Tag: horror

Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein, and a Question About the Depiction and Significance of Racism in Characterization

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T.E.D. Klein is one of those writers whose disappearance baffles many lovers of weird fiction. After his celebrated novel The Ceremonies (which I have not yet read) and his collection of novellas titled Dark Gods, he seemed to go mostly off the radar, and to stay there (unless one was reading the right magazines, I suppose)… until Subterranean put out a collection of his short fiction, titled, Reassuring Tales, about six years ago. (That was a limited edition and I never see it online for less than $200, so I suppose I won’t be reading it till I get somewhere …

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Vampires, Confucianism, Christianity’s Latent Monarchism, and the Translation of Sociohorror

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Seriously, now...
This entry is part 44 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

(Note: I’m filing this under Korean SF, though it only fits there if we define SF as “speculative fiction”: still, I think this post does appeal to a crucial question at the heart of the reception of SF and other fantastical genres in cultures foreign to the culture of a given work’s original production. So there.) So I’ll admit it now: I’ve been watching True Blood. Yes, yes, it’s trashy. But as someone who is not very plot-minded, I have to say, it does a particular trick with a knife that I, too, am learning to do. I’m close to …

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Lovecrafty Links

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Too busy to post that review of my trip to Italy–it’s coming soon–so here are some links: not really a “walking cactus” but a look at some weird critters from 520 million years ago, this looks right out of HPL’s nightmares like Lovecraft? Facebook’s got a feed for the Lovecraft e-zine, so you can sign up for tidbits… and of course go look at the zine itself! here’s a free ebook containing (almost) all of Lovecraft’s prose works, courtesy of Cthulhu Chick (yes, yes, most of it has been available online since forever, but it’s all in one single file, …

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World War Z by Max Brooks

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I am, I know, a few years behind most people in reading this novel by Max Brooks, but I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend, Mike. He commented on how he was fascinated by how a disaster — a violent, worldwide epidemic of zombie virus — transformed individuals: how a nobody could become a leader, or a leader (or group of leaders) could persist in folly and be taken down by it. I think that’s the gist of what he said. Well, for me, that was one of a few fascinating things about this book. Another was …

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Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

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Another belated review for a Librarything freebie book, here. This one is tough for me to post, for reasons I imagine will be obvious… I try not to be too negative when I review books, stories, or other creative work. For one thing, I know what it’s like to have someone slam my work when they clearly haven’t understood it even slightly. I know what it feels like to see someone who doesn’t care either way about me and my work to stand up and dismiss it — online, which makes it harder because any twit can write a nasty …

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