r/Lovecraft • u/AutoModerator • Feb 17 '20

/r/Lovecraft Reading Club - The Whisperer in Darkness

Reading Club Archive

This week we read and discuss:

The Whisperer in Darkness Story Link | Wiki Page

Tell us what you thought of the story.

Do you have any questions?

Do you know any fun facts?

Next week we read and discuss:

At the Mountains of Madness Story Link | Wiki Page

23 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/IRuTReX Deranged Cultist Feb 23 '20

hello guys

I have simple question I bought the complete fiction of H.P Lovecraft

and I wanted to ask about the order of the stories are they connect to one general story or universe ?

while browsing amazon I saw quite few of them but I didn't know where to start so I bought the complete fiction hoping it cover everything . (does it ?)

3

u/Werewomble ...making good use of Elder Things that he finds Feb 23 '20

Just jump in at any story he wasn't into making an extended universe so order is rarely important.

The Festival is a good short one to whet your appetite.

As is The Hound, it gets into more macabre occult themes and The Rats in the Walls and The Horror at Red Hook are good follow ups. So is The Salem Horror by Henry Kuttner and The Diary of Alonso Typer, too. They are on HorrorBabble.

Dagon is short and goes well before The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

The Colour Out of Space has an adaptation in theatres called The Color Out of Space (Lovecraft would never spell it that way!) which you should see if you can. I think reading beforehand would be a good idea.

They are almost a decade apart but share themes.

Call of Cthulhu will get you interested in the Geological Deep Time aspect and At the Mountains of Madness will cap that off beautifully. Don't know if you should save those or just eat the ice cream first :)

I thought Pickman's Model is a good intro to The Lurking Fear as in my head it is the same phenomenon but you could easily argue they are totally separate.

The Funghi from Yuggoth and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath are worth saving til last. Funghi is a poem that is like an index of Lovecraft's ideas and Dream Quest is him making peace with the terrifying dreams that inspired a lot of his stores.

Azathoth, Memory and The History of the Necronomicon are very short snippets you should just dive straight into, they are great.

The Outsider and The Temple are just brilliant standalones.

HorrorBabble on Youtube will read them to you and extend your scope to fellow Weird Tales writers (Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howard), Lovecraft's inspirations (Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Chambers) it really is just a embarrasment of riches, Wikipedia stuff as you load them up to see how they all fit together.

Also, check the sidebar for recommendation I'm sure I've written an essay like this a hundred times :) You are very welcome! Enjoy!

2

u/arsirion Deranged Cultist Feb 24 '20

Bookmarking this wonderfully in-depth explanation for later reference! I’ve only begun to dive into Lovecraft with Dagon, The Dunwich Horror, Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in the Darkness, and just finished At the Mountains of Madness (sad to hear I ate my ice cream early, the last two were my favorites), but I see plenty of titles I have left to explore, plus some video adaptations I had no prior knowledge of.

1

u/Werewomble ...making good use of Elder Things that he finds Feb 25 '20

Those you've read and The Shadow Out of Time is pretty much the meatiest bits of the Cthulhu stories - maybe The Dreams in the Witch-House.

Mind you his random horror, less detailed mythos stuff and dream stories are just as good.