeBooks... http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=black+cocktail&x=52&y=14 | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I hadn't even heard of the work before and will have to get myself a copy. Thanks, folks! What struck me about 'After Silence' was how like one of the classically structured Californian noir crime novels it read. The first person narrator uncovering a dark secret beneath the veneer of his outwardly perfect life and feeling compelled to dig down to the heart of it while fully aware he is undermining the foundations of everything he holds dear. The process is heartbreaking and, once the bad things start happening, completely devoid of Carroll's usually counterbalancing wit and charm. I loved this passage in particular, from the detective Max hires to do his dirty work: "'I want to tell you something I tell every client at this point in an investigation. It's only a piece of advice but I feel compelled to tell it to you. How we proceed afterwards is your decision. 'I've been doing this work twenty-two years. People ask me to look into things... whatever their reasons. Although it may sound contradictory, I'm not a curious man. The work interests me because it's logical and clear cut: gather facts, present them, let a client decide what to do with the information. Sometimes I feel like a librarian - you tell me what subject, I'll go back into the stacks and pull out all the things we have on it. 'But now I give this little talk free of charge. 'What I want to tell you is - Stop now. I can guarantee the further you pursue this, the more it'll upset you no matter how important you think it is. Chances are, you're upset already. Most people are. It gets worse. People are curious so they hire me. But once I give them a first bunch of stuff it begins to chew them up. Cheating wives, dishonest parents... there's many good reasons to hire an investigator. But finish it now, I'm telling you. Unless it's absolutely imperative, or doing it'll save someone's life, stop now. Pay me, walk out the door and forget it. That may sound strange coming from me, but I tell ya, I've seen so much pain in this job... I don't get a charge out of seeing people dissolve. I lose some customers but there's never any lack of them in this business.' 'You're probably right.' 'I know I am. In fact I'm so right, I'll bet I know exactly what you're thinking, "He's right and I will stop - after I ask him to look into only one more thing." But that's the killer. The "one more thing" usually ends up breaking your soul.'" If Max had listened we would have had the "happy ever after" story I craved for these people and one hell of a boring novel. But still... why didn't he listen?! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.9.254.149 |
Just finished The Respectable Face of Tyranny, a very striking use of the supernatural as a political metaphor, wittily and inventively sustained. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.43.252 |
Thanks, Ramsey! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I have to admit finding the prose style of 'The Overnight' somewhat disconcerting for the first few chapters but I've settled into the rhythm of it now and I'm really enjoying the subtle escalation of creepy atmospherics surrounding the book shop and the chapter-by-chapter introduction of all the disparate characters. It may not have been your intention but you already have me playing "who'll be the first to get snuffed", Ramsey. Can I ask what made you decide on this particular form of narrative? Second person isn't it? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.87 |
Gosh, I hope not! Third person present tense, isn't it? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.43.252 |
The Overnight is about as good as it gets in terms of Joel Lane's definition of great horror: "What the fuck was that?" Until Grin' came along, of course. (As an aside, I always consider this novel as later Ramsey, but I was shocked to realise today that it's nearly ten years old.) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Third person present tense! I'll have to remember that. It was a bit disorienting for the first few chapters and I can't remember reading a book in the same style before but I'm there with them now. Like 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' the go-for-the-throat supernatural atmospherics are very much like early Ramsey, imo. The encroaching fog, the vast building full of dark storerooms, the spooky lift, the half-glimpsed scuttling figures becoming part of the shadows, etc. Add to that Ramsey's inspired concentration on nuts-and-bolts technology undermined by something weirdly other (in which I detect the unmistakeable influence of the Asian horror boom at that time - the other Kurosawa's 'Pulse' especially) and what we appear to have here is the makings of a claustrophobic post-modern horror tour-de-force [at a quarter through]. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I've just finished THE DRACULA PAPERS BOOK 1: THE SCHOLAR'S TALE by Reggie Oliver, which is a great gothic romp, packed with incident and memorable moments. I'm looking forward to the follow-up, which doesn't seem to have a publication date on the Chomu website just yet. No idea what I'm going to read next... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.168.85.104 |
I'm on a re-read of the first Adrian Mole book. I was only 12 and 3/4 when I first (last) read it, so this is a real blast from the past. 27 and a half years later i'm discovering the subtext of the book which was missing for me first time round given my young age. I'm also already nearly 3/4 through it and I suspect I'll finish it tonight making it the first book I've read in one day since (I think) TM Wright's little boy lost nearly 2 years ago. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.168.85.104 |
Oh, I've had several complete belly laughs from it as well. the Class 4d school trip is a definite highlight 7am Boarded coach 7.05 Ate packed lunch, drank low calorie drink. 7.10 Coach stopped for Barry Kent to be sick. 7.20 Coach stopped for Claire Neilson to go to the ladies 7.30 Coach left school drive 7.35 Coach returned to school for Mrs Fossington Gore's handbag | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I well remember choking on my cornflakes at Noddy's balls showing through the wallpaper back in the day, Weber! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.69 |
I think I took the hint about the tense from Mister Johnson. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Please explain, Ramsey. Mister Johnson? It was a bold move and one that I could see being off-putting for casual readers but the further I get into the book the more the disorienting nature of the tense accentuates the nightmarish quality of the narrative. This is turning into a corker! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Well, Mister Johnson is a novel by Joyce Carey. I assume Ramsey is referring to some specific detail in The Overnight. It's in my TBR pile as well. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.69 |
Sorry! Yes, the Cary novel was (I think) the first I ever read that was told in the third person present, unless that was Ulysses. | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 193.113.57.161 |
I started The Overnight a few nights ago Stevie and can't say i noticed the particular tense at all. Just trademarked Ramsey eeriness from the get go. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
TPPTN: "As Woody descends into the darkness of the cellar he becomes aware of a disturbing miasma and realises, to his horror, that he has just broken wind." as opposed to... TPN: "As Woody descended into the darkness of the cellar he became aware of a disturbing miasma and realised, to his horror, that he had just broken wind." This is an education for me too, Sean! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.69 |
Good Lord, Stevie, you've got the rare complete edition! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
You realise what this means, Ramsey. I'm going to build a shrine to the book and sacrifice small animals in front of it while I plot how to lure you there to sign the thing and then... did I say that out loud? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'm finding 'The Overnight' to be Ramsey's most enjoyably pulpy straight horror novel in years. The feeling of impending doom as a blanket of evil descends over the characters and their workplace and the disturbing incidents and glimpses of nameless entities gather momentum is brilliantly sustained. I'd put it in the same "out-and-out frightener" bracket as 'To Wake The Dead', 'The Nameless', 'Incarnate' or 'Ancient Images' and can imagine Ramsey having a grand old time writing this one. It's just the kind of entertaining set-up I like to imagine happening in my own workplace with myself as the hero and certain "pain in the arse" individuals being the first to get chopped. A right ripping yarn, sir! Were you at all influenced by Stephen King's 'The Mist' I wonder? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.30.31 |
Thanks, Stevie! The Mist - not a conscious influence but it may very well have been lurking in the shadows of my mind. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Seven stories into 'The Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes' and I'm finding it very much a mixed bag which perhaps reflects the long span of time over which the stories were written, rather grudgingly, by an author in the twilight of his years who had long grown tired of his most famous creation. Many of the stories are rather lightweight and jokey in tone, with one story, "The Blanched Soldier", even being written by Sherlock himself, to show Watson how it should be done, while the rather silly story, "The Mazarin Stone", is bafflingly written in the third person, for no apparent reason (unlike "His Last Bow"). One gets the impression Doyle was only going through the motions to satisfy his public in some of these tales. There have been standouts, however, with "The Illustrious Client", "The Sussex Vampire" & "The Problem Of Thor Bridge" being three of the great man's finest escapades, imho. Only another five stories to go and that's your lot... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Hmmm... the last two stories (just read) have thrown me a rather delightful wobbler. "The Creeping Man" & "The Lion's Mane" are like no other stories in the Holmes canon (although "The Devil's Foot" pointed the way to them without quite going the whole hog). The first is blatant supernatural horror and comes as something of a shock after all the years of Doyle's strict adherence to a world of cold scientific logic in his Holmes tales. The story has more in common with 'The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde' or Lovecraft's "Arthur Jermyn" than to any of the dictates of crime fiction. It's entertaining for this reason alone and should be included in collections of Doyle's other excellent weird tales. While the second may not be supernatural but includes a non-human monster of nature that I have always found particularly terrifying and, indeed, have a profound phobia of when swimming in the sea. I looked up Cyanea capilata and it is all too real! So what can we make of this late period change of tone and slackening of the Holmesian rules by Arthur Conan Doyle? I detect a certain loss of respect for his millstone creation and a setting in of boredom with his elementary world view (given the author's total conversion to spiritualism and the supernatural by this stage) while tempered by the last vestiges of fondness and a bowing to the pressures of his clamoring public. "The Sussex Vampire" may just have been the swan song of rationality for this greatest of great detectives. Thoughts, anyone? | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 193.113.48.17 |
Stevie, you should seek out a copy of 'Shadows over Baker Street' next. A great collection of new Holmes tales by modern genre authors wherein our heroes tangle with the Mythos. Or 'The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' for more weird tales like 'The Creeping Man'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'm a bit funny about reading other people's interpretations of famous characters, Sean. While I can see the appeal I can't help feeling it smacks of artistic laziness and would far rather read something new that pays homage to the likes of Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe or Tarzan or Conan (etc...) but is entirely the author's own creation. Christopher Fowler's 'Bryant & May' series or August Derleth's 'Solar Pons' stories are far more enticing, for me, than even the finest of Holmes pastiches. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
