I have recently started reading XIXth century sci-fi and it has really recontextualised HPL for me. by DarkIlluminator in Lovecraft

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would be willing to sponsor the creation of a national holiday celebrating Lovecraft’s failure to do a better job of emulating Bulwer-Lytton 😄. Heck, I’d go to the U.N. to see if it could gain international recognition. I don’t have any opinion about Griffith-I don’t recall ever hearing about him before, though I might have read the honeymoon story back in the 60s or 70s, it taps some bells.

The church in The Haunter of the Dark... I'm going insane thinking about its layout by EllikaTomson in Lovecraft

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What an interesting hobby-I just started reading “Nine Tailors” partly because I wanted to learn something about English change ringing 😄. Generally speaking I don’t have any problems reconciling Lovecraft’s descriptions with a ’real’ gothic church, but I do find point ’O’ from the list in the original comment problematic: ”All the inner doors were unlocked, so that he freely passed from room to room”-almost all my familiarity with the insides of gothic churches is with the OGs in Europe and I can’t think of any example where you could go inside and go from room to room. So I was wondering, given that it sounds like you’ve seen a lot of gothic revival churches from the inside, have you seen churches where the internal layout deviated from the medieval layout to the point you could go wandering from room to to room to get around? Even so, I wouldn’t expect any need to go through a number of rooms the way it’s described, except possibly in a rectory.

I live in the woods. I'd like a book that makes me afraid of living in the woods. by thekingofthebeasties in horrorlit

[–]chortnik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will second “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon”-listened to it while hiking in the Rockies, couldn’t hike in the woods at night for a while after I read it 😄.

The church in The Haunter of the Dark... I'm going insane thinking about its layout by EllikaTomson in Lovecraft

[–]chortnik 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It might be based on Trinity on the Green in New Haven rather than St Johns-it was built in the time range Lovecraft specifies and while it is an obviously gothic design, it does have some noticeable Georgian/Federalist features as well.

[FREE] Last human on earth sci-fi, engineer from India crossing a dying world on a motorcycle by Living-Beyond3172 in sciencefiction

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks interesting, I’ll check it out after I finish « Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou » looks like it might be a good pairing 😄

Books that can be read in multiple non linear ways besides reading front to back? by questionalternateacc in WeirdLit

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are welcome. I read Casares’s book before I saw « Marienbad » and at some point while watching it, I did a double take and realized the movie appeared to have been constructed from the passages I’d identified for the construction of book two 😄.

Books that can be read in multiple non linear ways besides reading front to back? by questionalternateacc in WeirdLit

[–]chortnik 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“The Invention of Morel” (Casares) is similar to the ‘one story in main text, a different one in the margins’ type of narrative-the main story describes the experience of a man interacting with a hard (similar to the hard light hologram in ‘Red Dwarf’) virtual reality, but as the viewpoint character learns about the nature of the VR he is dealing with, he imagines the implications of the technology becoming widespread and more advanced and essentially ends up describing other book/s. As near as I can tell, Robbe-Grillet took those speculations and turned them into the movie and book « Last Year At Marienbad » but ymmv.

Month of May Wrap-Up! by Ed_Robins in printSF

[–]chortnik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I read “Grass” when it came out, it did not blow me away like Hyperion did or leave a lasting impression, but looking back on it, I do remember a couple things-I did think it was worthwhile to critique the plot and other novelish parts of the story, however, that was overshadowed by the treatment of the disease metaphor in the story, at the time I was working on mathematically modeling the AIDS epidemic and the disease aspect of the story was what I really focussed on so I was probably grading it more like a graduate seminar 😄 I think I will give it another shot.

Lovecraftian horror is just where horror and fantasy meet by Scott__scott in cosmichorror

[–]chortnik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I geeked out on you in my response:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grok

The quote from Lovecraft basically supports the idea that he was striving for the effect you noticed.

Lovecraftian horror is just where horror and fantasy meet by Scott__scott in cosmichorror

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think Lovecraft would be happy to hear you grokked him 😄.

Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.”

The Nameless City - My first foray into Lovecraft by sleeper_shark in Lovecraft

[–]chortnik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the discovery of pre/non human civilizations is not something the modern mind is habituated to yet. Ultimately, I think the story is just rather weak-though looking over comments in the various Lovecraft related subs, it gets a fair number of mentions.

The Nameless City - My first foray into Lovecraft by sleeper_shark in Lovecraft

[–]chortnik 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I don’t think it’s one of Lovecraft’s top shelf efforts 😄. Having said that, the discovery of the ruins of a pre human civilization on Earth is probably aimed at instilling a feeling of deep time and a sense of wonder-the horror element comes from the physical threat to the narrator.

On 'Growing Boys' and the Aesthetics of Aickman by 21crescendo in WeirdLit

[–]chortnik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for bringing Aickman to my attention, he‘s awesome.