This is mostly directed to AncientHistory as our resident Mythos expert, but I welcome any and all thoughts on this. What do you need, at minimum, to read and be familiar with to 'know what you're talking about' when it comes to the modern work on Lovecraftian stuff?
Basically, a nice list of titles of things I should read to become familiar with this stuff would be awesome.
Minimum compentency reading list for Lovecraft stuff
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Minimum compentency reading list for Lovecraft stuff
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Define modern here. How recent?
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
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--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Modern in my case means 'stuff that's not older than me'. Meaning that would have been written in the 90s and later.
Everything I learned about DnD, I learned from Frank Trollman.
Kaelik wrote:You are so full of Strawmen that I can only assume you actually shit actual straw.
souran wrote:...uber, nerd-rage-inducing, minutia-devoted, pointless blithering shit.
Schwarzkopf wrote:The Den, your one-stop shop for in-depth analysis of Dungeons & Dragons and distressingly credible threats of oral rape.
DSM wrote:Apparently, The GM's Going To Punch You in Your Goddamned Face edition of D&D is getting more traction than I expected. Well, it beats playing 4th. Probably 5th, too.
Frank Trollman wrote:Giving someone a mouth full of cock is a standard action.
PoliteNewb wrote:If size means anything, it's what position you have to get in to give a BJ.
Oh, damn. That's tough.
Okay, there's an anthology of Lovecraft-inspired short stories called the Book of Cthulhu and it actually has a pretty decent cross-section of Lovecraft monsters. Elder Ones show up, shoggoths, Innsmouth people in a couple of different stories (couple of stories are direct sequels of some of Lovecraft's own stuff: Shadow over Innsmouth and the Mountains of Madness).
It's a pretty good buy for ten bucks on Kindle and does have things in the same tone of the horror but they have original work (The Crawling Sky is awesome)
But you gotta understand that a lot of the establishing things would be in Lovecraft's own work: He baldly spells out what the Deep Ones are, and how they operate, in Shadow over Innsmouth. You learn about Elder Ones and Shoggoths in Mountains of Madness, and Mi-Go in Whisperer in Darkness.
So a lot of modern stuff sort of assumes you mainly understand what's going on here. At least, what I've read so far.
Okay, there's an anthology of Lovecraft-inspired short stories called the Book of Cthulhu and it actually has a pretty decent cross-section of Lovecraft monsters. Elder Ones show up, shoggoths, Innsmouth people in a couple of different stories (couple of stories are direct sequels of some of Lovecraft's own stuff: Shadow over Innsmouth and the Mountains of Madness).
It's a pretty good buy for ten bucks on Kindle and does have things in the same tone of the horror but they have original work (The Crawling Sky is awesome)
But you gotta understand that a lot of the establishing things would be in Lovecraft's own work: He baldly spells out what the Deep Ones are, and how they operate, in Shadow over Innsmouth. You learn about Elder Ones and Shoggoths in Mountains of Madness, and Mi-Go in Whisperer in Darkness.
So a lot of modern stuff sort of assumes you mainly understand what's going on here. At least, what I've read so far.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Ancient History
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That is a tough one. The thing is that nobody has tried to really consolidate the Mythos in awhile - everybody goes in their own directions. Because of that, contemporary Mythos writers also tend to refer back to the "canon" - Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, for the "classic" stuff and August Derleth, Ramsey Campbell, and Brian Lumley for the "new" stuff, mainly. Major contemporary writers like W. H. Pugmire and Caitlin R. Kiernan rather go their own way, but still hearken back to those stories. And, as you can tell, I tend to think more in the way of authors than anthologies. Twenty years ago I'd just have told you to go read the Chaosium cycles, but those are mostly out of print now.
Right, so a list. If you want to be conversant with the current crop of Mythos stuff, I'd suggest reading New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, Black Wings: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and the aforementioned Book of Cthulhu I & II. Fair mix, hits pretty much all the recent authors; novel-wise you'll also want to read Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives. If you want background for all of that, then at bare minimum you're going to want to read the three-volume Penguin Classics editions of Lovecraft's works.
Right, so a list. If you want to be conversant with the current crop of Mythos stuff, I'd suggest reading New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, Black Wings: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and the aforementioned Book of Cthulhu I & II. Fair mix, hits pretty much all the recent authors; novel-wise you'll also want to read Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives. If you want background for all of that, then at bare minimum you're going to want to read the three-volume Penguin Classics editions of Lovecraft's works.
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Remember that the stuff written in the 1920s is all ambiguously public domain, but all the new stuff is under copyright. So technically you can't use the materials written in the new works, or even the 60s and 70s without explicit permission. This creates a bizarre state of every author reinventing the wheel - because they are legally required to do so.
The authors of CthulhuTech could pick up and run with Cthulhu and Deep Ones and shit, but they didn't talk about Cthonians because they'd need permission for that from Lumley. And you can make pretty much exactly CthulhuTech yourself in terms of Cthulhu and Shub Niggurath and shit, but you can't use the Ashcroft Foundation or the Nazadi because copyright. Not that you'd want to, because the unique elements in CthulhuTech are terrible, but you can't.
Mythos literature stopped really building a common mythology during the Nixon administration - because no author can legally build directly on the works of other contemporary authors. Fuck Copyright.
