Search results for ""author xavier aldana reyes""

From the imaginations of Gothic short-story writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft came one of the most complex of villains - the mad scientist. Promethean Horrors presents some of the greatest mad scientists ever created, as each cautionary tale explores the consequences of pushing nature too far. These savants take many forms: there are malcontents who strive to create poisonous humans; technologists obsessed with genetic splicing; mesmerists interested in the way consciousness operates after death and inventors who believe in a hidden reality. United by an unhealthy obsession with wanting to reach beyond their circumstances, these mad scientists are marked by their magical capacity to alter the present, a gift that always comes at a price. . .

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The gothic, particularly in its contemporary incarnations, is often constructed around largely disembodied concepts such as spectrality or the haunted. Body Gothic offers a counter-narrative that reinstates the importance of viscerality to the gothic mode. It argues that contemporary discourses surrounding our bodies are crucial to our understanding of the social messages in fictional mutilation and of the pleasures we may derive from it. This book considers a number of literary and cinematic movements that have, over the past three decades, purposely turned the body into a meaningful gothic topos. Each chapter in Body Gothic is dedicated to a different corporeal subgenre: splatterpunk, body horror, the new avant-pulp, the slaughterhouse novel, torture porn and surgical horror are all covered in its pages. Close readings of key texts by Clive Barker, Richard Laymon, Joseph D'Lacey, Matthew Stokoe, Tony White or Stanley Manly are provided alongside in-depth analyses of landmark films such as Re-Animator (1985), The Fly (1986), Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), The Human Centipede (2011) and American Mary (2012). Contents Introduction: From Gothic Bodies to Body Gothic Chapter 1 – Splatterpunk Chapter 2 – Body Horror Chapter 3 – The New Avant-Pulp Chapter 4 – The Slaughterhouse Novel Chapter 5 – Torture Porn Chapter 6 – Surgical Horror Conclusion: The Gothic and the Body Notes Works Cited Filmography

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The reputation of early-twentieth century British writer Algernon Blackwood currently resides with his two novellas `The Willows' (1907) and `The Wendigo' (1910), and with good reason. They are perfectly crafted horror tales that convey feelings of mystical otherness; they hint at the possibility that there are forces which lie beyond the confines of our everyday understanding of the world and which may, given the right circumstances, manifest to humans. In `The Willows', `unearthly' creatures are responsible for arousing `some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything' the protagonists have ever known. In `The Wendigo', fear of the titular monster from Native American folklore is used to create a discombobulating atmosphere of dread. In both novellas, as in many other of Blackwood's fictions, wild landscapes (a desolate island, a labyrinthine forest) act as more than enhancing backdrops to the action - they become essential elements to the generation of anxiety and metaphysical awe. Both stories have become staples of the weird literary tradition, of which Blackwood was undoubtedly a modern master. Blackwood's slow and measured prose, deeply psychological and descriptive, grants his fiction an intrinsic cumulative effect. It both builds up to potent climaxes and brilliantly chronicles the aftermath of horrific encounters. His poignant narrative pace, sparse use of action and marked interest in how the mind filters perceptions, rather than on objective physical descriptions, makes Blackwood truly unique. Only a handful of other stories in horror fiction manage to conjure up the type of uncanny ambience found in `The Willows' and `The Wendigo'. This is why they are included in this collection.

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'I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence.' Beyond the genre-defining influence of Dracula, Bram Stoker was also a master of the short story form. This new collection of the author's tales represents his diverse interests in the macabre and uncanny, ranging from the hallucinatory and dreamlike in 'The Shadow Builder' and 'In the Valley of the Shadow' to the more overtly horrifying in the mini- masterpieces of 'The Judge's House' and 'The Burial of the Rats'. Alongside acknowledged classics of the horror short story canon, this new volume also includes obscurities such as the darkly comic 'Old Hoggen: A Mystery' and the morbid fairy tale 'The Castle of the King' to reflect the full brilliance of the legendary writer.

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H. P. Lovecraft is best known for his tales of cosmic horror, in which unnameable nightmares torment the limits of human consciousness. This mastery of weird and unspeakable terror is underpinned by the writer's sizeable contribution to Gothic fiction. This new collection of Lovecraft's stories is the first to concentrate on his Gothic writing and includes tales from the beginning to the very end of the author's career. The writer's weird vision mixes brilliantly with the trappings of earlier Gothic horror to form innovative mosaics of frightful fiction that will long haunt the reader's subconscious.

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The vampire is one of the great enemies of humanity, a nightmarish figure who feeds on the living in order to sustain themselves. Born from ancient folklore, writers in the nineteenth century gave form to the vampire as we know it today. Still haunting our subconscious in the twentieth century, a new wave of writers continued to develop the imagery and traditions of the vampire -- and the vampire continued to evolve. From John Polidori's iconic short story 'The Vampyre' and tales of parasitic female companions to experimental and freshly thrilling takes by Robert Bloch, Angela Carter and Anne Rice, this new collection sets out to present the enrapturing range of the vampire story and our undying fascination with the monster at its heart.

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A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach. This new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive `occult detective' character Carnacki, the ghost finder. A master of conjuring atmosphere, when the horror inevitably arrives it is delivered with breathtaking pace and the author's unique evocation of overwhelming panic.

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Sheridan Le Fanu was lauded by contemporaries such as M. R. James for his innovations in the ghost story and mystery genres, and his mastery of conjuring atmosphere and driving stories to thrilling narrative crescendos. And yet, aside from some regularly anthologised short stories and novellas, much of the writer’s fiction remains unknown despite its quality. Aiming to firmly position Sheridan Le Fanu alongside other canonical horror writers published by the British Library, this anthology focuses on some of his lesser-known stories, exploring eight thoroughly Gothic tales of murderous families, dark castles and ghosts whose business with the living remains unfinished.

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