The King in Yellow
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
It was introduced to me as some kind of proto-lovecraftian fever dream exploring the strange faraway lands of the titular King in Yellow, and it started out like Lovecraftian stories often do - upper society gentlemen of impeccable pedigree getting tangled up in the strange and occult. But after a few stories, of having hinted of the strangeness to come, the whole occult business was dropped, and the rest of the book was bog-standard Victorian romantic short stories.
I'd say you can get as much from the Wikipedia article and the poem, as you'd from getting the book.'
If you want the experience of exploring a weird and strange realm, I'd recommend 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' from the man himself.
Maybe it's because at the time it released it was novel, but now it's cliche?
It's not quite science fiction, though. The descriptions of New York aren't dark or dreary, like one would expect from a short story that usually firmly placed in the horror/weird fiction category. There's these hints that something is not quite right, though. like the presence of these "Government Lethal Chambers" in Washington Square Park where, I guess one could kill them selves publicly. It's hinted at, but not really addressed further. it's these little details that color the story and make it uncomfortable. It seems tht United States that has embraced authoritarianism, and society social structure is heavily enforced by a militarized government.
EDIT: Written in 1895 not 1985!
Is it you, Marty?
(sorry, could not resist)
A lot of later sci-fi actually retreated to more human-like familiar notions of the alien. Very few sci-fi works have explored Lovecraftian aliens -- maybe Arrival (notable for the aliens being benevolent but Lovecraftian), The Expanse (though the alien machines use simulated human minds to talk to us, making them seem familiar), Alien (the Xenomorph), and a few others. Edit: the Blindsight series by Peter Watts is another.
The Alien franchise is a huge missed opportunity for failing to develop the Xenomorph as an alien race. I always thought it'd be neat if they turned out to be intelligent insect-like hive-mind aliens that just don't realize they're doing anything "bad" because they don't understand our concept of individuality. In their environment using some of the drones of another hive to reproduce would be fine, even a kind of social interaction, so when they do it to us think they're saying hello. Their apparent violence is just the ultra-utilitarian behavior of drones. Ripley's comment in Aliens about "I don't know which one is worse" might have been a hook for that. We might have eventually learned that our sociopaths were, in fact, quite a bit more "evil" than the xenomorphs, who are just very unlike us biologically.
I'm aware of some of Lovecraft's personal shitty views, but I think it's unfair to judge people from another time by the standards of this age. His views would not have been unusual for his place and time, and they only really show up at the edges of his works anyway. I read all his works and never really picked up on those subtexts until it was pointed out to me later.
He was sort of a perfect fit for the generation of kids raised on computer games and RPGs that had voracious appetites for new mythologies.
It is funny how once you get tagged with "underrated" it just stays with you forever, though.
The old people here might remember the anti-magic push in the 90s, the satanic panics and efforts to stop Halloween. Midi-chlorians were part of this, removing magic in place of scientific explanations. Then harry potter swept the movement away.
Well.
> "If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow."
...where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask
Very good author: don’t show, _suggest_.
^ That "should" work. links to a track though, not the artist.
Genuinely, I remember reading first four stories after playing Signalis and I was very unimpressed. Especially with the first story, where I felt it was rambling for the sake of rambling.
I'm genuinely asking, really. If it matters I've been reading it in translation.
> has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi, and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural
Why all three critics have initials in their names? I don't think this is common in the average population. Is this a trend or something?
TED Klein's first name is Theodore (Ted)!
"In the wind! In the walls! In the young bride's grave!"
"In the seams of the scenes on the television screen.
In the silence in the air after a church bell's ring,
Hangs a shudder of a whisper of a presence unseen.
The echo of the terror of The Yellow King!"
He travels in dreams - In poisonous screams
A plague on mankind. A plague on mankind
The fall of man. Death in the Fall
The man in the mirror is no man at all
See Hali's clear scrying face round which acolytes assemble
Tremble when as one they bellow: "Behold, the King in Yellow"
For those who haven't read the King in Yellow:
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.