Lovecraft appreciation

[litmlove]

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author who achieved post-humous fame for his horror fiction. This thread is dedicated to his fiction.

His works are out of copyright so please share pearls of his writing. You should be able to fin the full stories using Google without problems.

* The Colour Out of Space

My favourite Lovecraft story because of the writing and elegant use of suspense. The specific threat is not thrown at you unlike in some of his other stories, so it is left to the reader to interpret the pure horror of the alien threat. Not recommended for people who live in the Catskill Mountains.

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. . .

* At the Mountains of Madness

About the narrator trying to warn about the evil in Antarctica. This is how you do Madness. One of his better stories because there is almost dialogue (because he sucks at it).

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I have a love/hate relationship with HPL. Things like "Call of Cthulhu" and "Shadow over Innsmouth" made a big impression on me, and I still reread them about once a year despite the racism. But he also wrote some comically bad stuff:

For it was only a penguin—albeit of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins - also from "At The Mountains of Madness"

The king penguin is the second-largest species of penguin in the world. The largest is the Emperor penguin (recorded back in 1844), which lives in, yes, Antarctica. So what he's saying here is, it was a normal-sized penguin for the region.

Instead, he carried about an insidious atmosphere of irony or amusement, accompanied at certain moments by a deep, guttural chuckle like that of a giant turtle which has just torn to pieces some furry animal and is ambling away toward the sea... Surama indulged in many a deep, testudinous [turtle-like] chuckle. - "The Last Test", with Adolphe de Castro

I'm pretty sure there's no species of turtle that chuckles. I'm also pretty sure the sea-turtles don't come on land to tear furry animals apart, either.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I don't get HP Lovecraft. I've read stories readers swoon over and remain unmoved.

Convince me.

Robert Bloch (PSYCHO) was Lovecrafts protégé and raved about the man, but I don't get it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

HP Lovecraft is a popular dude, here.

 

[jomar]

Eh, I liked him a lot at a time...same with Tom Robbins and Carlos Castneda...and others. I've moved on.

 

[Hypoxia]

Eh, I liked him a lot at a time...same with Tom Robbins and Carlo Castneda...and others. I've moved on.

We have favorites of our youth (and even more recently) that we may outgrow. Swift, Poe, Lovecraft, Robbins, the great fictionalist Castañeda, Tolkien (I never bit that apple), van Vogt, RE Howard etc. Even some LIT authors who impressed the shit out of me when I started reading here no longer have the same luster. Some of these may remain as striking influences -- my 1st-person style grew from John MacDonald's TRAVIS MCGEE books -- but they're no longer what drive us.

Did HPL once drive my imagination and dreams? Fuck yeah! And Poe, Heinlein, RE Howard, Bradbury, GB Shaw, others. Is their prose still vivid? Yes. Would I go back to a diet of these classics? I don't know; probably not.

 

[jomar]

Hypoxia...I read Starshp Troopers a wile ago and liked it. I'm currently a Reacher Creature and enjoy that series by Lee Child. Just read the Maze Runner series and had fun with that even though it's YA. Just finished The Martian, hard sci fi...was good. Also like Stuart Woods who writes sparse, breezy fluff.

Lately I tend toward mystery and action adventure. Though I just stared Zero Six Bravo, which is a true account of 60 mostly British special forces fighting and surviving against 100,000 Iraqi army soldiers. Think extreme Rat Patrol.

 

[Hypoxia]

Hypoxia...I read Starshp Troopers a wile ago and liked it.

Superb book, thought-provoking (and irritating to many), and surprising. RAH used a sly technique -- readers don't know Johnny's ethnicity until nearly the end.

Besides TROOPERS, the best of RAH includes IMHO (in no order): CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY - TUNNEL IN THE SKY - THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (very libertarian) - FRIDAY - STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (of course!) - THE DOOR INTO SUMMER - BETWEEN PLANETS - DOUBLE STAR. All these still resonate for me.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Lately I tend toward mystery and action adventure. Though I just stared Zero Six Bravo, which is a true account of 60 mostly British special forces fighting and surviving against 100,000 Iraqi army soldiers. Think extreme Rat Patrol.

I swear those special-forces training academies must include a six-week course on writing and publishing. Seems like every special-forces soldier that ever lived starts writing books as soon as they get out.

 

[SamScribble]

I swear those special-forces training academies must include a six-week course on writing and publishing. Seems like every special-forces soldier that ever lived starts writing books as soon as they get out.

Would it be unkind to suggest that behind most - maybe all - there has been a serious hands-on editor? 'You tell the story, Fred. I'll make it readable.'

 

[jomar]

I swear those special-forces training academies must include a six-week course on writing and publishing. Seems like every special-forces soldier that ever lived starts writing books as soon as they get out.

I feel ya, but this one is by a bona fide author researching and chronicling the account.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Lovecraft's influence reminds me of Freuds influence, it peaked about 1940 and is largely forgotten today. Ditto Poe. Does anyone read Poe these days?

The real 19th Century was frightening beyond belief. The old newspapers are fulla horrors that were common occurrences in those days. Lovecraft nor Poe got close to the evil.