What I am going to read next (after the latest B&M) may well have Joel spitting blood but I can think of no finer replacement in literature for the Sherlock Holmes tales. A first complete chrono order read of all the Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton. I can sense a gnashing of teeth from here! But seriously, Chesterton's immortal detective is the only one in crime fiction who deserves direct comparison with Sherlock. The stories I have already read are every bit as entertaining and clever as any of Doyle's pulp adventures when he was at the top of his game but, where Holmes makes his deductions using hard facts and cold logic, Brown comes to his conclusions by instinct and empathy, getting inside the mind of the criminal, and having recourse to the spiritual realm and "an uncanny insight into human evil." How marvellously the two men would have clashed! Chesterton wrote his long series of Father Brown stories (52 in all) between 1911-1936 and cited Holmes as the principal influence while attempting to create a character who was everything Holmes was not. He succeeded magnificently! | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 217.33.165.66 |
I have a friend who worked in the Ellesmere Port branch of Borders; he joined a few weeks before you left, Ramsey. He's asked if he can borrow The Overnight when I'm finished with it; I'd love it if he found himself represented within its pages... Another of my friends is getting married in the next few weeks; I asked those attending the stag night if any of them would care to commission a story about his murder, at the hands of his friends, on said stag night. The suggested fee was for one Cohiba, which would buy a pair of welding tongs and a blow torch in the final scene. There were no takers. Although I suspect there is an industry to be tapped there. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
There is indeed Chris. Just write the story...come to think of it, "Stags and Hens" seems like a good theme for Wordland 3 which will open for subs in June. Thanks for the idea. I've just finsishd Ray Bradbury's "Long Past Midnight" and feel that I have just returned from a strange and intensly moving world, entered with a search for a very special glass bottle in the ruin of Mars and exited via a confessional and chocolate. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
The title story of that collection is one of the more disturbing stories Bradbury ever wrote. The Dragon is another true belter of a story from that book. Just started on Storm Front by Jim Butcher - first book of the Dresden Files. 25 pages in and so far it's an amusing, easily readable fantasy take on the detective genre with a spectacularly messy double murder to kick off proceedings. I hope the rest of it is as good. Stevie, I think this might be a new set of books for you. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Oh, the Dragon isn't in Long After Midnight. However - The Wish is - and that is the greatest zombie short story ever written. Bar none. It also contains The October Game - the best pure horror story that Bradbury wrote - with one of the most famous closing lines of any short story ever. A Piece of wood and Punishment without Crime are also highlights of Bradbury's work and the Miracles of Jamie actually makes me cry when I read it. LOM is probably one of his finest collections. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thinking of modern interpretations of Sherlock Holmes on the screen, and Benedict Cumberbatch's inspired take on the character in particular, I've been trying to think of the closest modern equivalent to a Father Brown type detective in the same medium and just realised that, while not a direct adaptation of the character, Lance Henricksen's performance as Frank Black (another Fr B) in the criminally underrated 'Millennium' is probably the closest example we have. Both are deeply spiritual, empathic investigators into the darkest depths of human evil who operate by picking up instinctive impressions at the scene of the crime and putting themselves, at the peril of their psyche and/or faith, into the killer's mind and deepest motivations. As such they respresent a fascinating counterpoint to Holmes' far from infallible logic. Try Bryant & May, Weber. Fowler's pedigree as a genre author is impeccable, going right back to the 1980s boom years, and this series of books is the pinnacle of his writing career, imo. Their brilliantly constructed and interwoven adventures, over 10 books so far, is what he was always building up to. Those characters will live forever! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
A query for Ramsey: I'm looking to order your next in line novel and see it listed as 'Secret Stories' and 'Secret Story'! Is there any difference in the two versions and, if so, which should I go for? Thanks. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
As it only seems to be available as 'Secret Story' I'm hoping that's the one!! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.23 |
Secret Story was cut, Stevie, though by me. The complete text will appear in paperback this summer, however. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.23 |
What's the name of your Borders friend, Chris? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Stevie - You pick up and read New York trilogy by Paul Auster, and I'll pick up and read a Bryant and May... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Whether to wait for the complete text or buy 'Secret Story'. Are you now happier with the complete text or do you think the cut version works better? | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 217.33.165.66 |
His name was Ben. He wrote screenplays in his spare time. I was in Lingham's in Heswall in mid-2008, and I was advised that a local author, a certain Ramsey Campbell, had brought out a new book, The Grin of the Dark, which I went back and bought. I was shell-shocked; it has stayed with me like no other book, and prompted an interest in 'proper horror' that I still have, to the point that I now write it myself, and have been published. To this day, every time I accidentally make a typo at my keyboard in work ('abbout' is a common one for me), I smirk and remember Smilemime. When I looked further into your work, I found you had worked at Borders. So I told Ben, who said that before he left to work as a cameraman for a film company, he had talked to a guy who worked there (or who had just left), who had written a book about a haunted bookstore. I assume that was you... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Halfway through 'The Overnight' now and things are really cranking up a gear. This is great stuff!! Also just started 'The Deadly Percheron' (1946) by John Franklin Bardin. The first chapter sure is weird in a kind of comical but strangely unsettling way. A man walks into the psychiatrist narrator's office with a red hibiscus in his hair and proceeds to tell him about the three little leprechauns who have mysteriously come into his life. After a fascinating interview in which the doctor grows ever more intrigued by his new patient's apparent sanity, apart from the flower and his wild story, he agrees to accompany the man to a near-by pub where he is promised a meeting with one of the "little men". I'm certainly gripped to see what happens but not in the way I had expected to be by this "crime novel"! Highly odd but, yes, there's definitely something there... For anyone wondering, as I did, what in heck a "Percheron" is it's a rather beautiful breed of large draft horse originating from the Perche valley in the north of France (thanks, Wiki). Leprechauns, killer horses, WTF... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.16.110 |
I prefer the complete Secret Story, Stevie. Ah, Ben! I'm ashamed to see I didn't mention him in the acknowledgments. Well, good for Linghams. I wonder if they know that much of Thieving Fear takes place on their doorstep? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.122 |
Stevie, I would say 'The Creeping Man' was SF rather than horror, in that it has a 'scientific' explanation. Pretty disturbing though. I've always loved the Casebook for its elements of horror and the unknown. Father Brown? Certainly they're not bad stories, but I just feel life's too short for Chesterton's patronising and reactionary dogma. J.B. Priestley offers comparable literary skill combined with a far more interesting and meaningful worldview. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I read "The Creeping Man" very much as a lycanthropic horror story given a sheen of "respectability" within the Holmes universe by a somewhat dodgy "scientific explanation". Also the scene in which the monstrously transformed Prof. Presbury climbs up the outside of the building with his gown flowing like a great black bat was a direct nod to 'Dracula'. It's a great little horror yarn but sticks out like a sore thumb in the Holmes canon. It bears interesting comparison to Nigel Kneale's similarly themed play, "What Big Eyes", in the 'Beasts' TV series, with Kneale concocting a much more rational denouement that would have satisfied Holmes immensely. Arthur Conan Doyle must be kicking himself in the heavens he didn't think of it first! I should be finished the book at lunchtime today with only two stories left. J.B. Priestley's brilliant short horror story, "The Grey Ones" (1953), is one of my all-time favourites and I'd rank it as possibly the best Lovecraft pastiche I have read. I'm convinced I saw a B&W adaptation of it many years ago as an episode of either 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' or 'The Twilight Zone'. Oddly, the opening chapter of 'The Deadly Percheron' made me think of that story last night before you mentioned Priestley, Horatio. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks, Ramsey. I'll wait till the summer then and order the new paperback version. Keep me posted! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That's it! I've now read all 60 original Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and, after a bit of thought and re-jigging, here's my final ranking of the tales: 1. The Valley Of Fear (1915) – 4th NOVEL 2. The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1902) - 3rd NOVEL 3. A Study In Scarlet (1887) - 1st NOVEL 4. The Sign Of Four (1890) – 2nd NOVEL 5. The Copper Beeches - ADVENTURES 6. The Musgrave Ritual - MEMOIRS [narrated by Holmes as a youthful reminiscence through Watson] 7. The Speckled Band - ADVENTURES 8. The Bruce-Partington Plans - BOW 9. The Six Napoleons - RETURN 10. Charles Augustus Milverton - RETURN 11. The Cardboard Box - BOW 12. The Greek Interpreter - MEMOIRS 13. The Dying Detective - BOW 14. The Abbey Grange - RETURN 15. The Dancing Men - RETURN 16. Silver Blaze - MEMOIRS 17. The Illustrious Client – CASEBOOK 18. Black Peter - RETURN 19. The Boscombe Valley Mystery - ADVENTURES 20. A Scandal In Bohemia – ADVENTURES 21. The Sussex Vampire – CASEBOOK 22. The Gloria Scott - MEMOIRS 23. The Second Stain - RETURN 24. The Naval Treaty - MEMOIRS 25. The Final Problem – MEMOIRS 26. The Creeping Man - CASEBOOK 27. The Devil’s Foot – BOW 28. The Yellow Face - MEMOIRS 29. Wisteria Lodge - BOW 30. The Missing Three-Quarter - RETURN 31. The Problem Of Thor Bridge – CASEBOOK 32. The Resident Patient - MEMOIRS 33. The Lion’s Mane – CASEBOOK [narrated by Holmes after retirement] 34. The Golden Pince-Nez - RETURN 35. The Priory School - RETURN 36. The Retired Colourman – CASEBOOK 37. The Norwood Builder - RETURN 38. The Red Circle - BOW 39. The Three Students - RETURN 40. The Beryl Coronet – ADVENTURES 41. Shoscombe Old Place - CASEBOOK 42. The Reigate Squires - MEMOIRS 43. The Five Orange Pips - ADVENTURES 44. The Engineer's Thumb - ADVENTURES 45. The Three Garridebs – CASEBOOK 46. The Veiled Lodger – CASEBOOK 47. The Disappearance Of Lady Frances Carfax - BOW 48. The Stockbroker’s Clerk - MEMOIRS 49. The Blue Carbuncle - ADVENTURES 50. The Three Gables – CASEBOOK 51. The Solitary Cyclist - RETURN 52. The Crooked Man - MEMOIRS 53. The Red Headed League - ADVENTURES 54. The Empty House - RETURN 55. The Blanched Soldier – CASEBOOK [narrated by Holmes] 56. His Last Bow - BOW [third person narrative after retirement] 57. The Man With The Twisted Lip - ADVENTURES 58. A Case Of Identity - ADVENTURES 59. The Noble Bachelor – ADVENTURES 60. The Mazarin Stone – CASEBOOK [third person narrative] On second thoughts I had rather underrated 'The Sign Of Four' and it does rank above any of the short stories, having the most shocking revelations about Sherlock's personal habits and containing many of his most cherishable moments, while still being the most fanciful of the novels plot-wise. I still believe 'The Valley Of Fear' is the finest of the novels, however, having the most ingenious structure and being the most mature in tone - that's only by a hair's breadth over 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles', however, which, one has to admit, is rather far-fetched for all its timeless entertainment value. As for the collections, I'd rank them: 1. 'The Return Of Sherlock Holmes' (1905) 2. 'The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes' (1894) 3. 'The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes' (1892) 4. 'His Last Bow' (1917) 5. 'The Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes' (1927) | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 92.26.205.167 |
