|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 27, 2010 20:35:21 GMT
The reason it scares you, if it scares you, is, I think, because it subtly suggests how easily you could go insane yourself.
|
|
|
Post by ramseycampbell on Aug 28, 2010 10:35:50 GMT
Would be rather poor form if they did just lift whole anthologies after others have done the legwork - I can vaguely remember Hugh Lamb telling me about something like that happening to him once - though I don't remember who he said did it. In Hugh Lamb's case it wasn't an entire anthology. The anonymously edited Chamber Of Horrors (Octopus, 1984) helped itself to the R. E. Vernade's The Finless Death, Fred Cowles's The Horror Of Abbot's Grange, John Blackburn's Dad and Robert Haining's The Wall, all of them lifted direct from his selections. The worst of it was, the Blackburn and Haining stories were original to Return Of The Grave, so Octopus couldn't have got them anywhere else. What's the betting the editor thought "If Hugh Lamb's using them, they must be Victorian"! Ironically, i'm sure it was Hugh who rescued R. Murray Gilchrist from obscurity when he included Witch-In-Grain in The Thrill Of Horror (1975) and continued to run his stories - including The Basilisk, Roxanne Runs Lunatick and The Return - over several anthologies. Lord, I remember reading every anthology in the field I could find back in the fifties and gradually realising how many tales were recycled from book to book. Even the first Pan Book of Horror, which seemed virtually fresh to me then, I now realise lifted no fewer than seven tales from the "Not at Night" Omnibus.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 28, 2010 10:54:27 GMT
And, as has been mentioned, Pan Horror #3 is pretty much Charles Birkin's Horrors from the Creeps series with bonus material. I'm very grateful that Van Thal borrowed from them, just as i'm grateful Wordsworth have possibly looked to Ash Tree and Tartarus for "inspiration". Of course, those who "spent costly effort on researching and compiling the contents of the collections" should be acknowledged, but i hope they can take some tiny comfort from this recent post. I also agree that anything that takes people away from books is bad, but I've used these games in just the opposite way. I know several teenagers now who had never (I do mean literally, NEVER) read a book outside of those required for school. One of them, now 21, had a teacher who thought he was madly enthusiastic for a particular writer because he took one book of theirs out of the school library repeatedly. but it was simply that he was ordered to borrow one and that was nearest the library door. He had never even opened the cover. I lent his mother my copy of Barrow Hill, and he loved it, so then I told him that it was inspired in part by the classic Doctor Who story Stones of Blood. She found the novelisation in a secondhand shop, and he actually read it, cover to cover. Now he reads everything Wordworth release in the horror and mystery genre, has a huge collection of paperbacks, and his pc and games console actually get cold while he reads. Others have gone on from playing Lost Crown and Darkness Within to reading M R James and H P Lovecraft. So it can be a lever to prise them off the machinery and into reading.
|
|
|
Post by David A. Riley on Aug 28, 2010 11:29:39 GMT
Johnny Mains wrote:
"Would be rather poor form if they did just lift whole anthologies after others have done the legwork"
Which is all very well, but they have already got their recompense through selling books which, let's be honest, are geared pricewise more towards the collector than the reader.
Perhaps I have been glutted with "collectable" books, having a bookshop, but I get more pleasure out of buying a book that is aimed at the reader these days, such as Wordsworth's The Dead of Night, than any high-priced collectable book. I recently bought the very expensive Reggie Oliver collection from Centipede Press at over 900 pages with a leather and silk cover. Beautiful, but not something you could casually read for fear of damaging the damned thing. I would sell it off any day if I could get the same stories in a cheap paperback. At least I could then read the stories without worrying about devaluing the book while doing so!
|
|
|
Post by cw67q on Aug 28, 2010 11:33:55 GMT
I know Ash-Tree were upset about the Gilchrist volume, where their line up had been clearly swiped. But I thought that this had not been a problem since then. Of course volumes like the Caldecott have essentially identical contents. But then it makles sense to reprint the two original volumes together, a fairly obvious (but good) idea. I've been a big fan of ATP for years, but I'm actually more excited about the fact that Wordsworth are making volumes of similar content available at prices that make them available to everyone. A place for both I'd have thought. - chris Their Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural series has been one of the best things to happen in the horror genre for a hell of a long time. Yes, I agree, but in many cases this has only been possible because other people have spent costly effort on researching and compiling the contents of the collections, which they can then simply copy because the stories themselves are in the public domain. As far as I know, this is not a legal issue, as one cannot have copyright in a particular selection of other people's stories. Nor do I consider it an ethical one. But it is a bit dubious from the point of view of etiquette.
|
|
|
Post by David A. Riley on Aug 29, 2010 11:10:34 GMT
Just finished reading the opening story to this collection, The Beckoning Fair One, and I can't believe that I have never before read such a well-known story, but I haven't.
What a stunning story to open this volume with! It certainly lives up to its reputation.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 29, 2010 18:06:45 GMT
I worked up the courage to read "The Beckoning Fair One" for the first time in over 30 years. While it did not frighten me so much this time (I may have become somewhat jaded---as a result of early reading of this and other similar stories) it is still a masterpiece, of course. This time I noted some depressing rumination on aging and lack of accomplishments, something I think meant nothing to me the last time I read it.
I do not quite know what to make of the very last sentence---on the one hand, I like its laconic tone, but on the other, it suggests the author was overly concerned that some really dim-witted readers might not grasp what had happened.
|
|
|
Post by monker on Aug 30, 2010 0:23:14 GMT
I would have preferred it if there was more written of Oleron's personality to foreshadow the haunting. I suppose it’s a case of approaching a story with too high expectations. A great story, sure, but I just didn’t quite get that little ‘hook’ that I like to get from my favorites, even from some that have far less artistic merit.
