It has taken me entirely too long to discover this thread.
If you are comfortable with YA I recommend Robin Jarvis. Pretty much all his books have a fitting tone of bizarre, wonderful horror through out, but I’d especially recommend both The Deptford Mice Trilogy (and the prequel Deptford Histories) and Deathscent. (The Whitby Witches are also great books, but less London-y)
The Deptford Mice stories are set largely in, and under, a London full of lurking menace (well, the middle book is set in the country with lurking menace)and certain thematic similarities to these childhood favorites might be part of why FL appeal so much to me.
Deathscent is Elizabethan, rather than Victorian, and therefore less urban focused, but still has some similarities. There is plenty of steampunk oddness, with archaic scientific theories being realised, very complicated otherworldly presences and a sense of doom. Its effectively a story of Ascended England. (Minor SPOILERS) the premise is roughly the took the queen and her subjects up into space for largely unknown reasons and now they operate in an environment where certain natural laws are little different. Seem familiar?
Outside Jarvis, I’d recommend Clark Ashton Smith to fans of Weird Fiction. A contemporary and friend of Lovecraft, his work covers broadly similar themes to H.P.'s but he has a little more beauty and wonder in amongst the grotesquery and horror, in contrast to the cold revulsion of Lovecraft. Speaking of, whilst there is some overlap, Lovecraft differs from FL in a fairly significant way, specifically inclusivity. I’m sure most people here are aware of his lack of female character and his truly horrendous racism, it worth pointing out his works should come with a huge trigger warning.
My last recommendation is Bram Stoker’s Lair of the White Worm. The aspect of FL most present here is the absurdity of English Society. This is a book in which (SPOILERS) the protagonists are unable to prevent or interfere with what is presented as possibly an actual psychic duel as it would appear rude, and must come up with a plan to defeat a centuries old monster in a way that won’t harm their reputations. In many ways this is not a good horror, nor even really a good book, but it is possibly the only time I can think of where etiquette is placed alongside horror and scifi happenings in importance with absolute sincerity and a straight face. I found it funny, YMMV edited by Amsfield on 11/2/2017
I recommend the writer Michael Cisco. His writing reminds me very much of the surreal, oblique style of Fallen London’s recurring dreams. Here’s an excerpt from his first novel, The Divinity Student, the beginning of which can be found online.
"…quickly they bring him inside, lay him across two sawhorses and start cutting at him—they gut him like a fish, cut open from throat to waist, red hands pull his ribs apart, head and shoulders hanging down, his arms lying flat on the ground, tugged back and forth as they empty him out. They dump his contents cooked and steaming on the floor, and bring up stacks of books and manila folders, tearing out pages and shuffling out sheets of paper, all covered with writing, stuffing them inside, tamping them down behind his ribs and crushing them together in his abdomen. What pages they select and what books they tear are of little importance, only that he be completely filled up with writing, to bring him back, to set him to the task. Then they suture him shut again—drag him to the tub (his arms and legs dangling and catching on things overturning tables and chairs) and dump him in the water, slopping blue water on gray stone pavings, and together they draw breath and drop open their mouths, screaming noiselessly as they shove his face under the running tap and pushing him full under the water with their red hands, under their wings."
I recommend reading the city of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer along with City of Flowers and Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake.
Also my recommendations come without spam :)
i’m surprised to recognize trial of flowers… i’ve once picked it up on a whim because it had unique-looking cover, courtesy of the polish publisher’s in-house artist who must’ve read the book and, like me, decided that the horse scene was iconic
An inevident entry: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’ novel "The Doomed City". It is a depressive surrealistic "social fiction" thing (like a lot of their authorship). People drawn from our world by mysterious Mentors live there in a City for a sake of bizarre experiment. Artificial sun turns on and off at certain time like a lantern. People of different languages communicate easily for a reason unknown. There are no known human settlements outside of the City, yet there are rumours of sinister Anti-City on the other side of the world. In the final part of the novel protagonists are involved into a scientific expedition to the wasteland seeded with remains of previous settlements of different historical periods, there are modern ruined cities, 10th century watchtowers and prehistoric enormous stone faces. They encounter crazy things like talking wolves (hello Neath) and walking statues. And a final is bitter, open and enigmatic. You may read a plot summary there, but beware of last paragraph if you fear spoilers and inspired to read it.