I think he arrived fairly late on in your tenure, from what he said to me. He knew you to greet, and others there had mentioned to him you had written a book on the place, so you can probably be forgiven for not having mentioned him, seeing as you had more than likely already written it! It was a shame that particular Borders closed down; for a conglomo-bookstore, it wasn't bad. Ben is a film-obsessive; he managed to break into the film industry eventually, and he is doing well by all accounts. He and his wife are god-parents to one of my sons. | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 92.26.205.167 |
Incidentally, Ramsey, I found an old photo of the New Brighton Horror House and posted it on one of the Nightbreed threads, if you're interested in a reminisce. Is that the same one you were referring to in The Companion? http://www.knibbworld.com/campbell-cgi/discus/show.cgi?tpc=1&post=89824#POST8982 4 | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.18.80 |
No no no Stevie. it's Memoirs, Adventures, Casebook, Return, Last Bow. The quality curve is a Zorro-like Z (with an inclined first stroke) scratched deep across the dusty stone of time. Novels, it's Hound, Four, Scarlet, Valley. A long curving 7 with an inclined first stroke cut deep across the dusty curtain of time. You can tell a lot about Doyle's handwriting from his creative output. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I see his career more as a neat upward parabola. I'm having fun here examining all the recurring themes in the above stories. Holmes & Watson's adventures run the gamut from straight murder mysteries through crime thrillers dealing with heists, gangsters, elaborate revenge plots, criminal masterminds, sinister cults, family secrets, odd behaviour mysteries, vanishings, kidnap, blackmail and recover the loot plots to spy thrillers, buried treasure yarns, horror, sci-fi and even a western. Doyle sure knew how to keep his public happy! I've really enjoyed these books and their sheer entertainment value has not diminished one iota with the passing of time. What a marvellous legacy to have left behind. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I get what they mean about John Franklin Bardin now. After the somewhat baffled amusement of the first chapter I'm totally hooked by this weird meandering plot now and stormed to half way through the novel in one sitting last night. The plot is an absolute classic of nightmarish first person narrative paranoia and loss of identity with a respectable middle class professional finding himself sucked into a bewildering series of life-shattering events from one innocuously odd encounter and subsequent fateful decision. I wonder was the novel ever brought to Alfred Hitchcock's attention as he would have loved the set-up and been a natural to film it. I see this book as a fascinating half-way house between two of the defining paranoid noir thrillers of the era; 'The Ministry Of Fear' (1943) by Graham Greene & 'Strangers On A Train' (1950) by Patricia Highsmith. Bardin was undoubtedly influenced by Greene's equally nightmarish tale of an ordinary joe stumbling upon an elaborate conspiracy and being stripped of his identity and self-respect by the machinations of unseen antagonists while 'The Deadly Percheron' itself reads like an early template for Highsmith's brand of psychological terror in the face of a world suddenly turned hostile, in which coincidence, bad luck and impulsively out-of-character actions conspire against the protagonist as much as the actions of the bad guys. I wouldn't dare dream of spoiling any of the multitudinous twists of this fabulous book but would urge all fans of grim and downbeat hard-boiled noir to read it as a matter of urgency. A sublime one-off and exceptionally disturbing! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.31 |
Don't forget the other two forties Bardins, Stevie! But alas, Purloining Tiny is a grave disappointment. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Bardin's The Last of Philip Banter is, subjectively speaking, the most frightening novel I've ever read. So much I had to break away from it halfway through and come back to it a couple of weeks later. I described the basic storyline to someone recently and was told off for needlessly upsetting them. That's certainly unusual: a story so disturbing it can't be talked about. These days, when people say a book is almost too disturbing to read, they are usually trying to market some overcooked entrail-fest. The noir greats understood cumulative terror like no-one before or since. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I have all three in the Bardin omnibus volume, Ramsey, thanks to your recommendation. I was going to read them back-to-back but after what Joel's just said I may alternate it with something a bit lighter!! I've never considered myself a natural fan of crime fiction, being drawn only to the acknowledged greats, but I've found those noir classics of the 30s-50s that I've read are unparalleled in their brutality and fuck-you cynicism and, yes, the "worst" of them are downright terrifying. Is it just me or are the crime writers of today, with their serial killer and forensic examination obsessions, so much more anodyne? Only Derek Raymond, in my experience, managed to recapture the stark poetic miserabilism and potent sense of human evil of that era in recent times. Across genres I'm finding the 1930s-1950s to be by far my favourite period of modern fiction. It used to be the 70s & 80s. No longer. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.56 |
Well, in contemporary crime fiction I certainly admire Dennis Lehane and Steve Mosby. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.43.252 |
Mosby used to work down the corridor from me before he left to write fulltime. Rumours that I want to punch him are exaggerated. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I have to admit I'm struggling to get through two acknowledged genre milestones at the minute due to their ponderous heavy-going and somewhat dated nature. 'Arthur Gordon Pym' & 'A Voyage To Arcturus' are proving a struggle. The last time this happened was with George MacDonald's 'Phantastes' which is very similar in tone to Lindsay's fantasy. For all the dense allegorical beauty of the prose these works are proving too earnest and devoid of light to be in any way enjoyable. I'll persevere though... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.183.124.205 |
I must admit to feeling similarly bogged down when, as a lad, I read Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I was wondering what happened to your reading of VOYAGE, Stevie. I warned you it was unremittingly dark and gloomy in tone, maybe even out-gloomy-ing Lovecraft's overly-gloomy fantasies. I wonder about David Lindsay, reading this, what he must have been like.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Bugger! I have it and 'The Zimiamvian Trilogy' in my TBR pile. I recall the hero of Klein's 'The Ceremonies' making a similar pronouncement. So you're in good company, Mick. I truly believe the material in 'Pym' would have worked better separated out into a series of unconnected nautical horror short stories. The increasingly dark and bizarre series of incidents that make up the "novel" are just too long drawn out and cumulatively depressing to make for a satisfying read. That's my honest opinion of Poe's floundering attempt at the form. Undeniably great passages of transcendent horror but getting to them is a real effort! Whereas, with 'A Voyage To Arcturus', after the intrigue of the opening chapters has passed and we're into the increasingly incomprehensible alien realm of Tormance, the action settles into a plodding series of allegorical visions all too obviously based on the po-faced and ever so meaningful Masonic symbolism of Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' without the joy or entertainment value of that work's music to compensate. Maybe it's just because I'm reading them alongside two effortless masters of narrative drive that their deficiencies as entertaining stories are being unfairly highlighted? For all the dark and disorienting subject matter of 'The Overnight' and 'The Deadly Percheron' - and both are unrelenting in their accumulation of stark psychological terror - the works are unputdownable because of the authors' determination to entertain the reader as much as unsettle them. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Craig, I get the impression Lindsay would have been one of those dour and over-earnest young Scottish Christians from a stern Calvinist background and that this had a distancing influence on his prose style, as too with George MacDonald's equally weird, ambitious and heavy-going visionary fantasy debut, 'Phantastes' (1858). One can detect great minds desperate to fly in both books but held rigid by the bonds of their unforgiving faith. I believe both books can be read as an intellectual rebellion against the more unforgiving aspects of their harsh religious upbringing. What they couldn't come out and say directly they hid in an over-ripe blancmange of tastefully weird allegorical fantasy. Alas, they were able to go so far but once that ethos is in you it's there for life. Thank feck for the relative "liberalism" of the Catholic Church is all I can say! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I don't find Lovecraft gloomy at all, Craig. Atmospheric and frightening, yes, but his prose is a million miles away from the biblical portentiousness of David Lindsay! HPL's horror stories are about the most perfectly structured and effortlessly gripping that the horror genre has produced. I can read and re-read his tales endlessly and be just as excited every time. Howard may be the Godfather of pulp but Lovecraft was the Emperor. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Actually, I might just be knee-jerking relying on old impressions, Stevie. I've not read much of Lovecraft in many years - well, I did fairly recently reread "The Rats In The Walls," and indeed, found it to be riotous horror/pulp. But I remember on first reading Lovecraft very young, many stories left me dispirited, depressed, at his gloomy-doomy Universe... of course, this was pre-Chaosium, pre-mass-exposure-to-horror... and I wonder now if revisiting At The Mountains of Madness or "Dreams in the Witch House" or "The Shadow Out of Time"... if they would leave me as down as they did, despite my enjoying them even then. Some things aren't ever the same. I wish I could go back and actually be scared by, say, zombie movies like I used to be - it's almost embarrassing to admit that! that they actually freaked me out! - but they did, once upon a time, though no more (certain Fulci moments come close though, to this day). I gather they must have freaked lots of people out too, at least once in their lives... or it wouldn't have lasted quite as long, this never-ending string of zombie stories, here, there and everywhere... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thank feck for the relative "liberalism" of the Catholic Church is all I can say! How funny that, at least here in the States, the situation's reversed: the Church is seen as stuffy and medieval, and the Protestant denominations as more liberal, free, open, etc. Nietzsche somewhere castigates Luther for bringing back sincerity to the Christian religion, when it was on the verge of transforming into something altogether different at the height of its corruption, being his usual bomb-throwing self.... Think about the most famous, most obvious, Saints of the Catholic Church. Peter, Paul... Augustine, Thomas Aquinas... Theresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua... the "martyrs," Ignatius Loyola... throw in non-Saints and mystics like Anna Catherine Emmeric and Padre Pio, the list goes on... something odd they all have in common: not one of them or many others, had anything to do (while they lived) with the massive controlling Kafkan rule-generating/collating corruption-rife pluto-bureau-corpor-cratic machine that is and was Pontifical Rome, from the time of Constantine on (and prior!).... But I tangent, I tangent. Yes, Lindsay, you're probably right about him. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.76.202 |
I can't say I didn't like Gordon Pym when I first read it, but that was a long time ago and it was a Dutch translation. The one that gets me bogged down every time is The Night Land. That ubiquitous "And . . . " at the beginning of every single paragraph is irritating beyond belief and ruins the book for me. I so much want to enjoy it, believe me. Maybe I should download the Gutenberg version and concoct my own text. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.35.236.200 |
With me, Hubert, it's enough to look at the cover of Night Land and lift it up to have my imagination boggled. I don't need to read it. Craig - I miss being scared by things, too. I think the fruit has dried out. As I said on another thread, I've been watching old Hammer films recently and been rubbing them out from my list of 'loves'. And not just Hammers - a lot of old films. They're lifeless. We watched Sleepy Hollow the other night and it was bloody awful. It must be burned, I say. Absolutely shoddy, ploddy cinema. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Tony, I've been rewatching a lot of old Hammers recently, too, but it's had the reverse effect: they're wonderful, really full of life and colour and verve. I've rediscovered them. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.35.236.200 |
