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Post by ropardoe on Jul 13, 2018 7:41:24 GMT
James! I read this tale of yours tonight and it was a delicious interlude: a ruined castle in an obscure Welsh village, a legend regarding an unknown saint, an evil squire and a pact with the Devil; evocative descriptions of the haunted Welsh countryside. www.pardoes.info/roanddarroll/StoryFive.htmlThank you for providing me with a delightful diversion on this late Thursday night. cheers, Steve Good one, isn't it?
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 12, 2018 18:05:16 GMT
Moving sort-of sideways from the above, I'd recommend a canter through Jan Harold Brunvand's "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings". It's a sort of academic-ish work by a folklorist, looking at all the best known urban legends; the vanishing hitchhiker, the alligators in the sewers, you know the drill. Not exactly PhD-level stuff but some interesting thoughts on their characteristics - like the fact that there's always folk who swear that they happened (usually not to them, but to a friend or a relation or a relation of a friend, etc.), or that there are even cases where they are reported in the press as happening (which turn out to vanish like mirages on close examination). The author even categorises them, with a chapter each on car stories (e.g., "The Philanderer's Porsche"), teen horror tales ("The Hook"), contaminations ("Spiders in the Hairdoo"), death ("Dead Cat in the Package"), nudity ("Nude in the RV"), and business ripoffs ("Red Velvet Cake"). Yes, Brunvand is the best writer on urban legends. I recommend all his books.
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 9, 2018 18:55:21 GMT
Thought I'd have a go, although if I listen to an audiobook version they would probably change as I find listening to them, some of the stories improve for me I couldn't resist, of course, but the following comes with the proviso that, aside from the first three or four, and the final couple, all the others are liable to change position several times even while I'm typing them out. It remains the case that those stories I've examined most in detail, in articles, etc., are the ones I've come to love most (hence the position of "An Evening's Entertainment" high on the list): "Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance" "An Evening's Entertainment" "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book" "Count Magnus" "A View from a Hill" "A Neighbour's Landmark" "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral" "The Mezzotint" "An Episode of Cathedral History" "The Residence at Whitminster" "Martin's Close" "A Warning to the Curious" "Two Doctors" "Wailing Well" "The Diary of Mr Poynter" "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance" "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" "The Ash-Tree" "The Experiment" "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" "Casting the Runes" "The Rose Garden" "Number 13" "Rats" "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" "The Haunted Dolls' House" "A School Story" "The Uncommon Prayer-book" "The Fenstanton Witch" "After Dark in the Playing Fields" "Lost Hearts" "A Vignette" "The Tractate Middoth" "There was a Man dwelt by a Churchyard"
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 4, 2018 13:26:59 GMT
This is another sad loss.
I never was a fan. His ego and his reputation overshadowed his work so much. Mostly I remember his Star Trek episode which is said to be butchered - I never could work enough interest up to buy one one those complete script books - and some stories. Of his stories in "Year's Best Horror" I only remember that I thought them difficult to get through. But this is long ago. Maybe today I would enjoy them more.
Has anyone posted a link to Christopher Priest's masterly critique of the whole Last Dangerous Visions fiasco? It's great reading (if you've got an hour to spare). Chris had a story initially accepted for the book but he withdrew it and it's been published in various places elsewhere. It's "An Infinite Summer", and is one of my absolute favourite SF short stories. I've just tried to post the link here, and although I copied and pasted it from the address line, it doesn't want to work, so some judicious Googling will be needed for anyone who wants to find it.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 26, 2018 8:07:41 GMT
Yesterday I got a '66 World Cup question on Richard Osman's House of Games right: identify which person on the photograph of the England team scored a hat-trick. I knew who it was - Geoff Hirst (sp?) - and I knew which he was on the photo (which is more than three of the four celebrity contestants knew). So maybe there's still hope for me.
Anything spooky happened yet (aside from Gareth Southgate's mysterious shoulder)?
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 23, 2018 11:09:40 GMT
He's a very good writer and pretty prolific (as well as doing the regular Jamesian Podcasts column for the current Ghosts & Scholars). His Ernie Pine stories in particular are a lot of fun - imaginative and quite spooky. I was just rereading his Ernie Pine maze story, "The Outsider", the other day. It features a ghostly emu - surely a first (and only?) - it's not as ridiculous as it sounds (rather chilling, in fact). There's a few in here:
Somewhere I've got a sf novel he published in about 1978.One of Dallas Goffin's best covers for me, I think. And who could forget the story about the bunyip in the laundrette?
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 22, 2018 17:59:54 GMT
Rick Kennett had a story in Beyond magazine, which I edited and published, in 1995, though that's ten years after his appearance in The Australian Horror & Fantasy Magazine. He was definitely, though, an accomplished writer by then. His was one of my favourites in that issue. He's a very good writer and pretty prolific (as well as doing the regular Jamesian Podcasts column for the current Ghosts & Scholars). His Ernie Pine stories in particular are a lot of fun - imaginative and quite spooky. I was just rereading his Ernie Pine maze story, "The Outsider", the other day. It features a ghostly emu - surely a first (and only?) - it's not as ridiculous as it sounds (rather chilling, in fact).
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 22, 2018 14:27:49 GMT
Here's an early Aus Fanzine:
The Australian Horror & Fantasy Magazine #1 Summer 1984 ed. Barry Radburn, Stephen Studach Contents Barry Radburn, The Cauldron (editorial) Christine Elphick, Dark Intruder Stephen Studach, Redemption Paul Collins, Fairy Good Anonymous, Night Trevor Donohue, Horror & Fantasy Down Under Rick Kennett, Made in Hell On the Bookshelf (reviews) Barry M. Radburn, Journey's End Joseph Gral, Old Man In Wheelchair Poison Pen (letters) Coup de Grace
Didn't realise that Rick Kennett goes back that far!
