this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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My problem with that is that it's always the same descriptors for that unimaginable horror. Makes them boring if it's always the same.
Also, I feel like both Howard and Lovecraft were prone to incredibly lengthy descriptions of things
Yep, which for them it was fine cause they pioneered the genres but modern writers can't coast on that.
What's a good modern text to approach the genre?
The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers is not modern, but it is what inspired Lovecraft, and Chambers is a far better writer. It's several short stories, is pretty accessible, and has some moderate critiques or observations on society that are still relevant.
Important caveats - it's not all horror. Chambers was mostly a romance author who occasionally did horror and it shows near the end of the collection.
The beginning of the first story is pretty jarring to modern sensibilities, but Chambers was probably not a racist, and it was probably meant to be jarring even for readers of the day. It's a story where you have to remember the author is not the narrator.
Michael Shea's mythos stuff is pretty good I think. 'Demiurge' is a book collecting all his stories. He updates them to the then contemporary 1980s, keeping the elements of cosmic horror but putting them in more modern and relatable situations rather than attempting to make them period pieces.
Ada Hoffmann's The Outside. Autistic lesbian theoretical physicist meets Lovecraftian horror.
Lovecraft's stuff has that reputation, but on a listen through his works, he had a tendency to actually be properly descriptive when it was appropriate. I think it's a case of later, lesser writers gloming onto to making things indescribable as a lazy crutch that made the reputation of the mythos like that.
I think only 'The Unnamable' by Lovecraft really goes incredibly vague at a point where it should be describing the creature, but that story feels like a joke about this exact topic.