Greatest Horror Writer Of All Time If...

muravyets said:

Accountant like? Uh...maybe you need a new accountant.

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I say that cause it was my first impression when I read him, that the tone sounded like an accountant telling me a story.
Well an accountant taking LSD but still

williemeikle said:

I've long suspected that accountants worship at the altars of the Great Old Ones, waiting for the stars to be right.

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If you know the kind of accountants I have.....

kobold said:

Oh, the irony! Bloch was not only a Lovecraft fan as a lad, but corresponded with him. Realizing they were kindred spirits, Lovecraft gamely encouraged Bloch to 'kill' (and rend, disembowel, decapitate, bleed dry, etc.) him in the short story (really a pastiche) 'The Shambler from the Stars', a sort of counterpoint to Lovecraft's own 'The Haunter of the Dark'. Bloch also wrote the great mythos story 'Notebook Found in a Deserted House'. If you like Bloch but not Lovecraft, those two might be worth your time. HPL's tropes in RB's style.

Again, Lovecraft's concepts were amazing building-blocks for horror and science fiction. But his style reads rather stiff, over-mannered. It's a fair criticism of his work. You can almost sense him struggling to be a better writer than he (probably) realized he was.

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yeah I know all that

I have actually read all that stuff although it's been ages. I was always fond of Bloch cause he had this sense of humor about him. I love how he titled some of his stuff, right up my alley. And I know I have all of those somewhere in my pulp fiction collections (I like collecting pulp fiction magazine collection books, Weird Tales and so forth *sigh* oh the good old days)

and as I said yes I know all the typical boiler plate about lovecraft having influence blah blah blah.
His style as you said is right on the nail's head as to what I was getting at.
The ideas were nice and out there but when I read him I could imagine him sitting with me telling me his stories and I would just have this vision of someone very primly anxious and technical, stiff as you said.
It makes me think of an accountant trying to tell me about things he's afraid I won't be interested in hearing.

I'm sure this would be received as something of a controversy, but I also tend to wonder if you took Lovecraft and put him around today that his writing wouldn't really be received well nor hold up well, because too much of the weight to his work was just in him pulling out ideas no one was using that way.....at the time. That's another reason I have issue with him. I think Robert Bloch would do well, Stephen King would be fine whenever you threw him (assuming he wasn't burnt at the stake). A great writer doesn't need "original ideas" to himself because in my opinion pretty much everything has been done so it doesn't matter as much if someone else has done it so much as HOW you do it.

like I said i'm sure I'm in the minority on those thoughts but it's just been something I've thought about.

p.s. oh and what you said about feeling him holding himself back, yeah I can agree with that. The way I see it is as him being afraid or overly self conscious, perhaps just trying too hard or something instead of just letting go, trusting himself, leaning into it. That's probably one of the reasons why I have issue with him as that's a big cornerstone of my personal beliefs.

I like Lovecraft, although I think that sometimes he overdoes it so much that it actually becomes more funny than anything else. He often just says that something is evil or horrible without giving any actual reason for it. It looks ugly, QED it is evil.

Look at this quote:
"...and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter."
How can you sweep the floor of litter evilly? Do you have to stroke your goatee and laugh maniacally while doing it?

muravyets said:

In all honesty, I think the novel Dracula is an unreadable bag of crap and Bram Stoker was a horrible writer.

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See? It all comes down to personal taste. I just reread Dracula and I very much enjoyed Stoker's writing. Some of the passages were simply beautiful, almost poetic. I will admit that when he tries to phonetically recreate dialect and accents in dialogue its indecipherable. Overall, however, I think Dracula is very well written.

Viciouspen said:

I honestly am somewhat not a fan of HP lovecraft. I've just always found his stuff to be so accountant like.

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Yes, accountant-like is as good a description as any. I've tried to read Lovecraft and just find his writing too static with these dense descriptive passages that border on tedious and he is probably one of the worst writers of dialogue ever. He had a great imagination, but I think his best stuff was written by other authors.

Can't mention Stephen King. OK...

Bernard Taylor (The Godsend)

Richard Matheson (The Shrinking Man... as if I wasn't scared enough of spiders already)

Dan Simmons (Song of Kali)

Graham Masterton can write great horror, but too often he goes for splattery gore and cringeworthy sex scenes, IMO.

There are so many to list. Geez...
R. Karl Largent
Elizabeth Forrest
Bentley Little
Stephen Gregory
Deah Koontz

I'll think of more later and be back. I don't have a #1 as I like them all.

... and
Scott Sigler
Scott Nicholson
Sephera Giron
Richard Laymon (when he writes in third person)
By the way, that was Dean Koontz, not Deah Koontz!
Oh, so many more...

BoltzmannBrain said:

I like Lovecraft, although I think that sometimes he overdoes it so much that it actually becomes more funny than anything else. He often just says that something is evil or horrible without giving any actual reason for it. It looks ugly, QED it is evil.

Look at this quote:
"...and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter."
How can you sweep the floor of litter evilly? Do you have to stroke your goatee and laugh maniacally while doing it?

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Wow.
that is pretty amazing, sweeping the floor of litter evilly.
*mind blown*
I cannot fathom a situation in which anything could sweep litter from a floor evilly. I mean, no matter what, you're still sweeping up litter.
And yes the ugly so it's evil thing, I know what you mean. Reminds me of a superman comic where he's trapped in this small alien dimension with this "monster', well turns out the monster is another superhero from some other dimension who's trapped there. There's a line to walk with the ugly bit. In life it's often the pretty that are amoral and despicable.

Shadow_Ferret said:

See? It all comes down to personal taste. I just reread Dracula and I very much enjoyed Stoker's writing. Some of the passages were simply beautiful, almost poetic. I will admit that when he tries to phonetically recreate dialect and accents in dialogue its indecipherable. Overall, however, I think Dracula is very well written.




