Fantasy Recommendations - for the unenlightened

Status
Not open for further replies.
Thanks, Brys, glad to know I'm not missing anything. Do you know, it was getting to be a chore to read the next in the series, but funnily enough I felt guilty giving up. Perhaps when Jordan actually finishes the series, someone will be kind enough to post the ending, suitably garnished with "Spoiler" signs.

But I will bet you a trillion gold marks that good triumphs over evil. :p
 
I've said that quite a few times - IMO it's the one way Jordan can redeem the Wheel of Time series. Then I guess a few people would be a little disappointed that he had taken 12 books to do that.
 
I'm still enjoying the Wheel of time tbh. Though, i must point out i only "discovered" it in christmas 2002, just prior to COT coming out and i read all 10 books back to back (which with fantasy series is ,i think, the best way to go) so i didn't suffer from any of the frustrations of waiting 6 years or so for plotlines from 4 books ago to be resolved :D
 
I discovered it about the same time as you, but I've also discovered a lot of other authors since then, which is the main reason I'm not reading any more of it, at least not for some time.
 
yeah I think when i started reading it book 10 had just come out in hardback, i read on a web site its going to be 13 books I hope it ends well thats one series i don't want it to end painfully ever after did anyone read all of the sword of truth books I got to book 6 and had enough i can't beleive I made it that far but I got them for free so can't really complain
 
Sadly for some of us, we began reading WOT within the first couple of years of the books first coming out ARGHHH!!!!..:(
 
I have my 'book money' already set aside for the next WOT volume :p :D
 
Well, I shall wait with hope for Christmas now my laptop gave up the ghost and I had to get a new one :eek: . Money spend on that included my book-money :eek:

NOT VERY HAPPY
 
aftermath said:
Mad Arab-Necronomicon (thats all they call him in the book and since there is no author stated...I would say this is a must read)
Click to expand...

Perhaps you're thinking of Clark Ashton Smith? He wrote a couple of stories about scholars and an occult book called the Necronomicon by the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. The story with that in I can think of is "Return of the Sorceror", where one of the main characters is a scholar called John Carnby, set in the contemporary world. It was fantasy, but on the horror side.

But anyway, even if that isn't what you're thinking of, Clark Ashton Smith's short stories are excellent fantasy reads.
 
Brys said:
Perhaps you're thinking of Clark Ashton Smith? He wrote a couple of stories about scholars and an occult book called the Necronomicon by the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. The story with that in I can think of is "Return of the Sorceror", where one of the main characters is a scholar called John Carnby, set in the contemporary world. It was fantasy, but on the horror side.

But anyway, even if that isn't what you're thinking of, Clark Ashton Smith's short stories are excellent fantasy reads.
Click to expand...
Just to clarify things here Brys, the book being referred to is the fictitious book Neconimicon written by the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred. There's been plenty of unfounded speculation and something of a running internet hoax about this whole subject matter. I wrote something about this on the forums at one stage. The author or perpetrator of this is of course HP Lovecraft.

Plenty of people have since written books supposedly based on the Necronimicon.

Here's an interesting extract from a Lovecraft letter in which he also mentions CAS.

Regarding the Necronomicon--I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own imagination! Inventing horrible books is quite a pastime among devotees of the weird, &...many of the regular W.T. contributors have such things to their credit--or discredit. It rather amuses the different writers to use one another's synthetic demons & imaginary books in their stories--so that Clark Ashton Smith often speaks of my Necronomicon while I refer to his Book of Eibon . . & so on. This pooling of resources tends to build up quite a pseudo-convincing background of dark mythology, legendry, & bibliography--though of course none of us has the least wish actually to mislead readers

However CAS is still a nice suggestion....:D
 
I know it's a fictitious book - and Lovecraft and CAS worked together quite a bit, so it's not surprising that the same subject matter comes into both of them. I haven't read any Lovecraft yet though.
 
