Some great stories in here, and a good way to acquaint yourself with a variety of writers. The editors lean more toward horror and dark fantasy than tSome great stories in here, and a good way to acquaint yourself with a variety of writers. The editors lean more toward horror and dark fantasy than traditional fantasy, and this is reflected in the title change the series soon got ("The year's best fantasy and horror..."). I read this for a quarantine book club (we'd read about 50-60 pages and discuss weekly) and it made for some enjoyable conversation. ...more
Very impressive as a literary feat, as the author set out to write a Le Carre-style spy novel infused with his signature "supernatural conspiracy behiVery impressive as a literary feat, as the author set out to write a Le Carre-style spy novel infused with his signature "supernatural conspiracy behind the history" approach. The characters take a while to grow on you, and the ostensible hero is probably the least sympathetic of the main characters. My main complaint is the action moves so slowly, and scenes of supernatural horror are very brief. This was clearly painstakingly researched and has some nice use of folklore and literary epigraphs, but I felt like it might have been cut to half the length and lost nothing but painfully detailed descriptions of streets and hotels in various mid-century cities. ...more
A nice look at how George Romero and his friends managed to create a massively influential film on a shoestring budget and with a cast and crew of mosA nice look at how George Romero and his friends managed to create a massively influential film on a shoestring budget and with a cast and crew of mostly amateurs. The book follows the career of Romero and fortunes of some of the principals involved in the movie, with interviews and guest sidebars by various filmmakers. Kane writes informally, and the book reads a bit like a series of articles from a zine, but his enthusiasm is mostly tempered by a willingness to be critical of other works by Romero, Russo, Streiner, and company. There is some detail given about remakes and various re-edits of the original NOTLD, as well as some capsule reviews of other zombie films, and my only complaint would be that it feels a bit like a series of articles were stitched together to bulk up the book, which would be pretty short if it only covered NOTLD. The inclusion of theo riginal NOTLD script underlines the ambiguity -- was this included for completists (it IS interesting to compare to the final film) or just a way to fill page space?...more
I usually like Barker’s work, and this book was pretty enjoyable, though it was less horror and more of a fantasy quest, despite featuring the “PinheaI usually like Barker’s work, and this book was pretty enjoyable, though it was less horror and more of a fantasy quest, despite featuring the “Pinhead” character from the “Hellraiser” series of stories and films. The story’s protagonist is Harry D’Amour, a detective haunted by visions -- and not just visions -- of demons. I think there were a few other stories or novels with this character and assume he was more more fully developed as a character in them -- in this one, he’s one of the least developed of the characters. The other major players are a blind old woman who can see and communicate with ghosts, a New Orleans dandy who has prophetic dreams, a pair of tattoo artists who provide the romantic interest for two of the other characters, and various demons, the main villain being Pinhead. Eventually our protagonists all find themselves harrowing hell itself, and Barker’s vision of what that might be like -- in a world where god and the devil are mostly absent -- is strange but a little unconvincing. It would be hard to say much more without getting into spoiler territory but the bizarre conflicts between demon and human, and demon and demon, are interesting and unpredictable. *Full disclosure, I won a copy of this book in the Goodreads “first reads” book giveaway.*...more
This book has a gained a small measure of notoriety because its cover appeared in a few places in pop culture and because professional moron Glenn BecThis book has a gained a small measure of notoriety because its cover appeared in a few places in pop culture and because professional moron Glenn Beck singled it out as a destructive force in American culture. However I can’t imagine many people reading this -- it is essentially a short work of philosophy that looks at how twentieth and twentieth-first century horror (in fiction, films, and music) might help us comprehend the unthinkable world we now face: the world that might be: the world after human extinction. (I am reminded of the ancient skeptical quip that just as we do not fear the nonexistence we enjoyed before we were conceived or born, we should not fear the nonexistence that follows our death, but Thacker would probably want to say: The individual's nonexistence is one thing, the nonexistence of humanity, perhaps even of rationality, is another.)
