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"19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books"

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  "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-05-02 17:28 -0500
    "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Jack Bohn <jack.bohn64@gmail.com> - 2018-05-02 16:40 -0700
      Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-03 03:21 +0000
    Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Moriarty <blues95@ivillage.com> - 2018-05-02 16:45 -0700
    Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" "artyw2@yahoo.com" <artyw2@yahoo.com> - 2018-05-02 18:42 -0700
    Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2018-05-03 05:22 -0500
    Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2018-05-03 13:56 +0000
      Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-05-03 16:40 -0500
        Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2018-05-03 14:53 -0700
          Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-05-03 17:07 -0500
          Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Moriarty <blues95@ivillage.com> - 2018-05-03 15:10 -0700
            Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-05-03 19:04 -0500
              Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-05-04 04:49 -0700
            Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-05-03 19:46 -0500
              Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-04 03:08 +0000
                Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Titus G <noone@nowhere.com> - 2018-05-04 15:56 +1200
                  Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-04 05:44 +0000
                    Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Titus G <noone@nowhere.com> - 2018-05-04 19:38 +1200
                      Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-04 19:41 +0000
                        Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Lawrence Watt-Evans <misenchantedpress@gmail.com> - 2018-05-04 23:51 -0400
                          Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-05-05 14:12 +0000
                            Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2018-05-05 10:09 -0700
                              Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> - 2018-05-07 14:23 -0500
                  Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2018-05-04 06:47 -0700
          Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2018-05-03 22:07 +0000
            Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2018-05-05 14:11 -0700
          Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" Juho Julkunen <giaotanj@hotmail.com> - 2018-05-04 16:48 +0300
      Re: "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books" David Johnston <davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> - 2018-05-03 20:21 -0600

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#491753

Lawrence Watt-Evans <misenchantedpress@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 4 May 2018 19:41:37 -0000 (UTC), D B Davis <g@crcomp.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>>    Fair warning. This thread's about to take a turn for the worse.
>>Decent folk will find little of wholesome value beneath this point.



>>    Still with me? Hitchcock movie fans owe it to themselves to see the
>>2012 biopic _Hitchcock_. The biopic tells the story of how Hitch makes
>>the movie about the eponymous _Psycho_ (Block).
>>    Early on Hitch decides to purchase all available copies of the Block
>>in order to deny people the opportunity to read it for themselves. Both
>>the Block and the movie are based upon a sick, twisted, piece-of-work
>>named Ed Gein. [1] You need to know a little about Gein before we
>>proceed so you may want to take a quick peek at his Wikipedia bio if you
>>never heard of Gein before.
>>    In the biopic Hitch hosts a kaffeeklatsch presser to announce his
>>intentions for _Psycho_ the movie. He passes around some Ed Gein crime
>>scene photos. A general consensus of disgust registers on all of the
>>faces in the room. They hate it. But, as Hitch wryly notes, "They can't
>>take their eyes off of it, can they?"
>>    That's sort of how dystopic literature grabs me. It's hard for me to
>>take my eyes off of it.
>>    Joss #himtoo Whedon tells viewers to "bring your own subtext" when
>>they watch a Whedon movie. It seems that PKD more-or-less tells readers
>>to "bring your own paranoia" when you read his dystopic fiction.
>>
>>Note.
>>
>>1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein
>
> A nitpick and a bit of literary trivia:
>
> It's Bloch, not Block.  Lawrence Block, the mystery writer, spells it
> with a K, but Robert Bloch used an H.
>
> As for the trivia:  Bloch wrote _Psycho_ based on early newspaper
> accounts of Ed Gein's crimes; he didn't have most of the gruesome
> details.  I sometimes wonder what he (and later Hitchcock) would have
> produced had Bloch known all that sick stuff before writing his novel.

_In Cold Blood_ (Capote) strikes pretty close to home, for me. Beings
some of my extended family farms the part of Kansas where the quadruple
murder occurred.
    Capote was a warped, but gifted author. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is
one of my favorites. He apparently indulged in poetic license in some 
parts of _In Cold Blood_, which remains unread by me thus far.
    Gein lends credibility to the criminal cannibal clan that appears in
"The Heirs of Sawney Beane" (Watt-Evans). My wife just naturally accepts
that psychopaths are a fact-of-life and you never know when you're going
to run into one. Situational awareness, which is its own form of
intelligence, is everything in such encounters.
   The red fox spotted by me yesterday while walking my dog around a 
nearby watering hole, was certainly situationally aware. It took to the
high ground and never took its eyes off of me.
 
