Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarkChevallier" data-source="post: 5016864" data-attributes="member: 55538">A lot of reasonable points made by the Hatecrafts (I copyright that term, it's mine! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /> )Personally, I found the ancient history portion of At The Mountains of Madness its most compelling section - the revelation of mankind's existence as a by-product of an ancient alien race's attempt to create a slave labour force, the scope of the history being covered - it seemed to reinforce one of what's commonly seen as Lovecraft's big theme, the random and meaning-free nature of the universe. I found it quite creepy. Although in retrospect, the penguins were stupid, and I can understand after reading your critiques that not everyone will be equally grabbed by it.And I'm sorry for dismissing Timothy Zahn too much. I'm certainly no fan of those particular Star Wars books, and I'm confident he won't be remembered as much as Shakespeare or Lovecraft, but it was snobbish of me and I apologise. Take your fun where you can find it.Personally, I do feel much of Lovecraft's reputation comes from his position in the early stream of cosmic horror, but more of it (for us gamers and for many others) comes from the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, and its early revelation of story driven game with excellent scenarios and campaigns. It's kept Lovecraft alive far more than any dry anthology. But I feel this dismissal of him as a writer is almost an unfair backlash - he's not that bad; he's easy to dis because his flaws STAND OUT. But he was a pulp writer. Try to read any pulp writer and you'll usually see similar flaws. Amongst his peers, Lovecraft is good, and more than that, he's good, full-stop, provided he's read with an understanding that you're not reading regular modern prose (with all of its own insistencies on naturalistic speech and the bland, brief style only people like Jack Vance can break out of), but pulp prose. In the same way as Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever provided you remember you're not reading prose, but Elizabethan poetry intended to be acted on stage.Anyways, just my opinion. I'd suggest Lovecraft to anyone wanting to do creepy horror in their gaming, or just looking for a read that they might well thoroughly enjoy.</blockquote>

Verification