Schmid Literature Log

Schmid 12:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC) - Marvel Zombies Issue 1
Zombies.

Schmid 01:13, 3 May 2008 (CEST) - The Shunned House
Wauw. That ending was surprisingly disgusting. It actually reminded me of Clive Barker. Good short story with a modern feel to the themes.

Schmid 08:42, 22 April 2008 (CEST) - At the Mountains of Madness
Great story about the discovery of the City of the Old Ones in the Antarctic. The story is a bit slow in the beginning, but the last chapters are very captivating, as more and more of the ancient history of the Old Ones is revealed in all its horror.
 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness (1931)

I can't wait until Guillermo del Toro finishes his version of this story. Sadly, we'll have to wait until 2010 to see his vision. Until then we'll have to settle for John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), which could easily be interpreted as compatible with 'At the Mountains of Madness'.

References:
 * cthulhufiles.com: Old Ones
 * Wikipedia: Elder Things (Old Ones)
 * cthulhufiles.com: Shoggoths
 * Wikipedia: Shoggoth
 * The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

Schmid 22:14, 19 October 2007 (CEST) - The Terrible Old Man, The Tree

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
 * The Terrible Old Man
 * The Tree

Schmid 15:28, 11 October 2007 (CEST) - The Transition of Juan Romero, The White Ship, The Doom That Came to Sarnath, The Statement of Randolph Carter

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
 * The Transition of Juan Romero
 * The White Ship
 * The Doom That Came to Sarnath
 * The Statement of Randolph Carter

Schmid 13:52, 17 September 2007 (CEST) - The Hellbound Heart
Finally, after watching all eight Hellraiser movies (including Hell on Earth (III) Hellseeker (VI) and Hellworld (VIII) which are horrible in a different sense of the word), I read the novella that spawned them all. Note, of course, that none of the flicks beyond the first one are even related to the original story. The story is very similar to that of the first movie, except that the relations between the characters was simplified into a family in the movie - Kirsty, who in the novella was the loving friend of Rory, became the daughter in the movie. The story is simultaneously more subtle and more sordid than the movie, but indeed very similar.

Schmid 18:40, 11 September 2007 (CEST) - Books of Blood Volume 3

 * Clive Barker: Books of Blood Volume 3 (1984)
 * Son of Celluloid
 * Rawhead Rex
 * Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud
 * Scape-Goats
 * Human Remains

'Son of Celluloid' has a premise that has always fascinated me, the growth of horrible unlife from a dead body. The story is positively revolting at times, but it is well worth the possible nausea.

'Rawhead Rex' warns to be careful what you dig up from the ground. You might uncover a huge prehistoric creature that just can't get enough of those delicious human babies.

'Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud' takes a silly childish version of a ghost and fleshes it out into a modern horror tale. Great fun. Disgusting too.

... I just received Volumes 4 - 6 in the mail today. More Barker.

Schmid September 2007 - Dagon, Polaris, and Beyond the Wall of Sleep

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
 * Dagon (1917)
 * Polaris (1918)
 * Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
 * Memory (1919)

Dagon. So that's where the legend began. It is a very mysterious tale indeed, and I see why it has captured the imagination of so many for many years after. I can't wait to bear witness to the next appearance of the Father god of the Deep Ones in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".


 * "And the lords of the Philistines gathered them together to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice; for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand."
 * - Judges 16:23

The city of Olathoe lay in the north under the pole star Polaris. Ages ago, the city was overwhelmed by "the Inutos; squat, hellish yellow fiends", i.e. the Inuit (not very politically correct). The final battle is re-experienced through dreams by the main character, who gradually loses grip on his modern reality and is swallowed into the reality of his dreams.

'Beyond the Wall of Sleep' is a strange tale of a man who has visions of being a creature of light in an alternate reality. The young student examines him with a novel device of his own creation:
 * "It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves or radiant energy like heat, light and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period."

"Memory" is the shortest story ever :).

