ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

That pre-2000 avoidance is, uh, insane. WTF.

In keeping with the thread topic, I've shifted my reading to Halloween mode. I've been reading a Lord Dunsany collection (which is excellent and fits snugly among the mounds of ancient history/religion stuff I've been reading lately) and I just started House on the Borderland this morning. (William) Hope (Hodgson) it lives up to the hype.

I love that book so much I will make sure nobody ever makes a film of it. I did enjoy Corben's comic version though.

When that first came out, I was like, 'why did they choose to adapt some book I've never heard of that looks like a Lovecraft ripoff?' Naiveté, lol.

Some HPL fans even believe that it's compelling because they think it's all sublimated racism. I don't buy this take at all.

I was going to make a half-arsed argument along these lines - some of the stories that are most clearly about decadence due to miscegenation, "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and all that, do get some of their potency from Lovecraft's idiotic racial fears - but ultimately that's not what's at the heart of Lovecraft for me so much as the well-known cosmic horror, uncaring universe thing. If his mythos had included some Golden Age before the Old Ones the reactionary element would be harder to dismiss, but since there isn't, in the end the "savages" in "Call Of Cthulhu" know more than the civilized narrator - which is not to say their portrayal is ok, of course.

I love Lord Dunsany. Particularly the one about the club with the forgotten kings and the one about the dude buried alive for years and years.

i think there's a continuity: for HPL the borderland between unfeeling chaotic repulsive outer cosmos has always been right here on this planet, albeit for long periods hidden from the fragile civilised spaces and minds -- and the existence (and very being) of the uncivilised peoples on the world is a manifestation of it; they understand acknowledge and worship cthulhu bcz they are in essence coterminous with him in lovecraft's mind

I've never read Lovecraft, but I hated Alan Moore's two HPL comics, so maybe I should read the proper thing. I've got Vol 1 of the two collected editions at home...

Those more well-versed in Lovecraft can confirm or pooh-pooh, but it's long been my assessment that his depictions of an unfeeling chaotic repulsive outer cosmos are really just expressions of extreme xenophobia taken to their (il)logical conclusion. Fear of the other and that which lies outside of ourselves blown up to cosmic extremes.

I really don't know about that, Old Lunch: there is so much else that was around in Lovecraft's time/influenced him that you could attribute that sense of cosmic horror to, first and foremost the collapse of traditional religious values and ideological certainties, WWI, psychoanalysis, etc. You really don't have to be a racist to think the universe is empty and indifferent, and from there to actively hostile is a short leap.

i think there's a continuity: for HPL the borderland between unfeeling chaotic repulsive outer cosmos has always been right here on this planet, albeit for long periods hidden from the fragile civilised spaces and minds -- and the existence (and very being) of the uncivilised peoples on the world is a manifestation of it; they understand acknowledge and worship cthulhu bcz they are in essence coterminous with him in lovecraft's mind

This is well put, but I still think part of the horror for Lovecraft is that the "civilized" peoples aren't any different really, they just don't know/have managed to mentally supress their role. There are no "good" Gods in Lovecraft after all, no counterweight, we are all the Old Ones' playthings.

This sorta ties into Heart Of Darkness in a weird way: critique of Western whites believing they are civilized acheived through having the punchline be "actually you're a savage like the rest of them"; the problematic aspect of that being they take the idea of "savages" at face value in the first place.

he definitely thinks that civilisation -- nice as it perhaps is for some -- is a colossal delusion: ditto sanity

Some people exaggerate his nihilism (this is possibly because Ligotti taken that aspect and ran with it) but I think it's true that there's this HPL gradual realisation that it's not just the outer regions are wrong, but everything is tainted and hopeless.

Another reason for controversies: as fragile and defensive as some Lovecraftians are, some are just kind of exasperated by these arguments and that exasperation can be mistaken for reactionary suppression of discussion.

There have been a ton of thinkpieces, most of which don't do enough research, which Joshi will pounce on (he's one of the very few people to read all the remaining thousands of letters that let you into HPL's thought process). Add to this the current tendency for beginners to pretend they are experts (non-French speakers on every side of the argument who acted like they'd been reading Charlie Hebdo for years) and imagine the storm of thinkpieces Joshi will be riding if a popular screen adaptation happens.

