Arthur lists the reasons why he despises this third-rate author.
God damn you, Brian Lumley. Your brick-sized tomes weigh down the horror section in every bookshop I go to and all-too-sparse shelf space from superior writers. Every time you decide to write another homage to Lovecraft you manage to make the Cthulhu Mythos look even more ridiculous. I mean, come on, Azathoth as a nuclear explosion? Nyarlathotep as a telepathic gestalt? Kthanid, Cthulhu's good twin brother (who looks like Cthulhu only he's all sparkly)? Ramsey Campbell cut his teeth writing Lovecraft fan fiction but at least he didn't crap all over the territory while he was doing it.
Damn you for writing those idiotic, substandard Dreamlands stories as part of your ever-increasing series of Lovecraft pastiches. Given that the Dreamlands were originally Lovecraft writing as a third-rate Lord Dunsany imitator, that must make you a sixth-rate Dunsany imitator, and God does it show. It takes work to make the Dreamlands as dreary and generic as you have; not even Lovecraft himself was able to make it that dull.
And while we're still thinking about your Lovecraft fetish, damn you for writing a metaplot for the Cthulhu Mythos. Your whole "the Mythos is a time loop! The Old Ones get free only to get imprisoned again for the crime of breaking free and trying to take revenge on their oppressors!" manages to do two things: firstly, it outdoes August Derleth's attempts to suck out the horror and cosmic terror of Cthulhu Mythos (heck, the return of the Old Ones turns out to not affect humanity at all in the long run), and secondly it manages to make the Old Ones look like the good guys.
Damn you for the Necroscope series. You had a good seed for a horror story with your depictions of vampires in them, but you managed to ruin it with ridiculous puns ("ESPionage?" ESPionage???? Come on.), random Lovecraftian wankery, too-long descriptions of irrelvant crap, substandard spy shenanigans, idiotic conversations with the dead, the ridiculous concept of the Mobius Continuum ("you can go into another dimension if you memorise the right maths!") and your ever-present tendency to write 100 pages when 10 will do. I kept getting the impression that you'd have preferred to write fantasy epics, and lo and behold! Your Vampire World Necroscope series looks like a fantasy epic written by someone who likes the idea of body horror but isn't very good at making it genuinely scary.
Speaking of Necroscope and its spin-offs, screw you for tying them in with the Lovecraft mythos. You almost succeeded at creating your own work that stands separately from that of your influences, and you fucked it up for no good reason.
Every time I read one of your books I think "Wow, this guy really wants his books to be made into a movie". It must have galled you that nobody's picked up House of Doors when Cube became a hit with such a very similar premise. The fact is though, Brian, you just don't write very good stories and your characters make your hero HPL's look nuanced and well-characterised.
Screw you for embodying everything that's killing the horror genre.
Damn you for writing those idiotic, substandard Dreamlands stories as part of your ever-increasing series of Lovecraft pastiches. Given that the Dreamlands were originally Lovecraft writing as a third-rate Lord Dunsany imitator, that must make you a sixth-rate Dunsany imitator, and God does it show. It takes work to make the Dreamlands as dreary and generic as you have; not even Lovecraft himself was able to make it that dull.
And while we're still thinking about your Lovecraft fetish, damn you for writing a metaplot for the Cthulhu Mythos. Your whole "the Mythos is a time loop! The Old Ones get free only to get imprisoned again for the crime of breaking free and trying to take revenge on their oppressors!" manages to do two things: firstly, it outdoes August Derleth's attempts to suck out the horror and cosmic terror of Cthulhu Mythos (heck, the return of the Old Ones turns out to not affect humanity at all in the long run), and secondly it manages to make the Old Ones look like the good guys.
Damn you for the Necroscope series. You had a good seed for a horror story with your depictions of vampires in them, but you managed to ruin it with ridiculous puns ("ESPionage?" ESPionage???? Come on.), random Lovecraftian wankery, too-long descriptions of irrelvant crap, substandard spy shenanigans, idiotic conversations with the dead, the ridiculous concept of the Mobius Continuum ("you can go into another dimension if you memorise the right maths!") and your ever-present tendency to write 100 pages when 10 will do. I kept getting the impression that you'd have preferred to write fantasy epics, and lo and behold! Your Vampire World Necroscope series looks like a fantasy epic written by someone who likes the idea of body horror but isn't very good at making it genuinely scary.
Speaking of Necroscope and its spin-offs, screw you for tying them in with the Lovecraft mythos. You almost succeeded at creating your own work that stands separately from that of your influences, and you fucked it up for no good reason.
Every time I read one of your books I think "Wow, this guy really wants his books to be made into a movie". It must have galled you that nobody's picked up House of Doors when Cube became a hit with such a very similar premise. The fact is though, Brian, you just don't write very good stories and your characters make your hero HPL's look nuanced and well-characterised.
Screw you for embodying everything that's killing the horror genre.
