The DEEP ONES: Fall 2024 Planning Thread

Late start, sorry!

This thread is for nominations and voting on stories for inclusion in the October-December reads in this group. Please feel free to draw on the ongoing brainstorming thread for nominations, but don't limit yourself to items discussed there. There is no further obligation--even to participate in the resulting discussion if a nomination is selected! It's perfectly okay to gamble on stories the nominator has never read, although also welcome for nominators to put up stories they've enjoyed and would like to revisit. In all these years, we've never been known to dog anyone for nominating a story where readers end up taking a dim view of it.

As in past rounds, any story that gets more "No" than "Yes" votes won't make the cut; otherwise they'll be prioritized according to net-yes-minus-no, and the final list will be in OPD sequence. Ties will be broken in favor of author and period variety.

To propose a story for voting, place the title and author between HTML-style angle-bracket tags. The open tag says vote (in brackets); the close tag says /vote (ditto). Multiple polls need multiple posts. If you put the name of the author in double square brackets, it will make it a linked "touchstone" for the LT database, and first publication dates of nominated stories are appreciated. Also welcome are remarks about the story, the author, and your nomination motives, and/or a link to an online version. Here is an example (from a previous thread):


A useful resource for general bibliography info including OPD and inclusion in collections is ISFDB.

You can see a sortable list of all previous discussions here. The persistent brainstorming thread is here. Nominations repeating old discussions will be disqualified, but revival of dormant discussion threads is always welcome. "That is not dead which can eternal lie," etc.

VOTING is scheduled to END on the Autumn Equinox: Sunday, September 22.
Voting for your own nominations is permissible and encouraged.

Held over from tied vote last quarter. Housefulofpaper notes: Publication dates from ISFDB (for book publication in Dark Carnival and then The October Country).

Semi-random pick from The Weird; VanderMeer names it a personal favorite and calls it "all-too-true".

We haven't yet read Schwader, although she's been prolific in 21st-century Yog-Sothothery. This story is set in the American West and it looks like it might be a seasonal offering, since it is likely to be scheduled for December. "Glancing down at the pile of mail--holiday catalogs--her ranch foreman had just brought in, Cassie noticed a brightly colored flier ... COMING FOR CHRISTMAS! the copy promised."
Included in Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, Best of Black Wings, and a couple of Schwader's own collections.

An early Schweitzer tale in a Dunsanian mode: "THERE ONCE was a poet named Obbok who lived in the court of the King of Rhoon." First published in Schiff's Whispers zine, reprinted a few times, and collected in Don't Open This Book!, as well as Schweitzer's Mysteries of the Faceless King.

Originally published as "Where Spirits Gat Them Home" in Shadows. Republished in a couple of Crowley's own collections: Antiquities and Novelties & Souvenirs.

A late Wagner story, first in Whispers V, subsequently in A Lonely Place and many vampire anthologies, the source for its title (like the previous "The River of Night's Dreaming") was in the libretto of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This one concerns reincarnation and combines it in an unexpected way with a supremely traditional sort of gothic horror in a 1970s London setting.

Time for another Northwest Smith story? This one is available online and concerns another encounter of Smith's with what the good folks over at TVTropes would call an Eldritch Abomination.

Ford does a weird western. Online here. In English despite the Spanish title.

A Zothique story we haven't done yet; it concerns a grave robbery gone, inevitably, wrong.

Online here.

A very short story combining the story of the Arimaspians and the griffons with, of all things, book collecting.

Online here.

>6 paradoxosalpha:

This appears to be an online version of "Her Bounty to the Dead" (how legal I do not presume to know).

A tale of Faustian necromancy. First published in the All Hallows APA of the Ghost Story Society, reprinted in Monette's own collection The Bone Key and Paula Guran's New Cthulhu anthology.

Spence was the author of The Encyclopedia of the Occult, sometimes exploited by HPL. This antiquarian ghost story was reprinted in The Shub-Niggurath Cycle, where editor Price selected it for its "effective ... use of the devil-goat motif."

Say no more.

Equinox tomorrow. Last chance for nominations and voting!

I think we barely have enough nominations to cover the quarter at this point.

Making the vote counts now.