These books are huge, expensive and there's many yet to come
https://www.hippocampuspress.com/h.p-lovecraft/collected-letters?zenid=3qivn2fp2pv7lsp195cd2uonn5

nameless ancient hideousness to the web design there

Haha, it's one of my favourite publishers and Joshi's work for them represents the bulk or my respect for him. He seems to be involved in some way with most of their books.

Yeah, there's a real feeling amongst some younger progressives that everything pre-2000 (in any medium, really) is just a swamp of bigotry

lol this is the dumbest shit

Sorry to keep adding bits but there is a bunch of things that added to the feeling that HPL's racism is still dangerous.

-Occasionally get occasional far right people around weird fiction community. A couple have been banned from Ligotti forum.
-Nick Land is a Lovecraft nut.
-David A Riley was for years quite a prominent person in UK horror and Weird Tales kinda stuff. It was known for years that he was a former national front member but he was more recently outed as still being a nationalist and apparently he agreed with a terrorist attack. He is still creating controversy because some people still associate with him and there's been pressure to boycott anything to do with him.
-After World Fantasy dropped their Lovecraft award bust, a guy from counter currents made his own version for nazis.
-The Puppies (the gamergate of speculative fiction) defend HPL.

I often find myself wondering how much of horror fandom is composed of racist/far-right types.

If we're just talking books and not films and music, there is actually very little far right presence in horror compared to science fiction, which has the biggest far right gathering (usually very military orientated) and these guys often don't have much fondness for horror.

There is apparently a lot of aspiring and self-published writers of misogynistic rape fantasies and perhaps they take up some horror convention and online space but I don't see these guys much.

Some say horror writers are generally nicer because they're always confronting their dark side. Sounds kinda bullshit but who knows?

mark fisher (mentioned a little upthread) was nick land's protégé in the mid-90s and they were certainly still chums in the early 00s -- but at some point from a more or less shared position (of cyber-futurist nihilism) for want of a better description mark started travelling definitively (but genuinely) left, while land went (further) right. one thing they continued to share was a high regard for lovecraft

(the speculative realism group in philosophy also seem to use lovecraft as a kind of exemplary touchstone: i think most of them -- tho not all -- are leftish: graham harman certainly published for zer0)

s/b (of cyber-futurist nihilism, for want of a better description)

I heard that Land went on Cthuloid rants, did he have a phase of believing the stuff was real? He seems genuinely nuts.

i've seen ppl discussing his book fanged noumena in terms of the last stages of amphetamine psychosis (tho others say some of it is very funny) (i guess these aren't mutually contradictory) (also i think it was actually written before his full swing into towards the neo-reactionary)

i haven't read him and probably won't: i did one see him and sadie plant deliver a joint paper in the form of a gary numen-esque robotic performance -- it was bad not good

nuMAN

What variety of racist is he?

my poorly informed guess: lovecraftian

but i haven't read anything by him, especially anything recent

lol did you mean numan?

an excellent ilxor writes HPL-inspired stuff. but i don't think he comes to this thread.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25469506-cthulhu-fhtagn

i always mean to read a lot of that olde-tymey weird stuff but i never do. i've got a bunch of it at home. i need some 19th century malady or something so that i am in bed for months. THEN i'll read it all. i haven't even read that much poe. too much SF to get to!

i did enjoy that steve tem book i read though! deadfall hotel. that was definitely a cool fever dream. and i do think that would make a good netflix show...

i kinda bought that by accident though.

He strikes again! Includes review of the Carson story.
http://stjoshi.org/review_lockhart.html

Not sure I knew that this paper was available on line, don't think it was linked to before, found it pretty interesting when I took the book it was in out of the library several years ago: http://elms.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/98/2014/07/2000-Painwise-in-Space-single-space.pdf

still on STJoshi-watch: read The Hound last night and was afterwards amused that STJ faithfully noted the borrowings from conan doyle, poe and beirce, while c/p-ing dull explanations of the symbolists, the decadents, the pre-raphs and baudelaire from wikipedia or similar -- and entirely omitted to note that it's basically an eldritched up and very overwritten* remake of COUNT MAGNUS (with sprinklings of A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS) -- tomb-robbing substituted for amateur archeology, the sense of the futility of trying to flee or to return a stolen item, and of course the playful and learned attitude quoting legendary but often actually existing texts from the deep past (except with lovecraft they are all clumsily made up instead: i have always fkn HATED the "mad arab abdul alhazred" as a device)

*(USE FEWER ADJECTIVES HPL!)

also: mildly amazing anecdote involving MRJ, HPL, JMBarrie and PETER PAN'S ACTUAL REAL BROTHER NICO: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveMRJLetter.html

He uses the word cosmic about 24 times.

