Hey Fustar,

Moderate this!!!

I just did. Moderate that. So there.

Just spent thirty minutes looking at the Dreadful Thoughts section. Some very interesting chats going on there. Will try log on for the next one. Also passed the link on to a couple of other ghoulophiles so they might drop in too.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Actually, there is. That Yoda was talking out his arse.

Hope you (or some of yer ghouly friends) can make it. With babas, commitments and all that other adult jazz it can be hard to gather everyone together at the same time. Fresh blood welcome.

Moderate this!!!

Just spent thirty minutes looking at the Dreadful Thoughts section. Some very interesting chats going on there. Will try log on for the next one. Also passed the link on to a couple of other ghoulophiles so they might drop in too.

As for Le Fanu, I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest that Polidori is his equal as a writer, but he (Polidori) remains very significant nonetheless - almost in spite of himself.

All too often, I catch myself crediting Carmilla with the alluring, aristocratic vampire thing, even though Vampyre’s decades older. I suppose I just like Sheridan’s writing better.

Your mention of the “Yellow Peril” automatically brings Fu Manchu to mind - he who’s served as a template for plenty of diabolically cunning (though completely unfeeling) baddies for the best part of 100 years. Ming, of course, is his sexually voracious half-brother.

It’s interesting how the fear of the cruel but brilliant (machine-like) Eastern other (that saw articulation in plenty of Bond movies too) seems to have become passé. What seems to be stepping into its shoes (surprise, surprise) is the hoary old fear of the diabolically motivated collective. I don’t think we need strain too hard to see what buttons are being pushed here…

I should add that when we talk about cinematic/TV representations we run the risk of confusing American themes and preoccupations with universal ones. Lazy journalists do this all the time and it always winds me up. Not only that, but it’s also dangerous to draw conclusions about the zeitgeist and national psyches (etc) from cultural products made by complete morons and money-grabbing cynics.

You might be onto something with that, though. There’s definitely a trend towards animalizing the baddies, stripping them of any complex motivations, and thus making them a whole hell of lot less interesting. It might be a modern ‘extreme’ extension of the Yellow Peril, only worse, because at least the main threat with Yellow Peril was that ‘they’ were cold, calculating, and just plain smarter.

To bring it back to The Vampyre in some loose way, I guess if it was done today, Ruthven would be super-fast and super-strong, just to ensure that he’s super-bad. And probably skilled in the martial arts, as apparently all vampires are now required to be. Oh, and he’d have guns, because vampires need those, too. For some reason.

I haven’t, I’m afraid to say, read him - or at least not that I remember. Any particular best place to start?

Well, Ligotti really only writes short stories, which is great as he’s a master of the form and god knows we need good short horror stories but not so great in that it means that it takes years for him to amass enough material for a new collection. And then those collections seem to go swiftly out of print. There’s a new one from Virgin Books, though. It’s mostly recent material which I haven’t read, so I can only vouch for the four stories that I have read when they originated as a collaboration with Current 93. They’re quite good.

Couldn’t agree more about contemporary horror fiction, although I do like Thomas Ligotti, who seems to be one of the very few who can on occasion really nail the discomfort that should come from a really good weird tale.

I haven’t, I’m afraid to say, read him - or at least not that I remember. Any particular best place to start?

RE: Blaming Anne Rice. Not only is it easy, it’s fun. There are plenty of other suspects who deserve a smack in the gob though. Stephen King and his clones are surely due kicks in the hole for blockbuster-ising horror lit and all but killing the short story form stone dead. Boo.

One obvious recent shift in the cinematic vamp template, as seen in the (wretched) 30 days of Shite, is how they’re being “zombfied” or demonised. This seems part of the baleful trend of making baddies so super-bad that any ambivalence or ambiguity is booted out the window. I have some loose ideas about how this depiction ties into fears of crazed, irrational (but intelligent) “foreigners” - but they’re only half-baked as yet.

