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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 1, 2021 18:41:51 GMT
Inspired by your post I put my Cave collection on the screen and re-read Stragella. Unfortunatly I don't like Murgunstrumm much, I think it too long and the first part too rambling. But Stragella is great. So many original ideas, great atmosphere and a wonderful sentence at the end. Also memorable title. "Stragella" is what got me into Cave. Just now I had enormous problems remembering where I came across it, and had to consult isfdb.org. It was in Otto Penzler's THE VAMPIRE ARCHIVES.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 1, 2021 22:53:59 GMT
Inspired by your post I put my Cave collection on the screen and re-read Stragella. Unfortunatly I don't like Murgunstrumm much, I think it too long and the first part too rambling. But Stragella is great. So many original ideas, great atmosphere and a wonderful sentence at the end. Also memorable title. I liked "Stragella" just fine, but Murgunstrumm is one of my favorite novellas. It does ramble, but I love the mix of old-style horror with hard-boiled flavor.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 2, 2021 9:52:55 GMT
Inspired by your post I put my Cave collection on the screen and re-read Stragella. Unfortunatly I don't like Murgunstrumm much, I think it too long and the first part too rambling. But Stragella is great. So many original ideas, great atmosphere and a wonderful sentence at the end. Also memorable title. "Stragella" is what got me into Cave. Just now I had enormous problems remembering where I came across it, and had to consult isfdb.org. It was in Otto Penzler's THE VAMPIRE ARCHIVES. I liked "Stragella" just fine, but Murgunstrumm is one of my favorite novellas. It does ramble, but I love the mix of old-style horror with hard-boiled flavor. John Newton Howitt I got into Cave via Peter Haining's A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines, wherein he reproduced John Newton Howitt's cover artwork for Death Calls the Madhouse and accompanying interior illustration by Ralph Carlson. "I have so got to read that story!" Had to wait until five years ago to do so (it was worth it), by which time I'd ploughed through most of, if not all of the Murgunstrumm collection, Legion of the Dead, and various. Think Stragella was my first, too, via an issue of Startling Mystery Stories found in the Fantasy Centre.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 5, 2021 18:10:29 GMT
Raphael DeSoto Clark Ashton Smith - The Nameless Offspring: "It Is That Spawn Which the Hidden Dweller in the Vaults has Begotten Upon Mortality." Tremoth Hall, somewhere in the English countryside. Lady Tremoth suffers a catalytic seizure so convincing that she is buried three days in the family vault before Sir John discovers the truth. he finds his wife at up in her coffin, something having released her from her horrific confinement. That's not all it did. Nine-months later, Lady Tremoth died for good giving birth to a Monster of Glamis tribute act which has been locked away in a barred room ever since. Sir John - truly a saint among men - who can't bring himself to destroy the ghoul, has his one remaining servant keep the thing alive on a diet of reeking carrion (it refuses all other sustenance). Now the baron is facing death, the ghoul is intent on making a banquet of him ...
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 5, 2021 18:16:38 GMT
It Is That Spawn Which the Hidden Dweller in the Vaults has Begotten Upon Mortality. I must try to work this into conversation sometime.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 5, 2021 18:40:16 GMT
Seems to me the illustrations started simple and got more sophisticated over time.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 9, 2021 22:10:57 GMT
August Derleth - The Thing That Walked on The Wind: "Where the Head Should Have Been There Were Two Gleaming Stars. Burning Bright — Like Eyes!"Testimony of John Dalhousie, Royal Mountie chief of Navissco camp, Manitoba into the disappearance of an entire community and other strange occurrences. The people of Stillwater worship a monstrous air elemental, the Wind-walker, to whom they pay tribute in human sacrifice. It's decided that the next offering will comprise Wentworth and MacDonald, two travellers staying at the local inn, and Irene Masitte, the landlord's daughter. Irene warns the strangers of the villagers' intentions and these three escape into the night. The Wind-walker claims the entire village population as punishment. Exactly a year later, Wentworth, MacDonald and Miss Masitte drop out of the sky. The girl, who appears to have been thrown down, is dead. The men are so inured to the cold that everyday temperatures prove fatal. They die raving about the wind-walker, 'lost Leng,' something called a 'Lovecraft,' and the Canadian writings of Algernon Blackwood (not least The Wendigo). I also would like to read that Derleth tale. Presumably there's an allusion there to Blackwood's yarn "The Wendigo." (As Kev mentions in his excellent review notes!) I finally read "The Thing That Walked on the Wind" in The Ithaqua Cycle: The Wind-Walker of the Icy Wastes (Chaosium, 2006) and the experience reinforced my impression that Derleth's standalone tales tend to be better than his Lovecraftian ones. As cold-themed stories of his go, I prefer " The Drifting Snow." On the bright side, I enjoyed "The Thing from Outside," a George Allan England tale that appears in the same anthology. By coincidence, I recently read another story by him--the proto-steampunk "The Plunge" (in the Mike Ashley-edited Steampunk Prime)--and liked that one, too.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 11, 2023 13:16:21 GMT
