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

Lovecraft is just one among a number of artists whose work I personally appreciate and am able to separate from the artist but that I'd have difficulty recommending to anyone else (particularly without explicitly calling attention to that which is problematic). It's difficult to know how to properly navigate through those waters, particularly since I increasingly assume that the majority of public figures are/were scumbags of one sort or another until it's revealed after their death that they've been secretly paying Rosa Parks's rent for decades.

the guy is so massively influential and his best stories are *so* good I don't have any reservations about recommending his stuff to anyone who's curious about spec fiction and horror writing. The racism in his stories is pretty overt, any competent reader should be able to spot it for what it is.

I'd sooner recommend him than other equally "problematic" canonical dudes like, say, Heinlein or Van Vogt.

Some insist it hurts too much to read stuff like that. I can't really argue with that because I don't know what it's like for them, but I hope they want to be able to read ultra-bigots eventually.
If you refuse to ever read misogyny, that's cutting out an enormous amount of great writers from all around the world.

I once seen this fantasy fan brag they didn't read anything before 2000, from the bad old days. As if all writing around the world holds the same social attitudes.

Also annoying: people who've been ball deep in Lovecraft for years suddenly saying they never really liked him that much. And fans who're walking on eggshells and assuring you they know how awful his views were.

I mean, if we get to the level of the individual reader sure read whatever the fuck you want, why should ppl force themselves to read Great Authors if their bigotry speaks more loudly to them than their skill? It's when it gets to criticism/canonisation that this conversation gets trickier imo.

I once seen this fantasy fan brag they didn't read anything before 2000, from the bad old days. As if all writing around the world holds the same social attitudes.

Yeah, there's a real feeling amongst some younger progressives that everything pre-2000 (in any medium, really) is just a swamp of bigotry, which is obviously unfair to scores of older artists but also carries with it this smugness that now it's all been figured out and there's no way current writing will seem ultra-problematic in decades to come.

obviously i think the problem here is believing respectability is a be-all-and-end-all gain for genre work -- but it's quite a widespread anxiety among those who've devoted a lot of time (and the qualifications their education brought them) to exploring pulp and pop forms; bcz of course you want your work respected beyond yr immediate peers, even if it's only ever seen you worrying away at militantly unrespectable forms

This feels like such a dwindling preoccupation to me - highbrow respectable institutions these days are either a) hugely invested in not being That Guy re: dismissing genre and pop or b) losing readers and "cultural relevancy" by the day. Obviously someone like Joshi is old enough to remember this being different, but at this point I always feel like the snooty genre-dismisser is more a strawman ppl bring up because it's romantic to rail against them than a real person.

A while ago my brother was talking to a nice young man who was taken aback by being told that a British tv channel in the 90s once had a "strong women" film season. As if that didn't seem possible in the 90s.

Unfortunately there's a popular impression of HPL today that his work is nothing but racism. So I can understand why some people would find that unapproachable.
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.

Just watched a fantasy panel with Andrzej Sapkowski (The Witcher series, better known as a videogame) and he was the grumpiest panelist I've ever seen.

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.