References:
 * cthulhufiles.com: Dagon

Schmid 00:15, 4 August 2007 (CEST) - Books of Blood Volume 2

 * Clive Barker: Books of Blood Volume 2 (1984)
 * Dread
 * Hell's Event
 * Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will And Testament
 * The Skins of the Fathers
 * New Murders in the Rue Morgue

Schmid 17:06, 1 August 2007 (CEST) - The Tomb

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Tomb (1917)

A little short story about preferring the company of the dead rather than the living. It is not too interesting.

Schmid 17:06, 1 August 2007 (CEST) - Books of Blood Volume 1

 * Clive Barker: Books of Blood Volume 1 (1984)
 * The Book of Blood
 * The Midnight Meat Train
 * The Yattering and Jack
 * Pig Blood Blues
 * Sex, Death and Starshine
 * In the Hills, in the Cities

My high school English teacher Elsebeth Austin introduced me to Clive Barker. We read 'The Midnight Meat Train', and I loved the theme of a hidden and horrible world coexisting with our own, and the gory and detailed descriptions the events in the short story. Now, much later, I got the Books of Blood Omnibus by my relatives Birgit & Jørn Wassmann, as a graduation present (the actual gift carefully selected by myself, of course :).

The short stories are everything I expected them to be, innovative, psychologically insightful, gory and intense. 'The Midnight Meat Train' was as I remembered it. 'In the Hills, in the Cities' is very original, and I was very confused as I read it, as the premise of the story was too much like one of my own strange childish fantasies, something very big and very strange... Well, you'll have to read it yourself. Finally, 'The Yattering and Jack' surprised me by being extremely funny. It explains the toilings of a small demon trying to drive the extremely dull man, Jack Polo, to insanity. The frustrations of the little hellspawn are terrible, as Jack is simply too phlegmatic to become disturbed by swinging lamps, killed pet cats, and the likes. I caught myself laughing out loud in the bus, when I read this passage:


 * "In its frustration the Yattering picked up the cat and threw it into the fire, where it was rapidly cremated. If only the law allowed such easy cruelty to be visited upon human flesh, it thought. If only. If only. Then it'd make Polo suffer such torments. But no. The Yattering knew the laws as well as the back of its hand; they had been flayed on to its exposed cortex as a fledgling demon by its teachers. And Law One stated: 'Thou shalt no lay palm upon thy victims.'
 * It had never been told why this law pertained, but it did.
 * Thou shalt not . . .
 * So the whole painful process continued. Day in, day out, and still the man showed no sign of yielding. Over the next few weeks the Yattering killed two more cats that Polo brought home to replace his treasured Freddy (now ash)."

Schmid 12:25, 19 July 2007 (CEST) - The Beast in the Cave and The Alchemist

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
 * "The Beast in the Cave" (1905)
 * "The Alchemist" (1908)

These short stories are entertaining, albeit a little predictable. The surprise endings aren't that surprising, after 100 years of copying and elaborating the genre of horror. 'The Beast in the Cave' is the better of the two, and it puts a smile on my face to know that this incredibly eloquent little piece of horror was the work of a fifteen year old boy. The little prodigy really had a firm grip on the English language. He retained this boyish toying with turgid phrases throughout his later years, making him the subject of critique, yet I cannot resist his style.

Hold on - 'eloquent'? 'Turgid'? Oh no - I've been possessed by a Lovecraftian Vocabulary Horror. (And I like it :)

References:
 * The H. P. Lovecraft Archive

Schmid 14:16, 16 July 2007 (CEST) - Grey Knights

 * Ben Counter: Grey Knights (2004)

The first chapter of this book is absolutely awesome for any Warhammer 40,000 fan, combining the coolness of the Marines with elements of wonderfully described grotesque horror. One of my favourite sequences is in the absolute beginning:


 * "Far below, the surface of Khorion IX was covered in a seething forest of torture racks, crosses and squares and stars of bloodstained wood on which were broken hundreds of thousands of bodies, mangled and wound around the wood like vines around a cane. It was like a huge and horrible vineyard, with rows and rows of crucified bodies spilling a terrible vintage of blood into the earth. The victims were trapped between life and death, their bodies exsanguinated but their minds just lucid enough to understand their agony. They were the servants of the Prince of a Thousand Faces, the cultists and demagogues summoned to their master's planet in the hope of an eternal reward that was all too real. Their bodies were merged with the wood that had grown as the seasons passed, twisting their limbs into canopies of fleshy branches and deforming them until there was barely anything human in them save for their suffering."

