this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
24 points (100.0% liked)

Cosmic Horror

576 readers
39 users here now

A community to discuss Cosmic Horror in it's many forms; books, films, comics, art, TV, music, RPGs, video games etc.

"cosmic horror... is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock... themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries... the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale..."

For more Lovecraft & Mythos-inspired Cosmic Horror:-[email protected]

founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
 

(...)Cosmic horror generally revolves around humanity's contact with an Eldritch Abomination: a being so incomprehensible that merely laying eyes on it is enough to drive a person to the brink of insanity. In many cases, those who have seen the creature are the lucky ones, because they've already cracked. The folks who haven't met it yet must live in constant fear of first contact, which lends cosmic horror stories a delicious ramp of terror that lies in wait. (...)

books:

  • The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R.S. Belcher
  • Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan
  • The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria
  • Beneath by Kristi DeMeester
  • Blindsight by Peter Watts
  • Dead in the Water by Nancy Holder
  • The Croning by Laird Barron
top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I read The Croning because I wanted some cosmic horror and it was one of the most boring books I have ever come across. There's like 10 pages of cosmic horror in there, the rest is mind-numbingly bad.

[–] Lisk91 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Good to know. So far i've read Blindsight, which (although more on a syfy vibe) has a very interesting plot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago