Recommendations

Benjamin Bice

Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:32 am

Stephen R. Donaldson: The Chornicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. There is also The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. There are ten books in total(3, 3 and 4).
These books are the kind of brilliant epic fantasy books that I think it takes a white mind to write. It starts with an author in late 20th century America who is spurned by his Christian community because he contracts leporsy. His wife leaves him and takes their son, and he spent some time in a leprosarium in Louisiana before returning home. He has an accident that causes him to lose consciousness, then finds himself in "The Land", where he must combat the forces of Lord Foul the Despiser using the power of his white-gold wedding band. He thinks it is just a dream. Every time he returns from the land, he wakes up in his own world just hours later, though months have gone by in The Land. A day in his world is equal to a year in The land, so, when the Second Chronicles starts ten years after the first ended, over 3,500 years have gone by in the Land. Thomas Covenant actually dies at the end of the Second Chronicles, and a female doctor who accompanies him to the Land in The Second Chronicles takes over as the new protagonist in The Last Chronicles, wielding the white-gold wedding band that he gave her before he died.

Check Stephen R. Donaldson out! I hope to make more recommendations in the future.

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:54 pm

Early 20th century New Englander, Howard Phillips Lovecraft(1890-1937), is the quintessential master of the cosmic horror/weird fiction short story. He authored the stories of the famed Cthulhu Mythos. Most of his professional life as a writer was spent being published in the magazine "Weird Tales". He never made much money in his brief 46-year lifetime, barely eeking out a living, and often living with relatives. Below is a link to his advice for aspiring fiction writers.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/ ... n-writing/

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Mon May 12, 2014 5:04 am

I'm really starting to believe that Bram Stoker, the author of "Dracula" and 11 other novels, as well as many short stories, was one of the best writers ever.
http://bramstoker.org/

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Thu May 22, 2014 10:37 pm

"What a man does for pay is of little
significance. What he is, as a sensitive
instrument responsive to the world's beauty,
is everything!"
—Lovecraft in a letter to Maurice W. Moe,
January 1929

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Kevin Alfred Strom
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Re: Recommendations

Post by Kevin Alfred Strom » Fri May 23, 2014 8:30 am

Thanks for the Lovecraft recommendations. He was flawed in some ways (he was snookered into marrying a Jewess despite his physical and psychic revulsion toward most Jews, he was way too much a Nordicist, and he was convinced that the Cosmos was ultimately meaningless), but very brilliant. He authored some words definitely worth reading, like the following:

"As for the question of superiority & inferiority — when we observe the whole animal kingdom and note the vast differences in capacity betwixt different species and sub-species within various genera, we see how utterly asinine & hysterically sentimental is the blanket assumption of idealists and other fools that all the sub-species of Homo sapiens must necessarily be equal. The truth is, that we cannot lay down any general rule in this matter at the outset. We must simply study each variety with the perfect detachment of the zoölogist and abide by the results of honest investigation whether we relish them or not.

And what does such a study tell us? Largely this — that the australoid and negro races are basically & structurally primitive — possessing definite morphological and psychological variations in the direction of lower stages of organisation — whilst all others average about the same so far as the best classes of each are concerned. The same, that is, in total capacity — though each has its own special aptitudes and deficiencies.”
* * *
"Only a damn fool can expect the people of one tradition to feel at ease when their country is flooded with hordes of foreigners who — whether equal, superior, or inferior biologically — are so antipodal in physical, emotional, and intellectual makeup that harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. Such an immigration is death to all endurable existence, and pollution and decay to all art and culture. To permit or encourage it is suicide.”
* * *
“What we must do is to shake off our encumbering illusions and false values — banishing sonorous platitudes in a civilised realisation that the only things of value in the world are those which promote beauty, colour, interest, and heightened sensation. The one great crusade worthy of an enlightened man is that directed against whatever impoverishes imagination, wonder, sensation, dramatic life, and the appreciation of beauty. Nothing else matters. And not even this really matters in the great void, but it is amusing to play a little in the sun before the blind universe dispassionately pulverises us again into that primordial nothingness from whence it moulded us for a second’s sport.”
* * *
"What is more important, is to perpetuate those things of beauty which are of real value because involving actual sense-impressions rather than vapid theories.

'Equality' is a joke — but a great abbey or cathedral, covered with moss, is a poignant reality. It is for us to safeguard and preserve the conditions which produce great abbeys, and palaces, and picturesque walled towns, and vivid sky-lines of steeples and domes, and luxurious tapestries, and fascinating books, paintings, and statuary, and colossal organs and noble music, and dramatic deeds on embattled fields… these are all there is of life; take them away and we have nothing which a man of taste or spirit would care to live for.

Take them away and our poets have nothing to sing — our dreamers have nothing to dream about.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

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C.E. Whiteoak
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Re: Recommendations

Post by C.E. Whiteoak » Fri May 23, 2014 9:11 am

Thank you for posting those remarkable Lovecraft quotes, Mr. Strom. I had no idea that he had written those observations.

CEW

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:10 am

While we are discussing Lovecraft, I thought this would be interesting to post here.
http://mediadiversified.org/2014/05/24/ ... lovecraft/

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:15 am

A quick search reveals why this guy has a personal beef with Lovecraft's "racism".
" P. Djeli Clark is an Afro-Caribbean-American writer of speculative fiction."
That's really all we need to know.

Benjamin Bice

Re: Recommendations

Post by Benjamin Bice » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:18 am

Here is the hilarious Lovecraft excerpt quoted in the dark creature's article:
"When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger."
–H.P. Lovecraft, On the Creation of Niggers
(1912)

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Kevin Alfred Strom
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Re: Recommendations

Post by Kevin Alfred Strom » Mon Jun 02, 2014 8:52 am

Nice quotes --

Radish Magazine recently ran a great piece on Lovecraft; well worth reading.

All the best,

Kevin.

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