Lovecraft vs. Poe vs. King vs. Barker

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Vote for/post your favorite horror author.

For my money, Brian Lumley is the one and only horror writer who ever made me think... "if this book doesn't clean up in the next 20 pages, I'm gonna put it down - sick, sick, sick"....

It not only improved but became the best book I've ever read.

That was Necroscope - and the sick scene was where the baddie (Boris?) was reading a corpse's final thoughts by sitting on it naked, breaking and sucking the marrow out of its bones.

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You forgot Graham Masterton (my favourite books: Mirror, Tengu, Pariah) and James Herbert (Shrine, The Fog, Domain).

i've not read any h.p. lovecraft or clive barker books. any recommendations?

edgar allan poe makes me feel unclean when i'm reading his stuff...yet, i can't stop reading it...

the shining creeped me out slightly and makes me not want to stay with people in a remote place any more. if i do stay with people in a remote location then i'm hiding all of axes, guns, typewriters, bats etc... in random, unforeseen locations.

I'm not much into the horror genre per se but I do find Lovecraft quite fascinating.
I gave Poe a try but I didn't like his style much and - this is probably stupidly obvious but - I find it easier to relate to the world Lovecraft presents.

I don't think I should vote since I haven't read all and I don't think it's easy to say that one is "better" than all others. . . even if we were to agree on a criteria.

Try The Whisperer in Darkness, The Color Out of Space, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and/or At The Mountains of Madness. Other than The Color Out of Space, which was Lovecraft's himself favourite, they are all nouvelles.
While imagery is a very strong point, bear in mind Lovecraft takes his time to set up the mood (to the point you often already know what's going to happen) and that that which is presumably gruesome is for the most part implied - but then, he does this very well too.

True horror can be evoked by promoting insecurity in the reader as in "The Willows" by Blackwood or "The Horla" by de Maupassant which are old stories but nevertheless very effective. The standard horror creatures in films somehow always rely on teeth or claws to frighten. But in the old film "The Curse of the Demon" a long hotel hallway with doors (hiding who knows what?) is terribly frightening by its ability to evoke a potential of personal horror within each of the viewers. To not know what is out there even in the most innocent object can be more frightening than any monster. Some films such as "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (the one with Donald Southerland) and the John Carpenter version of "The Thing" where one is not sure who is a monster and who is a normal human can be horrifying by establishing total insecurity in the watcher. There is, in each of us, a tendency for paranoia that is the ultimate in generating horror if it can be tapped.

If you find Lovecraft a bit too much, try reading Brian Lumley's Titus Crow books - they're all based on Lovecraft and often have the same monsters.

I R sad Clive Has no votes, he's really good, but I have to go with Lovecraft, lest my avatar turn against me and eat my soul.

Each of the authors has subjective strengths and weaknesses - each are important to literature in very different ways. Bottom line is this - with all due respect to Barker and King, they don't belong in the same category as Poe or even Lovecraft. While Barker/ King are masters of the horror genre, Poe and Lovecraft were not only masters - they were pioneers of multiple genres. The former two may be great players, but the latter two helped establish the very game itself. Poe in particular was spilling out material that was highly controversial and basically avant-garde for his time period. He was ahead of his time, his presence ushered in a whole new era of literary art. Lovecraft was a champion of ideas like cosmicism and helped inspire both horror and science fiction to blossom and later split off into further sub-genres and subsequent realms.

When King and Barker get off the hollywood horror bandwagon and can channel enough creative energy to bring forth entirely new genres of literature, then we'll discuss this. Also, consider this: Poe died at age 40, Lovecraft died at 47, and both men did more for literature in a short amount of time than other writers could dream of accomplishing in an entire lifetime. I voted for Poe, simply because the other three writers wouldn't have been the same without his influence.

Agreed - Lovecraft and Poe were indeed pioneers.

King seemed to have almost single-handedly revived popular horror fiction in the 70s.

The likes of Graham Masterton and James Herbert followed a bit later - though not much later.

i voted king, not because i don't think that poe was a groundbreaker and that lovecraft isn't creepy, but because i remember being horrified by far more king stories, and remember them too. The only lovecraft i remember clearly is "The Colour" , and poe is all one mass of similar stuff in my mind. Barker i just couldn't get into; may try again tho.
Just one recent example; I love (! !) the first few chapters of Dreamcatcher, because of the body, the body as source of fear, (like in Cronenbergs film "The Fly"). It's done better in the book than the film where it is too quick. In the book it is terrifying , the creeping dysfunction of the lost hikers body. Afterwards the book degenerates. A lot of kings best horror is about the body and the ordinary going wrong, whereas poe and lovecraft are too abstract for me.

Koontz, on a good day, like the woman with twins pretending has only one son, because is supposed to have adopted only one child and so one must always hide away. They experience themselves as only one, grow up thinking that they are one person, but in two bits. At his best Koontz writes horrifying stuff about mental torture.

I actually find M R R James' ghost stories pretty horrific too, body or not. That "hand" on the corner of the chair. brrr!

And there is also "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, before either poe or lovecraft. Trying to bring "a body" back to life.

I'm not much of a horror fan, but for me by far the best of these authors is Poe. I've only read one Lovecraft book and it bored me, likewise I don't think that much of King. Barker has good ideas, and the first two thirds or so of Imajica were pretty good (especially the ruin of Yzoderrex), but the ending was dull and conventional, and in everything else I've read by him he either has a good idea and wastes it, or creates a grat ambience and then blows it.

To me, the scariest Lovecraft story is "The Thing on the Doorstep". There's an excellent sequel to it by Peter Cannon called "The Revenge of Azathoth". Other fine stories by Lovecraft acolytes are "The Voice of the Beach" by Ramsey Campbell and "Fat Face" by Michael Shea. I've read somewhere that Stephen King's "The Mist" (one of his finest stories) was an attempt to show what would happen to the earth if Lovecraft's Great Old Ones ever succeeded in dragging it off to another dimension.

Oh, and while we're on the subject: Other (non-Lovecraftian) horror stories that scared the s**t out of me were "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham" by H.G. Wells, "The Scythe" and "The Emissary" by Ray Bradbury, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" by Robert Heinlein, "The End of the Party" and "A Little Place off the Edgware Road" by Graham Greene, "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, "Sleep Is the Enemy" by Anthony Gilbert and "The Jaunt" by Stephen King.

Last edited by Icheb on 02 Feb 2008, 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Poe blows them all out of the water without question.

I'd recommend Tales, which is a collection of short stories by Lovecraft and The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. Hellbound was the first Barker book that I read, but I've heard that The Thief of Always, while kind of a children's book, is good.

I love Stephen King, but after reading Clive Barker's 'Great and Secret Show' and its sequel, as well as his other novels made me vote for him in the poll. Barker's novels are so richly detailed its like the literary equivalent of eating chocolate.