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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 8, 2014 17:03:45 GMT
My copy is just fine.
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Post by kooshmeister on Sept 9, 2014 21:14:52 GMT
Isn't that a problem with a lot of paperbacks over the last 20 years? Like everything, not made to last these days... and why not, I suppose, as everything becomes obsolete eventually. Eh, small potatoes considering the recent discovery that my books have got booklice again, including my brand new copy of The Invisible Man. Damn humidity here in North Carolina is basically death for paperbacks, especially older ones that have got lots of foxing (especially my copies of The Car and Invaders from Mars and my many Doctor Who Target novelizations). I may need to buy a dehumidifier to deal with the little bastards. It's that or let them continue living and partially eating my books. Digressing - your blog is great. Thanks! You'll still never convince me that Behemoth is a good movie, When did I try do convince you of that? Although I have an in-progress review of it here, I haven't yet posted anything related to that film on my blog that I'm aware of.
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Post by kooshmeister on Sept 9, 2014 21:23:14 GMT
Yes. Those are great, but why is The Shadow Out of Time posted twice?
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Post by pulphack on Sept 10, 2014 5:02:40 GMT
I know you're going to try and convince me that Behemoth is great as you're brandishing a copy of it in the picture that runs across the top of the blog. I loathe that film completely out of all proportion and I've never worked out why. I just know you love it because you managed to find something redeeming in a Larry Buchanan film, dammit.
Humidity is not a problem in London... damp, on the other hand... The last place I lived in had problems with condensation that a dehumidifier couldn't solve (some silly c*%& who lived there before had put the fitted kitchen in OVER the airbrick!) and some of the older books started to suffer. I was glad to sell that one and move on. When I handled the Sexton Blake archive for a book club I had a borrower who had moved to Thailand, and the humidity played merry hell with the old paper - his solution was to scan them and send them back almost by return of post, then read them on his laptop. Not ideal, but a workable solution, I guess. But not if you want to keep them - short of spending a fortune on aircon, what can you do about it?
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Post by kooshmeister on Sept 10, 2014 17:46:56 GMT
I know you're going to try and convince me that Behemoth is great as you're brandishing a copy of it in the picture that runs across the top of the blog. I loathe that film completely out of all proportion and I've never worked out why. I find it tolerable, myself. The picture is mostly me being confused by the redundant US title. You'll find my actual review of it on here a bit on the disparaging side.
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Post by Carfilhiot on Sept 10, 2014 20:15:10 GMT
I was always intrigued that the first magazine publication of "Mountains" was in Astounding Science Fiction, mainly because HPL's brand of cosmic horror never struck me as being a good fit with editor John W. Campbell's generally optimistic outlook...
But anyhoo, I have the issue of Astounding before the 1st part of "Mountains" appeared and here's what John W Campbell had to say about it:
Now I come to think about it, I can't help wondering if "Mountains" helped to inspire Campbell's own classic tale of Antarctic-based SFnal horror, "Who Goes There" (which appeared two years later in Astounding, in August 1938)..
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Post by pulphack on Sept 11, 2014 5:11:00 GMT
I'd never considered that, but it does give pause for thought. Campbell was a strange chap, wasn't he - 'good science'? Hmm. I agree about the word picture bit, though. Campbell, for a man who was seemingly obsessed by science, was certainly taken in a few times - Dianetics, Shaver, etc.
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Post by andydecker on Sept 11, 2014 18:05:06 GMT
I'd never considered that, but it does give pause for thought. Campbell was a strange chap, wasn't he - 'good science'? Hmm. I agree about the word picture bit, though. Campbell, for a man who was seemingly obsessed by science, was certainly taken in a few times - Dianetics, Shaver, etc. Has anybody read Shaver? I only stumbled upon the Wiki article about his work and had a good laugh. Still, people seemed to like this stuff.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 12, 2014 5:06:37 GMT
I've never read Shaver, only stuff about him in histories of SF and SF magazines. I'm almost tempted to see him as a phantom who only exists as a figure in books about books, and who never really wrote a word. From what I gather, it's a rather barmy variation on the Bulwer Lytton novel about the Vril, and it totally took in Campbell, who - for a wise cracking buzz-cut cigar chewing rational Joe - was dead gullible. Insert your own reference to L Ron Hubbard here...