Thacker’s basic idea is subtle and difficult to paraphrase. If I am understanding him (and as someone who studied philosophy pretty extensively, and in particular a lot of nihilism, as well as someone interested in or familiar with most of the writers he uses to illustrate or explore his ideas, I may be among the relative small minority of people who actually comprise his audience) -- if I understand this book, the first premise is that we need to distinguish among three “worlds”: the-world-for-us, the world-in-itself, and the world-without-us. (For my money this distinction alone was worth the price of reading this short but difficult book.)
Briefly, the world-for-us is the world understood instrumentally*, the world as something for our use as humans; the world in relation to humans. This concept of the world is most fiercely promoted in myth and religion, but it is also how we usually think of the world in our everyday interactions with it. Thacker uses the term “World” for this world.
The world-in-itself on the other hand is the world as it exists independently of human concerns and interests, the subject of scientific inquiry perhaps but potentially hostile. Paradoxically our scientific investigations generally convert the world-in-itself to the world-for-us because we normally undertake these investigations to solve some problem or gain some understanding of human problems, however it was the rational, scientific mindset that reveals the possibility of the word-in-itself. But philosophically, at least, we acknowledge that the world-in-itself is not just some human construct or a world made for- or by- us. The Kantian noumena (“thing-in-itself”) is obviously being invoked here, but Thacker is not strictly being Kantian here. For one thing he doesn’t necessarily agree with Kant that we know nothing about the world-in-itself; we in fact have a concept of the world apart from human concerns. Thacker calls the world-in-itself “the Earth”.
Lastly the world-without-us is the world that is, by definition, hidden from us and beyond our reckoning, and its reality is most plain when we think of the world after human extinction. This concept is of fairly recent vintage because it is only in fairly recent times that we’ve had any idea of a world with no humans. In the mythological/religious past, we could only think of the end of humans as the end of the world itself. But climate change, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the threat of extinction-level pandemics, the notion of civilization-ending disasters generally: these possibilities evoke the world-without-us. Thacker calls the world-without-us “the Planet,” because when we imagine the world without us we are considering our world “objectively,” as one planet among many, and not merely in-addition to humanity but apart from and independent of humanity. The Planet is not even hostile to us; it is indifferent to us. This indifference is terrifying to us, because it negates the humanocentric world. I should hasten to add that the alienating thing about the world-without-us does not depend entirely on human extinction. The very idea of the multitude of worlds, the near-infinity of time and space, and the possibility of alien intelligences also invoke the world-without-us.
Thacker’s thesis is that modern horror (in film, fiction, and even music) provides a non-philosophical approach to grappling with the Planet, that is to say: the world-without-us. The bulk of the book tries to illustrate this thesis, drawing on everything from black metal music and Hammer films to H.P. Lovecraft and Georges Bataille. Theological and occult writings on magic and demonology are also analyzed as precursors to modern horror. Along the way Thacker uses a variety of philosophers, especially Schopenhauer and Aristotle (!) to explain how the world-without-us can be understood philosophically. Perhaps obviously, Lovecraft's notion of "cosmic horror" very aptly describes the human response to the idea of the world-without-us. Towards the end of the book he suggests a mystical approach to comprehending the world-without-us, using certain “darkness” mystics (Bohme, John of the Cross) to analyze a strange, supposedly anonymous poem that is probably the work of the author himself.
I should finally comment on the utterly strange but effective structure of his book: we are treated to a series of medieval scholastic forms (quaestio, lectio, disputatio) each exploring specific questions or topics.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thacker does not settle on a clear conclusion, but there are at least two more books in his “Horror of philosophy” series.