Oh, I think I've been watching the 'minor' ones though, catching up with ones I can't remember as well. The Lee Dracs and a few others are still safe! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
Almost finished "Rocket Science" a hard sf anthology edited by Ian Sales. I'm reviewing it for FutureFire (my first review for a long time) and so far I've really enjoyed it. I'm not really a hard sf fan (or otherwise), if it's good I like it, if it isn't I don't. This is a book with heart, humour and a little sprinkling of horror and I recommend it, some great stories including a very very clever alternative moon race history. Cheers Terry | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Started reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History today...so far, it's rather compelling. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.45.22 |
I think, when revisiting old favourites, it's often the case that it's we who have changed, and not the films themselves. Personally, I still find most of the films I loved when I was younger to be just as good, in most cases. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Started reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History today...so far, it's rather compelling. I read this a few months ago. A very controlled, cerebral piece of work. Be interested to see what you think about it. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.246 |
Huw, it's always us and not the films! My mother used to be convinced that books that had surprised her on first reading must have been altered because reading a reprint didn't affect her the same way. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'The Deadly Percheron' last night and was kicking myself I didn't work out who the murderer was. It's perfectly solveable with the book working as a scintillating mystery whodunnit as well as one of the most nightmarish "wrong man" Hitchcockian thrillers I have read. I can just see what a great job Hitch would have made of the big carnival set finale. A crying shame this marvellously cinematic story wasn't adapted by somebody at the time. It's one of the great paranoid masterpieces. Two thirds through 'The Overnight' and it too grows ever more disturbing as each of the beautifully drawn characters starts to implode on their long dark night of the soul - locked in the vast bookstore with whatever that is... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Recently read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and found it a brilliantly insightful portrait of individual, familial and social madness. Having portrayed a frighteningly dysfunctional family, she draws out into a wider perspective and shows us an outside world that is far worse. The narrator casually drops in such unsettling comments as: "I didn't go to the stream today because I don't go there on Tuesdays, so I wasn't sure it would be there." This book is the literary equivalent of inhaling lighter fluid. Currently reading her collection The Lottery and understanding why it was in the Robinson Dark Fantasy series when the title story may be the only speculative or 'horror' story in it. Every story, no matter how mundane its context, dynamites complacency and reminds us that ordinary people are cabable of pretty much anything in terms of delusion, cruelty, unreason and deceit. People justly praise The Haunting of Hill House but rarely seem to locate it in the context of Jackson's other work, which seems to be very much polemical in nature. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Joel, I treasure Jackson's The Summer People as one of the finest short stories ever written. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is indeed an incredibly powerful novel. She was one hell of a writer. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
And don't forget "The Possibility of Evil," Zed, with it's deliciously nasty final line.... But yes, "The Summer People" is deeply unsettling, frightening; and We Have Always Lived In The Castle, despite it's (for me) slightly unsatisfying conclusion, is stellar. I wonder about her The Sundial, which King mentions in Danse Macabre as being a major influence upon The Shining; but I also wonder if that was an error, and he meant to say, The Haunting of Hill House?... | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my most favourite of Jackson's novels, and probably one of my all-time favourite novels. Despite that, I've always found The Sundial a bit of a slog, and still haven't managed to finish it. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.225.26.101 |
'Recently read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle..' One of my favourites, too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.76.202 |
Some of her short stories boggle the mind. "Got a letter from Jaimie the Other Day" is as odd as they come. I don't know if her work should be labelled 'horror' or 'fantasy', for it appears to be very much in a class of its own. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Ramsey has done it again. Only a few chapters left to go of 'The Overnight' and what I read last night had me starting awake gazing into the shadows outside my bedroom door in the early hours. The last quarter of this novel is, I believe, the most full throttle passage of sustained terror I have read of the great man to date! The way he separates out each of the most vulnerable characters and strands them in the dark while those abominable things close in is a masterclass in how to terrify the wits out of the reader. Absolutely fantastic!! Better even than 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' this is Ramsey's most frightening and purely entertaining supernatural horror novel since the 80s, imo. Not to denigrate any of the more experimental novels in the interim but... talk about recapturing your muse!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
And as I should be finished this horror masterwork today I've decided on a bit of apocalyptic sci-fi to replace it; 'The World In Winter' (1962) by John Christopher. This was his third such novel and the follow-up to his masterpiece, 'The Death Of Grass' (1956), which still resonates in my mind like no other novel since 'Lord Of The Flies' (1954). Apparently his apocalypse books got progressively more explicit in their savage indictment of mankind so this should make for a pretty grim but thrilling read. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.211.92 |
Finished storm front last night. A rather enjoyable detective story with a wizard twist. I'm certainly looking forward to the next in the series. As a follow up i'm reading book 5 in probably the most twisted detective series of the lot - Dexter is delicious. So far it's well up to standard of the others. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'The Overnight'. A tour de force is right! Nothing short of a sustained attack on the reader's nerves this brilliantly paced and thoroughly satisfying good old-fashioned pulp horror extravaganza has to be one of Ramsey's finest achievements to date. He plays with the characters and our expectations ruthlessly in this one, treating the sympathetic and the obnoxious with equal disregard for the justice of their fates, ensuring the suspense levels in the final chapters are at their most nerve-shredding. I also loved the apocalyptic ambiguity of the ending and the Birds-like lack of an explanation for what was going on. All things considered this is now one of my all-time favourite horror novels and certainly the best I have read of the new millennium so far. Well done, sir, and thanks for a week of troubled sleep!! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.21.32 |
Well, thank you, Stevie! Not a comedy, then? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
And I'm already almost half-way through John Christopher's 'The World In Winter'. Interestingly, he chose to tell the story of this particular apocalypse - by new Ice Age due to a cyclical dimming of the Sun's radiation - from the point of view of those in power rather than the plebs on the street (as in 'The Death Of Grass'). While the novelty of skating on the Thames wears off as the snow continues to fall and the infrastructure buckles under the weight the media are shown to be working hand in glove with the government and military as they insist; "the worst is almost over", "temperatures held steady this week and experts feel sure they will begin to rise again soon", "there was a brief drop in temperatures again today but blips like this are still to be expected", "there is no cause for panic", "just an unusually long and severe winter but the spring will soon be here", "no new Ice Age", etc... while in reality the rich and feckless have already taken off for the tropics and all major city centres are being turned into fortified Green Zones within which the ruling classes are holed up with strict instructions to admit no one without "clearance" and outside the starving crowds gather, emerging like zombies from the blizzard conditions as they scent the food and heat on the other side of the stockade walls. The end of the world has never been so entertaining! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Your idea of comedy is probably the most disturbing thing about the book, Ramsey! What the hell were those things? Ectoplasmic manifestations of pure evil is the nearest I can approximate. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
They sound like HR managers. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.17.130 |
I rather saw them as stupidity incarnate. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Well, Ramsey, in my philosophy willful stupidity or "conscious destruction for destruction's sake due to its perceived entertainment value or to pseudo-intellectually contrived prejudice that flies in the face of logic and reality" is the very definition of evil. That's a patented Stevie definition of evil, btw. There is a broad strain of demonic humour throughout 'The Overnight' but that is something common to all horror fiction, imo. I still insist that horror and comedy are far more closely linked than is generally acknowledged. It's all in the balance. Your books are too horrifying to be considered truly funny while the more grotesque sketches of Monty Python, say, are too outrageously silly to completely disturb. I did grin at the wordplay on numerous occasions during 'The Overnight' but it was always wiped off my face within a paragraph or two! I mean that as a compliment. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
And dexter Is Delicious is turning into one of the better books in the series if not the best so far. The return of a character from book one to disrupt his home life is as disturbing to the reader as it is amusing. It's creepy enough that in the books Dexter is training young Astor and Cody in the way of Harry... the returning character seems to be trying to mold the children in his own fashion instead. For those of you who have read the first book and know who I'm talking about, you'll know how bad that news is. Add to that a rather intriguing kidnap/murder (no one is quite sure yet) involving modern day vampires and this is a book that I hate the moment when I have to put it down to do something less important like work or sleep. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Have I used the correct form of the word mold there? Is it mold or mould that means to form something into a shape of your choice? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.109.19 |
No, mate, you're thinking of "Tory 'independent' research commissioning policy". | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I've taken a notion to read another sci-fi/horror classic from the golden era, for the first time; 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' (1954) by Jack Finney. I consider the plot to be the most frightening in the genre and have long wanted to read this. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.208.226 |
I thought it wasn't as good as the film. The ending is a lot different and not as effective | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.109.19 |
I found it very Lovecraftian. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.158.153.34 |
I bought the SF Masterworks version of The Body Snatchers recently & I thought it was excellent, not least because of its surprisingly liberal (for the time) attitude to the relationship status of its protagonists | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.211.81 |
It was the ending i had a problem with. The rest of the book was pretty good. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.130.84.245 |
I'm happy to report though, that Dexter is Delicious (naff title aside) is turning into the best of the books to date. Lindsay's writing has really picked up and the humour seems more natural than it has done in the earlier books. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