OH Hi there Brys. If you haven't read any Lovecraft yet you will probably want to, he's amongst the best if not arguably THE BEST of the Old Weird school although I'm sure you already know this....:)
 
There is, actually, a recently published book presenting itself as THE Necronomicon. I looked it over at the library a few months back, and couldn't tell whether the author and publisher were trying to pull something over on that part of the reading public which is drawn to the occult, or it was an elaborate homage to Lovecraft. I probably should have brought it home and compared the contents with some of the Lovecraft stories I have, but the parts I read at the library just looked like magic spells invented by a person with some knowledge of the history of magic and a particularly unpleasant mind, and I didn't.

Clark Ashton Smith was but one of many writers who set stories in Lovecraft's Cthulhu "universe". "The Return of the Sorcerer" was one, and "Ubbo-Sathla" is another. (I have both in a battered old book -- of thoroughly mundane antecedents, alas, and mere paper covers --Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume One, edited by August Derleth.) I don't know the titles of any others he wrote in that setting, but there well may be others.

I'm not aware of any actual collaborations between Smith and Lovecraft, if that's what Brys means by working together.
 
Thanks for the update Kelpie. I'll bet London to a brick, as I alluded to in my previuos post, that the Necromonicon book you were looking at was just another of many such Lovecraft take offs produced over the years.

As far as HPL and CAS goes, I assume Brys means that they swapped ideas and compared thier stories over the years in a fairly close collaboration as indeed they did with other contemporaries of that time like Robert E Howard. As far as an actual published collaborativre work written by the two is concerned I know of no such piece in existence. Below is an extract from something I read recently about CAS and HPL that hopefully addresses the question.

HPL was attracted to CAS's poetic style, transmundane focus, and sardonic wit. CAS liked HPL's sweeping vistas of time and space and his personal philosophy of what's been called "cosmic indifferentism": the belief that humanity is no more significant in the universe than a blade of grass. HPL encouraged CAS to try his hand at fiction, and the two were soon passing drafts of stories back and forth for comment.

HPL's borrowings were not a one-way street. He encouraged his friends to use what they wished of his own "modest efforts" in their stories. It was like a game, and his friends played, too

Since the game of the Cthulhu Mythos continued after Lovecraft's death, later authors have also made reference to Smith story-cycles in Mythos stories -- August Derleth brought in Zothique, Ramsey Campbell the Martian/Aihai stories, Lin Carter the Xiccarph and Hastane tales -- so that, today, all of Smith's cycles except the Volmer stories may be considered to be in the Mythos. (Lest readers feel this to be a violation of an author's wishes, they should realize there is a CAS text fragment, "The Infernal Star", that combines references to most of Smith's own cycles, so that the thought was not entirely alien to him.).

As far as the stories CAS himself wrote with elements of Lovecraft's fiction in mind there's actually quite a number in addition to what you mentioned and simply too numerous to mention here, so rest assured I shan't bore you with such details... :)
 
Kelpie said:
I'm not aware of any actual collaborations between Smith and Lovecraft, if that's what Brys means by working together.
Click to expand...

I don't think there were any direct collaborations, at least not in the sense of co-writing any books. But they shared the Cthulu universe and were in close contact together. As Gollum said, Robert Howard was another one involved.

Now I've just got to try and find some HP Lovecraft.
 
Brys said:
I don't think there were any direct collaborations, at least not in the sense of co-writing any books. But they shared the Cthulu universe and were in close contact together. As Gollum said, Robert Howard was another one involved. Now I've just got to try and find some HP Lovecraft.
Click to expand...
Brys, the following provides a link to a number of horror writer's short stories including Lovecraft that has some of his earlier works "The Alchemist" and "The Beast In The Cave".

http://www.classichorrorstories.com/stories.html

My favorite Lovecraft works and probably some of his most famous include:

At The Mountains Of Madness
Shadows Over Innsmouth
Rats In The Walls
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Color out of Space
The Call of Cthulhu
Dagon
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Shadow Out of Time
The Horror at Red Hook
The Nameless City
The Dunwich Horror
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
S recommendations of manly fantasy novels Book Discussion 2
Berlyn Sci-fi recommendations for a fantasy fan? Book Discussion 40
chongjasmine Christian Fantasy recommendations? Book Discussion 9
chongjasmine New Fantasy Authors recommendations Book Discussion 7
Brys Fantasy Recommendations for the Unenlightened 2 Book Discussion 442

Similar threads


Back
Top