Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Sawfish Wrote:
>
> > I don't think that he belittled mankind so much
> as
> > put them in their proper objective place in the
> > universe he portrayed.
>
> Lovecraft's view of human beings vis-à-vis the
> universe is no more "objective" than any other
> view. It's merely a view of human beings from
> which much has been removed or depreciated.
>
> To get an intuitive sense of what Lovecraft leaves
> out, one might simply do a quick Google search for
> photographs by Andre Kertesz of people reading.
> I'd say just spend a few minutes looking at some
> of these -- forgetting about Lovecraft during the
> interval. Then come back to his typical remarks
> about human beings. I think you may feel that he
> willfully leaves something out -- even if it would
> be difficult, perhaps, to state in words what that
> is.
>
> Now, I'd say that any work of art involves
> selection, so for the purposes of a weird tale it
> might be legitimate to leave out something that,
> say, the Kertesz pictures suggest. But let's not
> allow ourselves to be misled by our enjoyment of
> the stories into thinking that Lovecraft will do
> as a philosopher.

Dale, no one "will do as a philosopher", as far as I'm concerned.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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I mentioned John C. Wright's The Last of All Suns in another thread. From the same collection, the story Awake in the Night describes servants of the House of Silence as mocking our human sacraments by organizing a wedding between one of theirs and a human woman, where, presumably, all of our rituals are turned upside down.

I was reminded of watching John Carpenter's Vampires as a kid, which attributed the creation of vampires to what it refers to as "inverse exorcism".

Monsters and the like don't really fill me with dread, but the idea of our sacred and ancient rituals being turned upside down, like when a Satanist turns a cross upside down, does leave a certain impression on me.

Sawfish Wrote:
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> ON thinking more about it, I'd say that Smith
> seldom creates a character with whom could--or
> would want to--identify with. This is not because
> they are inadequately developed (some may be, but
> usually the are not cardboard cut-outs or
> stereotypes), but more because they seem to
> function as a narrative POV.
>
> For example, in The Double Shadow, the 1st person
> narrator is penning his final message to the rest
> of the world. He's somewhat typically the acolyte
> one encounter (think Disney's "The Sorcerer's
> Apprentice", but without the playfulness) and
> while he's fairly open with us, he tells us mostly
> about the source of his on-coming and inescapable
> doom.
>
> And most importantly, it is the *concept* of what
> that doom is, and the nature of it's potency that
> makes the story worthwhile, and not any empathy
> for the narrator, or anyone else in the story, in
> my opinion.
To this I would add that the conception of the doom or threat the characters face is more likely to creep the reader out if it is kept offstage and then gradually manifested until it suddenly overtakes them, as in Smith's "The Seed from the Sepulcher". D.K. Broster's "Couching at the Door" is a story that gave me the creeps, but it depends upon strong character development, a sinister "back-story", and ominous dialogue before a powerfully bizarre climax occurs. Actually, I disagree with you about Smith's characters not being easy to identify with, or more precisely, that such identification is only created to facilitate an effective narrative POV. As Kojootti concluded elsewhere in this thread, Smith "offers subtle opportunities for connecting with his characters in one way or another". The two orchid-hunters in "The Seed from the Sepulcher" are a case in point. They are sufficiently contrasted physically and psychologically to draw immediate interest in their predicament. Being sick and lost in the Venezuelan jungle would be sufficient for a lesser writer to feel satisfied with a "stock" characterization. At the time of the Night Shade series, this was Smith's most frequently anthologized story (S.T. Joshi felt that Smith was weak at "pure horror", FWIW). There are one or two points in the plot that are controversial. How does the vampiric plant hypnotize Thone, since he does not have the filthy stuff get all over him like Falmer did, and, is Thone's sickness accidental, or did Falmer cause it in some way so that he could go alone to the shunned ruins and make off with the rumored treasure? Is the ending perfect as is, or merely perfunctory? Finally, which of Smith's several "fantastic plant" tales is the best, or your favorite?

jkh

For favorite strange planet stories I can recall the one about the two scientist brothers who land on a planet and are infiltrated by plants.

Voyage to Sfanamoe, or something like that?

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Every time I read the opening chapter of THE GREAT GOD PAN, I want to kill Dr. Raymond.

Sawfish Wrote:
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> For favorite strange planet stories I can recall
> the one about the two scientist brothers who land
> on a planet and are infiltrated by plants.
>
> Voyage to Sfanamoe, or something like that?

That's the one. Flawless. Why bother with the struggle to survive anyway, Smith seems to say. In "Sepulcher", the two characters transition from a desire for ill-gotten wealth to a state of comatose resignation to death. Falmer's ravings when he comes out of the plant-induced mental paralysis under the influence of morphine, recall a similar passage in Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space," which deserves mention here as another winner in the gooseflesh category.

jkh

Kipling Wrote:
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> Sawfish Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > For favorite strange planet stories I can
> recall
> > the one about the two scientist brothers who
> land
> > on a planet and are infiltrated by plants.
> >
> > Voyage to Sfanamoe, or something like that?
>
> That's the one. Flawless. Why bother with the
> struggle to survive anyway, Smith seems to say. In
> "Sepulcher", the two characters transition from a
> desire for ill-gotten wealth to a state of
> comatose resignation to death. Falmer's ravings
> when he comes out of the plant-induced mental
> paralysis under the influence of morphine, recall
> a similar passage in Lovecraft's "The Colour Out
> of Space," which deserves mention here as another
> winner in the gooseflesh category.

I got the creeps from an HPL story that featured a sort of idiot hillbilly who was a host to an alien presence. The hillbilly got increasingly assertive (I think the story was tod from the POV of a clinician of some kind) and was looking forward to promised rewards "when the earth is cleared away".

For whatever reason, that phrase seemed disproportionately ominous. It reminds me of the feeling that Spielberg was able to create in War of the Worlds, when you realized that the Martians were simply going to use all humanity as plant food as they reformed the earth to their liking. I had the impression that the old ones had something like that in mind when the hillbilly talked about "when the earth is cleared away".

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Kipling Wrote:
> Finally, which of Smith's several
> "fantastic plant" tales is the best, or your
> favorite?

I'm not sure I remember them all (There's "Voyage to Sfanamoe", "The Flower-Women", "The Garden of Adompha", "The Planet Entity / The Seedling of Mars", "The Demon of the Flower"). But I think I'll go with your suggestion, which is "The Seed from the Sepulcher".