================== *Thacker doesn’t specifically use Heidegger's concept of "instrumental rationality" here, but Heidegger certainly applies: The world-for-us is the world _for_ Dasein....more
A one-act play about some sailors and their ill-gotten loot, who hole up in an inn and try to cheat fate. Light entertainment, but I'd love to see it A one-act play about some sailors and their ill-gotten loot, who hole up in an inn and try to cheat fate. Light entertainment, but I'd love to see it produced. Maybe a short film....more
This is an odd mixture of mystery, horror, and adventure. The central mystery of the story -- what is going on with the odd young English woman in a vThis is an odd mixture of mystery, horror, and adventure. The central mystery of the story -- what is going on with the odd young English woman in a villa in Nice, France -- is largely telegraphed by the book's title, though we are nearly a third of the way through the story before things take a turn from the mundane to the fantastic, and all the vague talk of occultism and conspiracy comes to the fore. It is a little distracting that Wheatley is obsessed with connecting Satanism to Communism, but given that this written during the height of the Cold War, it is understandable that the author chooses to align all the enemies of respectable upper class morality and the monarchy. Wheatley's characters are all interesting and vivid, even if his extreme classism and nationalism cause him to rely on overt stereotyping. Despite the absurdity of the the novel's central conceit -- that Satanists are aided by Communists in their effort take over the world -- the story moves quickly and works as a thriller. The author's piety is tempered by some decent humor and mostly good dialogue. I suppose it would be odd to write about a Satanic cult without getting moralistic, but his protagonists are occasionally such pious, law-abiding twits that I began to find myself indifferent to their fates, and it was only the extreme evil and arrogance of the villain that made me root for the good guys. There is some really creepy imagery, particularly in the final third of the book, and some interesting asides. For one thing, apparently Wheatley actually met the infamous Aleister Crowley and he's included a story about him in one character's dialogue -- painting an unflattering but plausible portrait of "the Great Beast." Another throw-away idea he includes is that Atlantis was sunk by White Magicians in response to horrible rituals being carried out by Atlantis' Black Magicians. I get the sense that Wheatley was both attracted to and repulsed by the occult movement of his time and it gave him some really cool plot ideas, even if many are never developed. Worth checking out, despite its flaws. ...more
This was *almost* like nothing else I've read. I say almost because in hindsight it is clear that a *lot* of stuff I've read was very heavily influencThis was *almost* like nothing else I've read. I say almost because in hindsight it is clear that a *lot* of stuff I've read was very heavily influenced by this strange, gory, pedantic, surreal narrative. Without "Pym" we would probably not have "Moby Dick," "At the mountains of madness," or a number of Borges' stories... not to mention a vast number of pulp "weird tales" that take cues from this. Many other authors have of course used the unreliable narrator/fiction presented as factual memoir trope, but Poe combines it with a story so dream-like (well, nightmarish might be a better term) and an allegory so obtuse that it does not seem like anyone agrees about what, if anything, it all means. Indeed Poe admitted, when a critic panned it, that the story was rather silly. At the same time you can't help but notice that the story is filled with phenomena that seems pregnant with significance that the narrator misses, denies, or deliberately covers up... makes repeated references to certain colors, and to alcohol, and the contrast between civilized and savages... invokes religious imagery... includes long discourses on sailing and shipping, on animals and geology, and weather, that are a mixture of fact and bizarre fancy ... it all seems like an elaborately concocted allegory that must have been meaningful to Poe.
I have seen this book described as Poe's "least accessible work" and based on my admittedly limited reading of his stuff I agree. The story is an adventure yarn that describes a series a cliffhangers and narrow escapes, truly horrific scenes (the ship with the seagulls is an indelible image), and eventually stranger and stranger incidents. Poe was influenced by a variety of ideas then-current, including the "hollow earth" theory. The work is perhaps most infamous for the abrupt ending, which is extremely mysterious and reinforces the dream-like quality of the whole book.
I listened to this rather than read it, and the Librivox recording suffered in places from some really terrible readers -- the book was read by a variety of volunteers who each took one or more chapters. In fact I had to skip two chapters due to the reader's sing-song delivery and strangely affected accent. Most of the readers were ok though....more
I stumbled across this on archive.org, and while it was not exactly riveting, it was entertaining. The story is about a shipwrecked sailor who finds himself on an island with a trap-filled castle. He has a few companions -- another sailor, a cat, a bearded hag, and a mute native -- most of whom are killed by the various traps.
The Victorian prose is a little rough, and the narrator is somewhat repetitive, but the idea for the story is pretty original. ...more
When Lumley is being himself, he's really good; as a Lovecraft disciple, he about as bad as anyone else in that literary kiddie pool. A few of the stoWhen Lumley is being himself, he's really good; as a Lovecraft disciple, he about as bad as anyone else in that literary kiddie pool. A few of the stories were really excellent, while others were almost slavish imitations of Lovecraft, minus the best and worst aspects of Lovecraft's writing.
