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H. P. Lovecraft

Well, in my intermittent reading of Lovecraft's works on my Kindle, I've got to the end of the short stories. The last 2 were "The Picture in the House" and "The music of Erich Zann", which I confess I quite enjoyed, certainly more than some of the other tales. I'm still feeling more "meh" than "wow" about them, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. There are some great themes in there, and I particularly liked the house impossibly high up a cliff face, with the door opening on to thin air (I forget the story's name, sorry), but I haven't "felt" the tales as I thought I might, apart from a slight sense of unease at some of the weirdness.

Anyhow, the way my Kindle edition is laid out, I find myself at the start of the novellas, so my next chunk of reading will be "At the mountains of Madness". I'm expecting great things...
 
Lovecraft's Creatures Would Have Made Excellent Opponents For Europe's Crusaders
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What if H.P. Lovecraft had been around in the Middle Ages? It’s likely that the crusades would have turned out very differently, as seen by these fantastic illustrations from Austrian illustrator, Robert Altbauer.

Altbauer runs a website called Fantasy Map, where most of his art is in the form of fantastic alternate maps, some of which end up in gaming books. He noted that these illustrations were a side project: “When I finally had the time and leisure to do so, I wanted to give them an special twist and Lovecraft came into mind. I have read most of his work and he was a master of his genre. I think the creatures of Lovecraft make excellent opponents for fearless crusaders.” ...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/lovecrafts-creatures-would-have-made-excellent-opponent-1768666924


that guy at the the front has got to be Kurt Russell
 
I'm surprised no-one's made a low budget short of The Picture in the House. All you'd really need are a couple of actors, a bicycle, a country cottage, and some miniatures for when the house collapses. (Or you could slightly change the ending and ditch the special effects all together.)

The Music of Erich Zahn and Cool Air would also make great shorts. You could film them both with a tiny cast and mostly using interiors, with minimal special effects.

Put all three together and you could have a classic old style portmanteau horror flick.
 
I'm surprised no-one's made a low budget short of The Picture in the House. All you'd really need are a couple of actors, a bicycle, a country cottage, and some miniatures for when the house collapses. (Or you could slightly change the ending and ditch the special effects all together.)

The Music of Erich Zahn and Cool Air would also make great shorts. You could film them both with a tiny cast and mostly using interiors, with minimal special effects.

Put all three together and you could have a classic old style portmanteau horror flick.
There's this one:
 
Well, in my intermittent reading of Lovecraft's works on my Kindle, I've got to the end of the short stories. The last 2 were "The Picture in the House" and "The music of Erich Zann", which I confess I quite enjoyed, certainly more than some of the other tales. I'm still feeling more "meh" than "wow" about them, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. There are some great themes in there, and I particularly liked the house impossibly high up a cliff face, with the door opening on to thin air (I forget the story's name, sorry), but I haven't "felt" the tales as I thought I might, apart from a slight sense of unease at some of the weirdness.

Anyhow, the way my Kindle edition is laid out, I find myself at the start of the novellas, so my next chunk of reading will be "At the mountains of Madness". I'm expecting great things...
I think my problem when I first worked through Lovecraft was I quickly got the an idea where he was going in his stories. Also it's difficult as a modern reader with all our access to literature and film to see his works as anything more than dark fantasy that doesn't evoke the intended horror. Although a couple of scenes have stuck in my mind as being pretty disturbing. What Lovecraft did quite well was make humanity insignificant in a hostile universe, as well as making aliens really 'alien', something rarely seen in modern culture, including in many eyewitness reports of alien encounters.
 
Geology And Ancient Fossils Inspired H.P. Lovecraft To Write His Best Horror Story

Geology has inspired everything from great science fiction television toDarwin’s theory of evolution. In fact, the master of modern horror himself, H.P. Lovecraft, based some of his best stories on geological ideas.

“At the Mountains of Madness” is a science-fiction/horror story written by Lovecraft in February/March 1931 and first published in the February, March and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories.

Like many others stories by Lovecraft, “Mountains of Madness” is told from a first-person perspective: Geologist William Dyer is one of the few survivors of a Miskatonic University expedition to Antarctica. After discovering strange fossils there, the team ventures into the frozen interior of the continent, only to discover a terrifying chain of unknown dark peaks … the Mountains of Madness.

Lovecraft is today considered one of the first authors to mix elements of the classic 19th century horror stories, mostly characterized by supernatural creatures like ghosts or witches, with elements of modern science-fiction. He was an enthusiastic science autodidact and used many geologic observations in his stories. He often cited the 1928-30 expedition to Antarctica led by Richard Evelyn Byrd.

The first Antarctic fossils – fragments of petrified wood – were collected in 1892-93 on Seymour Island by members of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition led by Carl Anton Larsen. One of the first geologists to collect fossils in Antarctica was the Swedish Otto Nordenskjöld in 1902-03. He and his crew discovered Jurassic plant fossils, shells and the bones of gigantic penguins – which are also featured in Lovecraft’s tale. ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbr...-to-write-his-best-horror-story/#65a823c8641f
 
Interesting piece though I'm not sure anyone thinks that's Lovecraft's best story. It moves at a truly glacial pace.
 
"Glacial pace"! Very appropriate.

Actually, I have just finished reading that tale, and enjoyed it more than a lot of his shorter tales. Long and slow it may have been, but at least old HP did eventually get to the point. Far too often in so many other stories, his narrator says that things are too terrible to describe, which always seems like a cop-out.
 
Other than that, the only irritating things about "At the Mountains of Madness" were the odd howler (eg the sun on the Southern horizon!), and the unlikelihood of remains surviving 50 million years or more.
 
...the only irritating things about "At the Mountains of Madness" were the odd howler (eg the sun on the Southern horizon!).
I haven't read the story, so maybe I'm missing some context here, but the sun does approach and disappear below the southern horizon of Antarctica as the Southern winter sets in. How else could it disappear for months on end? (This applies everywhere but at the South Pole itself - from there the horizon is north in all directions! :p )
 
I'm not feeling too clever today, so maybe my befuddled brain isn't thinking straight, but surely if the Sun is near the horizon in the Southern hemisphere, it must be the Northern horizon? After all, the Sun is always directly above the tropics, isn't it?
 
You're right in what you say, but I often feel that there is too much left undescribed by Lovecraft, despite the sometimes lengthy sentences. I've read a fair bit of his work now, and am hankering after a few different adjectives, at least - his constant favourites appear to be "Cyclopean", "Atlantean" and "decadent", which get a bit repetitive!
 
I'm not feeling too clever today, so maybe my befuddled brain isn't thinking straight, but surely if the Sun is near the horizon in the Southern hemisphere, it must be the Northern horizon? After all, the Sun is always directly above the tropics, isn't it?
Yes, you are correct. If you can see the sun near the horizon, it must be the northern horizon. Seems my befuddlement was greater than yours - I was confusing myself with thoughts of the path of the midnight sun. Must remember KISS - keep it simple, stupid!
 
I've recently discovered Clark Ashton Smith, who apparently developed a friendship with Lovecraft and like him was published in Weird Tales.

Quite a lot of his stories are up on Youtube, and feature some gloriously purple prose. Here's The Garden of Adompha, about a secret royal garden where a magician grafts dismembered body parts on to luxuriant flowers.

 
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