Well, I am at it again. After the initial staggering section, The City and the Stars suddenly becomes more conventional, with a moralizing theme we have encountered countless of times: Modern man meets primitive man, and is taught a lesson. Clarke's intelligence adds a little extra, that keeps the interest going.

But the mushiness doesn't last long. All of a sudden Clarke makes a great tip of the hat to Lovecraft, and to the story "Dagon" especially. He is quite the opposite of Lovecraft, his writing being cool and distanced. But his imagination and the details are fabulous.

Majorkahuna Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> [The City and the Stars] is one of my all time favorites and was
> Arthur's first efforts. It seems his vision is
> correct except for the size of the Computer.

Yes, I find it distressing. I miss the old days when everything was solid and on paper. Soon all writings and art have transfered into digits of ethereal dimension. Artists don't even buy paper, brushes, and paint in tubes any more. How stable and lasting is it? It seems like the sparklings of fairy dust, that may suddenly disappear. I supose the young generation born today, find it superior, but I am emotionally stuck in the past. It is disheartening. . . . Sorry. But on the other hand, nothing lasts forever, not even that written in stone.

Write it on the pyramids; geologists have determined they'll last 70,000 years.

When all comes around, after all, digital is probably the best lasting source created so far. Although it feels very unsubstantial. Even if computor technology changes, or disappears, those digits may be translated in the transition stage, or be retraceable if so be wished thousands of years hence, as long as a few discs or memory units are preserved. (Or will they be retraceable? Without the technology those digits may be permanently locked away.) Books will all crumble. The last surviving movies in 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm photographic film, have already started to bleach away.

But whatever heritage there is from mankind on Earth in another 70.000 years, most of the things from today will be pointless and of no interest to them. Or perhaps all will be stored in files in the backs of their heads, as evolutionary memory. Or all will be lost, with only insects and reptiles left crawling in the mud. Whatever, ... Christ I'd better get on with my life. hehehe

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When all comes around, after all, digital is
> probably the best lasting source created so far.
> Although it feels very unsubstantial. Even if
> computor technology changes, or disappears, those
> digits may be translated in the transition stage,
> or be retraceable if so be wished thousands of
> years hence, as long as a few discs or memory
> units are preserved. (Or will they be retraceable?
> Without the technology those digits may be
> permanently locked away.) Books will all crumble.
> The last surviving movies in 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm
> photographic film, have already started to bleach
> away.
>
> But whatever heritage there is from mankind on
> Earth in another 70.000 years, most of the things
> from today will be pointless and of no interest to
> them. Or perhaps all will be stored in files in
> the backs of their heads, as evolutionary memory.
> Or all will be lost, with only insects and
> reptiles left crawling in the mud. Whatever, ...
> Christ I'd better get on with my life. hehehe

Digital files are just as fragilenas celluiod, paper and vynil records, I'm not even sure how to spell vilynl, although I have about 50 lbs or like *86 kgs of old photograph reviews which ran on variable speeds, 45, 78 and regular. I was just reading about the began as VHS wars in the 70's and 80's. Seems the huge pornography business took of in the 80's and billions of $ was made because Beta could only record 60 minutes
Digital has many problems, how to read it. Remember floppy discs, and CD's were unscratchanle. There are many types of DVD HD formats, and every download a file and can't open it because it's doc. PDF xps.. ... It goes on and on.
The biggest threat I see coming is the computer generated cloud. Every current PC user has seen cloud based storage, free 2GB storage like Dropbox. Now we do not even store the information on a physical object.
Lovecraftians, CAS dreamers like myself find it odd that the earth has been around for billions of years and modern mankind that think like us for 150 thousand years but civiliazation didn't begin until 3500 hundred years ago, give or take a few thousand.
We are supposed to believe that mankind did little before this for almost 145 thousand years and then built pyramids.
There is way too much to discuss in a other wierd writers forum.

Just finished Le Fanu's Glass Darkly... I concur with what others have said about it here, it's an excellent collection of tales by an amazing writer... I totally get his influence on MR James now. I have read a tale or two in an anthology, but hadn't realised how good he was.

So, what should I read next by Le Fanu?

All of Le Fanu's short ghostly fiction is worth reading. I particularly recommend the short novel "The Haunted Baronet", "Schalken the Painter", "Ultor de Lacy", "The Child that Went with the Fairies", "Ghost Stories of the Tiled House" and "Laura Silver Bell". All but the last of these can be readily found in Dover's BEST GHOST STORIES OF SHERIDAN LE FANU (everything in this book is excellent), and the last of these in the follow-up volume GHOST STORIES AND TALES OF MYSTERY.

Note: there are two versions of the story of Schalken: "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter" is the earlier of the two versions is a little more explicit in its description of the supernatural threat than the later version. "The Watcher" is an earlier version of "The Familiar". "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House in Aungier Street" is an earlier version of the story transplanted to England in "Mr. Justice Harbottle" and, paradoxically, relates events later than those told in "Harbottle". The Ash-Tree collections of Le Fanu contain both versions, as well as a few stories not known to be Le Fanu until decades after E. F, Bleiler put together his two excellent Dover collections.

I should have prefaced my reply with - To anyone looking for more after reading "Green Tea" or any of the more familiar stories.