I liked ‘Benlian’; it had the benefit of being shorter and, thus, you have less time to waver.
I'm looking forward to this volume, all the same, and will no doubt reread TBFO at one stage.
|
|
|
Post by jonathan122 on Aug 30, 2010 21:08:41 GMT
The character of frustrated / bored/ slowly going insane author Oleron is presumably meant to contain a lot of Onions himself (OLivER ONions). I'd never noticed that until you pointed it out, Lord P! (Actually, I didn't even notice it then, and at first I just assumed it was a problem with the caps lock on your computer. ) On another note, I've just been reading "The Honey in the Wall" (1924), and there's a moment where one of the characters tells a ghost story, and the story turns out to be exactly the same as William Sansom's "A Woman Seldom Found" (1956). Until now, I'd always assumed that the Sansom tale was original - but is it actually quite a well-known folk-tale which I've somehow never hear before?
|
|
|
Post by cw67q on Aug 31, 2010 8:33:59 GMT
The Honey in the Wall is a beautiful piece of writing, very moving. I'd have recommended it at the start of the thread, but the supernatural element, if it really exists at all, is minimal, and the horror element nonexistent, which didn't make it appear to be the main candidate for vault fodder. It is, however a very fine tale, well worth reading. Excuse me, but I have to break off for a quick sob and nose blow... - chris Ps I never noticed the Oliver Onions/ Oleron thing either, which now it has been pointed out feels a bit like not noticing the Pearl & Dean (sp?) advertising music in the cinema of the day. (Doh!)
|
|
|
Post by cw67q on Aug 31, 2010 11:25:23 GMT
Btw Morgan Scorpion (I don't think you're on this group, but if you are: hello Morgan) is 10/12ths of the way through uploading an audio reading of the Beckoning Fair One to librivox: librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=505687&sid=5fca8f411f31efa513ad0ce1c9a03accIf you aren't familiar with librivox, it is a website featuring free audios of out of copywrite material recorded by volunteers. There was a bunch of spooky/horror stuff when I last visited including stoires by MRJ, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood etc. Morgan herself has recorded a bunch of HPL stories. - chris
|
|
|
Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 7, 2010 20:38:31 GMT
Phantas - Abel Keeling lies slowly dying of thirst on the deck of the slowly sinking wreck of the sailing ship Mary of the Tower with only the mad religious hymn-singing zealot Bligh for company. And of course the ghost ship from the future that he's obviously just dreaming of. Some nice descriptive passages here in a straightforward sea story that has a nice ending to it.
Rooum - Now here's one other vaulters can probably help us with. What exactly is going on here? The title character appears to be haunted by an invisible ghost who keeps trying to catch him up and overtake him, only if the pavement isn't wide enough the spectre forces its way through him. There are some rather strange explanations of scientific terms like osmosis which are exactly accurate and don't really help either. I've filed this one under 'weird'.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Sept 9, 2010 11:36:00 GMT
Rooum - Now here's one other vaulters can probably help us with. What exactly is going on here? The title character appears to be haunted by an invisible ghost who keeps trying to catch him up and overtake him, only if the pavement isn't wide enough the spectre forces its way through him. There are some rather strange explanations of scientific terms like osmosis which are exactly accurate and don't really help either. I've filed this one under 'weird'. WARNING: SPOILERS!!! Well, here is what I think (for what it's worth). The thing chasing after Rooum is the ghost of someone he killed. There's nothing much to support that - except the possible hint where the narrator suggests that the name of the thing running after him is "Conscience". What that thing is trying to do is to physically "blend" with Rooum - i.e. possess him - and then cause him to kill himself. It takes the thing a few attempts to achieve that - it runs up to Rooum, but then passes right through him. Eventually, though, the thing succeeds in its mission - at the end, when Rooum runs off, it's not actually him doing the running (if you see what I mean).
|
|
Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
|
Post by Thana Niveau on Sept 9, 2010 12:48:16 GMT
Thanks for that interpretation of "Rooum", Dr Strange. It's a strange little story, to be sure, and your explanation makes perfect sense. "The Beckoning Fair One" is up there with "The Yellow Wall-Paper" for me now. I do have a slight obsession with the "slowly going mad" theme and I can't believe it took me this long to read Onions! BTW, my Wordsworth copy arrived in the post today. I wholeheartedly agree that they're doing an excellent job and are deserving of recognition for it. I find hardbacks unwieldy and uncomfortable to read in bed - especially expensive collector's editions! So I prefer battered old paperbacks for reading purposes. And while we're on the subject of others doing all the work... **ahem** As Lord P was reading me "The Beckoning Fair One" my eyes kept being drawn to the Tartarus Press cover and Oliver Onions' name. So during a break in the reading, it was I! I, I say! who suggested that Oleron might be a creative interpretation of his name. Some people just --
|
|
|
Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 9, 2010 18:38:36 GMT
And while we're on the subject of others doing all the work... **ahem** As Lord P was reading me "The Beckoning Fair One" my eyes kept being drawn to the Tartarus Press cover and Oliver Onions' name. So during a break in the reading, it was I! I, I say! who suggested that Oleron might be a creative interpretation of his name. Some people just -- Indeed it was, not that I had actually claimed that observation as my own. Still, for that particularly unseemly outburst I'm afraid Lady P is going to have to go back into the attic for a while.
|
|