So if you have been online much at all in the last few years, you will have heard that cultural appropriation is Definitely A Thing.
I’m about to commit cultural appropriation. If this or the snark that follows triggers you, that’s not my problem. Continue reading
A Lonely and Curious Country
Matthew Carpenter, ed.
Ulthar Press
Trade Paper, 234 p., $16.95
As Matthew Carpenter points out in his introduction, Lovecraftian fiction has become a mainstay of the fantastic and weird fiction genres, with some of the best-written stories being published on a regular basis. A Lonely and Curious Country is no exception. (Mr. Carpenter didn’t say that, I did.)
The seventeen stories here are perfect examples of what’s going on in the admittedly large subfield of Lovecraftian fiction. They are disturbing, horrifying, Lovecraftian. In some the Lovecraftian element is quite prominent; in others, you don’t realize you’re in Lovecraft country until you’ve almost finished. I’m not going to try to give a one or two sentence summary of each one. Rather I’m going to focus on the ones that stood out to me. YMMV. One other thing before I start discussing the stories. Of the eighteen authors, I had only heard of three of them prior to reading this book (Webb, Price, and McNamee). There are a lot of good writers out there that I need to keep up with. Continue reading
Keith here. What follows is a guest post by Paul McNamee. Normally I wouldn’t intrude but I wanted to include a link to Paul’s blog. Now here’s Paul.
(First, thanks to Keith for the guest spot on Adventures Fantastic.
I am here promoting the new anthology, A LONELY & CURIOUS COUNTRY: Tales from the Lands of Lovecraft. The book is currently available in print from Amazon, and we all hope an ebook is soon to follow.)
Honestly, I don’t remember exactly when or which Lovecraft book I read first. It was the “old days,” the latter half of the 1980s. I was in college. I was interested in horror – mostly by way of Stephen King. And I still had an interest in fantasy – mostly by way of J.R.R. Tolkien.
There was no world wide web. In those days, I never knew what books were coming out. I would wander – mostly in the scifi/fantasy section of the bookstore. I would grab what jumped off the shelf at me.
The Del Rey editions of Lovecraft’s work were appearing on the shelves. The Michael Whelan art certainly caught my eye.
I believe it was THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH first. It collected tales that were more dark fantasy. But there was enough horror there to pique my interest in that vein, too.
I probably read another volume, possibly THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. Again, it was slanted more toward the fantastic but contained horror tales as well.
But shortly thereafter, I read THE LURKING FEAR.
Continue reading