Jim has pretty much pegged it as far as his ghostly short fiction, though I would suggest looking up the original version of The Purcell Papers online -- quite different from the Arkham edition of the same name, and you get to see a few other examples of earlier workings of what he would later revisit.

I would also suggest trying a few of his novels. Uncle Silas, certainly, with its hints that the titular character may in fact be infernal; he certainly closely allied to the sorts of ghosts Le Fanu often depicted, particularly the monkey in "Green Tea". But I would also suggest Wylder's Hand -- a rather subtle use of the weird influence there, but (as with several of Wilkie Collins' novels) nonetheless pervasive. The Wyvern Mystery, while scarcely touching on the eerier territory, is nonetheless a rather good book, and has some very fine evocative passages as well.

I would, however, take a different tack with "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street" and "Mr. Justice Harbottle". They definitely complement each other, and being aware of each adds layers to the other; but I don't one as being quite what I would describe as an earlier version of... though this may simply be a difference in the way we would express it....

I think the second version of Schalken, "Schalken the Painter", starts off better at building an integegrated well rounded work. The first version starts much too abruptly, in the middle of an unexplained situation, as if the reader is already supposed to know characters and previous happenings. I have not read all of the first version though, it may improve as it moves along.

Both versions of Schalken have their adherents (Rosemary Pardoe of GHOSTS & SCHOLARS prefers the earlier version), but I agree that the second version has a stronger opening than its predecessor.

Yes, I should have mentioned that "Aungier Street" and "Harbottle" are quite different from each other in tone and incident, despite having basically the same central ghostly character (the hanging judge, also borrowed, with much else from Aungier Street, by Stoker's "The Judge's House"), but I have written more extensively on that topic elsewhere, and was afraid I would clutter up this board if I went into too much detail.

I agree with your choice of novels, and would add a few more, given the caveat that any reader who first encountered and enjoyed Le Fanu's short fiction must be sympathetic to the length and pacing of the triple-decker Victorian novel in order to enjoy Le Fanu's novels. Some are able to do so, but many are not. Far and away the best of them are UNCLE SILAS and WYLDER'S HAND, which both share much of the same atmosphere of dread and mounting doom encountered in the ghost stories.

THE WYVERN MYSTERY is not, for me, as successful as either of these two novels, even though it inspired the best Le Fanu film adaptation thus far. In fact, and this is a rare confession from me, I actually prefer the film version with Derek Jacobi and a very young Naomi Watts to Le Fanu's novel - the acting helps limn the characters to better effect, the pacing is tighter, and the cinematography helps enliven a book that seems to be cast all in gray, without sacrificing any essential portion of the novel's content.

Less in the gothic, sensational, Wilkie Collins mode, I would recommend the sprawling, Hogarthian cross-section of late 18th century Irish village life, THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCH-YARD, which has some splendid ghostly episodes and derring-do, but is too episodic and has too large a cast to comfortably fit into any given genre. Many have been disappointed by the book, expecting it to be ghostly throughout, for which we have August Derleth and several other careless genre critics from the first half of the twentieth century to blame. It is part comedy of manners, part chronicle of village life, part mystery, and has much charm, but may seem to lack a real center. Thus what may appeal to some readers will frustrate others.

Each of the other novels has its champions, and I would recommend the tragic COCK AND ANCHOR next, as being his longest and most poignant treatment of Anglo-Irish, Protestant/Catholic relations in Dublin. In fact, many might prefer it directly after SILAS and WYLDER, as one of his best integrated, most carefully character- and plot-driven novels.

Less ambitious, but also worthwhile are
the hidden identity mystery in CHECKMATE and the melodramatic account of madness in THE ROSE AND THE KEY.

Again, however, I would warn anyone moving from the short fiction to the novels, that theme and pacing are quite different.

Very good choices. I didn't mention The House by the Churchyard because, like you, I have met with almost no one aside from myself who had a favorable reaction to that one. Personally, I think it is a lovely book, though it certainly doesn't hold itself to any particular genre I think it does what it does very well indeed. I've not read The Rose and the Key; given my liking for Le Fanu's novels, I ought to go ahead and pick up that one... as I recall, Dover did have that one in print, though it isn't any longer.

Nice to see a mention of Checkmate. I've not encountered any mention of it elsewhere though, again, I found it well worth my time when I read it some years ago. I had also completely forgotten about the adaptation of The Wyvern Mystery, having never seen but only heard of it. I'll have to look it up and see. I tend to like Derek Jacobi's work, so would be predisposed toward this one, I would think. I would also agree with the caveat; one has to be familiar with and open to those old Victorian triple-deckers (which really were a direct offshoot of the original Gothics, with their often rambling structure... something taken to extremes with the penny dreadfuls) but, if one doesn't have a problem with that type of thing, Le Fanu is, I would say, one of the best... though again, I may be going against the tide here, both in my liking for his novels and for a fair amount of the work of Wilkie Collins (whose Armadale seems to me to be an unjustly neglected masterpiece), who seems to have garnered a fair amount of quite negative reaction in the past decade or two....

ARMADALE was, for me, the greatest reading experience of last year. I have thoroughly enjoyed everything of Collins's that I have read, but that one is breathtakingly over the top. And, as there is a Penguin Classics edition of it, it is hardly "neglected."