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Mike's Reviews > Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
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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 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.
"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.
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