THE DEEP ONES: Summer 2020 Discussion Schedule

1-Jul "Le Pied de momie" (1840) by Theophile Gautier
8-Jul "Green Tea" (1869) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
15-Jul "The Hand" (1883) by Guy de Maupassant
22-Jul "The History of the Young Man with Spectacles" (1895) by Arthur Machen
29-Jul "Potarnees, Beholder of Ocean" (1910) by Lord Dunsany
5-Aug "The Wandering Train" (1919) by Stefan Grabinski
12-Aug "The White Ship" (1919) by H.P. Lovecraft
19-Aug "The Demoniac Goat" (1947) by M.P. Dare
26-Aug "The Button Molder" (1979) by Fritz Leiber
2-Sep "The Sect of the Idiot" (1988) by Thomas Ligotti
9-Sep "The Beautiful Gelreesh" (2003) by Jeffrey Ford
16-Sep "The White Hands" (2003) by Mark Samuels
23-Sep "Vastation" (2010) by Laird Barron
30-Sep "Erbach's Emporium of Automata" (2014) by D.P. Watt

There were 6 nominators and at least 11 selectors, with the number of individual nominations up significantly over recent quarters.

Top net vote was 10 for "Green Tea," and there was a cutoff at net-6 votes, with the Leiber being scheduled as a sole 1970s selection and nominations of 21st-century work from Will Murray and Sean O'Brien being deferred to a re-vote next quarter.

Thanks, as always, for keeping the wheels turning.

Apart from my own nominations, nothing here I've read before, altho the only new authors to me would be Dare, Samuels, and Watt.

Nothing from the 1920s or ' 30s, which is decidely unusual for us! Strong showings, OTOH, for the 19th and 21st centuries.

I think the desirability of online sources skews towards the 19th and 21st centuries over the 20th.

Our library system apparently has re-opened so my voting may shift accordingly next quarter. I've not yet visited my local, however, and of course there could well be another wave of closings in the fall.

But I do like the idea of very old and very new selections this quarter. I think the new authors for me are the same as >2 AndreasJ:.

Thanks for tabulating! I've read 5 of these, and only one of them recently. Good point about online availability.

I might use this Lord Dunsany selection as an excuse to start reading his work - I haven't read any yet but I read his name a lot as a heavy influence of Lovecraft etc. Is there a good collection of his recommended for someone with no experience of his work beyond one story - How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles?

>6 cd96:
I don't have a recommendation as to which collection is best to start, but if you decide to read Book of Wonder it's crucial you have an edition with the original illustrations by Sime. Unusually, Sime created the illustrations first at Dunsany's request, and with no input from Dunsany as to what they should contain. Dunsany then wrote stories to fit the illustrations. Reading the stories without reference to the images is possible, but it's much better to have the illustrations available (online if not in your edition of the book).

>6 cd96:

If you do e-books, all of Dunsany's early work (which is what inspired HPL and what's of the most Weird relevance) is available for free at Gutenberg.

If not, you could do worse than to start with the Chaosium collection The Complete Pegana, but it unfortunately doesn't have the particular story we're reading in July.

For an edition of The Book of Wonder with the Sime illustrations you could go for the Tolkien's Bookshelf edition (which also includes The Last Book of Wonder), but that doesn't help you wrt to "Poltarnees" either.

>6 cd96:, >8 AndreasJ:

For a collection that actually contains this story, A Dreamer's Tales (where it was first collected back in 1910) has been republished lots of times over the years, and various editions are available e.g. at Amazon.

(Oh, and looking at ISFDB, I note that the 1910 date I gave in the nomination thread is wrong; it's the date it was collected, but the original magazine publication was in 1908.)