Page 5 of 8

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:35 pm
by Murmur
The Stone Ship

by William Hope Hodgson

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Stone_Ship

This is one among many maritime tales that Hodgson wrote. This is roughly the same in style and content as his other maritime stuff. It's less monster-y than his other stuff though.

You can hear a version of it from the Canadian radio show Nightfall here:

https://archive.org/details/Nightfall-c ... e_Ship.mp3

Recommendation: Read it if you like horror.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:31 am
by Murmur
He Walked Around the Horses
by H. Beam Piper

I found this story on my phone. I downloaded it one or more years ago. I don't remember doing any such thing and I don't remember ever hearing of this story or its author. So I read it. I was surprised at how enjoyable it was. It's a great little sci fi story. The story is about 99 pages as an ebook on my phone, which means if it was in a paperback book, it would be around 1/3 or 1/4 that length.

This story is about a British diplomat during the time of the Napoleanic wars finding himself in an alternate Earth.

Read it online at Gutenberg.

Recommendation: Read it if you like older sci fi.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 10:29 am
by Murmur
The Isle of the Torturers
Clark Ashton Smith

This is a superbly written tragic story. The version that I read had a lot of errors in it, but I could understand everything except for the word "elllong". The two online dictionaries I used didn't have that word. It looks like Mr Smith liked adjectives more than Lovecraft did, because, holy moley, everything had an adjective.

Read it online

Recommendation: Read it if you feel like reading a depressing fantasy/horror story.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:56 pm
by Murmur
The Metamorphosis of the World
by Clark Ashton Smith

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/sh ... s-of-earth

This is a superbly well written horror / sci fi story.

I have found that Clark Ashton Smith's stories have a style that resembles Lovecraft's style. Since they were contemporaries, this is understandable. This particular short story doesn't resemble Lovecraft, and that's good. Compared to Smith's other stuff that I've read, this story shows a bit of stylistic maturity. I haven't read a lot of Smith's work, so I could be in for more pleasant surprises in the future.

Recommendation: If you like HP Lovecraft, WH Hodgson, or HG Wells, you'd probably like this.

EDIT: My collection of CAS stories has this story as The Metamorphosis of the World and I changed the name in this post.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 10:17 am
by Murmur
asya47 wrote:I also really love old stories, more than modern ones. Thank you for the selection, I'll take note! In general, I really like to take biographies of people (not only famous ones) and analyze their life through characteristics according to the Volikov test. It helps a lot to draw conclusions on how certain qualities affect a person's life
I'm glad you enjoyed my reviews. :)

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2020 11:44 am
by Murmur
The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1
by Clark Ashton Smith

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246 ... -the-story

The book has a bunch of fantasy, sci fi, and horror stories by Clark Ashton Smith. It's very good. The end of the book includes letters to and from HP Lovecraft, CAS's other contemporaries, notes regarding publishers, CAS's thoughts on his own stories, and other stuff. HP Lovecraft was very supportive of CAS.

CAS was extraordinarily productive. I don't remember how many stories he wrote in his career but it was quite a lot. More than a hundred.

CAS must have had a thesaurus close at hand at all times when he was writing. He used more fancy words than any other author I've read. CAS really liked describing colors in his stories for some reason. I can honestly call CAS a wordsmith.

A few highlights, from what I can remember.

1. The Abominations of Yondo
It's a very good story, except it seems to have no real ending.

2. The Metamorphosis of the World
Described in another post of mine.

3. Marooned in Andromeda
A sci fi story about marooned mutineers. They are forced to explore their new planet by a succession of events.

4. The Immeasurable Horror
This is my favorite story in this collection. It's a sci fi horror story. Humans are making an aerial exploration of an alien planet and they encounter a colossal slug-like creature.

5. The Monster of the Prophecy
The human protagonist is the monster in this story. He's taken to another planet to fulfill a prophecy. This story contains a ridiculous plot device to save the human's life.
Spoiler
A meteor hits a temple where the human is being tortured, and he uses the confusion to flee.
It's a very good story regardless.

6. The Tale of Satampra Zeiros
Reading this story was very fun. Two guys scoff at tales of a haunted town that people are afraid of. They explore the town and discover why people are afraid of it.

Recommendation: If you like HP Lovecraft or WH Hodgson, you'll like this collection.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2020 6:20 pm
by Murmur
I made a list of some of the fancy shmancy words that Clark Ashton Smith put into his stories. Here's a partial list of words that I had to look up. Some of these words should be pretty obvious as to what they mean; for example, funereal.