"Recognition" was competent but boring. "The mirror of Nictoris" as good as one of HPL's minor stories, which is faint praise. "Born of the winds" was nominated for a prize but I thought it was a very derivative HPL re-tread.
The best of the lot, IMO, was "The Viaduct" -- a suspenseful story with no supernatural elements at all. I also liked the story that lends it's title to the collection (despite being partly a Lovecraft homage) and the paired stories "The Cypress shell" and "The deep sea conch" were very good. "The thin people" had some potential but ran out of steam for a weak ending.
"The man who photographed Beardsley" and "The man who felt pain" didn't do anything for me. At least they were not Lovecraft pastiches, I guess.
The introductions to the stories are a nice touch, giving a little insight into Lumley's creative process, and the introduction to the collection is a funny critique of the "splatterpunk" movement in horror writing that was emerging around the time this collection was published.
As a sample of mid 1970s to late 1980s horror writing, this was all right, and Lumley dos have his moments, but this does not really make me want to rush out and read his novels....more
The centerpiece is Stoker's "Jewel of seven stars" but the stnad-outs, in my opinion, are Poe's uncharacteristically funny "Some words with a mummy" (The centerpiece is Stoker's "Jewel of seven stars" but the stnad-outs, in my opinion, are Poe's uncharacteristically funny "Some words with a mummy" (which must be the only of his stories that ends with the narrator SEEKING a premature burial) and the two stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Doubt I'll have anything to say that hasn't already been said in this very widely read and commented upon book, but I was struck by several things worDoubt I'll have anything to say that hasn't already been said in this very widely read and commented upon book, but I was struck by several things worth mentioning.
1) OMG the writing is dated. Been a long time since I've read any Georgian era ficiton, let along gothic Georgian fiction. I actually enjoy some style-heavy stuff like E.R.Eddison and Jack Vance, but Shelley is really over the top. Here's a random sentence: "It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous." Much of this is perhaps due to the fact that the narration is in the first person. Still it is painful. Also there seemed to be alot of indirect reference to Shelley's friends and family -- more than I felt like puzzling out. Is Victor Frankenstein Lord Byron? Is Safie a mouthpiece for Mary Wollstonecraft? I don't know and I don't care.
2) I knew the monster of the book was very unlike the monster of the movies and popular culture but I never knew he was not even created from corpses in the book. The actual process is left vague but the impression I got is that Frankenstein somehow relied on chemistry (and alchemy) to create the monster. No electricity either. I'm kind of impressed that the movie makers came up with those details. The fact that Frankenstein scaled the thing up to be eight feet tall (so that it would be easier to work on than if it were normal human sized) is kind of funny. The descriptions of the monster are mostly very vague (hideous and misshapen are the main descriptors), but the few details we get -- yellow, semi-transparent skin, watery eyes, huge grinning teeth, long black hair, and his mummy-like hands -- certainly seem freaky. So apart from the fact that Shelley's monster is much more intelligent and eloquent than the movie version is only one of many significant differences. Good to know.
3) I haven't ever read much criticism/interpretation of the book but my sense is that the "message", if there is one, is much more complicated than the pop culture idea too. People talk about the book and monster being a cautionary tale about science overreaching, or the hubris of a scientist. But it's pretty clear that Shelley is more interested in the obligations of a creator to his creatures, and perhaps also in the nature and origin of evil. Heavy stuff for a 19 year old author.
So anyway I liked it despite the heavy style that makes H.P. Lovecraft seem restrained.
