I was looking forward to reading this story, since I love "Dracula". I couldn't even get past the first few chapters, glad I'm not the only one who thought this story was crap. Chad, I'm sorry you wasted your vacation having to read this idiotic tale.   

I'm a big fan of Blackwood (especially his John Silence http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/John_Silence,_Physician_Extraordinary stories...very creepy) but I have to admit this is probably my least favorite story by Blackwood, so I have to agree with Chris. I feel like Blackwood was using this story to experiment with mood and atmosphere only and the plot and characters were just carelessly thrown in as an afterthought. 

October 2000 - "Shadows Bend: A Novel of the Fantastic and Unspeakable" by David Barbour and Richard Raleigh
     Despite featuring both HPL and Robert Howard as main characters, and cameos of Clark Ashton Smith and Samuel Loveman, this novel, which revolves around HPL, Howard, and (for the obligatory love-triangle) a former prostitute on a quest to put a magic stone in a cave, is a damp squib. I read this book once, long ago, on a plane, and it still haunts me 12 years later.

Also, as was featured on the Thing on the Doorstep podcast, HPL was mentioned in the Collect Call of Cthulhu Real Ghostbusters episode.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that novel haunts!

But are we overlooking how the issue of pants relates to Smurfs and why they only seem to wear pants and a hat?
Is there a Smurf valet counted among the 99?


Well...if the smurfs are French in origin, we may never really understand their sense of fashion...

One of my favorite stories, thanks for doing it. Leman is on top of his game as usual. Poor Mary. A kiss is not informed consent! 

I love the last line of that story, the narrator not entirely convinced that it was a ghost that attacked him, freaky!   

Right, so these Conan stories are pretty much by far the most badly-written fiction I've ever read (and I've read The da Vinci Code!), but are pretty enjoyable nonetheless. One of those things that's sort of terrible yet awesome at the same time.

There's just so much gleaming, bulging muscles and full-lipped women with lithe, supple bodies having their scanty silken garments torn off...I don't think I've read anything where you can quite so clearly hear the author wanking as he types.

(On a side note, it's only when I read the notes at the back of the book that I realized R.E.H. topped himself at the age of 30. )

You'll probably want to stay away from Edgar Rice Burroughs, he was also big on the scanty clad, lithe bodies as well. Pulp writers had to make a living, sometimes it was typing to the lowest common denominator who was the main paying audience. 

The soldier returning from India with strange stories and artefacts is a common motif of the period. You can find variants in "The Moonstone" and "The Sign of Four", while Kipling has several characters like the Sergeant-Major in his stories.

Heh... the first thing I thought of was HPL's own "The Transition of Juan Romero."

I was thinking of Lord Dunsany's Joseph Jorkens stories...

I can't even turn the TV on during "Shark Week".

Sharks...I'm a 38 year old man and I still can't watch a movie about a Great White made in the 1970s. The worst part about it is that I'm a huge Roy Scheider fan

Has anyone seen the South Korean Horror move, R-Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Point)? It is essentially a ghost story set during the Vietnam War with the main characters being a platoon of ROK (Republic of Korea) Rangers. It's pretty eerie and at times has a Gothic horror feel to it. 

I would like to see a teleplay version, similar to the BBC's The Stone Tapes, for The Picture in The House...minus the cleansing lightning bolt though.

I'm not ordinarily into this sort of thing but I thought the episode was well done and Andrew is clearly knowledgeable in terms of the topic, I would listen to something like this again. 

The collected original Conan The Barbarian stories! Aww HELL yeah. Going on holiday next month and this is my holiday reading. Already dipped in, looks pretty good. Not read any R. E. Howard before but I believe he was part of HPL's circle and they borrowed ideas from each other (the fictional prehistory and pre-human races in particular, I think).

Anyone else here a fan?

Yeah, I am. I read the complete R.E. Howard Omnibus over the summer, like a thousand pages of pulpy goodness. I've always been a little bit more of a Howard fan than a Lovecraft fan. Also, once your finished with Howard's Conan stories, I would suggest Brian Lumley's Primal Lands stories since they usually feature an adventuring barbarian like character.   

My problem, of course, is that I have such a massive ego I think I couldn "handle" a book like the King in Yellow.  Really, I know my limitations, and intellectual humility is not my strongest point.  But isn't that really the downfall of every Lovecraftian character?  "Normal" people never fall into the mythos realm because, frankly, they know better than to mess around with that stuff.  But even know the King in Yellow is not a real book, I'm still frustratingly curious about what Chambers thought was supposed to be in there. 

Yeah, that's true most of the time...unless a meteorite happens to drop out of space on to your property.