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 21, 2018 12:53:12 GMT
Also, I had a totally random and unplanned M. R. James encounter last night. While grooming my cat, I took down my copy of Clark Ashton Smith's posthumous essay collection Planets and Dimensions. I have the Mirage Press edition published in Baltimore in 1973. I'd forgotten that Clark wrote a short little appreciation of the Master in Fantasy Fan. I think the year of the original publication was 1934. cheers, H. Yes, Smith was quite a fan. I think he was the person who recommended MRJ to Lovecraft. On checking, I think it may be the other way around to what I said: it was probably HPL who introduced Smith to MRJ's stories. Here's a quote from a letter from Smith to HPL (1933): "James repays careful study; and I find myself appreciating him even more than I did when you loaned me A Warning to the Curious and Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Also, I am very much taken with certain of the more inferential tales, such as 'Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance', which seem full of unfathomably baleful suggestion. Tour de forces [ sic!] like 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' knock one out at the first reading; and, of course, always retain their power; but the less overt yarns certainly grow on the reader. It is an object lesson in what can be done by skilful adumbration and by veiling more or less the main horror." So CAS was a particular fan of "Mr Humphreys", one of my favourites too and for much the same reasons (though whether the story's charms were deliberate or accidental - caused by it being written in a rush - I wouldn't like to say).
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 20, 2018 17:36:28 GMT
Also, I had a totally random and unplanned M. R. James encounter last night. While grooming my cat, I took down my copy of Clark Ashton Smith's posthumous essay collection Planets and Dimensions. I have the Mirage Press edition published in Baltimore in 1973. I'd forgotten that Clark wrote a short little appreciation of the Master in Fantasy Fan. I think the year of the original publication was 1934. cheers, H. Yes, Smith was quite a fan. I think he was the person who recommended MRJ to Lovecraft.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 20, 2018 15:33:04 GMT
Yes, the nut channels (or mainly one channel) is always worth a look and a chuckle. And if you like a good debunk of such things (I do, nearly as much as the books/programmes themselves) then I recommend Jason Colavito's blog. Thanks for the blog recommendation, Rosemary. In return, I recommend skeptoid.com and ohnopodcast.com. The former provides a weekly 15 minute podcast examining all kinds of fringe and paranormal subjects. It used to be entirely free, but only the last 50 podcasts are now free. The latter appears roughly weekly and examines various fringe subjects with quite a few on alternative medicine. Both are very entertaining and informative. Thanks. Will check them out. I should have said in relation to Jason Colavito's blog that, while he invariably talks sense, it's best to avoid the comments section where nastiness dwells!
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 20, 2018 8:48:03 GMT
This isn't really M.R. James news, or only peripherally, so if it's in the wrong place, Kev, please move it to somewhere more suitable! "Wasn't that the house in Berkeley Square?", as the unnamed gentleman says at the start of "A School Story"... There's a new article on the House in Berkeley Square on the Mysterious Universe site: mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/the-bizarre-nameless-thing-of-berkeley-square/ I love that site and check it every day, although it can be a little too open-minded at times! The Berkeley Square article, by my favourite author on the site, does at least note possible fictional sources for the story, but doesn't go so far as to say that the whole thing is fictional, aspects of it influenced by Rhoda Broughton's "The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth". That's the theme of my Ghosts & Scholars article on the subject, reprinted in The Black Pilgrimage book. But I shall be forever in awe of a writer who can introduce the phrase "octopoid cryptid" into his article on the haunting. My essay is boring by comparison.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 19, 2018 15:03:39 GMT
For those not inclined to turn pages, our wonderful digital TV services offer a range of ahem documentaries on similar subjects on channels that shall remain nameless. Nazi flying saucers, Nazi magical rituals, bigfoot, ufos, chupacabras, prehistoric shark survival, Atlantis, ancient astronauts, alien abduction, etc, all with ahem experts talking very earnestly. One of my favourite books on "out there" subjects is "Did Spacemen Colonise the Earth" by Robin Collins (1975). I was around 13 when I bought the book brand new and read it avidly. It's a heck of an entertaining read and impressed me at the time--hey I was 13 . Yes, the nut channels (or mainly one channel) is always worth a look and a chuckle. And if you like a good debunk of such things (I do, nearly as much as the books/programmes themselves) then I recommend Jason Colavito's blog.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 14, 2018 15:16:08 GMT
This thread has lone voice howling at the moon written all over it, so let's get started. As ever, will be concentrating on all the great stuff - outstanding performance(s), flash of skill, foul of the tournament, most negative team, worst match, biggest fix, "the game that shamed football," gloomiest fans, ghastliest TV commercial, etc. Today. Group A: Russia v. Saudi Arabia: Possibly the all-time least glamorous opening fixture of any world cup since time began, but we live in hope the two lowest ranked teams in tournament can magic up a thriller. If not, tomorrow schedule looks tasty. No, no, no, no, no!!! Well, unless something spooky happens; then I shall rely on you to report.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 14, 2018 15:15:33 GMT
This thread has lone voice howling at the moon written all over it, so let's get started. As ever, will be concentrating on all the great stuff - outstanding performance(s), flash of skill, foul of the tournament, most negative team, worst match, biggest fix, "the game that shamed football," gloomiest fans, ghastliest TV commercial, etc. Today. Group A: Russia v. Saudi Arabia: Possibly the all-time least glamorous opening fixture of any world cup since time began, but we live in hope the two lowest ranked teams in tournament can magic up a thriller. If not, tomorrow schedule looks tasty. No, no, no, no, no!!!
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