What I will say (unequivocally) is that this trend is very, very shit - and automatically makes most contemporary horror tedious (not to mention borderline offensive) in the extreme.

According to Mary Shelley, Polidori’s submission was something about a skull-faced woman and was also quite awful.

A skull-faced woman? That sounds great! He’d have called it “The Skull-faced Woman”.

But seriously, Polidori (modest writer though he was) hit on a winning synthesis when he married the revenant with the aristocratic rake. In a way that would no doubt have maddened him, he probably has Byron to thank for that. If Byron hadn’t been (in wunderkammer’s apt words) such a “git”, then it’s unlikely that Polidori would ever have conjured such a figure (though one of Byron’s other cast-offs might well have done). The fact that it was a character the world was ready and waiting for should be pretty clear by now.

You’re actually kind of right on both counts, but oddly Sandman still has some merit. It is often impressively imaginative, and the good in it is very good indeed and almost outweighs the more questionably arch moments. That said, I still prefer the 70s Kirby Sandman for sheer insanity.

I’ve never rated Gaiman as highly as, say, Grant Morrison, but he does have his moments, most of which are scattered throughout the Sandman run. His serious fans can be seriously annoying, though.

Can’t think of too many authors off the top of my head, but I don’t keep up to date with a lot of contemporary horror (as it bores me by and large). The vamps in 30 Days of Night are pretty hideous and unattractive. More bestial than seductive certainly.

Couldn’t agree more about contemporary horror fiction, although I do like Thomas Ligotti, who seems to be one of the very few who can on occasion really nail the discomfort that should come from a really good weird tale. He doesn’t always pull it off, but he at least always tries. Plus, he’s a mighty impressive misanthrope, judging by his interviews.

And he’s about it, I guess. I can’t think of any others who’ve impressed me on any level. And contemporary vampire fiction is in an even worse state than general horror. It’s probably too easy and cliched to blame Anne Rice, but what the hell. I blame Anne Rice.

It is one of the recent series of Wordsworth Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural titles.

That series is a godsend. They’ve been popping up somewhat regularly at the Half Price Books chain here in the states, and I grab them whenever I see one. So far, I’ve managed to get the Bulldog Drummond one, two Robert E. Howards, The Beetle, and the M.R. James collection. Still looking for the Carnacki one and the Conan Doyle one. The whole line can be viewed at Wordsworth’s website.

Anyway, The Vampyre. Read it years ago and couldn’t remember much about it, so it was good to revisit it. Polidori wasn’t exactly the most inspired writer, but the historical significance of this one is pretty hard to ignore, as it’s a pretty clear forerunner of Dracula. Also pretty hard to ignore is its status as a thinly-veiled attack on Byron. There’s really no way around that, but if the legends of Byron’s treatment of him are true, he probably had it coming. I doubt he was much bothered by it, being Byron and all.

One thing that’s interesting is the story about The Vampyre being an extension of the fragment that Byron wrote at Deodati that night. According to Mary Shelley, Polidori’s submission was something about a skull-faced woman and was also quite awful. It’s a shame that one hasn’t survived.

hey, if you’re still there, I just popped into “Greetings Earthlings” and took only a quick look … but it looks like tremendous stuff !!
(I think the two of us are going to get along just fine lol)

I was in bed for the last 7 hours tossing, turning and having horrible feverish thoughts and dreams so I’ve dragged myself downstairs to curl up on the couch with my cats and try to distract my addled mind.

Glad you like GE. It’s something I’m still pretty proud of but I never get the time to update it anymore. Would love to resuscitate it but can’t see it happening any time soon.

I started robotkrishna.wordpress.com only a few days ago, and at the moment, it’s all over the place, but there is a method to the madness (it’s a sketchpad related to fiction I’m writing)

Looks intriguing, I’ll keep a dead grey eye on it.

When the eyes are wrong, everything is wrong.

I started robotkrishna.wordpress.com only a few days ago, and at the moment, it’s all over the place, but there is a method to the madness (it’s a sketchpad related to fiction I’m writing)