LOL.

I was hoping that MRJ would comment on the ghost stories of his namesake Henry, but alas no.

I've read that MRJ response to HPL before but not the Nico thing. If I remember correctly the essay places importance on cosmicism.

Amazing that MRJ actually read "Supernatural Horror in Literature" ... one wonders what he would have made of HPL's fiction but perhaps "He uses the word cosmic about 24 times" says it all.

Unless i'm misreading it, James is making a nice distinction between "horrid" (which he likes) and "nasty" (which he doesn't).

"But the moderns are apt to be either woolly or too nasty for me." I choose on next-to-no-evidence to assume this means Lovecraft and Machen ("rather a foul mind") respectively,

M.R. James will always remember old Mr Whatsisname

In Big Sick there's a copy of Supernatural Horror in Literature in Kumail's bedroom.

Algernon Blackwood thought Lovecraft's work had too much rotting flesh.

So, Simak - "City" really is some kind of oddball masterpiece, I can't think of anything like it. "Foundation", maybe, matches it in scope and content in terms of a future history although that is very different in tone and is way more ponderous and poorly written than the compact, lyrical style Simak has. Heinlein did the future history thing too, but Simak's weird combination of folksiness and pastoral nostalgia and tragedy is infinitely more appealing, both funnier and more somber and more human. It's also interesting that it is totally devoid of any kind of villain or good/evil conflict, the characters generally do wrestle with moral quandaries and but there's none of the conventional opposing forces fighting each other stuff, everything is in the context of these larger, uncontrollable forces at work on society (and different types of societies). The farther I go into it (I'm on the 7th story) the more I like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/11/top-10-modern-nordic-books

what would you add to this list?

Interesting post. Was it meant for this particular thread though?

simak is the best - just this slightly skewed, odd worldview. "3 body problem" recalled his story-style for me.

Subterranean Press print editions can be pretty expensive, but they've got some nice-priced ebooks, from their site or Amazon etc.; this is one is $2.99:

Robert Silverberg, The Emperor and the Maula

Dust jacket illustration by Jim Burns.(Not so hot, though)

Robert Silverberg’s The Emperor and the Maula was written in 1992 for an aborted publishing project and has been printed only once, in a radically abbreviated version. This deluxe new edition restores more than 15,000 words of missing text, allowing us to see, for the first time, the author’s original intent. The result is both a genuine publishing event and an unexpected gift for Silverberg’s legion of readers.

The Emperor and the Maula is Silverberg’s Scheherazade tale, the story of a woman telling a story in order to extend—and ultimately preserve—her life. The Scheherazade of this striking story is Laylah Walis, denizen of a far-future Earth which has been invaded and conquered by a star-faring race known as the Ansaarans. Laylah is a “maula,” a barbarian forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot on the sacred home worlds of the imperial conquerors. Knowing the risks, Laylah travels to Haraar, home of the galactic emperor himself. Once there, she delays her execution by telling the emperor a story—and telling it well.

That story, the tale within a tale that dominates this book, is, in fact, Laylah’s own story. It is also the story of the beleaguered planet Earth, of people struggling, often futilely, to oppose their alien masters and restore their lost independence. Colorful, seamlessly written, and always powerfully imagined, The Emperor and the Maula shows us Grandmaster Silverberg at his representative best. This is science fiction as it should be written, but all too seldom is. No one does it better than Robert Silverberg. No one ever has.

Also:
What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlín R. Kiernan's fourteenth collection of short fiction, comprised of twenty-eight uncollected and impossible-to-find stories.

Treading the grim places where desire and destruction, longing and horror intersect, the author rises once again to meet the high expectations she set with such celebrated collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love, and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Ape's Wife and Other Stories. In these pages you'll meet a dragon's lover, a drowned vampire cursed always to ride the tides, a wardrobe that grants wishes, and a lunatic artist's marriage of the Black Dahlia and the Beast of Gévaudan. You'll visit a ruined post-industrial Faerie, travel back to tropical Paleozoic seas and ahead to the far-flung future, and you'll meet a desperate writer forced to sell her memories for new ideas. Here are twenty-eight tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant—or worse.

