Thread by @17cShyteposter

You know what, here's the hottest take I can drop, Stephen King *should* have been the next Poe or Lovecraft, he had both the imaginative horsepower, the narrative mastery, and the sense of horror necessary to become this.

Some of King's work, especially his early ones, and *especially* the first four Gunslinger novels, prove this. He had it in him. Immense, insane imagination, the sensitivity was there.

Bad. Ass. Author. But there was something just a little off. He couldn't quite do it.

So wait—my most volcano-scorching-hot take is that early Orson Scott Card, the Mormon, is the greatest horror author of our age. He sold out later but his '70s/80s shorts are the most horrifying works I've ever read from that period. Even more terrifying than King

Card was the most savage author from that period by a long shot, "I Put My Blue Genes On" basically described the last year to a T.

Ender's Game is great, but he will never be appreciated for what he actually did. Ender's Game came after he worked through that earlier horror.

Or "Breathing Exercises," or whatever that story was called

If you haven't read it you can't argue with me, these stories were all nightmares

Dogwalker, or The Fat Farm, holy fuck, nobody understands how terrifying Card's stories were. Eumenedies in the 4th Floor Lavatory. Card was utter horror, an actual madman, and no one remembers this

These are from Maps in a Mirror, if I'm remembering right. Orson Scott Card was the greatest horror author since Lovecraft, hands down, these stories terrorized me. I'm gonna dig them back up