HP Lovecraft reccomendations?

[Onionsoilder]

I'm known a bit about HP Lovecraft's works for a while now, but I've never actually read any of them. Recently I've seen a lot of references to the Ancient Ones and stuff like that in a game I've been playing, so I figured I would start learning some of the lore. But there are so many... Where should I start.... his first ones? Does he have a particularly awesome one? Something else?

 

[Kyriakos]

Read "The outsider". It is short, and i think it serves as a perfect introduction to Lovecraft.

Here, i found it for you:

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theoutsider.htm

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Call of Cthulhu

At the Mountains of Madness

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Dagon

 

[Onionsoilder]

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theoutsider.htm

That's... insane. It was difficult to read at first, but about halfway in I adjusted to his writing style. The ending though... wow.

 

[Kyriakos]

Glad you liked it
Currently i am translating it to greek (there exist other translations, but it is good practice for my own writing)

 

[mariogreymist]

I always liked The Dunwich Horror.

 

[Newbunkle]

There are only a few of his stories that I like to read over and over again. Most of the time they concern aliens. I'm not so keen on the dreamlands stuff, but its ok.

What game was it that you've been playing? The Call of Cthulhu RPG? Arkham Horror (board game)? Dark Corners of the Earth (PC game)?

These are my favourite stories:

> The Shadow Over Innsmouth - A guy visits a coastal town with some very strange inhabitants. The show seems to be run by a bizarre cult called the Esoteric Order of Dagon (if you've played DCotE you might recognise this).

> The Whisperer in Darkness - A guy begins corresponding with a man who lives in the middle of nowhere and claims that strange creatures are up to no good in the hills around his house.

> The Colour Out Of Space - The arrival of a meteorite causes strange goings-on at a farm.

> The Shadow Out Of Time - A guy experiences a gap of 5 years, during which time his family say he acted completely out of character. He tries to piece together what happened during his missing time (again, DCotE references this one).

> The Mountains of Madness - An expedition to the Antarctic makes an incredible discovery, but goes horribly wrong.

 

[Kyriakos]

My own favourites are:

The outsider

The music of Erich Zahn

The Dunwich horror (but only the first 15 pages, which i find excellent however)

The cats of Ulthar

The cave

So mostly his shorter stories

 

[Till]

I second Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, and Outsider, but the short story
i like best is Rats in the walls.

My favourite work by Lovecraft is like Fungi from Yuggoth, however, as the poems leave plenty of room for your imagination.

 

[Dachs]

The first Lovecraft story I read was The Rats in the Walls, and I still think it's one of my favorites.

 

[Lord Baal]

The Rats in the Walls is also my favourite. I borrowed a book of Lovecraft's short-stories from my local library two months ago and keep renewing it. Great stuff for an aspiring writer to look at. He had a very interesting style.

I'd also recommend The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness purely for their relation to his mythology, though they're both decent on their own, especially the latter. The Outsider I also like. I'm not a fan of The Colour Out of Space. I'm up to The Dunwich Horror in this anthology, so I'll let you know what I think of it.

 

[Harvin87]

The case of Charles Dexter Ward is a great story .. check it out if you want.

 

[Lord Baal]

As promised, I finished reading The Dunwich Horror today. I give it my heartfelt recommendation, though, like Varwnos, I think the beginning is superior to the ending.

 

[Earthling]

I think the usual recommendation is to try to find original sources, always a good copy of the Necronomicon or the real King in Yellow or Book of Eidon or something. If you have to go with secondhand accounts/storytelling like Lovecraft's that's all right of course.

 

[Lord Baal]

I think the usual recommendation is to try to find original sources, always a good copy of the Necronomicon or the real King in Yellow or Book of Eidon or something. If you have to go with secondhand accounts/storytelling like Lovecraft's that's all right of course.

Hang on, there's an actual Necronomicon? Aside from H.G. Geigers(sp?)?

 

[Earthling]

That explains why you might have found so many people on this forum already insane

 

[GoodGame]

So far, I've only read his bio and Dagon. His bio was far more interesting.

 

[GoodGame]

No there's no real Necronomicon.

Just read The Festival. Another early story. A bit better than Dagon in terms of story-telling.

 

[Kyriakos]

I liked Dagon, although again the beginning seems to me to be superior than the ending. I liked almost everything up to when he started exploring the island, then i think he lost touch with the atmosphere

 

[GoodGame]

I guess I didn't enjoy the lack of suspense in Dagon. The Festival leads up to its ending kind of suspensefully, because of the foreshadowing with the initial quote and the gradual unfolding of the setting. Suspense = good read to me.