Dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial? Don't mind if I do (a weird fiction thread)

is this the main M R James thread?

MR James night tonight on bbc4:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/schedules/bbcfour/20171224

how was it?

The chances of me watching anything on the communal TV that isn't sport or the worst kind of popular entertainment are always slim to none at Christmas.

Even recording it and watching it the next morning is useless. I did see try and watch the barchester stalls bit but there was Christmas morning bustle happening and repeated "what is this?". Will iPlayer the documentary later and watch it on the laptop during the traditional 6 hours of boxing day darts / Dynamo specials.

Christopher Lee reading things out didn't seem to add a lot tbh.

when i saw the link for some reason i thought it was an audio thing on radio 4, not a repeat of the telly one. i saw the tractate middoth & the gatiss thing last year, latter was as you would expect, former was just ok, it's not the scariest of his stories. i've also seen a view from a hill, don't recall it so well, don't know if i've seen no.13 at all. might see if i can fit them in over the next few days.

Worth checking out? Was made aware of it by the presence of Matthew "Garth Merengi" Holness:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Uncanny-Tales-Unease/dp/1905583184/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=chortlcouk&linkId=65479821d8b54161d53067d5f87d2de3&language=en_GB

There was another book that might have been in the same series, from a decade ago. I haven't read either yet but I doubt they're the same kind of weird fiction (despite the presence of Ramsey Campbell).

man i so wish there was just a little more overlap between "weird fiction" and "good fiction"... desperate for quality recs

I am not deeply versed, but if you haven't read Arthur Machen (referenced above), he's totally worth the time. Elliptical and mysterious.

if you're okay with "old" as well as "weird" and "good," Hoffmann, LeFanu, Bierce, Machen, Blackwood, M.R. James, and Henry James all deliver the hightone.

Always William Hope Hodgson too (but be careful what you choose).

Wish I could recommend more because I've got an absolute ton of it but of recent reading I really liked Aliya Whiteley's The Beauty ((women die off and are reborn as fungus creatures that slowly alter the male population, in this case semi-hippies who live in the wilderness)) and Farah Rose Smith's Almanac Of Dust ((kind of a dying earth story with frequent philosophical rants about nothingness)).

Some short stories by Karin Tidbeck are very good.

I mean wish I could recommend more because I haven't read much of my To be read pile.

RogerMeixco- Can I ask what you haven't liked?

I should note that Whiteley's The Beauty feels closer to science fiction than the main tradition of weird fiction.

is this the main MR James thread? (redux)

This week Radio 4, 15m each, 10:45 and 19:45
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001l7c

M The Mezzotint
T Casting The Runes
W The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral
T A Warning To The Curious
F Rats

and then

Christmas Eve BBC Four
22:00
The Dead Room
A Christmas ghost story about a long-running radio horror series.
(Gatiss channeling MR James)

22:30
Lost Hearts (1973? last shown 1994)
An orphan finds himself haunted by the ghosts of two children.

23:05
The Ash Tree (last show 2005)
A 17th-century squire is haunted by a curse his great uncle brought upon the household.

also, in more christmas ghost story news, tonight on gideon coe

Muriel Spark's The Girl I Left Behind Me read by actor Bronwen Price with a specially commissioned soundtrack by Alison Cotton.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001nbl

not heard it but i know alison (Left Insides) and everything she does is quality.

RogerMeixco- Can I ask what you haven't liked?

I should note that Whiteley's The Beauty feels closer to science fiction than the main tradition of weird fiction.

xp took me a while to work out why you'd labelled the radio programmes with a sequence ending in 'WTF'.

(Ava once noticed it somewhere when I was visiting: "I know what wtf stands for! Wednesday Thursday Friday!")

ha!

i'll give the gatiss thing a shot, his version of the tractate middoth wasn't totally disastrous. there is a dedicated MR james thread around here somewhere...

(searching for M.R. is useless, as is MR. so you're left with James which is useless. i tried a posts search for tractate and middoth and "the ash tree" and didn't find a thread.)

ah, 'Tis the Season = M.R. James (via "Antiquary")

Christmas Eve BBC Four
22:00
The Dead Room

30 minutes of build up to a bog standard jump scare. Exceedingly meh.

was trying to decide which would be the best thread to complain about it on

Gatiss is terrible at making his influences cohere into anything that works

jump scare was fluffed too

If they looking for ideas to save money for when the gov stop subsidising pensioner tv licences - sack off mediocre nobs like Gatiss, just stick on some Hitler docs at xmas.

OTM

"why does everything have to be so meta", I ask myself.

Wasn't really a jump scare to me, any more than the blankets are a jump scare.

Gattis know his stuff and it's great to hear him talk but his writing is often a let down.

the big vandermeer-curated book of weird fiction is 99p in the current Amazon uk Kindle monthly deals (35 quid for this paperback). it's been mentioned in the sf thread a few times.

(ledge mentions it here and there's some discussion, sept 2012)

I think Roadside Picnic might be part of this discussion.