Harry Bates [ed.] - Strange Tales of Mystery & Terror: Sept. 1931 (Adventure House, 2019) Announcing — Strange Tales
Ray Cummings - The Dead Who Walk Arthur J. Burks - The Place of the Pythons Marion Brandon - The Dark Castle The Death of Bolster Gordon MacCreagh - Dr. Muncing, Exorcist Charles Willard Diffin - The Dog That Laughed Death Tokens Clark Ashton Smith - The Return of the Sorceror Capt. S. P. Meek - Nasturtia Victor Rousseau - A Cry from Beyond West England's Little Folk S. B. H. Hurst - The Awful Injustice Blurb: Pulp Magazines were popular culture for nearly seventy years. Their colorful covers beckoned the world weary reader to step into a new vibrant world of action, romance and adventure fiction. Pulp magazines filled the entertainment void for as little as a dime for millions of readers each and every week. Printed on cheap high bulk pulp paper, "The Pulps" bridged the gap between juvenile nickel weeklies and the more expensive glossy magazines and hardbound editions. Stories and titles of magazines varied as much as their readers. Come along with us and drink deep the excitement and adventure of "The Pulps."Rafael DeSoto Clark Ashton Smith - The Return of the Sorcerer: Into the Dark Magic of the House of Carnby There Comes a Visitor of Dread. Ogden takes work as live-in secretary to the reclusive Oakland scholar, John Carnby. In truth, the young man has been hired to translate a passage from The Necronomicon, as Carnaby is desperate to perform the ritual for the exorcism of the dead. His need is indeed great. Last week Carnaby murdered and dismembered Helmar, his twin brother and rival black magician, but the severed body parts refuse to lie down. When the panicked diabolist admits to his crime, Ogden hands in his notice too late to be spared the final, grisly horror.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 12, 2023 16:00:31 GMT
Clark Ashton Smith - The Return of the Sorcerer: Into the Dark Magic of the House of Carnby There Comes a Visitor of Dread. Ogden takes work as live-in secretary to the reclusive Oakland scholar, John Carnby. In truth, the young man has been hired to translate a passage from The Necronomicon, as Carnaby is desperate to perform the ritual for the exorcism of the dead. His need is indeed great. Last week Carnaby murdered and dismembered Helmar, his twin brother and rival black magician, but the severed body parts refuse to lie down. When the panicked diabolist admits to his crime, Ogden hands in his notice too late to be spared the final, grisly horror. A classic. Brian Lumley wrote his version of the plot in Lord of the Worms, a Titus Crow story.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2023 18:40:15 GMT
Already met with a number from this issue, over various anthologies/ R.A.W.L.'s Magazine of Horror, Startling Mystery Stories, etc., including Place of the Pythons, The Dog That Laughed, Dr. Muncing, Exorcist, The Dark Castle, and A Cry From Beyond. Lowndes also revived the following, in MOH #21 and SMS #1 respectively. Captain S. P. Meek - Nasturtia: A Touching Tale of Deathless Love and Atonement Lies Behind the Major's Passion for His Flower Garden. Major Baxter is but the latest incarnation of a Wandering Jew tribute act, condemned to endure multiple incarnations over several centuries for breaking his pledge of eternal fidelity to his wife, a Buddhist Princess. Nasturtia herself has been transformed into a swamp flower for refusing to denounce him. S. B. H. Hurst - The Awful Injustice: The Turgid Depths of a Tortured Human Soul Give up a Secret Memory Terrific Reincarnation. From childhood, Judge Romain, the County's supreme justice, has been tormented by his conscience. It seems that, in a previous life, he committed a sin so heinous as to damn his soul for eternity. Dr. Sykes, a controversial quack psychologist, regresses him back through several incarnations, eventually arriving in Roman Judea circa AD 33 ...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 16, 2023 12:07:01 GMT
H. W. Wesso Ray Cummings - The Dead Who Walk: Throught the World of the Living Stalks a Ghastly Company, Grim and Purposeful - the Undead! (A Complete Novelette). Dr. French is mystified as the rest of us at the sudden death of Kent Cavendish, 25, a "perfect physical and mental specimen of manhood" (trans: he's English) engaged to wed Anne Rollins, the sweetest gal in New Jersey. Hardly have Anne and brother Jack, our narrator, returned from the funeral than Kent's corpse is disinterred and made off with by persons unknown! That same night, Jack receives a visit from the dead man who appears none the worse for premature burial save he's starving hungry, atypically threatening, and his vocabulary is that of a previous century. Turns out that Cavendish is one of twenty dead men recently returned from tombs and vaults of Maple Grove and neighbouring cemeteries — but who, or what, has revived them, and to what purpose? Forty-plus pages later, can't say I'm any the wiser, not that it matters. The gist seems to be that the corpses have been commandeered by three (?) disembodied ego's/ elementals. In nineteen cases, they've chosen badly; the bodies are too far gone to be of use. Kent's is the highly prized exception on account of he's not dead but suffering an attack of catalepsy. While French and Rollins interrogate a captured undead, the mouldering army break in upstairs, murder the maids, carry away Anne to the dungeons beneath the old mill on River Mill. While it's certainly on the strange side, Bates' choice of opening story in the launch issue prepares the reader for an entirely different magazine. Cummings creaky sci-horror reads like a proto-weird menace, all that's missing is the sex 'n sadism.
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