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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   2572 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What is some horror that emphasizes the power of an entity — sheer power that provides fear and awe? Do I just read Lovecraft? Any other great contenders? Or anything of horror, like a particularly good descriptive historical account of something terror and awe inducing?

I found Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' new Nosferatu movie to be absolutely menacing. He is not a cosmic horror like in Lovecraft, but you can absolutely feel him emanating raw, evil power when he is on screen.

Does There Is No Antimemetics Division count?

Or some of the books in The Laundry Files? Though this one is more played for comedy.

One other arguable contender is NSFW (and I am going to err on the side of caution, not seeing anything one way or another in the site rules, and so not mention it beyond this sentence.)

You should read Stross's first novel 'Scratch Monkey', which is kind of like a hard-sf take on cosmic horror. It's a little rough but it's actually pretty good. It's available for free on his website..

There's also a paper copy if you're a masochist.

I can't think of anything I've read from Lovecraft that really emphasizes power. I will second the Chernobyl miniseries and Blindsight. I'd recommend Gateway by Frederik Pohl, the climax of the book really captures the powerlessness of humans against a specific phenomena.

Thematically I wouldn't say Lovecraft emphasizes alien power so much as human powerlessness; it's just that those are two sides of the same coin. His is a universe where humans are alive not because we're strong enough to survive so much as because we're weak enough to go unnoticed.

The first Gateway book is probably a good answer in the same sense as the Chernobyl miniseries; I'd say the final book in the series ("The Annals of the Heechee") is a good answer in other ways. I don't think I can say much more about the distinction without spoilers for both, though.

The rest of the Gateway series isn't as good as the first book, though - bigger ideas but without the same depth of characterization.

HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries does a great job at this. It’s a lightly fictionalized docudrama about a real event, but it feels like a cosmic horror story. And it really nails the feelings you mention, to the point that you actually start to feel your stomach drop every time you see the reactor. I’m sure many of the people here can point to errors in accuracy or history that it made, but as a work of horror fiction it’s just great.

Sci-fi with only touches of horror, but A Fire Upon The Deep was pretty good at this. The worldbuilding is a bit contrived, but cleverly so and no more than necessary to make the power+horror plausible.

I'd recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts. The aliens are alien, far beyond on us, and don't particularly like us.

Great book, one of the most surprising and enjoyable reads of the last 5 years for me.

Without spoiling too much, Watts' aliens not just don't like us, they are nothing us, which is rather terrifying and very Lovecraftian - an entity who is entirely incapable of caring for humanity's existence at all, and possessing powers well beyond humanity's understanding.

Robert E Howard's original Conan stories have a lot of almost Lovecraftian horrors in them. I know they had a correspondence, and a loose understanding that their stories could conceivably occur in the same world. Nothing explicitly shows up (to my knowledge) that crosses from one author's fiction to another's. But there are often shared themes.

Some of his other stories like Solomon Kane had some of those elements too.

Blame, Biomega, most Tsutomu Nehei, especially his earlier works seems like it might fit this category. Possibly the "three shakes" chapter of A Sum of All Fears? Chernobyl, come to think of it, which chains to Roadside Picnic.

Inhuman creatures that have unlimited power over you? Just read /r/fednews

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