H.P. Lovecraft has become a sort of pop icon, at least within a sizable subculture of gamers, horror aficionados, and general "geek culture," althoughH.P. Lovecraft has become a sort of pop icon, at least within a sizable subculture of gamers, horror aficionados, and general "geek culture," although as the author notes he is more frequently referenced or parodied than actually read. In all fairness, there is a considerable part of Lovecraft's work that is pretty rough going, due to its derivativeness (his early work and attempts to copy Dunsany) or due to its unapologetic racism and xenophobia (which even Robert E. Howard, himself criticized for bigotry, chastised Lovecraft for!). However Martin focuses on several of Lovecraft's most famous and acclaimed works ("The call of Cthulhu," "The whisperer in the darkness," _At the mountains of madness_, and a few other key works), and in doing so makes a powerful case to take Lovecraft's mature work much more seriously than it hitherto has outside of "weird tales" fandom. Martin argues, quite lucidly, that HPL can be better understood as a trailblazer in the intersection of two literary movements: the grotesque and the modernist. HPL, he demonstrates, uses modernist devices and concerns, with grotesque themes and situations, to create subtle studies on alienation, subjectivity, and the absurd. Indeed the Lovecraftian sense of "cosmic horror" (a phrase I think Martin circumspectly avoids) is understood here as really being a sense of horror at man's evident place in the universe (or lack thereof). Martin rather convincingly (to me, at least, as a non-scholar regarding literature!) shows that HPL really fits comfortably in with Conrad, Eliot, O'Conner, Faulkner, and other "modernists," distinguishing himself more by his use of the grotesque rather than more realist or mundane dramas to sketch his vision of the world: alienating because it is indifferent to human concerns and pride; disturbing because subjectivity makes absolute reality impossible to approach; and absurd because logic and science are just powerless as religion and art in the face of this alienation and subjectivity. HPL's use of sophisticated literary devices belies his oft-criticized purple prose, and Martin also makes an effort to suggest that HPL uses humor and even self-parody which is lost on many readers. So overall I think this is an excellent study of HPL, and refreshing in that it mostly avoids the biography that so often passes for criticism and appreciation that passes for interpretation. Having said all that, this is a doctoral dissertation, and the reader is often reminded of this fact by the repetition of ideas, the exhausting presentation of piece after piece of evidence, pedantic footnotes which some advisor or reader doubtless insisted be inserted to clarify or disclaim some statement, and most of all by the jargon of academia. In fact this last part was the most distracting: "connects," "destabilizes," "questions," and similar verbs abound, as I have often found them to in academic literary criticism. Such terms always make me think that either the writer is avoiding taking a clear stance or that they don't really know exactly what the argument is and these words are meant to say "well this here sort of suggests that, but the logical connection is not clear and I am not positive what the actual conclusion should be." But then that is the meat and mead of defending a thesis. One must pull back as far into ones shell as possible or face endless debate from the advisor and readers who must ultimately approve the thing. So I can forgive that. I would be remiss if I did not mention that I know the author of this work and he sent me a copy to read (though he did not ask for a review or anything in return). I should also mention that I was intensely flattered to be acknowledged among the people who influenced his thinking, though really I knew him long ago, and I doubt I had anything substantive to say about HPL at that time. I hope that if he ever returns to this topic, perhaps to edit the dissertation into a format that will attract more casual readers, he will expand his examples to draw on more stories, and perhaps give a little more explanation of some of the more jargony terms of literary criticism, for the ideas herein do a great deal to rehabilitate HPL as more than merely a "horror" or "pulp" writer. He might also address some of the more problematic aspects of HPL's work and views; however I know from correspondence that he intentionally set out to avoid the pitfall of biography and psychologism that besets so many writers on writers....more
Gorgeous prose, but fairly disturbing -- I think I'd have been more put off if I hadn't read some Western history before this (most recently Empire ofGorgeous prose, but fairly disturbing -- I think I'd have been more put off if I hadn't read some Western history before this (most recently Empire of the Summer Moon) and didn't know that it is based on actual events, perhaps embellished but essentially true, apart from the obviously invented character Judge Holden. Harold Bloom called this the "ultimate Western" -- ultimate in the sense of FINAL, as in: no one need write another Western after this. I have nothing to add to that.
I hear that someone is hoping to make a film of this book. I think that is insane. Movie goers don't want to see a film about constant atrocity with few if any sympathetic characters, and despite the success of No country for old men and The road, you will notice that this book, probably McCarthy's best, is practically out of print while his other books are in numerous editions.
My only complaint would be that McCarthy never uses quotation marks and rarely uses apostrophes and I don't really see much benefit to that quirk.
Spoiler alert (stop now if mention of plot events will impair your enjoyment of a book!)
I checked out a few other review and I'm flabbergasted that so many reviewers say the murder of the kid is only hinted at ... I'd say it is pretty clear that he was murdered and mutilated in the 'jakes' at the end. ...more