**** SPOILERS **** Three quarters through 'The World In Winter' and the narrative hasn't quite panned out as expected. This book is a much broader and more ambitious political and social satire that eschews the harrowing moment-to-moment detail of 'The Death Of Grass' and spans a far longer period of time. Seen entirely through the eyes of a coldly dispassionate television news reporter, Andrew, who, while being moved by the plight of the majority, thinks mainly of his own skin as one of the privileged few, the book is split into three novella length and markedly different parts (as with Hammett's 'The Dain Curse' & Sturgeon's 'More Than Human'). In Part 1 we have the coming of the "long winter" and detailing of the British infrastructure's inability to cope with it while social order collapses and martial law is imposed with chilling (sorry) rapidity. The scenes here are like a replay of TDOG but observed from the other side, through the hardened eyes of officialdom, with the abandoned mass of the populace appearing as glimpsed snapshots of spiralling misery and horror. The effect is profoundly disturbing and satisfyingly different from the earlier work while being somewhat less immediate. Part 2 sees Britain abandoned to the starving mob and "our hero" taking off with his loved ones to the assumed safety of former colony, Nigeria. This section reads like role reversal satire as the influx of ruling class white refugees find themselves the butt of negro resentment, stripped of their wealth, humiliated and forced into stinking slum dwellings and the most menial of work (street cleaning, prostitution and the like). This was a brave move by the author and one can detect something of the flavour of Graham Greene in these passages but it does rather break up the narrative flow as we can't help wondering and caring more about the poor beggars back home. Which is where Part 3 comes in... Many years have passed and all contact with Blighty has long ceased when Andrew is plucked from begging on the streets by an old Nigerian acquaintance who is organising an expeditionary force to go back and see what became of London. He is invited along as a guide and gladly accepts. What follows reads remarkably like the J.G. Ballard novel, 'Hello America' (1981), as this predominantly black expedition embark on a haunting odyssey to the long dead heart of the former Empire that had subjugated them. I'm finding it the most powerful and eerily resonant section of the novel. A damn fine read and by no means the retread of 'The Death Of Grass' one might have expected! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Also a third through 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' (1954) and will be finished it in no time. A riveting page-turner with all the gripping intensity of Don Siegel's timeless adaptation. So far the 1956 film is as scene-by-scene close to the novel as was Polanski's 'Rosemary's Baby' true to its source. Both read like emotionalised screenplays for all those iconic moments of cinematic terror. To read Miles Bennell's thoughts and experience him trying to hide his interior panic for the sake of those who look to him, as town doctor, for an explanation is to fully comprehend what a stunning performance Kevin McCarthy put in and, for all that, to bow once more to literature as the greater medium for communicating terror. Jesus God! But that scene in which Miles suddenly realises the danger Becky is in and sprints through the nighttime streets in a gulping panic, forgetting his car keys and oblivious to traffic, is a masterclass in generating real fear in the reader! I'm reminded of the only other piece of fiction by Jack Finny I have read, the masterful short exercise in heart-stopping suspense, "Contents Of The Dead Man's Pocket" (1957). Must seek out more of his stuff. I'm also struck by what a profound influence this novel must have had on the young Stephen King. I'd say it and Matheson's 'I Am Legend' (also 1954) were unquestionably what led him to write 'Salem's Lot' (1975). But who influenced Matheson & Finney? None other than that man Heinlein again with his granddaddy of paranoid sci-fi/horror nightmares, 'The Puppet Masters' (1951)... must get me a copy! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I've mentioned it before, Stevie, but don't forget P.K. Dick's short story "The Father-Thing," which predates Invasion, and surely must have been an influence upon it too.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I know the story well, Craig, and see it, with its frightening child's view narrative, as having been influenced by the previous year's 'Invaders From Mars' (1953). But even pre-dating Heinlein's 'The Puppet Masters' - which kick-started the theme of alien invasion as allegory for 1950s communist paranoia - is John W. Campbell Jr's famous novella, 'Who Goes There?' (1938). Now that's one I dearly would love to read. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Not that hard to find, Stevie: look online for second-hand collections of JWC stories, and use some reference source to check the contents. I have it in a paperback collection whose title I'll check when I get home. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.22.190 |
"Who Goes There?" has just been reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Body Horror. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.57.253 |
For the first time ever in a Dexter book, I was actually pretty disturbed when he let the Dark Passenger take over. The writing in this latest book has really improved by a good few notches on the previous (as good as they already were). The switch from first person singular to first person plural narration followed by the tense change from past to present as the passenger took more control was beautifully done. I know it's the way he's always signalled it, but here it worked so well and he let us see the terror of the victim so much more than he has before. I'm thinking of going back to Mr King when I finish this. Which one though - I have Dreamcatcher, Lisey's Story and Under the Dome which I haven't read yet. Which do people receommend? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Just thought I'd give a shout out (because it deserves it) to this 40 year-old novelette, "Haunts of the Very Rich," by T.K. Brown III, that I got around to reading (found in the DAW Year's Best Horror Stories: II). It's a very familiar kind of story (another example would be Stanley Ellin's 1954 short story "The House Party"); but what this author did with this convention, was both unsettling and hilarious at once, and the effect of the whole stays with you. They made a TV film of it too, from that year; looks like the whole thing's on youtube, and the comments show it's lauded as an exquisite specimen of camp from that era (produced by Aaron Spelling!). But in reading the imdb description of the movie, I see they changed the source material to some no-little degree... and I have a feeling the carefully constructed descent of the original, was lost entirely.... I think I'll go back now and re-read, after many years, the last of this DAW collection, T.E.D. Klein's novella "The Events At Poroth Farm." That became Dark Ceremonies, if I remember correctly. Two books are all I know of from Klein, his collection of four novellas, and that novel (and then this one, too, of course). I gotta go back to see if Klein ever wrote anything else, after I lost track.... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.45.166 |
Stevie, I thought there were some very funny scenes in The Overnight - Woody's 'smile practicing' lesson, for example. I found the atmosphere very effective throughout. It felt as though everything was unfolding in a sort of hazy semi-reality. The sense of foreboding was unrelentingly oppressive - as though Texts and its hapless employees were slowly suffocating in mud and shadows. I think there's also quite a lot of humour, though. I remember chuckling at the interaction between Woody and his employees. Craig, aside from The Ceremonies and Dark Gods, there is a collection of previously uncollected Klein stories called Reassuring Tales. He also wrote a book about writing titled Raising Goosebumps for Fun and Profit. I think he was working on another novel, but it was never finished (or not published, at any rate). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.89 |
Currently 'leafing through' Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It's supposed to be written for the 'average reader' (whoever that may be), but I remember it was quite difficult the first time around, mainly because every sentence sets you thinking. You don't want to continue until you've grasped the full impact of a statement. Plus I'm quite allergic to mathematics. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
You're right, Huw, there was a lot of humour in the book but that's not what stayed with me having set it down each night... shudder. Finished 'The World In Winter' last night and the denouement in the heart of frozen London, surrounded by all those ice-encased landmarks, has the same kind of emotional gut-punch impact as the ending of 'The Death Of Grass'. The horror is very personal in John Christopher's adult novels and as devastating for the interior life of his characters, their most cherished beliefs and ideals, as for their physical circumstances. And I should be finished 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' tonight. Bloody terrifying!! Just about to start my chrono read of Jim Thompson - alternated with John Franklin Bardin & Cornell Woolrich I think. First up; 'Nothing More Than Murder' (1949), which was his first foray into the crime fiction that made his name. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Also about to start, with bated breath, the latest, long awaited instalment in the Bryant & May series; 'The Memory Of Blood' (2011). From the synopsis this is a locked room murder mystery with a possibly supernatural explanation and is set in the world of Punch & Judy puppet shows. I've always found Mr Punch a particularly frightening figure and knowing Fowler this promises to be another cracking tale. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
"Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapleford (or is it 'ton? Haven't got in in front of me and can't remember). An astonishing book with titanic cope, and in it is way quite prophetic e.g. predictions of every hillside covered with wind turbines and a huge Russo-German war (it was written in 1930, before Hitler took power). Cheers Terry | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.185.225.55 |
It's neither 'ford nor 'ton, but 'don! Excellent book - I first read it whilst at school. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Huw, the reviews of that third book seem to indicate it's not worth it: over 1/3 of it is taken up by "Events at Poroth Farm," and the rest is earlier, less-fine materials. I guess he really did just walk away from it all, at his (or, "a" at least) peak. Someone mentions Klein did the screenplay for Argento's Trauma - ! I loved that film on first viewing... then close to hated it, on the second. I won't blame Klein for that. Reading "The Events at Poroth Farm" in this particular old antho, is like suddenly stumbling on a work wholly apart, almost outside the genre. Klein pushes the genre into the mainstream. He could have been a King, if he'd had the energy... or, well, been in the right place/right time with/right material (i.e., Carrie)... but then again, he clearly didn't have the output of a King, that you need to found a real horror-genre renaissance.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
So which King should I read when I'm done with this Dexter book? Lisey's Story Dreamcatcher Under the dome | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.89 |
Stapledon's book is supposed to have influenced Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time". I was forever reminded of Dune, The Night Land and Will Worthington's haunting short story "Plenitude". Luckily the style is very modern, in fact I find it hard to believe it was written in those merry days when even Asimov was writing about rocket ships and damsels in distress. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Haven't read any of those three, Weber, but a female King fanatic mate of mine ranks 'Lisey's Story' as her favourite of all his books - and she's read pretty much everything! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
