R. von Pnaklendorf
Chymist
What do you think of Donald Tyson as a fiction writer, and of everything else he does? Personally, I have nothing against the format he uses. He owes much of it to people like Fred L. Pelton, whose writings were also taken by occultists and reinterpreted as reality, when we know very well that Fred L. Pelton was essentially the closest thing to what we would nowadays call a role-playing gamer making props.
That said, Tyson has written within the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as written about the Cthulhu Mythos as though it were real. I haven’t read any of his fiction, BUT I did read something he presents as nonfiction, although to me it clearly is fiction.
Through Starfire Publishing, the publisher that also publishes Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian trilogies, he published Liber Lilith, which is essentially a Gnostic grimoire of Lilith, along with a whole host of other things. At the beginning of the book, we are presented with the diary of an occultist named Karl Steiger, who is the one who supposedly sends Tyson the Liber Lilith and, somehow, his own diary as well, through his sister, since Karl Steiger later commits suicide.
What follows in the book consists of the rituals and all the other things that these people take seriously.
Karl Steiger does not exist. At one point, I looked into him among German sexual-magic circles, and no, he does not exist. The diary, however, struck me as a good piece of fiction; it reminded me of Hellraiser.
Even so, I don’t particularly like the other things Tyson does, and I feel that they appeal to a kind of morbid curiosity that eventually becomes tiresome.
Have any of you read Donald Tyson? What do you think of him?
That said, Tyson has written within the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as written about the Cthulhu Mythos as though it were real. I haven’t read any of his fiction, BUT I did read something he presents as nonfiction, although to me it clearly is fiction.
Through Starfire Publishing, the publisher that also publishes Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian trilogies, he published Liber Lilith, which is essentially a Gnostic grimoire of Lilith, along with a whole host of other things. At the beginning of the book, we are presented with the diary of an occultist named Karl Steiger, who is the one who supposedly sends Tyson the Liber Lilith and, somehow, his own diary as well, through his sister, since Karl Steiger later commits suicide.
What follows in the book consists of the rituals and all the other things that these people take seriously.
Karl Steiger does not exist. At one point, I looked into him among German sexual-magic circles, and no, he does not exist. The diary, however, struck me as a good piece of fiction; it reminded me of Hellraiser.
Even so, I don’t particularly like the other things Tyson does, and I feel that they appeal to a kind of morbid curiosity that eventually becomes tiresome.
Have any of you read Donald Tyson? What do you think of him?