1. Adipocere
2. Adits
3. Adumbration
4. Ambergris
5. Animaculae
6. Armillary
7. Assiduously
8. Ataxia
9. Avocation
10. Beetling
11. Benison
12. Bole
13. Cachinnation
14. Calamites
15. Calenture
16. Celerity
17. Chary
18. Chrysolite
19. Chrysoprase
20. Conterminate
21. Crepuscular
22. Crotali
23. Delectation
24. Demesnes
25. Descried
26. Distrait
27. Dolorously
28. Drupes
29. Ebullition
30. Eld
31. Ell
32. Erigible
33. Erubescent
34. Etiolated
35. Ewer
36. Exigent
37. Ferine
38. Fescennine
39. Frangipane
40. Fulgurant
41. Fulvous
42. Funereal
43. Glaucous
44. Habiliments
45. Heteroclitic
46. Immitigable
47. Inanition
48. Inchoate
49. Indomitably
50. Infrangible
51. Irremeable
52. Irresoluble
53. Lacunae
54. Lambence
55. Languor
56. Lentor
57. Littorals
58. Mandragora
59. Marl
60. Marquetry
61. Mellifluence
62. Mephitic
63. Mordantly
64. Palliate
65. Panniers
66. Parapegms
67. Parlous
68. Pells
69. Perambulation
70. Perdurable
71. Perforce
72. Peroration
73. Pestles
74. Plover
75. Prelate
76. Proffered
77. Propitious
78. Purpureal
79. Quaver
80. Quiescent
81. Quotidian
82. Ramified
83. Recondite
84. Riven
85. Salubrious
86. Scarps
87. Senescence
88. Sibilant
89. Stridulations
90. Superannuate
91. Supernal
92. Sybarites
93. Tellurian
94. Thews
95. Tumescent
96. Vates
97. Venerous
98. Verdigris
99. Vermilion
100. Vertiginous
101. Viscid
102. Vitiation
103. Wried

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Sun May 23, 2021 11:14 am
by Murmur
The Marching Morons
By C. M. Kornbluth

This is an absolutely excellent sci fi story of a sleeping guy being awakened in the far future. The movie Idiocracy has a lot in it that resembles The Marching Morons, so much so, that it seems like Idiocracy was based on the story.

You can read it for free here, which is what I did.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/5 ... 1233-h.htm

Recommendation: Read it.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2021 3:32 pm
by Murmur
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319 ... t-e-howard

It was pretty good overall.

Notes:
1. His story "Pigeons From Hell" is probably his best story therein. PFH was made into an episode of the podcast Midnight Marinara which you can find here.
2. Some of the stories mention Lovecraft's creatures.
3. REH was pretty good at writing horror adventure stories.
4. He wrote a lot of poetry. I don't like poetry so they didn't interest me very much.

There were a few things I didn't like though.
1. REH used racial language typical of his time, which was the early twentieth century. A lot of it is ugly.
2. REH liked to state people's ethnic backgrounds as a source of pride. I don't like that very much. I've seen movies where a character tells another character: "My ancestors were ruling their country while your ancestors were having sex with goats!" That sort of ethnic pride strongly reminds me of what REH put in his stories.

Recommendation: Read it if you like short horror stories.

Re: Murmur reviews short stories

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:50 pm
by Murmur
First, a few things about William Hope Hodgson.

William Hope Hodgson is a predecessor to the early 20th century more famous "weird tale" authors. He wasn't a contemporary of Lovecraft and pals. However, a lot of his stories have a similar feel as the stories of the "weird tale" authors (RW Chambers, CA Smith, HP Lovecraft, etc.).

Interestingly, Hodgson reused the same premises and settings for a lot of his stories. For example, there are different short stories that use the premise of a ship being stuck in seaweed and the crew trying to free it. The characters are different, the stories are different, but the settings are the same. There is more than one story where the crew finds a derelict ship. There are many stories where a ship seems haunted, and it turns out that, in the tradition of Scooby-Doo Where Are You, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the supposed hauntings.

And now, this particular volume.

The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures: The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 1

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/341 ... adventures

I will never understand why the table of contents isn't available online for every single book. I just searched for it for this book and couldn't find it. So, I had to find my physical copy to make notes about what's in it. This particular volume has the Glen Carrig story, the Sargasso Sea stories, Captain Gault stories, and a few others.

I finished reading this book a year ago, I think. My memory of some things is spotty. Overall, the stories are excellent and fun to read. The stories in this volume are more of the adventure genre than anything else. I'm most interested in horror stories, not adventure stories, so this volume, even though it wasn't my primary interest, was still enjoyable.
  • The Glen Carrig story is an adventure story of sailors who abandoned their ship.
  • The Sargasso Sea stories are about ships stuck in seaweed, in the Sargasso Sea.
  • The Captain Gault stories are about the eponymous captain, who is a smuggler. Kind of like an honorable thief.
  • The two Captain Jat stories are about the eponymous captain and his abused cabin boy, Pibby Tawles.
  • The Cargunka stories are about Cargunka, a sort of heroic pub owner, who used to be a pirate or captain or something.
This book is published by Night Shade publishers. I was amazed at how many mistakes were in the book. Like there was one easily noticeable error once every twenty pages. That's quite a lot. It looked a lot like the contents of the book was scanned and then proofread. For example, the errors were like these: "shove" may have been "sh0ve" and "shorn" may have been "shom". I made up those examples just now. However, those made up examples are typical of the type of errors in the book.

Recommendation: If you like early 20th century adventure stories, you'll like this book.