This was the biggest scam I read in recent memory.
It was introduced to me as some kind of proto-lovecraftian fever dream exploring the strange faraway lands of the titular King in Yellow, and it started out like Lovecraftian stories often do - upper society gentlemen of impeccable pedigree getting tangled up in the strange and occult. But after a few stories, of having hinted of the strangeness to come, the whole occult business was dropped, and the rest of the book was bog-standard Victorian romantic short stories.
I'd say you can get as much from the Wikipedia article and the poem, as you'd from getting the book.'
If you want the experience of exploring a weird and strange realm, I'd recommend 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' from the man himself.
I think the stories inspired by KiY, like James Blish's "More Light" are better than the ones in Chambers' book. Chambers' genius was in the creation of a work (the eponymous King In Yellow play) that induced insanity. This influenced a lot of later authors such as HPL with his fictitious Necronomicon.
Such a fascinating book. I remember first reading it because of True Detective season 1. I was pretty into Lovecraft at the time. The first short story is still great
"The Repairer of Reputations", is such a weird story. I love that fact that it takes place in 1920's NYC, 30 years in the future from when it was written (1985).
It's not quite science fiction, though. The descriptions of New York aren't dark or dreary, like one would expect from a short story that usually firmly placed in the horror/weird fiction category. There's these hints that something is not quite right, though. like the presence of these "Government Lethal Chambers" in Washington Square Park where, I guess one could kill them selves publicly. It's hinted at, but not really addressed further. it's these little details that color the story and make it uncomfortable. It seems tht United States that has embraced authoritarianism, and society social structure is heavily enforced by a militarized government.
Yes, it is always fun to read things set in a future time from the author's perspective long after the future date is past. I remember plenty of SF growing up in the 1970s about the "future world" of the 1990s or even the year 2000. But KiY with its "future date" in the 1920s is the earliest I've encountered.
Yeah, its those underdeveloped details that actually make it awesome. It just hints a world that is quite different and _maybe_ that has everything to do with the play/book? Its quite uncomfortable indeed. I really like it.
There is a deeper inspiration as well I believe. It seemed to me like the play-within-a-play that drives you mad is exactly what we see happening to the main characters in TD1.
Lovecraft remains an underrated sci-fi pioneer as well as a horror writer. His depictions of the alien are notable for being truly alien. A lot of his "eldritch horrors" weren't necessarily evil so much as so alien that their value systems, motives, and conception of morality are incomprehensible to human beings. This might well be the case if we meet real aliens. We'd be able to converse about objective things like math and physics but beyond that we might find our worldviews to be different to the point of near mutual incomprehensibility.
A lot of later sci-fi actually retreated to more human-like familiar notions of the alien. Very few sci-fi works have explored Lovecraftian aliens -- maybe Arrival (notable for the aliens being benevolent but Lovecraftian), The Expanse (though the alien machines use simulated human minds to talk to us, making them seem familiar), Alien (the Xenomorph), and a few others. Edit: the Blindsight series by Peter Watts is another.
The Alien franchise is a huge missed opportunity for failing to develop the Xenomorph as an alien race. I always thought it'd be neat if they turned out to be intelligent insect-like hive-mind aliens that just don't realize they're doing anything "bad" because they don't understand our concept of individuality. In their environment using some of the drones of another hive to reproduce would be fine, even a kind of social interaction, so when they do it to us think they're saying hello. Their apparent violence is just the ultra-utilitarian behavior of drones. Ripley's comment in Aliens about "I don't know which one is worse" might have been a hook for that. We might have eventually learned that our sociopaths were, in fact, quite a bit more "evil" than the xenomorphs, who are just very unlike us biologically.
I'm aware of some of Lovecraft's personal shitty views, but I think it's unfair to judge people from another time by the standards of this age. His views would not have been unusual for his place and time, and they only really show up at the edges of his works anyway. I read all his works and never really picked up on those subtexts until it was pointed out to me later.
There was a long period of time where he _was_ ignored and underrated, up until 1981, when Stephen King gave him a shoutout in his book about horror writing (Danse Macabre) and the Call of Cthulhu RPG was published. Until then, his books were entirely an underground phenomenon, and even then it wasn't until the early 2000s or late 1990s that Cthulhu was anything but a shibboleth for ultra-nerds.
He was sort of a perfect fit for the generation of kids raised on computer games and RPGs that had voracious appetites for new mythologies.
It is funny how once you get tagged with "underrated" it just stays with you forever, though.
Underrated? No. Underdiscussed or undertaught, yes. His overt racism makes open discussion difficult. But anyone who reads horror seriously very much appreciates his work.
It is possibly a religious thing. The puritan/protestant influence on american culture tends towards down-to-earth fiction that avoids discussion of fantastic situations that rub up against religion. Lovecraft's basic mythology is that there are things older than the earth. That conflicts with creationism and so would be a shunned in 18/19th century america. Such things certainly would not be found in school libraries.
The old people here might remember the anti-magic push in the 90s, the satanic panics and efforts to stop Halloween. Midi-chlorians were part of this, removing magic in place of scientific explanations. Then harry potter swept the movement away.
AIUI France took sci-fi somewhat more seriously than the anglosphere did from earlier on (maybe due to Verne?); in English-speaking countries it was really seen as pure genre fiction with negligible literary merit until quite recently.
Pelgrane Press has a wonderful Yellow King role-playing game (tabletop) that would be worth checking out if you're a fan of TTRPGs, stories and other related media.
I've only been able to play the solo (single player) RPGs of that publisher. There is a sample one as well that is pretty awesome. I wish I had a group to play the full RPG with.
I really like this book actually, not sure why but I do keep going back to it too. Also there are strong references to it and the sentiments of it in a video game called Signalis actually.
It can be a bit of a hard read though sometimes too I find.
> not sure why but I do keep going back to it too.
Well.
> "If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow."
...where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask
So good, So many question. So many allusions to things that aren't explained but feel whole, but unknowable. They exist, but not for you.
There is something about this story, isn't there? Even among Lovecraftian lit, it stands apart. Not exactly a god-like monster, just a presence. Something malignant, whatever it is, wherever it is, that just gets mentioned from time to time. And it's yellow of all colors.
I'm confident that the Frenzied Flame / Chaos [0] in the game Elden Ring is loosely based on it, yellow themed, Eye of Yelough, etc. May chaos take the world!
I love this book. I have a a music project thats based on the themes around this particular book, and the metafiction inside the stories in this book. (90's Warp Records influence Braindance/IDM)
I'm afraid I need someone to explain to me why it's a good book. :(
Genuinely, I remember reading first four stories after playing Signalis and I was very unimpressed. Especially with the first story, where I felt it was rambling for the sake of rambling.
I'm genuinely asking, really. If it matters I've been reading it in translation.
Women writers started doing it to hide from sexism when judging books by their covers, and then men started doing it to imitate great women writers. Now it's traditional in literature.
This book doing the rounds again reminds me of the ever relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/610/ Everyone likes to think of themselves as special somehow, so authors of fiction write stories to play up to that.
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
It was introduced to me as some kind of proto-lovecraftian fever dream exploring the strange faraway lands of the titular King in Yellow, and it started out like Lovecraftian stories often do - upper society gentlemen of impeccable pedigree getting tangled up in the strange and occult. But after a few stories, of having hinted of the strangeness to come, the whole occult business was dropped, and the rest of the book was bog-standard Victorian romantic short stories.
I'd say you can get as much from the Wikipedia article and the poem, as you'd from getting the book.'
If you want the experience of exploring a weird and strange realm, I'd recommend 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' from the man himself.