✍

Thank you,

-- 
Don

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#491758

On Saturday, May 5, 2018 at 10:12:45 AM UTC-4, D B Davis wrote:
> Lawrence Watt-Evans <misenchantedpress@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 May 2018 19:41:37 -0000 (UTC), D B Davis <g@crcomp.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>    Fair warning. This thread's about to take a turn for the worse.
> >>Decent folk will find little of wholesome value beneath this point.
> 
> 
> 
> >>    Still with me? Hitchcock movie fans owe it to themselves to see the
> >>2012 biopic _Hitchcock_. The biopic tells the story of how Hitch makes
> >>the movie about the eponymous _Psycho_ (Block).
> >>    Early on Hitch decides to purchase all available copies of the Block
> >>in order to deny people the opportunity to read it for themselves. Both
> >>the Block and the movie are based upon a sick, twisted, piece-of-work
> >>named Ed Gein. [1] You need to know a little about Gein before we
> >>proceed so you may want to take a quick peek at his Wikipedia bio if you
> >>never heard of Gein before.
> >>    In the biopic Hitch hosts a kaffeeklatsch presser to announce his
> >>intentions for _Psycho_ the movie. He passes around some Ed Gein crime
> >>scene photos. A general consensus of disgust registers on all of the
> >>faces in the room. They hate it. But, as Hitch wryly notes, "They can't
> >>take their eyes off of it, can they?"
> >>    That's sort of how dystopic literature grabs me. It's hard for me to
> >>take my eyes off of it.
> >>    Joss #himtoo Whedon tells viewers to "bring your own subtext" when
> >>they watch a Whedon movie. It seems that PKD more-or-less tells readers
> >>to "bring your own paranoia" when you read his dystopic fiction.
> >>
> >>Note.
> >>
> >>1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein
> >
> > A nitpick and a bit of literary trivia:
> >
> > It's Bloch, not Block.  Lawrence Block, the mystery writer, spells it
> > with a K, but Robert Bloch used an H.
> >
> > As for the trivia:  Bloch wrote _Psycho_ based on early newspaper
> > accounts of Ed Gein's crimes; he didn't have most of the gruesome
> > details.  I sometimes wonder what he (and later Hitchcock) would have
> > produced had Bloch known all that sick stuff before writing his novel.
> 
> _In Cold Blood_ (Capote) strikes pretty close to home, for me. Beings
> some of my extended family farms the part of Kansas where the quadruple
> murder occurred.
>     Capote was a warped, but gifted author. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is
> one of my favorites. He apparently indulged in poetic license in some 
> parts of _In Cold Blood_, which remains unread by me thus far.


It's generally considered one of the first "non-fiction novels"
which mingled journalism with novelistic techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fiction_novel

>     Gein lends credibility to the criminal cannibal clan that appears in
> "The Heirs of Sawney Beane" (Watt-Evans). My wife just naturally accepts
> that psychopaths are a fact-of-life and you never know when you're going
> to run into one. Situational awareness, which is its own form of
> intelligence, is everything in such encounters.
>    The red fox spotted by me yesterday while walking my dog around a 
> nearby watering hole, was certainly situationally aware. It took to the
> high ground and never took its eyes off of me.
>

When I lived in Milwaukee, working in bookstores, we always
sold a lot of this one:

Edward Gein, America's most bizarre murderer
by Robert H. Gollmar (Charles Hallberg, Delavan WI 1981)

St Martin's brought it out in paperback in 1984.  Gollmar
was the judge who presided over the trial.

Traffic reports on the radio would mention "the Plainfield curve"
on I-43.  Traffic accidents there, which were frequent, would
sometime elicit macabre jokes about "Ed ordering food in again."

Kevin R

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#491812

On 2018-05-05 12:09, Kevrob wrote:

> Traffic reports on the radio would mention "the Plainfield curve"
> on I-43.

Apparently, that's at least a quasi-official name:
<https://projects.511wi.gov/i94northsouth/overview/map-of-improvements/>

-- 
Michael F. Stemper
I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.

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#491698

On Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 11:57:08 PM UTC-4, Titus G wrote:
> On 04/05/18 15:08, D B Davis wrote:
> snip
> > 
> > _Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said_ (PKD) appears on the list. It was
> > recently read by me. It was my fondest hope for it to be The One, the
> > most dystopic of them all, according to me.
> 
> Was the real world as described in "A Scanner Darkly" a contender?
> 
> >      Alas, it turns out that _Cloud Atlas_ (Mitchell) is actually the
> > worst of them all. It's meta-dystopic with a crapsack supernatural. Even
> > after you die its dystopic claws don't let loose. It makes Alice Sheldon
> > look positively Pollyannish in comparison.
> 
> David Mitchell is one of my all time favourites. I have read all his 
> novels and most are five stars. The "crapsack supernatural" continues. 
> It doesn't impose or dominate but has still upset some of his literary 
> critics. It was hardly mentioned at all in "The Thousand Autumns...." 
> and arrived late in "The Bone Clocks" about which I read the criticism. 
> "Slade House" is all horror in "crapsack supernatural" but is a much 
> shorter book. (Although the novels all stand alone, I think they would 
> be better appreciated if read in publication order.)