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Post by kooshmeister on Sept 12, 2014 14:33:40 GMT
Maybe what Campbell meant by "good science" was the early bits involving the drilling for rock and fossil samples and so forth? And Lake's enthusiasm for the newly unearthed Elder Things? He certainly couldn't have meant Dyer's later unscientific existential terror with regards to the city (yes I'm still on about that). Either way, the early portions of the novel do come off as Lovecraft having actually tried to create a realistic geological expedition to look for stuff in Antarctic stratum and to determine whether Antarctica was one continent or two. Speaking of which, was that an actual scientific debate in Lovecraft's time?
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 12, 2014 16:58:56 GMT
I like your review kooshmeister and I think you've brought up some great points. I think the science at the time was relatively unscientific by modern standards though and the use of blasphemous was pretty standard for anything that didn't confirm to a heavily 'christian' viewpoint. The existentialist view is relatively modern. In Lovecraft's day dancing with someone you didn't know was edging on blasphemy such was the pull of the mores of the time. Blasphemy could be summarised virtually as 'different'.
The first Antarctic expedition in 1928 might have had some bearing on his writing and certainly the early expeditions always seemed to look like boy scout outings with everyone tying things together with bits of string and shooting anything they didn't understand.
I recently read MoM and was again impressed by the sheer width of imagination and the attention to detail. it reads like a real narrative account and the creepy madness builds. Of course we know from about the third line that there's a giant octopi from Mars on the loose but the build up to the characters (Painfully slow) realisation makes it for me. I was aware too that the jump from seeing indescribable nameless pictures on a wall to working out the rise and fall of an entire ancient and alien civilization was stupendously clever and pretty quick but hey ho - the plot moved on. Lovecraft seemed to give them enough time to make some sort of conclusions - There is a sense that he knew this was a huge jump and had to make a balance between the creeping horror which was affecting their minds (and would clearly be intolerable if you spent months there) and the need to investigate what actually happened (which would take years). It didn't quite work but I think it was just about unworkable in any hands
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 12, 2014 17:40:07 GMT
the use of blasphemous was pretty standard for anything that didn't confirm to a heavily 'christian' viewpoint. "Blasphemous" has a broader meaning than just the religious one, and Lovecraft, it seems clear to me, is not using it in the religious sense. He is using it in the sense of something strongly violating some established order.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 12, 2014 17:50:59 GMT
the use of blasphemous was pretty standard for anything that didn't confirm to a heavily 'christian' viewpoint. "Blasphemous" has a broader meaning than just the religious one, and Lovecraft, it seems clear to me, is not using it in the religious sense. He is using it in the sense of something strongly violating some established order. Yes, what I was trying to say ineffectively.
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Post by mcannon on Sept 15, 2014 9:57:43 GMT
I've never read Shaver, only stuff about him in histories of SF and SF magazines. I'm almost tempted to see him as a phantom who only exists as a figure in books about books, and who never really wrote a word. From what I gather, it's a rather barmy variation on the Bulwer Lytton novel about the Vril, and it totally took in Campbell, who - for a wise cracking buzz-cut cigar chewing rational Joe - was dead gullible. Insert your own reference to L Ron Hubbard here... I've read a couple of Shaver's stories and yes, they're pretty awful. I can understand why they would have been interesting to a certain type of reader, though - it's hidden history / whacko alien conspiracy theory stuff, before those concepts were really defined. There's a fairly typical example, "I remember Lemuria!" available at the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/RichardS.Shaver-IRememberLemuriaAlso on the IA is a lengthy 1950s interview with Shaver and Raymond A Palmer, who as editor of "Amazing" published the Shaver Mystery stories. I found it fascinating listening - it's truly bizarre - and it certainly supports the theory that Shaver was, at best, an extreme oddball, and possibly seriously mentally ill. archive.org/details/LongJohnNebelInterviewsRichardShaverAndRayPalmerFor best effect, listen to the interview late at night! It's been claimed that Palmer actually wrote most of the "Shaver Mysteries". Shaver himself wrote a couple of letters to "Amazing" in the early '70s, a coupe of years before his death, disputing this. The letters were rambling, barely coherent, but somehow oddly entertaining - rather like the aforementioned interview.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 16, 2014 7:04:27 GMT
Thank you for that, Mark. I started to read and thought - mmm, best for when I have some time and a bottle of something, perhaps. I'm going to listen to that interview now. Loony fringe stuff, perhaps, but fascinating for the place they have in SF history. I appreciate the links.
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