P.S. I read it in Russian as I am a native-speaker, and I don’t know if it was translated to English (yet it b—dy should be, they are notable writers and notorious counter-Soviet authors and stuff) and I would be pleased to try reading a translation. If anyone go for it, could you PM me a link? Many thanks in forward. edited by curtistruffle on 1/22/2018
If you’ve ever found Hollywood Christmas movies to be excessively sentimental, City of Lost Children has one of the greatest correctives of all time in its opening scene. One of the most glorious and disturbing openings to a film I’ve ever seen.
[quote=Teaspoon]While not a book in any way, shape or form, and indeed revolving around gasp the French, I found the Cato-Jeunet film "The City of Lost Children" to be very reminiscent indeed. There’s a number of Urchins in it, naturally. And a Docker. Also an inexplicably peckish child who eats candles, and an atmosphere that is…let us say, adjacent to steampunk, in the same ways that FL is. Much of the story is left teasingly unelucidated. More than all of this, it is profoundly visual, so if you ever wanted to spend a few hours just enjoying the spectacle of what a Fallen city might look like, there’s your chance.
(*Yeah, it’s in French. But no one on this forum minds a little extra reading, right?)
Update: Definitely the City of Lost Children. Freudian slip. edited by Teaspoon on 3/13/2017[/quote]
[quote=curtistruffle]
P.S. I read it in Russian as I am a native-speaker, and I don’t know if it was translated to English (yet it b—dy should be, they are notable writers and notorious counter-Soviet authors and stuff) and I would be pleased to try reading a translation. If anyone go for it, could you PM me a link? Many thanks in forward. edited by curtistruffle on 1/22/2018[/quote]
The recommendation of the later two M. John Harrison Viriconium novels is spot on (even thought I’d be the first to make it). Particular resonance with the ideas of the ruins of the previous Fallen Cities, layers of history mostly forgotten, and the more Baroque dream-like storylets.
And I think the Calendar Council is a definite nod to The Man Who Was Thursday.
One of these days, I’m going to start an FL book club. Until then, I wanted to collect all the book inspiration for FL, Sunless Sea and Skies. Some have already been mentioned like The Man Who Was Tuesday by G.K. Chesterton (which I would recommend, and I have seen other people say that it is anti-anarchist propaganda, and I just want to say, it’s more complex than that and worth reading), Clark Ashton Smith’s work (I have read a few short stories of him but it has been a while since, apparently had a bigger influence on Sunless Sea than Lovecraft), Invisible cities by Italo Calvino (haven’t read yet), A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) (Loved the series since I was a child, my favorite is The Penultimate Peril), Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peak (never read). The other work I heard influenced the games are: The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot (Duh! Never read, but apparently challenging to read), Moby Dick (Never read, influenced Sunless Sea), The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis (Never read, although I did read all the Narinia book as child, influenced Sunless Skies) and Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones (Never read, apparently that is where the idea of the stars as Judgments come from.) Also, I know of at least two writers who worked on the games and also published some books, Amal El-Mohtar (Never read anything from her yet) and Cassandra Khaw (I read Hammers on Bone, I think I liked it? but I wasn’t in the best state of mind when I read it, it took me a month to get through that book, that is only about 100 page long, so I can’t be sure of how I feel toward it.) edited by Quidam on 8/4/2021
Well, (and I’m surprised that nobody else has said this), the thing that first comes to mind for me is "Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has a gothic horror setting in Victorian London that is reminiscent of the atmosphere in Fallen London. Other titles include (as mentioned prior) "Neverwhere" and "The Watchmaker of Filigree Street". edited by HellDreadLord on 10/31/2021
I won’t make another thread because this one is already a great one. So here I’m reviving it!
I decided to try again the books that I read when I was a kid and I saw there are a lot of similarities between Lewis Carroll’s book and Fallen London. I won’t include the ones that we find common today (Victorian, everything can talk, anthropomorphic character, etc).
Adventures in the underground
Passing through the smooth surface of a mirror
The chessboard behind it
Talking plants, but notably, a talking rose which is very similar to our exceptional one
Jabberwocky poem which is something Pages might have written
Hey @skinnyman, great thread my dude, thanks for reviving it!
And if I would be so bold as to recommend another media that reminds me of fallen London, well, I just finished the first two seasons(80 episodes) of the Magnus archives in the last half month and would highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys the eldritch horror elements of fallen London. I’m also sure at least some of you are already familiar with it/listening to it, but oh well.
