Name: The King in Yellow
ISBN: 9781792038136

The King in Yellow

An important early classic of fantasy/sci-fi. [Main story:] The ill effects of a soul-destroying play, to read which brings doom. A discovery that changes living flesh to stone. The mad adherents of a cult of evil powers from beyond. A lost traveler is suddenly 400 years in the past. Great writing; powerful emotions. Chambers wrote mainly conventional stuff, but not here.

What Hacker News says

ndsipa_pomuNov 2023

Yeah, I haven't read any Derleth, though I am a fan of Charles Stross' Laundry Files series. Also The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers is in my opinion an essential addition to Lovecraft's mythology.

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User23Feb 2023

It always makes me think of Robert W. Chambers' collection The King in Yellow. It's a great read. It also heavily inspired the first season of True Detective.

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rnoordaSep 2021

Fictional books are always fun for me, and one of the things I love about Cthulhu mythos stories- the Necronomicon is well-known, but also Unaussprechlichen Kulten and De Vermis Mysteriis. In a similar, but earlier vein is The King in Yellow from Robert W. Chambers.

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PopeyesDec 2025

James by Percival Everett

Five Decembers by James Kestrel

The Names by Florence Knapp

The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck

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User23Dec 2021

It’s neat that Robert Chambers predicted this well over a century ago in The King in Yellow.

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djurJul 2017

Lovecraft was more directly influenced by writers like Robert Chambers ("The King In Yellow") and Ambrose Bierce ("An Inhabitant Of Carcosa"). And the beings he describe tend to be completely alien, unlike the natural chimeras in the Dictionnaire Infernal and similar works. Even the tentacles and such which are familiar on Lovecraftian horrors tend to be described in ways that distinguish them from the familiar appendages of squids and such.

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