The stories in Dear Sweet Filthy World were first published in the subscription-only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlín for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the first availability to the general public for most of these rare tales.

From Publishers Weekly:

“The 28 stories (most previously available only in her e-zine, Sirenia Digest) in Kiernan’s newest collection of dark fiction (after Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea) explore the human and inhuman conditions in all their filthy glory, and bravely wallow in the effluvia of mythology, murder, and depravity…her many fans will be overjoyed to have these works collected.”

From Kirkus Reviews:

“Horror blends with love, obsession, transformed bodies, and terrifying mysteries in this collection of stories. Kiernan's surreal and often unsettling fiction derives much of its power from the way it causes characters and readers alike to question reality via a shroud of narrative ambiguity… At their best, these stories are sinister and beguiling in equal measure, tracing the border between fear and obsession and asking powerful questions about desire along the way.”

From Locus Online:

“Although Kiernan has produced three fine novels, I think it’s safe to say that most of her fans think of her as one our finest and most productive writers of short stories. And so this new collection, her fourteenth, will certainly be received with much delight and acclaim. Containing nearly thirty tales, this handsome volume incidentally proves once again that Subterranean Press continues to be one of the most generous, savvy, elegant and creative publishers around.”

From SFRevu:

“Any fan of dark fiction should be reading Kiernan, and if you haven't discovered her yet this collection is a chance to see what you have been missing.”

Table of Contents:

Werewolf Smile
Vicaria Draconis
Paleozoic Annunciation
Charcloth, Firesteel, and Flint
Shipwrecks Above
The Dissevered Hearts
Exuvium
Drawing from Life
The Eighth Veil
Three Months, Three Scenes, With Snow
Workprint
Tempest Witch
Fairy Tale of the Maritime
– 30 –
The Carnival is Dead and Gone
Scylla for Dummies
Figurehead
Down to Gehenna
The Granting Cabinet
Evensong
Latitude 41°21'45.89"N, Longitude 71°29'0.62"W
Another Tale of two Cities
Blast the Human Flower
Cammufare
Here Is No Why
Hauplatte/Gegenplatte
Sanderlings
Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)

$4.99! I'm gonna get this.

I love Silverbob but I really can't bring myself to care about anything post-1976. I read some of it in high school (Lord Valentine's Castle, iirc) and have dipped into some other short fiction from the 80s but it just doesn't grab me.

If this doesn't show, it's Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

https://subterraneanpress.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/g/o/golden_age_ebook_cover_1.jpg

Naomi Novik ended her acclaimed, beloved nine-volume Temeraire series last year with a stunning finale, League of Dragons. Fans missing their favorite series can now rejoice: Novik returns with an original Temeraire collection as unique as the world she has created, with each tale inspired by an accompanying piece of fan art.
The Temeraire novels provide a window into an alternate nineteenth century populated with Novik’s own richly human and unforgettably draconic characters as they adventure alongside well-known historical figures. That tradition continues here. Readers will delight at appearances by fan-favorite characters from the series and historical figures like the famed explorer Matteo Ricci. In “Planting Season,” Novik shows us an early glimpse of American dragon John Wampanoag at Boston Harbor. “Golden Age” finds a dragon who believes he remembers being called Celeste hatch from a shipwreck-tossed crate onto an island where he meets others of his kind. But other famous fictional characters are to be discovered here as well. Readers will certainly recognize a certain Miss Bennet (here Captain Bennet) and her suitor, Mr. Darcy, in “Dragons and Decorum.”

Filled with the inventive world-building, rich detail, sparkling wit, and deep emotion that readers have come to expect from Novik’s work, Golden Age and Other Stories is a treasure at home on any Temeraire-lover’s bookshelf.

From Kirkus (Starred Review):

“So accomplished, absorbing, and wide-ranging is Novik's creation that the stories elicit enormous pleasure… a must-read for all fans of this outstanding series.”

