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4 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

It's funny how once upon a time King had to actually cut like four hundred pages from The Stand to get it published.

Did you ever try to read the un-cut version? Talk about diarrhea of the word-processor. King was real pleased to get the long version published, he should have been ashamed of himself.

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Keene's a good dude, there's a GoFundMe set up.  I've no idea what happened, but the arm injury sounds absolutely awful. 

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  • 11 months later...

Just became aware of Clark Ashton Smith.  Are the Collected Fantasies the go to books?  Is there something missing or more complete?  I'm fine with kindle books unless there's unavailable stuff like when I wanted that Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery of Man book.  I may have already bought the first two volumes after seeing there was  a five dollar credit deal on Amazon.

Edited by assfax
Insect politics
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On 5/24/2019 at 6:19 PM, assfax said:

Just became aware of Clark Ashton Smith.  Are the Collected Fantasies the go to books?  Is there something missing or more complete?  I'm fine with kindle books unless there's unavailable stuff like when I wanted that Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery of Man book.  I may have already bought the first two volumes after seeing there was  a five dollar credit deal on Amazon.

CAS is arguably the greatest prose stylist the field has ever seen. You want the Complete CAS published by Night Shade Books. There simply isn't any CAS that isn't worth reading.

Now here's a surprise, I'm not a big poetry guy at all, (yeah, I can recite "The Raven" and some Shakespearean monologues but that's about it) CAS considered himself first and foremost a poet ans his stuff like "The Hashish Eater" will fucking blow your mind. Do a Google, I'm pretty sure that it is on-line. 

Now imagine discovering CAS at age 13 as I did, changed my life. 

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  • 2 months later...

Y'all need one of these:  THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM  - VICTOR LAVALLE

Tor.com, United States, 2016. Paperback. Condition: New. Language: English. Brand new Book. One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker AwardsPeople move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?"LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do." -- Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All"[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction."-- Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days "LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft's Dagon. [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending." - Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction. 

In case the names don't ring a bell,  Laird Barron and Elizabeth Hand are two of the best writers and critics going today. if they say it,  you can take it to the bank!                                                 9

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  • 8 months later...

If I wanted to read Paul Wilson's Night World, do I need to have read Reborn and Retribution to know what is going on?

 

I read The Keep, and I know who Repairman Jack is thanks to wikipedia.

 

Both novels seem like unnecessary padding to Wilson's Adversary Cycle, especially Retribution.

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8 hours ago, Southside Jim said:

If I wanted to read Paul Wilson's Night World, do I need to have read Reborn and Retribution to know what is going on?

 

I read The Keep, and I know who Repairman Jack is thanks to wikipedia.

 

Both novels seem like unnecessary padding to Wilson's Adversary Cycle, especially Retribution.

Jim: I know Paul Wilson and he's a good dude and a fine writer. You're assessment is very, very close to the truth. What happened is this: After years of writing mid-list horror novels that barely earned out their advance Paul knocked it out of the park with Repairman Jack. His publisher basically told him "You've got a hit series here, push it as much as you can and keep it going for as long as you can!"  Like most series characters Repairman Jack is a blessing and a curse, Paul wants to write other stuff and expand his horizons as an author, but he's making more money at retirement age than he ever has in his life. It's just like the situation Doyle had with Sherlock Holmes; he wanted to do other stuff and was sick of the character but the public was having none of it, they wanted more Sherlock Holmes and they were perfectly ready to make Doyle and everyone associated with the series miserable unless they got more Holmes and Watson. I think Paul is stuck with Repairman Jack no matter what. We'll see more adventures of a young Repairman Jack, likely some novels cleverly slotted between the currently existing books and so on just as we saw Michael Moorcock do this first with Elric and then give us the big reveal that all his lead characters were avatars of the same guy so a six book series suddenly became a sixty book series. 

Paul's not doing anything quite that brazen, but I'm afraid we're going to see a lot more fill in the blanks novels of Repairman Jack before we see much of anything else. Paul's a good guy and I'm very happy for him finally getting the big bucks that he's always deserved, I just wish he'd be able to strike a balance between what his publisher wants to sell and the other books that he wants to write. 

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So...that's a "yes" then that I don't have to read Retribution and Reborn?  


Thanks, Nightworld looks like a fun apocalyptic thriller, but I really don't need to read about an Atlantean sorcerer spending 300 pages destroying the life of a priest who almost caused the sorcerer's mother to miscarriage due to refusing to sleep with her.

Edited by Southside Jim
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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Finished The Testaments last weekend and started on the new novel by Finnish horror writer Marko Hautala. He was an English major like myself back in the University some two decades ago. He's actually been able to make a living by writing horror novels for a while now (imagine that, huh, OSJ). If I'm not mistaken this is his ninth novel to date. This is the fifth one I'm reading.

A few themes I've seem to find in his work are for example that the protagonist always seems to have some sort of psychological issue or trauma that in the beginning seems to offer an alternative, more rational explanation to the strange stuff he or she starts to encounter. Every time, however, the supernatural elements creep in and they are real, not imaginary.

Furthermore, while a bunch of people get it in the pants during the book and there is death and bloodshed, the protagonist does seem to survive the big bad in the end, only to be drawn back in and to meet their demise in the final page(s) or epilogue.

Also, if (and signs seem to point to the affirmative) all these novels happen in the same Universe, and they DO take place in my (and the author's) home town, it seems like I live in one goddamned hell mouth with all this supernatural shit going on beneath the surface. It is also super fascinating to read about actual places in your home town, you could just walk or ride a bike to right now and go investigate. I've read enough of these things to know that doing that would be a fatal error, however!

I'm three quarters into the book right now and while it may end up not being among my favorites by the author, it's pretty sure to creep me out and disturb me for a bit once I finish it. Now the city centre is yet another place to avoid, after dark. Pretty soon, I'll just be hopping in a circle. Luckily, my part of town has yet to be featured in any of his work.

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