**** SPOILERS **** Finished 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' in a frenzied rush last night and was left with mixed feelings about the ending. While I agree with Weber that the film ending (particularly of Kaufman's 1978 remake/sequel) is stronger and more nightmarishly terrifying I have to say I was genuinely elated to experience such a radically different and more positive conclusion to the famous story. We now have three alternate and equally valid endings to choose from for this most iconic of 20th Century horror stories. In the novel humanity prevails, the alien pod people are soundly defeated and all four main protagonists survive (Hooray!!). In Siegel's definitive adaptation only Miles survives and the ending leaves us ambiguously hanging in the balance with a possibility of defeating the invasion, if we move damn fast. While in Kaufman's brilliant and most pessimistic version humanity is completely overrun and no one survives. What all three share in common is the most fantastically exciting and cumulatively terrifying narrative drive of any of the great horror themes. For creating such an original and compelling new horror scenario Jack Finney's name will always deserve to rank amongst the all-time greats. A sensational horror novel that, like 'Frankenstein' or 'Dracula', will live forever. Everyone should read it! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'The Memory Of Blood' starts hilariously with the release of a "top secret" Wikileaks dossier on the Peculiar Crimes Unit that I swear had me crying with laughter. It's great to be back in their world! | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Finished reading Stephen King's latest addition to the Dark Tower universe THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE at the weekend. While readable and entertaining enough, I don't feel that it brought much to the overall story. Essentially just three hardly-related stories tacked together. On their own they'd all be fairly forgettable; the book as a whole isn't much more than the sum of its parts. Moved on to Adam Nevill's APARTMENT 16. Strong, atmospheric stuff so far. Figured I'd better get it done before his next novel, LAST DAYS, comes out next month (with a new Graham Joyce to follow in June - good times!). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
"The Events At Poroth Farm" stands up superbly! It reads like feature-film-fodder, and I wonder why it's never been filmed?... In no way disparaging the other excellent tales in this anthology, but it feels, (by comparison to all that came before it; it's the last one in the book), so modern - so contemporary. The narrator in the course of the novella, is reading lots of supernatural and dark speculative fiction, many authors and works are mentioned. One book is by an author mentioned earlier above, in this thread: John Christopher's The Possessors, which I've never heard of; looked up the logline, and it sounds deliciously dark. Anyone ever perused that one? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've been keeping my eyes open for a copy of 'The Possessors' (1964) for years, Craig, and can't wait to read it. I remember it being mentioned in 'The Ceremonies' as well. It was, by all accounts and happy coincidence, Christopher's spin on the 'Who Goes There?'/'Body Snatchers' theme with a small group of characters trapped in an isolated ski lodge with a malign alien intelligence that sets about possessing each one of them in turn until we are unsure who remains human and who is alien. I've heard it's one of the darkest and most disturbing variants on the form and Klein's recommendation seems to verify that. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.185.225.55 |
Stevie - you've obviously not been looking for "The Possessors" hard enough! http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=john+christopher&bt.x=83&bt.y =6&sts=t&tn=the+possessors 62p + p&p cheap enough? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Yeah, I should order it, Mick. Just been hoping to come across it one day in a second hand shop as I did all Christopher's other novels. I've heard that 'The Little People' (1966) is another great Irish-set supernatural horror novel of his. Maybe I'll order them both. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Jim Thompson's 'Nothing More Than Murder' (1949) has started as a fairly typical domestic drama of simmering hatred and infidelity within an unhappy marriage, with much brooding over life insurance policies, that one can see heading the way of earlier noir thrillers, 'Double Indemnity' (1936) or 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' (1934). So it appears that after his youthful phase of trying to emulate John Steinbeck, and making a decent fist of it with 'Heed The Thunder' (1946), Thompson was most taken with James M. Cain's brand of bleak and cynical "homespun" crime fiction. Should be interesting to see how he plays, if at all, with this oldest of crime themes. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.49.253 |
The paperback cover artwork for The Little People - featuring whip-cracking nazi leprechauns pouring out of an old castle - is among the funniest I've seen. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thoroughly enjoying the latest Bryant & May, as ever, and I'm gobsmacked to have just discovered there are another TWO earlier horror novels featuring the characters; 'Rune' (1990) & 'Soho Black' (1998). So 'Darkest Day' (1993) wasn't their debut as I had thought! There was me thinking I'd have to wait another year for the next one! And neither of these two has been rewritten (as yet) so they stand as is. Happy days. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'm only familiar with the really rather spooky 1970s Sphere cover, Huw, with all those staring eyes. It's meant to be a great horror novel I've heard. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Sort of in-between books, not sure what I want to read yet. So (having the whole series) I picked out at random another of DAW'S The Year's Best Horror Stories, this one the fifth of the series, collecting stories from 1975 & 1976 (edited by Gerald W. Page... and featuring no stories by Ramsey Campbell? Wtf?!?). I so far have skipped the ones that I know I've read before, gone to the shorter ones first... and so far, V isn't standing up to II. "The Service" by Jerry Sohl, "Long Hollow Swamp" by Joseph Payne Brennan, and "A Most Unusual Murder" by Robert Bloch, are all tepid disappointments; Manly Wade Wellman's slight "Where The Woodbine Twineth" is the better one so far, though it's surely more fantasy than horror. Unless something else leaps out at me, I suppose I'll keep going... I know some better tales are ahead, even if I have to read them over again.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Maybe it just wasn't good years for horror.... Read three more: "Harold's Blues" by a Glen Singer (?), a merely okay Cthulhu Mythos fable; "Huzdra," a by-the-numbers dark fairy tale—not horror—by the usually much better Tanith Lee; and the best of the three so far, but pure pulp adventure and again only borderline horror, "Followers of the Dark Star," by one Robert Edmond Alter. Whom I've never heard of, so I googled him; turns out he was a prolific late-pulp writer who died some 10 years previous to this publication (his agent kept sending his unpublished stories around, apparently); died young too, at age 40 of cancer, but still has a fervid following among those who know him. He's the one undiscovered gem I've stumbled across herein, and so far.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.208.88 |
Just because it caught my eye this morning, instead of a king book, i'm starting on the Bloodwind by charles l grant. The story, judging by the back cover seems oddly similar to Whirlwind - one of his 2 x-files novels. I'm still in two minds about whether or not jeff lindsay fluffed the ending of dexter is delicious. I do appreciate the title more now though when i consider the storyline of a group of cannibals in miami. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.171 |
Here you go, Stevie: http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2007/03/little-people-by-john-christopher- avon.html | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That has to be the single most ridiculous cover I have ever seen! But it has me more intrigued to read the book than ever now. How on earth could he have pulled off such an insane concept?!?! I'm going to order it right now, with this cover: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0722123051/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=26 6239&s=books | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.171 |
That reminds me of the cover of the paperback copy of King's Night Shift I bought back in 1981, Stevie. When you opened the book, the eyes (which had holes cut around them on the cover) appeared on a bandaged hand, as an illustration for 'I am the Doorway'. I must admit I like the Nazi leprechaun cover! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I've ordered it, Huw, and really can't wait to read it now. I have complete faith in John Christopher as a naturally gifted storyteller to make even Nazi leprechauns work... somehow! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.89 |
When you opened the book, the eyes (which had holes cut around them on the cover) appeared on a bandaged hand That's the one I have! Bought in 1980, I think. The outer cover with the holes has become slightly torn and wrinkled over the years. Apart from Carrie, Salem's Lot and The Shining there wasn't a whole lot of King available back then - an incredible thought when you consider the man's complete output today. I still think Night shift is one of the best things he's ever produced. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Opted for a couple known heavyweights, revisiting known quantities: "Sing A Last Song of Valdese" by Karl Edward Wagner, is fantasy, but also horror; and it's an entire novel in less than 20 pages. While Harlan Ellison's "Shatterday" is that too (hell, an entire movie!), and one of the few horror stories containing a sinister force of good (are there even any others?...) For these stories alone, 1976 & 1975 respectively, were good years for horror.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Is that a Kane story, Craig? The title rings a subliminal bell with me. And I agree, Hubert, 'Night Shift' was one of the first King books I read (if not the first) and it turned me into an instant fan overnight. It's still far and away his best collection, imo. The stories have a wonderfully exciting pulp energy to them that gradually leaked out of his work over the years. 'The Mist' [in 'Skeleton Crew'] was this side of King at his absolute peak, imo, but he was never again as consistently entertaining as in 'Night Shift'. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Indeed, Stevie. About a gathering of odd folk at an old country inn... two overlapping legends of the surrounding area... and a decades-old search for revenge. It's a story with no "heroes," everyone's a black-heart; and yet, a kind of justice triumphs. The story shakes the reader and demands s/he take notice. Wagner was something.... The stories in NIGHT SHIFT were when King was hungry; they all predate his phenomenal success, and show him as another steady, careful craftsman in the field. No, never again, Stevie, I agree.... An immense output though, and cultural icon. King was just in the national spotlight this last week, for voicing "controversial" opinions on taxing the very rich (he's for it). The man did linger, didn't he? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.132 |
"King was just in the national spotlight this last week, for voicing "controversial" opinions on taxing the very rich (he's for it)." Good for him! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
(I guess I gotta keep going until I finish this, don't I? It's the obsessive-compulsive in me.) Two more heavyweight from the '75/'76 DAW collection of The Year's Best Horror Stories: "When All The Children Call My Name," by Charles Grant, patiently spun if a tad over-indulgent, and a bit too cloying, especially in its close (good, but Grant's been better); and "Belsen Express," a dark paranoia piece by Fritz Leiber that, for most of it (until the journalistic turn towards the end), has all the pace and flavor of a Ramsey Campbell terror tale. Both are fine—the scales are shifting towards even, somewhat. Three stories to go will determine the outcome.... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.29.179 |
Just read A Cold Season - thank heaven I had it with me when our plane out of Venice was delayed almost six hours. An impressive debut novel, I'd say - the sense of unease that's present from the start builds to a pervasive paranoid uncertainty, and the underlying dread escalates to scenes of real terror. Atmospheric throughout, and disturbing to the end. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.209.129 |
Who's that by Ramsey? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.109.19 |
Alison Littlewood. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.185.225.55 |
...and it's definitely a good'un. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
It is indeed. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.1.124.14 |