From Publishers Weekly:

“Novik collaborates with her fans in this welcome return to the alternate 19th-century world of her Temeraire series, in which English naval captain William Laurence befriends the newly hatched Chinese dragon he names Temeraire and the two of them enjoy adventures around the globe. Perhaps the best story in the collection is 'Golden Age,' which tells an alternate version of the first meeting between Temeraire (here called Celeste) and Laurence and the formation of their unusual bond.”

From Library Journal:

“This illustrated collection, which can serve as a stand-alone or as a companion volume for readers of military fiction and dragon fiction, will bring joy to the series’ many admirers.”

Table of Contents:

Volly Gets a Cow
Planting Season
Dawn of Battle
Golden Age
Succession
Dragons and Decorum
(drabbles)
$5.99

James P. Blaylock, River's Edge

We’re pleased to present a new Langdon St. Ives adventure. At more than 40,000 words, this is by far the longest of the novellas!

The body of a girl washes up on a mud bank along the edge of the River Medway amid a litter of poisoned fish and sea birds, casting an accusing shadow upon the deadly secrets of the Majestic Paper Mill and its wealthy owners. Simple answers to the mystery begin to suggest insidious secrets, and very quickly Langdon St. Ives and his wife Alice are drawn into a web of conspiracies involving murder, a suspicious suicide, and ritual sacrifice at a lonely and ancient cluster of standing stones. Abruptly St. Ives’s life is complicated beyond the edge of human reason, and he finds himself battling to save Alice’s life and the ruination of his friends, each step forward leading him further into the entanglement, a dark labyrinth from which there is no apparent exit.
$4.99

*Think* I used to come across this guy's stories in Twilight Zone Magazine, back when the TV series was revived--was he good?
from Subterranean Press:

We've been working with David J. Schow for two freaking decades now, and it's high time we published DJStories: The Best of David J. Schow. Need further conivincing? Read on for the full details on this career-spanning collection.
About the Book:
(BONUS COVER FLAP STORY - ABSOLUTELY FREE!)
Once upon a time, there was a writer named David J. Schow.
One of his specialties was the tale of unsettlement, unease, looming fear, straight-up gross-out, unnerving spookiness, gallows-humor black satire, heart-rending loss, the conte cruel, the ironies of fate, and the seductive sorcery of the otherworldly-in a word, horror.
This was by no means his only specialty.
He wrote short stories, then novels, then TV, then movies, fiction and non. He won various awards for this pursuit, including the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Twilight Zone Dimension Award, and the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award.
As you read this now, he's been engaged in this activity professionally for forty years.
Call him a modern fantasist, a black magic realist, an acerbic satirist, a splatterpunk, a caustic comic, an "urbanized Cormac McCarthy" (John Farris), "smart, scathing, and verbally inventive to an astonishing degree" (Peter Straub), a "literary gunslinger" (Richard Christian Matheson), "the Duke of the Dark" (Mick Garris), "deeply felt but truly chilling" (Weird Tales), "remarkably talented; edgy, insightful, and fearless" (Joe R. Lansdale), a "gifted storyteller" (Robert Bloch), a "cleverly metaphoric literary chameleon" (T.E.D. Klein) ... you get the general drift, right? As Michael Marshall Smith said, "Be prepared to be dragged to some very dark places, and to love every step of the way. Like being punched in the face by a poet."
DJStories is Schow's first "greatest hits" album, covering four decades of his efforts to shake you up, shock you awake, tweak your sensibilities and gun down your preconceptions. Thirty stories- count 'em, thirty!-that cover the entire spectrum of what you may find frightening.
Monsters. Lovers. Spirits. Allies. Killers. The earthly and unearthly. The insane and the too-sane. The dead, the living and the in-between. Fictional folks who just might have an impact on your real, waking life.
This story does not have a happy ending. Guaranteed.
Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies: $40 (Maybe they'll eventually do a cheapo ebook edition, like those in previous Subterranean post.)

About to read Women of Wonder---The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s, edited by Pamela Sargent, Harvest Original trade paperback published 1994.
Contributors:
Octavia E. Butler
Pat Cadigan
Jayge Carr
Angela Carter
Suzy McKee Charnas
C.J.Cherryh
Storm Constantine
Carol Emshwiller
Sheila Finch
Karen Joy Fowler
Mary Gentle
Lisa Goldstein
Nancy Kress
Tanith Lee
Rosaleen Love
Judith Moffett
Pat Murphy
Rebecca Ore
Pamela Sargent
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Connie Willis