The rest of the story follows a small group of Grey Knights, fighting against impossible odds in a Chaos-infested star system. The book a few high points, the ending being one of them, it is horrific corresponding well to the introduction and has a nice surprise twist that really rounds the story off well.

The horror elements are very good, but they are too few and not described in satisfying detail. It would be nice to explore the horrors of Chaos even more than is done here. Also, the characters are a bit ill-defined and you don't really understand the motivation of the Grey Knights themselves.

Overall, the book is a good read for Warhammer 40,000 fans, without being truly great.



Schmid 11:00, 16 July 2007 (CEST) - Re-Animator

 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Herbert West - Re-Animator (1922)
 * Audio tape read by Jeffrey Combs

This, the "Frankenstein story of H. P. Lovecraft" is classic zombie horror. It is very short and each chapter builds up to a small climax of horror at the end. The following excerpt describes one of the failed experiments of Mr. West, come back to haunt his second birthplace:
 * "Looming hideously against the spectral moon was a gigantic misshapen thing not to be imagined save in nightmares--a glassy-eyed, ink-black apparition nearly on all fours, covered with bits of mould, leaves, and vines, foul with caked blood, and having between its glistening teeth a snow-white, terrible, cylindrical object terminating in a tiny hand."

The audio book version read by Jeffrey Combs is a must for any fan of the 'Re-Animator' movies. Combs, who plays the character of Herbert West in the movies, reads the story as the painful recollection of a traumatized man, and does it quite convincingly.

References: 
 * The H. P. Lovecraft Archive

Books

 * Stephen King:
 * Carrie (1974)
 * Salem's Lot (1975)
 * The Shining (1977)
 * Night Shift (1978)
 * The Stand (1978)
 * The Dead Zone (1979)
 * Firestarter (1980)
 * Cujo (1981)
 * The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982)
 * Different Seasons (1982)
 * The Running Man (1982)
 * Christine (1983)
 * Pet Sematary (1983)
 * Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)
 * Thinner (1984)
 * It (1986)
 * Misery (1987)
 * The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)
 * The Dark Half (1989)
 * Needful Things (1990)
 * Dolores Claiborne (1993)
 * Insomnia (1994)
 * The Green Mile (1996)
 * Michael Ende:
 * The Neverending Story (1979)
 * Michael Ende: Momo (1973)
 * John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
 * Samuel Youd:
 * The White Mountains (1967)
 * The City of Gold and Lead (1967)
 * The Pool of Fire (1968)
 * S. A. Wakefield: Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967)

Comics

 * Bill Watterson: Calvin and Hobbes (1985-1995)
 * Amazing Spider-Man #1-100 (1963-1971)
 * Frank Miller:
 * The Dark Knight Returns (1986)
 * 300 (1998)
 * Jhonen Vasquez:
 * Johnny The Homicidal Maniac (1995-1997)
 * Squee!
 * I Feel Sick
 * Fillerbunny 1-3 (2005)
 * Katsuhiro Otomo:
 * Akira (1982-1990)
 * Roman Dirge:
 * Lenore #1-12 (1999-2006)
 * Aliens:
 * Aliens (1989)
 * Aliens Volume 2 (1990)
 * Dark Horse Presents Aliens (1992)
 * Alien: The Illustrated Story (1979)
 * Alan Moore / Bars Sears: Violator #1-3 (1994)
 * Todd McFarlane et al.: Spawn #1-22 (1992-1994)
 * Frank Miller / Todd McFarlane: Spawn & Batman (1994)

Interesting Literature
A list of literature that I would like to read at some point:
 * William Gibson and Bruce Sterling: The Difference Engine
 * Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal (recommended by Julie Poulsen)