Craig...there's a definite feel about 1970s written horror. Perhasp its because that was when I really cut my reading teeth, but I love it, particularly American 1970s horror. Ramsey...Also, I am definately going to read "Cold Season", so thanks for the recommendation. It sounds perfect. As for me, just finished "Last and First Men" which is an astonishing book, written by a man who had never heard of science fiction until after he had completed this work. Just started "Thankyou Jeeves" by one of the most perfect writers I have ever read and, 50-odd pages in, hilarious. Cheers Terry | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Terry, I think the 1970's is my favorite decade for the horror short story. And I think it's high time someone out there just plain did a "Best Horror Stories of the 1970's" anthology, American and British. And I anticipate a happy ending to report on this particular 70's horror antho... but more on that, later.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Well, not the best of collections, this DAW Series: V, but certainly very good nonetheless.... The last three stories (I had left to peruse) are only, by a great stretch, horror: David Drake's "Children of the Forest," was emotionally engaging; but I don't remember his writing style being this awkward—I had a difficult time in the very act of reading it, something about the way he worked his sentences and phrases... not his best. H. Warner Munn's "The Well," the longest story in this book (and original to it), was one of the most entertaining, however; a sort of fable that brings to mind Jacque Futrelle's magnificent "The Problem of Cell 13," this one was filled with wry humor, and almost qualifies as wisdom literature—about the indomitable human spirit. Then there's Arthur Byron Cover's "The Day It Rained Lizards" (also original to this volume)... a strange strange story that I didn't know what to make of when it was all said and done. What seems fairly straightforward, on final reflection, seems anything but. At first the style, so obviously influenced by Ellison though reminding one also of (the to come) King, I found too forced and affected; but it really became an integral element of the whole, by the end. It's the kind of story that—in retrospect; upon further reflection—gets better. His name—beyond being familiar—rang a bell for me, and indeed, after googling him: He co-hosted a L.A. radio show, back in the mid-80's, that was a true gem to those who got to hear it, "Hour 25," devoted to sci-fi lit and movies and whatnot; for many months, the program was even hosted by Harlan Ellison (when the main host was out sick, a serious illness), crazy to think that now.... ABC was friends with Ellison, I remember even now a story they told together, about how Ellison so utterly snubbed ABC at some convention back then, how he seethed over it for a while, before they eventually got to be friends. What I didn't know, or didn't realize until today, was that ABC ran the now gone-forever Dangerous Visions bookstore, in Sherman Oaks: the go-to place for sic-fi/horror/fantasy, famous locally (gone, yes, like all the other speciality bookstores)—I instantly recognized his pic as the friendly guy always behind the counter in that singular store, but I guess I never knew it was him! And, to add to the irony, I purchased this very DAW book (I've had these for too many years now) at the very store! Huh. Fascinating... kinda fascinating?... how about just, oddly worth mentioning. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I need an "entertainment," as Graham Greene might have put it. Something lighter, but not vapid, something entertaining, but not a total waste of my time. I'm hoping this Karl Edward Wagner pulp fantasy Conan: The Road Of Kings (1979) does it for me... I was so re-impressed by his story in that DAW anthology, that I thought I'd finally dredge this out from hiding.... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Three-quarters of the way through "Thank you Jeeves" and it is perfection, a master class is sparkling, energetic and immensely economical prose. Why oh why haven't I read PGW before? Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Nearly finished Jim Thompson's 'Nothing More Than Murder' (1949) and it's very much a formulaic noir potboiler along entirely predictable lines - infidelity, carefully plotted murder, one fatal stroke of bad luck, blackmail and betrayal, etc. Entertainingly done but hardly memorable and with too many unnecessary asides into the business of running a small town cinema (as the casually immoral main protagonist does). Let's be charitable and call it a tentative first attempt at a crime novel but his previous work, the almost gothic family saga, 'Heed The Thunder' (1946), was a much finer book, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Also soon be finished the truly marvellous and shamelessly old-fashioned theatrical whodunnit, 'The Memory Of Blood' (2011) by Christopher Fowler. We have an 11 month old baby throttled and flung from the window of a sixth floor locked room apparently by an animated Mr Punch puppet found lying by the cot. The autopsy even reveals the marks of little wooden hands around the infant's neck. As peculiar a crime as Bryant & May have ever had to deal with and we have a neat list of suspects, each with their own secrets to hide, all of whom were present at the opening night party of a new play in which murder abounds and one of whom must be the killer. Naturally more deaths ensue each following a set pattern... I think I've twigged who the culprit is and it has ramifications going back through the whole series. I really can't stress enough the almost ridiculous entertainment levels matched by the literary strengths of this incredible series of books. How Fowler manages to sustain the quality throughout is one of the few genuine wonders of modern genre fiction. Beyond sublime! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 58.168.211.135 |
Been on a steady diet of Ramsey short stories lately, and came across a couple of new ones (to me) - 'The Entertainment' - very disturbing, and a real page turner. This one goes straight into my personal top ten. And, 'Just Waiting' - what is it about this tale that makes it so damn scary? - or, is it just me? It left me feeling genuinely unsettled, but I have no idea why. Another personal fave. Felt like something longer, so I borrowed 'The Passage' from the library. 80 pages in, and I can't put it down. Not my usual cup of tea, as I much prefer more 'personal' horrors, but, I'm really enjoying this - long way to go though, another 680 pages! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
In fact TMOB is such a well written and constructed whodunnit Fowler even has me perusing the original script of the traditional Punch & Judy show, as found here: http://www.punchandjudy.com/scriptsframeset.htm And rather chilling it is too... and helpful in solving the mystery. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
About to start 'Waltz Into Darkness' (1947) by Cornell Woolrich. This is the first time I'll have read anything by the man and I'm rather looking forward to it. And after I finish TMOB I've got 'The Possessors' (1964) all lined up for a nice scary break from the crime fiction. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Terry, it's not immediately obvious why readers without David Cameron's kind of background would enjoy Wodehouse's world of clueless old Etonians and failing aristocrats. But he combines a subtle awareness of the shadows behind the characters' comic gestures (alcoholism, sexual phobia, creeping erosion of economic power and social influence) with a pitch-perfect sense of irony, often imitated but never equalled: WOOSTER: It would never have worked, Jeeves. She wanted me to read Nietzsche. Can you imagine? JEEVES: Indeed, sir. You would not have enjoyed Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
GRIMWOOD: I say, I never thought of it like that Lane old chap but you're absolutely bang on. LANE: Indeed, sir, an amusing irony if I may say so and one only detectable by the most discerning eye. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished the 9th Bryant & May novel, 'The Memory Of Blood', at the weekend and I was half right in my deductions (can't say anymore). This was one of the most entertaining and ingenious straight whodunnits of the series. Fowler pays homage to the ingenuity of Agatha Christie while gently mocking her flaws with real wit and substance in this one. The resolution of the mystery is a masterclass in blind-siding the reader and as thrilling as anything he has written. We are also left on a bit of a shock cliffhanger that seems to indicate the next book, the 10th, will also be the last. And I'm going to have to wait until 2013 to read it!  But in the meantime I can seek out the two old duffers' earlier pulp horror adventures in 'Rune' (1990) [apparently based on M.R. James' 'Casting The Runes'!] and 'Soho Black' (1998). Started my first read of Cornell Woolrich last night, with 'Waltz Into Darkness' (1947), and after the first chapter I'm already captivated by his oddly lyrical prose style redolent of 19th Century gothic literature, or even Edgar Allen Poe, although that may be due to the story being set in 1880s New Orleans. I'm getting pretty good vibes about this one already. But I'm positively ecstatic about John Christopher's 'The Possessors' (1964). Right from the wonderfully atmospheric prologue, describing how the alien menace came to Earth during the last Ice Age, to the, again Christie-like, introduction of the cast of distinctive characters, British, American & Swiss, who find themselves mingling, flirting and gossiping in a luxury ski lodge high in The Alps, to the first intimation of danger as one of their young children finds something unusual in the snow, this is a masterclass in the slow build-up of suspense and at generating an almost breathless excitement in the reader. I only hope the book continues as excellently as it has started as I'm finding it compulsively unputdownable and remarkably similar in style and structure to the pulp horror novels I grew up reading in the 1970s, only much better written, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Halfway through 'The Possessors' and the book is a remorselessly scary thriller that surely must have been hugely influential at the time. Even Kingsley Amis gives it a good write-up in the blurb. The characters have all bedded in, we've got to know each of them and their foibles, picked those we'll root for and those we don't trust. The alien intelligence has infiltrated the group through possession of an innocent child and is insidiously working its way through family members before taking on the larger group. This is told from all points of view, including the cold survival instincts of the creature, and Christopher structures the story so we're always aware of where the thing is and what it is planning, which increases our fear for the still human characters, as they make their fateful decisions and take their sides unaware of what we know, to almost unbearable levels. This is a cracking horror novel that takes the scariest elements from; 'Who Goes There?' (1938), 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' (1954) & 'Ten Little Niggers' (1939) [totally agree, Sean!] and wreaks havoc on the reader's nerves. Absolutely magnificent and supremely entertaining! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I am so enjoying this book. A pleasure to read such a well constructed and genuinely effective old-fashioned frightener. At two thirds through the action has settled into a tense battle of wits between the remaining humans, who have twigged the threat to them, and those who have succumbed to the alien transformation. What's great is how methodically the author goes through the decision making processes of both sides, with those defending themselves still having limited understanding of what exactly is going on. They realise the process is somehow communicable by touch and alters the mentality and physical hardiness of the victim. Mass hysteria, some unknown contagious illness and even demonic possession (so close to the truth) have been posited but it is the not knowing how the transformation occurs and the inability to protect themselves, other than by isolation, that cranks up the fear levels and paranoia, threatening to tip over into fatal panic at any moment. The alien intelligence is fully aware of this and plots its moves, using the knowledge accrued from those it has possessed, with remorselessly calm assurance, chipping away one-by-one at the remaining characters' weaknesses without ever overplaying its hand or letting slip its true nature. The tense discussions of tactics among the characters are as exciting as the moments of attack with knowledge the thing's main advantage and superior numbers theirs... for now. This would make a cracking stageplay nevermind a film. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.211.89 |
I finished bloodwind last night and i have to say it's weaker than many of charlie grant's books. It's all very moody and atmospheric, but keeping all the deaths and disappearances off stage completely almost robbed the book of any drama to go with the mood. As a result this one just wasn't scary. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.110.158 |
