Halloween Reading

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droid

Well-known member
Gyo. Yeah, its great - thats where 'The enigma' comes from.

There were 2 volumes of Tomie and 'Flesh coloured horror' released in English '99 - a bit repetitive, but all worth reading and a few gems - they were re-collated in 'Museum of Terror' by Viz. His only other english works 'Black Paradox' & the comedy 'Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu' - I havent read.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
droid said:
Machen's 'The Terror' and Blackwood's 'The Willows' are both great and available for free.
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Oh, cool, I've been meaning to read The Willows ever since I belatedly became a Belbury Poly fanboy...

Big fan of The Barron Short collections.
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I recently read The Imago Sequence off the back of your ongoing proselytizing. Good stuff. Decent ideas written well. Although I thought a few of them would have been better if he'd held back the bit where someone "explains" what's going on via a massive expositionary monologue stuffed with eldritch horror standbys like DNA and Nikolai Tesla and cosmic rifts without adding any real depth of horror to what we've already guessed, namely that the protagonist is gradually losing his marbles and probably about to get eaten by something deeply unpleasant, most likely as an hors d'oeuvre before it gets onto the rest of humanity. On the other hand, I absolutely love the way his protagonists almost invariably operate in some menacing, hardboiled, hypermasculine world that already feels on the brink of some sort of Ballardian ultraviolence even before the weird shit starts happening, and which provides absolutely no mental or emotional relief for the protagonist when it inevitably does.
 
Wanda

Wanda

Member
Mr. Tea said:
Oh right, cool. I think zhao might have mentioned it too though. Is his other stuff (as) good? I gather he did something about sentient, fish-killing bacteria or somesuch that sounded a bit, well, silly. But then I guess anything that could take sashimi off the menu would be a pretty huge deal in Japan...
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After I read Enigma I jumped into his Uzumaki. The first volume was amazing, the second made me wish he had stopped at 1, and the third kinda redeemed itself. In any case, would still recommend it!

ALSO, there's a MOVIE! - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/uzumaki/

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D

droid

Well-known member
Slothrop said:
I recently read The Imago Sequence off the back of your ongoing proselytizing. Good stuff. Decent ideas written well. Although I thought a few of them would have been better if he'd held back the bit where someone "explains" what's going on via a massive expositionary monologue stuffed with eldritch horror standbys like DNA and Nikolai Tesla and cosmic rifts without adding any real depth of horror to what we've already guessed, namely that the protagonist is gradually losing his marbles and probably about to get eaten by something deeply unpleasant, most likely as an hors d'oeuvre before it gets onto the rest of humanity. On the other hand, I absolutely love the way his protagonists almost invariably operate in some menacing, hardboiled, hypermasculine world that already feels on the brink of some sort of Ballardian ultraviolence even before the weird shit starts happening, and which provides absolutely no mental or emotional relief for the protagonist when it inevitably does.
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lol, I suppose I have proselytized a bit. I Think Imago is a bit of a formative work - it was the first one I read. Some of it is a bit scholcky, but then there's stuff like 'Procession of the black sloth' which is brilliantly atmospheric and obtuse - like a cross between Barker's books of blood prime and Ballard. Beautiful thing, and Occultation are both better overall I think. Looking forward to his new collection - though 'X's for eyes' was extremely disappointing.

'The Willows' is here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Will837.shtml though there is a copyright free epub around as well I think.
 
D

droid

Well-known member
There was a decent little horror in the last Mieville shorts collection Säcken. Probably the best thing in the book actually.

Not shorts - but McCarthy's 'Outer Dark' I think can be read as horror, with its unrelenting nihilism, atmosphere of dread, the violence of the prose and the ambiguous, possibly supernatural aspects of some characters.

The man took hold of the child and lifted it up. It was watching the fire. Holme saw the blade wink in the light like a long cat's eye slant and malevolent and a dark smile erupted on the child's throat and went all broken down the front of it. The child made no sound. It hung there with its one eye glazing over like a wet stone and black blood pumping down its naked belly. The mute one knelt forward. He was drooling and making little whimpering noises in his throat. He knelt with his hands outstretched and his nostrils rimpling delicately. The man handed him the child and he seized it up, looked once at Holme with witless eyes, and buried his moaning face in its throat.
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In fact, you could probably make a good horror case for Suttree, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian & The Road... especially seeing as how liberally his style has been borrowed by genre writers of the new weird, horror and post apocalyptic milieus.
 
D

droid

Well-known member
And fuck it, while Im canvassing - John Langan's 'The Fisherman' is a must read. It has a Lovecraftian tale-within-a-tale, some genuinely creepy imagery, a huge unknowable supernatural force... Id say its the best horror Ive read this year.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've probably said it here before, but if Ligotti is the spiritual successor to Lovecraft, then Barron - with all the sex, violence and general air of swashbuckling derring-do in many of his stories - strikes me as a descendent of Robert E. Howard. Don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed some of them, but others have just felt a little too like an adolescent fantasy to take seriously. Which is not something I've ever found with Ligotti.

I also like his distinctly warm, wet, organic take on cosmic horror, as exemplified in 'The Broadsword', which reminds me at times of Burroughs.

Edit: I heard about the movie of Uzumaki. Sounds like it got very mixed reviews, and apparently they changed the Shuichi character to make him a controlling, abusive arsehole, which I think is a huge shame because the rather pure and innocent love between him and Kirie, and the lengths he goes to to protect her, are pretty much the only think in the manga that provides any relief from the omnipresent horror.
 
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Wanda

Wanda

Member
Mr. Tea said:
Edit: I heard about the movie of Uzumaki. Sounds like it got very mixed reviews, and apparently they changed the Shuichi character to make him a controlling, abusive arsehole, which I think is a huge shame because the rather pure and innocent love between him and Kirie, and the lengths he goes to to protect her, are pretty much the only think in the manga that provides any relief from the omnipresent horror.
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It's a fun movie and almost has a Black Moon vibe to it. Suichi didn't seem any more of an ass to me than he did in the manga. Still slightly suffocating and self-important. Keeping with tradition that even in the midst of the supernatural, gender roles remain stuck in reality. Which, for me, made it all the more horrific.
 
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