Drood

[C. Lascaux]

It's not Mythos-specific, but Dan Simmons' book Drood is a wonderful horror story set in Victorian England... Since I don't want to give away spoilers I'll just say that some themes and elements that have happened in our own game appear in the book. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes dark twisted evil horror stories!

[Carlyle]

Hmm, I heard of it at all until today but I did just earlier read that Guillermo Del Toro is supposed to be working on a film adaptation of just that for 2012.

[Suede]

Simmons also did a (equally huge) novel called The Terror, which is about the doomed Franklin expedition that attempted to find the Northwest Passage in the 1800s.

The nightmarish cold, the misery of the men trapped in a ship stuck in the ice for years, and the thing that's prowling around outside, taking them one by one...it all makes for a darned good scare. And even though I thought the ending was a little weak (doubtless, my cynicism), it had a couple of images at the end that still haunt me.

I will definitely pick up Drood.

LSP Suede

[Oliver White]

Aside from doing the Hobbit and the aforementioned movie, del Toro supposedly has an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness that he wants to film, but according to wikipedia the lack of a love story or a happy ending is troubling to the studios.

So there. In 3 steps we've linked Dan Simmons to HPL.

[Suede]

Aside from doing the Hobbit and the aforementioned movie, del Toro supposedly has an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness that he wants to film, but according to wikipedia the lack of a love story or a happy ending is troubling to the studios.

So there. In 3 steps we've linked Dan Simmons to HPL.

There's a pdf of a script making the rounds on the web. It's purportedly del Toro's draft script for At the Mountains of Madness.

I am praying -- and offering copious libations to the Gods -- that the script is a phony. Because it's horrible.

LSP Suede

[C. Lascaux]

Simmons also did a (equally huge) novel called The Terror, which is about the doomed Franklin expedition that attempted to find the Northwest Passage in the 1800s.

The main reason Cassandra is from the frozen wastes of the Yukon is because I'd just finished that book when I created her. :D

Plus, Inuit legends are so Lovecraftian in and of themselves.

[Carlyle]

Aside from doing the Hobbit and the aforementioned movie, del Toro supposedly has an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness that he wants to film, but according to wikipedia the lack of a love story or a happy ending is troubling to the studios.

So there. In 3 steps we've linked Dan Simmons to HPL.

Ah, I had not seen that! Now that I look into it it the tentative release date seems to be 2017. Odd to think that far ahead. My guess would be that anything making the rounds ths early online won't be used, if for the fact that it is an early draft or merely the fact that it was leaked. Anyhow, I found this here (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/01/29/del-toro-to-incite-audiences-to-madness-with-hp-lovecraft-project/).
“I remember when I was a kid out of the studios came the big event horror movies, ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘Alien,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘The Shining,’” del Toro recalled. “It is my hope that this movie will be a tentpole movie [of that sort]. It has the scope of a Shackleton epic exploration movie but it’s full of tentacled things.”

That sounds promising. Toro knows his stuff usually when it comes to achieving his vision. Now we just have to hope that his matches ours.

[Carlyle]

Picked up Drood today after I had one of those 'oh, a twenty in my pocket?!' windfalls today on the way to get a long bus journey. Only a few chapters in so far, but my it is good. Reminds me of Gyles Brandreth's new Oscar Wilde murder mystery series in style but of course with more horror mystery than crime mystery and seemingly written in a much more sophisticated manner. Loving it so far, anyway.

[Oliver White]

And I picked up The Terror just an hour ago. After a whole 2 pages, I can already say that I like the author's style. Add another unread books to the already tottering pile on my nightstand. (Currently reading the HPL anthology Horror in the Museum, which collects stories he co-wrote or ghostwrote for others. Next up is either the Dream Cycle anthology or Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghost.)

[Carlyle]

Add another unread books to the already tottering pile on my nightstand.
I like to call that the Proust Pile :P

[Suede]

I have to say I finished the darned thing. Under protest.

I was 200 pages from the end and had to resist the urge to throw Drood into the trash. I put it on the bookshelf with no intention of picking it up again, and only several nights of unremitting insomnia made me take it out again...because I was looking for something to kill the time until dawn.

The book is masterfully written and excellently plotted. Simmons' use of his incredible depth of research is, however, at times intrusive. (Is it really necessary to know down to the ha'penny the amount Dickens received for his reading tour?) The historical facts and the minutiae of Dickens' and Collins' lives, constantly thrown in one's face like an obnoxious boy waving a flag, can be irritating.

My main discomfort stems from Simmons' strip mining of the lives of others in order to produce his books. His use of a real tragedy in The Terror in order to produce an entertainment/fantasy bothered me, but to grab two historical personages (Dickens and Collins) out of their lives make them dance to his tune like a couple of puppets is something I find disheartening to say the least.

The motive, I can't but believe, is profit: had he used two fictional characters set in the same time period, his readership would have been halved. But Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins? Who could pass it up?

I was irritated beyond belief at his method of "tying it all up" at the end. Though I was beginning to suspect by mid-novel that that was the only way out for Simmons.

The above are my opinions only! Read the book and decide for yourself!

LSP Suede

[Godsend]

It sounds like a book I recently stumbled apon on Amazon. Its called 'Pride and prejudice and zombies'. Its the Jane Austin novel but with a zombie plague inserted by the books other author. This guy has just taken a well known and loved piece of fiction and placed his own stuff in it.
It sounds terrible but by god I think I will have to buy it. This guy must know me! The only way I would ever read Jane Austin is if zombies or some other monsterous creatures were added!

[Carlyle]

I'm just a bit over halfway trough (found Milan Kundera in between times so it was left aside for a but.) and it really is picking up beyond my expectations. His Wilkie is the perfect narrator for this sort of tale. Just the right balance between scepticism and opium. Of course my like of it may just be that I'm not terribly familiar with either of the writers' personal life but the little details that make it more diary/memoir-like were certainly more entertaining to me than Suede. From a technical literary point of view I agree completely with Suede, but I liked this I think in the same way that some people somehow like Grishham... Except that it is of course better than that Grisham tripe :P

[Carlyle]

I found it to be such a good yarn that I went and picked up The Terror too. Only about ten chapters or so in but so far I think it is much better than Drood with its weaving narratives, lack of this-then-this chronology and so forth.

[Arthur]

It sounds like a book I recently stumbled apon on Amazon. Its called 'Pride and prejudice and zombies'. Its the Jane Austin novel but with a zombie plague inserted by the books other author. This guy has just taken a well known and loved piece of fiction and placed his own stuff in it.
It sounds terrible but by god I think I will have to buy it. This guy must know me! The only way I would ever read Jane Austin is if zombies or some other monsterous creatures were added!

Yeah I have seen this and have to get it. Zombies.. they make anything better. :D