/lit/ - Literature

>>10217381
>>10217455

I think the first Penguin collection from around 2000 opened up Lovecraft's readership a lot. I also think he's more approachable than Poe and Ambrose Bierce and the rest of the 19thC writers, which helps.

As for Clark Ashton Smith, he has always been obscure; his estate have been be sloth, and he wasn't championed in the same way as HPL and REH, by Derleth and Sprague Camp. Authorised and restored texts from him appeared only recently, along with the 2014 Penguin volume';the only way is up. More people will be discovering him - he is in some ways a superior writer to HPL, a better stylist and more worldly voice, but an ideal complement, and frankly a must for a weird fiction collection, but anybody with an interest in fantasy should also consider his Hyperborea and Zothique stories

>>9931398
>Science Fantasy/Dying Earth genre

Nightwings by Robert Silverberg (it won a Hugo); Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique story cycle, it's ridiculous how good those stories are; Leigh Brackett's Mars cycle e.g. Sword Of Rhiannon, Dying Mars instead of Dying Earth.

In terms of inspiration Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias, for me, captures some of fallen grandeur of the dying earth aesthetic. As does Lord Byron's 'Darkness', written in the wake of the volcanic eruption at Mount Tamboura, its gigantic ash cloud reducing temperatures globally and creating a world famine. Excerpt;

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;

>>9866834
Those developers should read Clark Ashton Smith. Hyperborea is ripe for a videogame treatment, a pre-glacial bronze age of a first civilisation of wizards, thieves, dead cities, and weird Gods from outer space.

>>9866814
Night Land is probably public domain, and it's always been a writer's/critics favourite. It might also be the first 'dying earth' fiction in prose (there is Lord Byron's Darkness in poetry) and that still is a popular idea for SF and movies.

Number of the beast >>9866668
>>9866681
>>9866681
>>9866684
>>9866698