I would be curious to read "The Tower of Moab" by C. L. Lewis, or even his whole Tales of the Grotesque collection. Is this one essential for horror and supernatural connoisseurs?

Knygatin Wrote:
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> C. L. Lewis ...

I meant L. A. Lewis.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11 May 20 | 04:20AM by Knygatin.

L. A. Lewis reminds me of John Metcalf in that he is virtually forgotten and his stories are very bizzare, true weird tales. The best of them is probably "Animate in Death", a story about a partly decomposed, living corpse, suspended in some strange green fluid medium in another dimension and eaten alive by hideous water snakes. The tales bring nothing new to the table, so to speak, one can find popular motives that appeared in various fiction magazines of the era like "Weird Tales" or "Amazing Tales" (a horrible hybrid offspring; an aeroplane that can think and take revenge; a strange model of a castle which is connected with the real edifice standing god knows where; an object that convicts the culprit of murder in a mysterious way etc.) but, all in all, they are entertaining, I enjoyed most of them. "The Tower of Moab" is about a gentleman who sees or thinks he sees a monstrous tower rearing in London that grows up, night after night, to the heaven and that no else seems to see. He begins to investigate the phenomenon and the consequences are not pleasant for him. It is not a bad story but it gradually loses the quality of the opening parts which are very promising.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11 May 20 | 09:52AM by Minicthulhu.

Thanks Minicthulhu, L. A. Lewis sounds fairly interesting. I read a few introductory lines from "Animate in Death", and thought they were quite powerful. Such as, "The emaciated sodden legs beat a ceaseless march on the unresisting veil, like those of a gallows victim marking time in air.".

How about "The Seeds of Death" by David H. Keller?

I have read some stories by Keller, but not this one. So one of these days I am going to read it because the title itself sounds inviting. :-)

Perhaps the lengthy list in this thread have some items you have not encountered before. Obscure Weirdness Hunt

Thank you. The list is very interesting. A lot of stuff I have never read so far.

Here is a list of all the 170 authors, and their stories in the Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series: Fontana's Great Ghost Stories. Robert Aickman, who had a very good sense for quality, edited the first eight volumes. Not all are typical ghost stories, some are more of supernatural weird tales.

I read "The Red Brain" today and I cannot but feel about it like I did when I read it for the first time years abo. The story reminds me of "The Masque of The Red Death." by Mr. Poe in some way.

Minicthulhu Wrote:
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> I read "The Red Brain" today and I cannot but feel
> about it like I did when I read it for the first
> time years abo. The story reminds me of "The
> Masque of The Red Death." by Mr. Poe in some way.

How about "Colossus" and The Web of Easter Island?

I have only read some of Donald Wandrei's letters, in Mysteries of Time and Spirit, but couldn't quite hold up my interest. I thought he was not up to the intellectual level and impressive authority of Lovecraft, and a third of the way into the book I started skipping/skimming most of his part in the correspondence.

I have not read "The Web of Easter Island" and judging by the reviews I can find about the book, I am not sure I ever will.

As for his short stories, I have read cca. fifteen of them (not in “Colossus” but in “Don't Dream: The Collected Horror and Fantasy Fiction of Donald Wandrei” which also includes his poems, essays and illustrations) and I must say I was not impressed too much. You can find scores of similar stories which were written in the prime of pulp magazines (Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, etc.) by half-forgotten authors like Thorp McCluskey, David H. Keller, Frank Belknap Long and others. The best ones are “The Red Brain” (by the way, he wrote it when he was only sixteen years of age) and “A Fragment of a Dream” which reminds me of “Abominations of Yondo” in that it virtually has no plot and it is more or less a description of horrors and monsters inhabiting an abnormal and alien landscape the hero plunges through. “Spawn of the Sea” is about finding a shipwreck with an unknown life form that has developed inside the old hull, a story very similar to “The Derelict” by W.H. Hodgson. “A Scientist Divides” is about a guy who has found a chemical coumpound by means of which he is capable of dividing himself into two similar entities, one of the several stories in the collection which have a promising opening parts but gradually degenerate to something naive or ridiculous. Most of the tales are of such a quality I am not able to remember what they are about even I am reading their passages right now but what I have found really great about them is the fact they are very, very short so it is an ideal stuff to read before going to sleep – you are quite sure you can finish this story ot that because it is just three or four pages long.

“Don't Dream: The Collected Horror and Fantasy Fiction of Donald Wandrei”)
[www.goodreads.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 17 May 20 | 09:10AM by Minicthulhu.

Thanks Minicthulhu, that was interesting. I don't think I will be reading much of Wandrei's work, aside from "The Red Brain" and "Colossus", and possibly The Web of Easter Island or at least parts of it if I can find it online. "The Tree-Men of M'Bwa" has an appealing fantastic title, I will probably take a closer look at it.

I once started reading "The Red Brain", but stopped because I thought the first sentences were not dynamic enough prose. The story may still have interesting conceptual ideas of course, which is what it is famous for.

Maybe Arthur Machen, specifically The White People? Plus I did read a collection of short stories - Last Stop Wellsbourne - recently by a UK author, which I guess had overtones of cosmic horror.

Somebody mentioned Michael Shea - Nift the Lean is a classic of its kind (it won the World Fantasy Award in 1982). I'm not sure if it counts as 'cosmic horror' but Nift's visits to a demonic underworld are pretty hair-raising.

Cathbad Wrote:
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> Nift the Lean is
> a classic of its kind (it won the World Fantasy
> Award in 1982). I'm not sure if it counts as
> 'cosmic horror' but Nift's visits to a demonic
> underworld are pretty hair-raising.


That book has several memorable weird scenes. Great imagination. Terrific in details. But not so very well developed and integrated as stories. The last episode I found pretty incomprehensible.

Michael Shea was really brilliant. I love "Fat Face" and "Polyphemus".

Absolutely - ie, I'd remember the Nift sequence mainly for its visual flair.

It's been a while since I last read the original quartet but I did read 'The A'rak' around ten years ago and was struck by the corollaries between the world Nift inhabits and the insect world; Shea seems to have used insect behaviour, life-cycles etc, as the basis for some of the stories.

I'm not sure what that last story was about either (aren't they assembling some sort of giant skeleton?) - it's as atmospheric as it is incomprehensible.