Good Collection of Lovecraft's Work

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	• The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch Del Rey, 1987 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 135 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good Collection of Lovecraft's Work

This is where you should start if you are looking for a budget-minded introduction to the world of HP Lovecraft. As his fans well know, Lovecraft straddled the line between horror and science-fiction. If this collection seems surprisingly unrevolutionary to you, that's because virtually all of Lovecraft's once-groundbreaking conceits have been incorporated into the mainstream of fantastic literature. This volume collects over a dozen of Lovecraft's better works, all of which contain the sense of dread and decay that influenced so many other writers.

Everyone's entitled to their favorites. For me, "The Thing on the Doorstep," "The Rats in the Walls," and "The Dunwich Horror" are among the most effective pieces of horror ever written. They must be read to be believed, and have vivid unforgettable characters and frights. Fans of the "X-Files" or any other conspiracy-oriented horror will love "The Whisperer in the Darkness," another fine tale. I'm less enthusiastic about those stories that feature extended dialogues, as Lovecraft seems to have had almost no feel for capturing the feel of the spoken word, particularly when dealing with characters using colloquial speech. I also don't understand the purpose of Robert Bloch's often pointless "defense" of Lovecraft in the introductory essay. Lovecraft's best work should speak for itself, and Bloch's attempts to put Lovecraft in perspective are not needed in an introductory volume. If anything, a neophyte might find the essay very distracting.

If you are a fan of superior horror that doesn't shy from scientific speculation, you're going to enjoy much of this book. I can't vouch for all of Lovecraft's short stories, but the ones in this volume are among his best and most accessible.

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Best of Lovecraft

The title says it all. The best of his stories and if you're a fan of Lovecraft, this must be a part of your collection.

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Revisiting Lovecraft

This is a great Lovecraft compilation. I love the florid late Victorian prose, but more than anything this man seems so far ahead of his time for someone writing in the 1920-30 era. His visionary dreams are evocative of the psychedelic visions and writings of the bohemians of the 1950s and later. His stories, through the rejection of the ghost story, instead were firmly grounded in speculative science and science that was cutting edge at the time - the theories of Einstein, early ideas about parallel universes and higher dimensions, the spiritual higher dimensional topology of P.D. Ouspensky.

The most amazing ideas in this collection are, I believe, in the short story "The Silver Key." That story, with its confessional tone, seems to prevision post-modernism and a weariness with the rational scientific worldview that seems to have overtaken much of the rest of popular culture only decades later.

There is so much in Lovecraft's work that is echoed by the work of modern ayahuasceros and other psychedelic visionaries - his worlds seem very similar to those reported by students of DMT and psychedelic mushrooms. Perhaps if he had been born a few decades later, he would have found more wonder and awe in his internal experiences, and less of a sense of horror at his glimpses into the arcane realms.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME--the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip.
"I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."
Stephen King

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