The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales
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The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales
by Mark Samuels
Publication Date: 16th March, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-907681-05-9
Paperback, 178 pages, 8.0 x 5.25 x 0.41 inches
Cryptic and potent languages, bizarre cults, mysteries that span the gulf between life and death, occult influences that reverberate through history like a dying echo, irresistible cosmic decay, forces of nightmare that distort reality itself, gateways to worlds where esoteric knowledge rots the future.
Here, from Mark Samuels, the author of Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes and modern exemplar of mystical horror, is a collection of tales that forms a veritable Rosetta Stone for scholars of cosmic wonder and terror.
Contents
Losenef Express
The Man Who Collected Machen
THYXXOLQU
The Black Mould
Xapalpa
Glickman the Bibliophile
A Question of Obeying Orders
Nor Unto Death Utterly by Edmund Bertrand
A Contaminated Text
The Age of Decayed Futurity
The Tower
About The Author
Mark Samuels is a London-based writer of horror and fantastic fiction in the tradition of Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft.
Born in Clapham, South London, he was first published in 1988, and his short stories often focus on detailing a shadowy modern London in which the protagonists gradually discover a dark and terrifying reality behind the mundane urban world. His works have been praised by Thomas Ligotti and John Pelan amongst others.
What People Say
About Mark Samuels’ previous work:
“In The White Hands, Mark Samuels earns a reputation as the contemporary British master of visionary weirdness.”
- Ramsey Campbell, Postscripts
“An impressive debut collection, The White Hands is an unexpected dark miracle of invention, tradition, and archetypal revision…. The author exhibits in this carefully arranged onslaught of weird fiction individualistic taste, thoughtfulness, and a strict control of literary subtlety. Re-envisioning the archetypal images and concerns of traditional supernatural fiction with distinctly contemporary, urban settings and bleak if heartfelt characters, Samuels weaves a deceptively subtle, menacing web of wizardry.”
William Simmons, Hellnotes
“…dark, tragic, ominous but ultimately a reflection on ourselves and the society we live in. Mark Samuels, like Thomas Ligotti, looks beyond the supernatural into some dark void which lurks in our minds, he then proceeds to show us the really scary stuff that lurks in that darkness. [The White Hands] is a marvelous collection…”
Highlander’s Book Reviews
“The Man Who Collected Machen & Other Stories is possibly Samuels’s finest collection to date. Like most writers who are confident of their own abilities Samuels is not afraid to acknowledge influences. Hints of Machen, Poe, Lovecraft, Borges and Ligotti are to be found in these stories, but the dominant figure is always Samuels. … What all these stories possess is a rich literary and intellectual subtext.”
Reggie Oliver, Wormwood
Online Reviews