Good Chultlu stories?
noir_blood
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Registered User regular
So I just realized that I have never read any lovecraft or Chultlu stories, and are aiming to change that. What should I read? Are the original lovecraft stories good? I have heard that they are kinda unwieldy. Also, if any one can recommend stuff to read online, that'll be great as my job currently has quite a bit of downtime.
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I'd suggest reading The Shadow Over Innsmouth, though a lot of them are good. You can probably find the stories elsewhere, but I tend read them in the old fashioned paper format. His stories are quite full of purple prose. It's part of the way he writes, and makes it interesting.
Also, if you like Lovecraft, check out some Robert E. Howard, the inventor of Conan the Barbarian and someone who was clearly influenced by / influenced Lovecraft in their years of correspondence.
If you're looking for something longer, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is quite famous, and was quite good, although one thing to keep in mind about Lovecraft is that he is very wordy and tends to use vocabulary that is somewhat non-standard today, so the longer story might be something to work up to if you have a shorter attention span. If you're not sure you're up to the task, I'd have a dictionary on hand.
Avoid his fantasy, i.e. anything with "Kadath" in the title, because it's crappy.
In the Mouth of Madness is a pretty blatant homage to Lovecraft's work. Starring Sam Niel (with appearances from Charleton Heston and other people that will make you say "I know that guy!"), it's about 10 years old and shows its age a bit, but is pretty creepy anyway. Watch in widescreen if possible.
It's very rereadable. In fact, it gets way creepier on further reading.
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It has all the stories mentioned above plus more of his great short stories (including Call of Cthulu) and I picked it up for maybe $12. It's only $10 on Amazon, so I definitely recommend grabbing it. It really is a steal for the price.
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How about finding something to do at work that doesn't waste your companies time? I am aghast at how many people talk about how much downtime their job has when they could be doing something in that "downtime" that could lead to a raise or promotion.
Uh, depending on the job, sometimes there's nothing to do. Mine is a good example. Periods of madness followed by periods of nothing to do.
He speaks the truth. Sometimes, there is absolutely nothing productive to do. For example, certain duties in a warehouse being assigned to you, that you can't walk away from, i.e. supervising a line that brings shipments in. Too bad that the next shipment comes in three hours, and you're stationed there.
(luckily I only had to do that a few times, it's enough to drive a person utterly bonkers)
There is a movie called Dagon, based on novel The Shadow over Innsmouth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon_(film)
Follows the original story very closely, and the movie is excellent, provided that you like(or tolerate) 1920's silent film style.
And there's the fact that I work at a call center, which is notorious for having long stretches of busy followed by stretches of downtime. And it's either that or taking time off for low call volume, which I don't get paid for.
Lovecrafts Cthulhu stories vary in quality. I liked "The Call of Cthulhu," "Shadow over Innsmouth" is good, but doesn't involve Cthulhu (it's about Dagon mostly), "The Dunwich Horror" ire pretty good, "At the Mountains of Madness" was alright, and changed Cthulhu from supernatural horror to Sci-Fi horror, which was neat. You may get tired of things being described as indescribable and unknowable, but it's just a part of the style and not often overused.
As said, avoid the Dream Quest book. There are a couple alright stories and ideas there, but it's not horror and is mostly long winded and pointless fantasy.
There's a whole lot of the expanded mythos that sucks balls, but a few of stories are good. "Strange Eons" by Robert Bloch was fun to read, it being sort of an ending to the whole Cthulhu cycle.
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I've tried looking around and there's no definitive answer I could find, so I may be wrong in the public domain thing.
I'm still going through the entire collection, and man I can only handle a story or two every day, otherwise I get way too creeped out. The Colour of Outer Space, The Whisperer in Darkness, Call of Cthulhu. The Rats in the Walls was also particularily amazing.
I love how lovecraft actually had a cat named Niggerman.
Lovecraft had one because he was a real actual racist, anyway. Good writer aside from that, but...
http://www.cthulhulives.org/
I like the dramatisations a lot, they really capture the spirit and eerieness of the stories. A good introduction to Lovecraft and even better if you're already a fan of the books.
As an interesting aside, Lovecraft took his racism well above and beyond the 'product of the times' sort of racial attitude. In some of his personal correspondence and a few semi-academic pieces he insinuates or outright says that "negroes are a lesser race of mudmen", or something to that effect.
I don't particularly care given how awesome is writing is, but bearing that in mind while you read some of his stuff can be a neat way to gain a more broad understanding of his work.
It's also no secret that he was pretty harshly racist. I mean who couldn't infer that from his writing, with constant mentions of the more amicable and trustworthy characters being of proper upbringing and of established breeding being of a light complexion, while he continually associates the most evil, sinister, and uneducated humans in his stories as being blacks, natives, and hispanics.
Is much cleaner and easier to read then that dagon site thats been linked.
It's very amusing, too, considering his wife was Jewish.
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For those of you who missed it: yes, the Ghostbusters did fight Cthulhu. Yes, there were octopus-headed cultists chanting "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu f'thagn!" on a children's animated show. Yes, it was awesome.