|
Post by Knygathin on Feb 2, 2023 0:21:46 GMT
Shiel's "How Life Climbs" is pretty extraordinary, touching on alien sex decades before Philip José Farmer was noted for dealing with it. Where would one find that one? It seems a very rare piece. New Tales of Horror by Eminent Authors
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 30, 2023 16:08:23 GMT
Jack Vance won first place. Not bad in a collection like that.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 28, 2023 11:18:31 GMT
Interesting new photo of Whitehead on isfdb.org.
Henry S. Whitehead and M. P. Shiel both had backgrounds in the West Indies. Are there any similarities, or common themes/concerns, between their writings?
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 25, 2023 8:37:07 GMT
I loved Shiel's short story "Xelucha." As a teenager I bought and owned for a time a volume of his tales with that story as the headliner; it was one of those handsome mid Seventies hardbound reprints. Unfortunately the book long ago went the way of all flesh, but I recall the cover drawing on the dust jacket as having a certain nightmarish quality to it. H. That sounds as if you had the Arkham House edition. I read "Xelucha", and, like Lovecraft commented, it is a poisonous piece. I found it painful. But it again proves that Shiel was no hack.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 25, 2023 0:59:36 GMT
Any book can be finished, if you set your mind to it. The question is if you really want to, or not.
I am now struggling with David Lindsay's Devil's Tor. A good book, but extremely slow, as it deals with the internal more than the external. I can't read for very long, before getting distracted by other things. A spiritual book, seeking paths to heightened existence. It also analyzes social relationships in interesting ways. There are sporadic supernatural elements, which are subtle, but very well crafted and convincing.
Reading W. H. Hodgson's The Night Land was a breeze comparably.
I will finish it.
I am also very eager to read M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud, in the full version. I used to try to dismiss Shiel on the ground of him being "an imitator of Poe". But he can't be dismissed. His prose is much too good. I don't have any of his books on my shelves, but would like to have at least one representable example.
I would also like to read Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. And Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (to find out first hand what the fuss about national socialism is all about). But I am not sure I will have enough patience for either, as my mind usually requires the fantastic to stay focused.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 21, 2023 19:55:55 GMT
John Carpenter's LOST THEMES in three volumes for films that never were, but could have been! You do the visual imagining.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 20, 2023 3:03:18 GMT
I don't know. I have not read the book, but it may be intended as a social satire. But I am not sure Polanski works by way of allegory. He seems to take fantasy at face value. His struggle seems to concern whether it is true or hallucination.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 18, 2023 12:46:57 GMT
If Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym had ever been filmed, by the right director, it could have been an excellent drama/horror/weird film.
I watched Polanski's The Tenant a couple of days ago. I thought I had already seen it, at a film festival in the 1980s, but if I had, then I must have completely forgotten it. It was excellent - must say, one of the best films I have ever seen - and very similar to his Rosemary's Baby. Rosemary's Baby, by the way, has a sadistic undertone in its whole vision, that leaves a bitter aftertaste. There is really very little genuine warmth in any of Polanski's films, although beautiful and artistically impeccable. The atmospheric The Fearless Vampire Killers is one of my favorite films ever.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 16, 2023 7:43:37 GMT
Humans have created images of a divine female form for hundreds of thousands of years. The reign of Christ lasted about 2000 turns of the planet around the sun. Exactly! We seem to agree on that one.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 15, 2023 1:31:23 GMT
Eye-catching art. The album title is of course an Aleister Crowley reference ( To Mega Therion = "the Great Beast"). H. Yes, Eye-catching, provocative, ... it slugs like a sledgehammer, ... unsettling. I find the statement it makes about Christianity quite interesting. And at the centerfold it seems to say that the Great Mother is a much greater universal force than Christ.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 14, 2023 13:07:00 GMT
Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion. Not sure which song titles, if any, may be related to horror stories. Perhaps to Robert E. Howard? The songs hearken back to Medieval, Roman, possibly even Cimmerian times. Giger on both cover and centerfold of the album.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 12, 2023 21:05:56 GMT
The very first LP I bought was Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. ... Me too :-) ... I had a classmate, and his very first LP was, also ... Billion Dollar Babies. Alice Cooper must have made a lot of money. That picture on the inner sleeve where Alice holds the baby really disturbed me, as a child. And I could not understand why its eyes had been painted like that. What was the purpose. I thought it looked like those band members were going to kill the bunnies and eat the baby or something. I quickly enough eagerly tore out all of the fan picture cards (ruining the album's collector's value), and soon lost them. And almost thought the giant billion dollar bill could make me rich. His shows were very cinematic, with special effects, and monsters, and that was probably a big part of his popular attraction. I think Black Sabbath was more bare on stage, concentrating all on the music.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 12, 2023 15:30:33 GMT
Illustrating the title track on Black Sabbath's first album.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 12, 2023 14:50:59 GMT
Just listened to The Songs of Distant Earth again, and I am not sure it holds up quite as well as I remembered. The great parts are still GREAT, but it kind of drags in between. Requires some patience. Works best as background music while doing other things.
|
|
|
Post by Knygathin on Jan 12, 2023 14:06:34 GMT
There is a concept album called The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It is a soaring, beautiful album, true to the spirit of Clarke's book, except for the last couple of minutes which are really PC cringe. One of my favorite Mike Oldfield albums. Stupendous!
|
|