Yes, accountant-like is as good a description as any. I've tried to read Lovecraft and just find his writing too static with these dense descriptive passages that border on tedious and he is probably one of the worst writers of dialogue ever. He had a great imagination, but I think his best stuff was written by other authors.

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He's one of those guys who I think wasn't that talented so much as he just had some interesting ideas nobody else had bothered with.

I always imagine he had to be a horribly fidgity guy.

Richard Matheson was great. I always thought his stories had a similar theme: One man against the odds.

Guy de Maupassant is little known. His story "The Horla" was terrifying.

Excluding Stephen King, my favourite horror writer is mr. Clive barker. I'm not sure if he's been mentioned, but Harlan Ellison is a great writer, "I have no mouth and I must scream" is one of my favourite short stories I re-read it a couple times a year.

Haggis said:

Nobody's mentioned Stephenie Meyer yet.








*cough*





That's okay. I'll let myself out.

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Not to be rude, but I don't see how Stephenie Meyer is a horror writer?

I think the only horror I've read other than Stephen King is Jack Ketchum. He is a very skilled craftsmen I think.

Despite having read very little horror I've read two or three books about how to write horror, because... I'm weird.

Oh wait I have read Ira Levin does that count? He was very skilled too.
Oh and I've read Frankenstein and Dracula.

I read one amazing short story by Ray Bradbury and I've read The Yellow Wallpaper which is apparently essential horror reading.

I know this is meant to be a thread about who is the greatest, but I don't suppose I've read enough to say. Everyone of these writers was great I guess I haven't read any rubbish horror. I've bought a couple of Samhain Publishing horror novels but haven't read them yet.

DeadCities said:

Not to be rude, but I don't see how Stephenie Meyer is a horror writer?

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Is "The Host" horror? I have not read it.
I do know there are a few people who are so ignorant about genres that they actually think Twilight is horror because it contains a vampire.

gingerwoman said:

Is "The Host" horror? I have not read it.
I do know there are a few people who are so ignorant about genres that they actually think Twilight is horror because it contains a vampire.

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I have read the first chapter of the host, from that, and what people have told me it is more sci-fi than anything (though it's mainly centered on a love story, like twilight). Twilight is most definitely not horror, the scariest thing about the movies was the acting. It could loosely be called a gothic romance I suppose.

gingerwoman said:

I do know there are a few people who are so ignorant about genres that they actually think Twilight is horror because it contains a vampire.

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Oh God, this again. I've seen Twilight on a "best of" list of horror novels more than once. Given it was one person's opinion, but it still pains me to see it there.

Back on topic, though. David J. Schow's Not From Around Here was a fantastic short story, and as gory as it was in spots I still loved it. I love Richard Matheson as a short story writer, though the one novel I read by him (I Am Legend) didn't really pull me in. His shorter work, though....damn.

I still need to get my hands on The King in Yellow. Anyone here read it? (I haven't gone back through all the previous posts, so I apologize if it's been mentioned)

Undoubtedly it's been said elsewhere in this long thread, which I haven't read in it's entirety, but even if so, it merits repetition:

POE

He essentially invented both the modern short story and the modern horror genre.

Lots of other meritorious names have been mentioned, so no further list from me is necessary.

caw

You can read The King In Yellow complete here.

(The reason it's there is because I retyped the entire thing by hand back when I was teaching myself how to write.)

James D. Macdonald said:

You can read The King In Yellow complete here.

(The reason it's there is because I retyped the entire thing by hand back when I was teaching myself how to write.)

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Bookmarked and thank you.

Poe
(King if I was allowed to mention him)
Matheson
Everyone else

I'm reading Stephen King for the first time. The Shining, so far, has been heavy on detail. I'm not sure the book needs whole chapters to dialogue Jack's alcoholism, the stocks in the kitchen of the hotel, etc.

Lovecraft
Poe
Dante's Inferno (boy was I hooked on his stuff as an emo teenager)
Barbara Hambly's Walls of Air, and the other two books in the trilogy.

I read Kujo when I was a kid and found it vastly annoying, and boring. I didn't like it. For me it was a wallbanger. I've tried now and then to read Stephen King's stuff again, and I still don't like it very much. As far as movie horror goes, the Snow White movie that had Sigourney Weaver in it sort of traumatized me as a child when I saw it, but I can't really think of any other movie that really freaked me out much.

B...b...but I like King :C I've read a vast majority of his books.

I also like Lovecraft, Poe, Koontz, Stoker, and Peretti (He's an other that does more religious horror type novels, but his shit can be scary sometimes.)

Richard Matheson comes to mind straight away. Susan Hill definitely deseres a mention for her ghost stories. James Herbert and Clive Barker, too.

I also like some of Shaun Hutson's stuff. He's a decent writer most of the time, but I don't think many are familiar with his work. He tends to go a bit heavy on the gore.

Clive Barker
Arthur Machen
Poe
King
Masterson
Saki
E.T.A Hoffmann
Marjorie Bowen
Algernon Blackwood
Matthew " The Monk" Lewis

Is it just me, or has no one mentioned James Herbert yet? Granted his later stuff wasn't up to much IMO, but some of his early work, like the Rats trilogy, The Dark, Portent and The Magic Cottage are well worth a look at.

Another couple of my favourites are some of the less well known British writers, Stephen Laws, Mark Morris and Joe Donnelly. Some seriously good scares to be had from those fine chaps, though I think all of them have now bowed out of the horror game, and apparently a lot of their work is now out of print, which is a shame. Here's a couple of recommended reads if anyone wants to give these guys a shot...

Laws - Chasm/The Frighteners
Mark Morris - Mr Bad Face / The Deluge
Joe Donnelly - Shrike/Bane