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The authors of CthulhuTech could pick up and run with Cthulhu and Deep Ones and shit, but they didn't talk about Cthonians because they'd need permission for that from Lumley. And you can make pretty much exactly CthulhuTech yourself in terms of Cthulhu and Shub Niggurath and shit, but you can't use the Ashcroft Foundation or the Nazadi because copyright. Not that you'd want to, because the unique elements in CthulhuTech are terrible, but you can't.
Mythos literature stopped really building a common mythology during the Nixon administration - because no author can legally build directly on the works of other contemporary authors. Fuck Copyright.
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Ancient History
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Yeah. There is still borrowing and references, but there's less of it, and there's even less communication between writers these days. So like Charles Stross totally has the Cthonians in his Laundry series - and I don't think he asked Brian Lumley for permission, though maybe he did - but there's no reference to Ramsey Campbell's Goatswood or any of that. It's very much a patchwork of stuff budding off of the original Mythos tales - I think probably the last anthology that could be argued to be "core" is Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and that was what, '71?
Which needn't be so bad, because it means there's less material to go after to get a good rounding on the Mythos, but it does also mean that contemporary Mythos fiction varies very widely indeed.
Which needn't be so bad, because it means there's less material to go after to get a good rounding on the Mythos, but it does also mean that contemporary Mythos fiction varies very widely indeed.
What's the best classic collection to own?
Good, broad base of stories, but also nice bindings and such?
Good, broad base of stories, but also nice bindings and such?
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This is what I have:
Library of America edition of Lovecraft's stuff.
Several hundred pages of Lovecraft, in a dense book (seriously, it's heavier than it looks), and has its own little bookmark.
Library of America edition of Lovecraft's stuff.
Several hundred pages of Lovecraft, in a dense book (seriously, it's heavier than it looks), and has its own little bookmark.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Ancient History
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Sinister's request for any modern example of Cthulhu mythos got me thinking: The Slender Man is HP Lovecraft's skinny grandkid. Seriously. It's the same genre of horror, just in a different time and a different set of critters.
A lot of the Slender Man fiction hits the same notes as the Cthulhu mythos did.
-Protagonist brushes against a mysterious/creepy occurrence, they try to investigate, get bits of the truth, but just knowing about it leads to them being involved and harrowed by the forces in question. The forces are things they can barely comprehend, much less defend against, so their chance for a normal life is gone, and, likewise, it reveals that our idea of 'normal' is just a soap bubble on an ocean.
-The pursuing entities are intelligent and purposeful, but have motives and means that can't be guessed. They are, however, relentless (thought patient). Part of their creepiness if this mix of human and inhuman.
-Narrative pacing is slower, a slow buildup of gathering lots of clues which, if done right, makes you anticipate the reveal but doesn't dull the effect of the reveal.
-A big deal is made of verisimilitude, leading to people to assume the fiction is an actual account. I know a couple of people who think the Necronomicon, written by Abdul Alhazred, is an actual thing. Even now. Just like how there's folks who think the Slender Man is an actual thing.
I've watched way more Slender mythos stuff than I should have, over the past few years but it does hit the same buttons as Lovecraft.
A lot of the Slender Man fiction hits the same notes as the Cthulhu mythos did.
-Protagonist brushes against a mysterious/creepy occurrence, they try to investigate, get bits of the truth, but just knowing about it leads to them being involved and harrowed by the forces in question. The forces are things they can barely comprehend, much less defend against, so their chance for a normal life is gone, and, likewise, it reveals that our idea of 'normal' is just a soap bubble on an ocean.
-The pursuing entities are intelligent and purposeful, but have motives and means that can't be guessed. They are, however, relentless (thought patient). Part of their creepiness if this mix of human and inhuman.
-Narrative pacing is slower, a slow buildup of gathering lots of clues which, if done right, makes you anticipate the reveal but doesn't dull the effect of the reveal.
-A big deal is made of verisimilitude, leading to people to assume the fiction is an actual account. I know a couple of people who think the Necronomicon, written by Abdul Alhazred, is an actual thing. Even now. Just like how there's folks who think the Slender Man is an actual thing.
I've watched way more Slender mythos stuff than I should have, over the past few years but it does hit the same buttons as Lovecraft.
Last edited by Maxus on Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
There's also the Complete Works anthology produced by @Cthulhuchick which comes in pdf, epub and mobi.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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Ancient History
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Ancient History
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If you want authoritative sources on Lovecraft's original creations, and how Derleth's work added onto them, I have nothing to add that hasn't been mentioned.
If you want stylistically authoritative guides, I cannot overemphasize the importance of Marc Laidlaw's "Leng" - it's as good as the best of Lovecraft's work, and faithful to his worldview and style, except where the latter is improved upon. It reminds me of "The Rats in the Walls".
You might also find the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast to be helpful. They have some useful discussion of background, although they spend too much time sniggering at the weak points for my taste.
If you want stylistically authoritative guides, I cannot overemphasize the importance of Marc Laidlaw's "Leng" - it's as good as the best of Lovecraft's work, and faithful to his worldview and style, except where the latter is improved upon. It reminds me of "The Rats in the Walls".
You might also find the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast to be helpful. They have some useful discussion of background, although they spend too much time sniggering at the weak points for my taste.