Cloud Atlas was made into a pretty well-received movie a few years ago.
Most of it was quite pretty as I recall.

Its not a spoiler to say that its structured as taking place in several
time periods sometimes centuries apart, with slightly connected plots,
and the same actors playing different roles in each period. I thought
the end was quite cliched though.

pt

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#491639

In article <XnsA8D7977789136taustingmail@69.16.179.43>,
Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha  <taustinca@gmail.com> wrote:
>Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote in
>news:pcfvkg$t2p$1@dont-email.me: 
>
>> On 5/3/2018 8:56 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books"
>>>>     https://best-sci-fi-books.com/19-best-science-fiction-horro
>>>>     r-books/ 
>>>>
>>>> I have read seven of these.  "Leviathan Wakes", "The Andromeda
>>>> Strain", "The Girl with all the Gifts", "I am Legend", "I have
>>>> no Mouth and I must Scream", "The War Of The Worlds", and "The
>>>> Tommyknockers". 
>>> 
>>> Wouldn't the top 19 (and perhaps the top 40) be H.P. Lovecraft?
>> 
>> Huh ?
>> 
>Are you under the impression that Lovecraft didn't write horror?
>
My son frequently insists that Lovecraft wrote hard SF.

-- 
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

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#491766

On Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 6:30:07 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <XnsA8D7977789136taustingmail@69.16.179.43>,
> Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha  <taustinca@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote in
> >news:pcfvkg$t2p$1@dont-email.me: 
> >
> >> On 5/3/2018 8:56 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> >>> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
> >>>> "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books"
> >>>>     https://best-sci-fi-books.com/19-best-science-fiction-horro
> >>>>     r-books/ 
> >>>>
> >>>> I have read seven of these.  "Leviathan Wakes", "The Andromeda
> >>>> Strain", "The Girl with all the Gifts", "I am Legend", "I have
> >>>> no Mouth and I must Scream", "The War Of The Worlds", and "The
> >>>> Tommyknockers". 
> >>> 
> >>> Wouldn't the top 19 (and perhaps the top 40) be H.P. Lovecraft?
> >> 
> >> Huh ?
> >> 
> >Are you under the impression that Lovecraft didn't write horror?
> >
> My son frequently insists that Lovecraft wrote hard SF.

I agree. Some stories are clearly SF, and certainly "hard" by 1920s-30s standards.

William Hyde

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#491699

In article <XnsA8D7977789136taustingmail@69.16.179.43>, 
taustinca@gmail.com says...
> 
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:pcfvkg$t2p$1@dont-email.me: 
> 
> > On 5/3/2018 8:56 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> >> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
> >>> "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books"
> >>>     https://best-sci-fi-books.com/19-best-science-fiction-horro
> >>>     r-books/ 
> >>>
> >>> I have read seven of these.  "Leviathan Wakes", "The Andromeda
> >>> Strain", "The Girl with all the Gifts", "I am Legend", "I have
> >>> no Mouth and I must Scream", "The War Of The Worlds", and "The
> >>> Tommyknockers". 
> >> 
> >> Wouldn't the top 19 (and perhaps the top 40) be H.P. Lovecraft?
> > 
> > Huh ?
> > 
> Are you under the impression that Lovecraft didn't write horror?

Not a lot of it was book length, though.

_At the Mountains of Madness_ probably should be there, though.

-- 
Juho Julkunen

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#491659

On 2018-05-03 7:56 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>> "19 Best Science Fiction Horror Books"
>>     https://best-sci-fi-books.com/19-best-science-fiction-horror-books/
>>
>> I have read seven of these.  "Leviathan Wakes", "The Andromeda Strain",
>> "The Girl with all the Gifts", "I am Legend", "I have no Mouth and I
>> must Scream", "The War Of The Worlds", and "The Tommyknockers".
> 
> Wouldn't the top 19 (and perhaps the top 40) be H.P. Lovecraft?
> 

Hell no.  Lovecraft had some interesting ideas, but only a few really 
great stories.

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