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Originally Posted by Spellbot 5000
Lovecraft's work is great just to see how horror writing got it's start. There's only a handful of his stories I enjoy purely for the story and characters. The rest though serve as these little tiny time-machines, to take you back to a different style of writing and plot. It's great to see all the differences in tone and style, and the choice in words to convey the story. I love too how innocent his horrors are in todays context, and to think what people of his era may have thought if they could read the horror stories of today. People used to a climax where Lovecraft reveals "but in fact the man was DEAD!", would whither reading something like King where he takes an entire chapter to describe how someones bones crack and splinter as they are forcibly pulled through a 3 inch slot.
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Yes, it's tame stuff by modern standards. But I think current writers might take a lesson or two. The most effective horror is the stuff that happens in our own heads. I think modern writers in several genres err by showing their hand too soon.
For example, one of my favorite grade B SF films is an oldie from the 50's called "Them". The creatures are giant mutated ants, the results of nuclear tests, but we never even see them for half of the film. We just see the destruction they cause, with scenes like the little girl in catatonic shock after the ants have destroyed the family farm and killed her parents. She sets bolt upright, wide eyed, on her stretcher as the ant's high pitched warbling noises swell in the background, then sinks slowly back into catatonia as the sound fades. The "My God, what's happening here?" anticipation makes the film.
It's been a while, but as I recall, most of Lovecraft's stuff happens off stage. You know something terrible is occurring, but you don't know what, and your mind fills in the blanks. I contrast unfavorably that with the modern "splatterpunk" school of horror, which wants to get right to the vivid blood and gore.
There's a difference between horror and nausea, and I think some folks have lost sight of it.
Incidentally, a chap named Daniel Saroff has nice Mobipocket versions of complete H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith collections posted on
Memoware. If I can track him down, I'm going to invite him to repost them here.
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Dennis