I'm now 2 and a half stories into Cyberabad Days by Ian MacDonald. It's a short story collection set in India in 2047 and is a loose follow up to River of Gods. I'm not sure if it's because I've not read the novel but so far I'm slightly less than impressed. The stories do convey a good sense of place but there doesn't seem to be much to them other than that. The characters and events don't excite me, events are rushed through at such a pace that it's difficult to feel involved. It also doesn't help that the narrative voice uses a fictional slang and fictional technological phrasing without explaining what much of it is. Some I can work out through context, others don't make much sense. Hopefully it will improve. | ||
| Pete_a (Pete_a) Username: Pete_a Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 108.231.165.81 |
Just want to throw my hat in the ring with Joel and Terry and say how wonderful I think P G Wodehouse is. While some of the non-series novels can come across as creaky and not-that-funny to modern readers, the Jeeves stories and novels are consistently brilliant and delightful. It's Bertie's first-person voice that is the miracle, of course (there are two or three stories told in the third person or narrated by Jeeves himself that don't work nearly as well, IMO). There are some who, while recognising the skill, dismiss Wodehouse as 'trivial'. It all depends whether one thinks joy is trivial, I suppose. Horror writers in particular should be above such condescension. Joy is as ephemeral and as profound as dread, and just as hard to conjure with the written word. PG was an absolute master of prose, who could make the English language do precisely what he wanted with no sign of apparent effort, a trait he had in common with Raymond Chandler, a near contemporary and a fellow alumnus of Dulwich College. Kim Newman and I discussed this at last year's FantasyCon banquet and we both wondered if there was some unsung genius of an English teacher there who somehow inspired both of them. Certainly the bizarre mix of casual-classical-allusion and mastery-of-the-vernacular which is common to both of them suggests a shared starting-point at least. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Just finished 'The Possessors' and I am simultaneously elated and depressed. For the first time an author has convinced me of the sheer logic of giving up this painful human existence and accepting the irresponsibility that comes with the "uncomplicated" hive mind I admire so much in ants... and he did it without any recourse to high drama or violence but simply by highlighting how we all would reacte in similar circumstances - with terrifying subtlety... the first time I think I've ever used that phrase! As an antidote I am running back into the arms of the man who defined this type of popular intelligent sci-fi, and had a much more comforting take on the strengths of the human race, with, reputedly, one of his most perfectly structured novels... 'Starman Jones' (1953) by Robert A. Heinlein. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.110.158 |
Well I started on Embassytown by China Mieville last night (signed first edition)and enjoying greatly.I'm hoping that the slang the characters use will make more sense as the novel moves on and we get more explanation of the society but other than that minor quibble... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'm going back to finally finish Barker's The Inhuman Condition (published in Britain as The Books of Blood Volume IV). Not him at his best, but compulsively readable regardless: he had that gift.... Stevie, you've certainly whetted my appetite on The Possessors! I am going to search it out. Did anyone know John Christopher died but a few months back?... (I didn't.) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Chillingly understated and remorselessly logical is how I would describe 'The Possessors', Craig. The more I read of John Christopher the more it becomes obvious how coloured by the events of the Holocaust all his fiction is. Including my much loved introduction to the man, 'The Tripods' trilogy. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I only found out he died recently and posted a RIP thread on here, Craig. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
At long last I'm approaching the end of 'A Voyage To Arcturus' and what an arduous, page-a-night process it's been. I really didn't enjoy this book at all. Heavy-handed and ponderous in the extreme and all swathed in a blanket solemnity of Biblical proportions that saps the will to read on from the reader like no novel I've experienced in years. Colin Wilson must need his bloody head examined if he thinks this was the greatest novel of the 20th Century and as for Harold Bloom... the man must be clinically insane! I understood what Lindsay was saying, about the nature of faith, consciousness and reality, but Gene Wolfe told the same story every bit as imaginatively but with at least some laughs in 'The Wizard Knight'. I feel like a well written silly black comedy to restore my faith in the joyful qualities of literature after that, so onward with my chrono re-read of Tom Sharpe it is; 'Indecent Exposure' (1973). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Colin Wilson thought that?!... As for Bloom, he's grown a tad hysterical over time, I think. The way he goes ON and ON and ON about "Hamlet" alone... I am not exaggerating, reading the "Hamlet" section in Bloom's othewrise-exceptional Shakespeare tome, it got me depressed to a level I've never gotten to reading much of anything, fiction or no. He was so shrill in his repeating his themes there, that it became like a hammer smashing into your skull. ... All of which is to say: yeah, maybe he is, Stevie. But yeah, now you see what I mean: I liked Arcturus, but I doubt I'd read it again. It, too, is depressing in ways I've not encountered elsewhere.... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.34.237 |
Lindsay died of bad teeth you know. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Lindsay's strength was at creating powerful fantasy imagery of an almost Biblical intensity, no doubt fired by his staunch Scottish Calvinist upbringing, but, if this book is anything to go by, his gifts for characterisation and narrative drive were sorely lacking and he entirely lacked a sense of humour. Call it the easy-going Irish Catholic in me being put off by his sermonising zeal but somehow I think even James Joyce would be more fun than this book! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Tony – his own bad teeth, or those of someone or something else? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
My god, the first chapters of 'Indecent Exposure' don't half bring it home what a barbaric regime South Africa was in the early 70s. Completely indefensible what was going in that country. The humour is so black here it's almost comparable to Ramsey's, if it weren't for the elements of outright farce and how Sharpe subverts them into nightmarishly hilarious phantasmagoria, Monty Python style. I'm not a bit surprised they deported him! I don't think I've read this one before. Thought I had but it's not ringing a bell so far... and believe me it would. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.25.147 |
I read Arcturus twice and loved it! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I dearly wanted to love it, Ramsey, and was often impressed by the clarity of the imagery but the relentless tone of portentous gloom just ground me down and I found the book a really hard slog, after the intrigue of the opening chapters had waned. I think C.S. Lewis was a far finer and more entertaining storyteller who built on Lindsay's vision and I personally got much more from his similarly themed 'Space Trilogy'. Have you read 'Voyage To Venus' aka 'Perelandra' (1943)? It is every bit as vividly imagined and profound as AVTA but is a rattlingly paced adventure yarn at the same time and surprisingly horrific, Lovecraftian even. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I don't know how Robert Heinlein does it but he has me hopelessly hooked again. The man's ability to spin a captivating yarn is second to none. 'Starman Jones' (1953) is a gloriously old-fashioned joy of a read that reminds me of what I got from 'Oliver Twist' or 'Huckleberry Finn' in the raw emotional power of its narrative and freewheeling sense of adventure it weaves so effortlessly - you have to force yourself to stop reading one more page, then one more, and so on. It's the old story of a young country boy, one Maximillian Jones, abused by cruel step-parents, who packs a few belongings and runs away to seek his fortune... in the late 21st Century. He's already suffered the fears of being alone in the dark, been robbed, narrowly avoided death taking a shortcut through a brilliantly imagined future "railway" tunnel, had run-ins with the police, fallen in with manipulative rogues who plan to lead him astray, got lost in the big city, been reprimanded for staring goggle-eyed at aliens - no one tells this kind of tale as thrillingly as Bob - and now the lad finds himself, having sneaked aboard the starcruiser Asgard, being blasted into deep space on an irreversible mission to the far side of the galaxy. I wish I had children to read this book to! It is absolutely magnificent - tough, moving and mature for all its thrills and the kind of book that respects its young readership by refusing to speak down to them or lessen the impact of its harsh but empowering message. Spine-tinglingly great literature of a kind I'd forgotten I loved so much. God bless him! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Getting into the story of 'Waltz Into Darkness' now and Woolrich's great talent seems to be at making it obvious something sinister is afoot without actually stating anything explicit. It's all in the accumulation of subtle details - here of a gullible lovestruck fool being sucked in by the ruthless machinations of a delightfully evil femme fatale, of the type we've all known and loved and can't quite bring ourselves to hate. His is a gift I cherish in writers and the ultimate compliment to the intelligence of the reader, imo. Patricia Highsmith, Stanley Ellin & Ira Levin spring to mind as comparably beguiling talents. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.79 |
I've read all three of Lewis's sf novels, Stevie, many years ago and liked the first two quite a bit - I seem to remember the third one being, hm, odd. He admired Lindsay, as I recall, rather to the bemusement of Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss when they interviewed him. Aickman did too. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.34.237 |
Ramsey; the third book is wonderful on re-reading. I find it very frightening and came to think of it as the best of the three. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'That Hideous Strength' (1945) is indeed a very odd book, Ramsey, and a fine one, imo. It is the closest Lewis came to a classically structured horror novel, even considering the (comic) demonic goings on of 'The Screwtape Letters' (1942). It read, to me, like a weird foreshadowing of the paranoid sci-fi horrors of the 1950s with its small community overrun by a brainwashing alien menace. Yes, the appearance of a resurrected Merlin and all those animals fighting on the side of the light were straight out of the Narnia books, making for a bewildering collision of styles, but I'd still consider the book, in its recently republished full unexpurgated form, to be easily Lewis's most ambitious, mature and disturbing work of fantasy... dark forbidding Old Testament fantasy, I'll grant you, but without Lindsay's grinding heavy-handedness and with one of the most spectacularly apocalyptic resolutions in genre fiction... it certainly influenced Clive Barker, as I was shocked to discover. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I want a spider puppy! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Can't do a spider puppy but here's a spider cat  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It's an alien pet in 'Starman Jones' that has to be one of his most memorable creations. Magical book! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
I have a brachypelma albopilosum tarantula here, but she's hardly a puppy anymore. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Post a picture of it please... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
As luck would have it the lady does not deign to come out of her burrow. But I'll catch her eventually. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
Here she is. Not the best pic in the world, but it was shot in utter darkness using a flashlight.  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
omg . . . Looks like the critter from the old Jack Arnold film from 1955. Sorry about that, folks. | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 217.33.165.66 |
No problems Hubert. I'm in Cumbria, but if I stand in Yorkshire, the picture looks fine. You've a handsome spider there. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Not sure why this image needed to be uploaded as it was already on the web. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
No, it wasn't. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.110.31 |
methinks Hubert hasn't spotted Joel's cunning wordplay... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
Gotcha  |