THE DEEP ONES: Spring 2022 Planning Thread

This thread is for nominations and voting on stories for inclusion in the April-June 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 Spring Equinox: Sunday, March 20.

Much anthologized since its initial Weird Tales appearance, including in the Joshi-edited American Supernatural Tales. Marvin Kaye attributes to this story a "literal aura of shadowy menace."

Available online and in some prestigious multi-author collections. Goodreads reviewer Althea Ann calls it a "jazz riff on The Tempest."

A story exploiting the metaphysical penumbra of mining in the early 19th-century Romantic milieu and based on a contemporary anecdote from G. H. Schubert. "Once again the artist (as in many other stories by Hoffmann) must choose between loss of his supernatural aims and the death of the domestic man" (per editor E. F. Bleiler). The story is a typical ingredient of Hoffmann anthologies.

A story of long-delayed divine vengeance. Online in lots of places, e.g. Wikisource.

Yes, it's Stella Gibbons of Cold Comfort Farm and Reggie Oliver's aunt.

Most recently published in Women's Weird 2 and also in a couple of Virago collections of ghost stories and in Gibbons' Roaring Towers and Other Stories.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

Note for later - found here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31820/31820-h/31820-h.htm#div1_mines

>6 RandyStafford: Reggie Oliver's aunt.

I didn't know that literary connection, I'm a fan of Oliver's.

A story about, well, a mermaid astronaut by an author I've been meaning to try. Hugo nominate and online here.

The sequel to winter's "When the Green Star Waned". Online here.

A depressive young woman and a sea captain with a past find one another on an Arctic tour. They end up going somewhere strange.

Online here.

A timely warning about the dangers of reading in bed. A young Polish officer encounters the Devil and his (the Devil's) niece.

Online here.

A novel haunted house situation set in British colonial India. Found in Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937.

Well-anthologized. Jeffrey Ford says that it "was written just prior to 'The Turn of the Screw,' and could be seen as an early expression of the ideas that would soon manifest themselves in this later, longer masterpiece."

AKA "The Way It Came"

ETA:

https://gutenberg.org/files/21932/21932-h/21932-h.htm#link2H_4_0033

I saw this on Twitter, in a list of Lovecraftian fiction for Black History Month.

Collected in The Book of Cthulhu and available online here:
https://innsmouthfreepress.com/jeroboam-henleys-debt/

Nominated by Andreas last time but it didn't quite make it. Trying again, because I agree with him that this one is "Good fun (of a macabre variety)".

A few days left for late nominations now. With only 13 nominations this far, any new would stand a good chance of getting in.

Last chance to vote; I will run the totals in about an hour.

I'm working up the totals now, but with only 13 nominations, everything should be on the list.