Everyday Horrors: Psychopaths

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Psycho's Norman Bates meets victim Marion Crane

A sociopath suffers from an anti-social personality disorder. A psychopath is a conscienceless individual. According to a longer definition of the latter, the psychopath is “a person with a personality disorder indicated by a pattern of lying, exploitiveness, heedlessness, arrogance, sexual promiscuity, low self-control, and lack of empathy and remorse. Such an individual may be especially prone to violent and criminal offenses” (“Definition of Psychopath”).

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the anti-social personality disorder’s “essential feature. . . is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

The public tends to use these terms pretty much interchangeably to denote a seriously disturbed, dangerous person who is prone to mindless acts of rage and violence.

I know a psychopath. Fortunately, I haven’t seen him for many years. His name is Herbert, and, during our respective childhoods, he and the rest of his rather large family lived in the same neighborhood as the one in which I resided. His family was poor. Their father didn’t seem to be home much. Their grandmother lived with them and helped their mother rear the children. They lived upon a triangular, weed-choked lot in a two-story frame house. Inside, the furnishings and décor were minimal. Without carpeting, the wood floors were worn almost to sawdust. Their yard contained a collection of machine parts and rusted junk, and there was an outbuilding. A bare path led through what grass there was; there wasn’t a lawn in the proper sense of the word and no attempt at landscaping.

Herbert got into trouble on a few occasions. Once, when the school bus stopped, he jumped off and climbed a tree, refusing to come down. On another occasion, the local minister caught him holding a cat by the tail over an open fire “to see what it would do.” It was rumored that he stabbed a Boy Scout in the foot during a camping trip because the boy's foot “was sticking out of the tent.” Shortly before adolescence, Herbert moved with his family into the mountains, and we never saw him again until he’d become a young man. (According to psychologists, the anti-social personality disorder is often indicated by the so-called MacDonald triad, which consists of animal cruelty, arson, and bedwetting.)

Herbert returned in a late-model car with a friend. They stopped by our house and asked whether I’d like to go for a ride with them. Herbert said he’d bought the car for fifty dollars. Although I suspected he and his friend had stolen the vehicle, I agreed, against my better judgment, to go with them. As we left the driveway, I said, “So, what have you been up to, Herbert?”

NASA Photograph of Mars

Herbert told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he’d just returned from Mars, describing the planet’s flora and fauna. Since he has limited intelligence and an inadequate imagination, it was obvious that he believed, on some level, that he had, in fact, just arrived home from the red planet. Maybe he’d read a science fiction magazine story or, more likely, had seen a science fiction movie about an expedition to Mars and had come to believe that he had been among those who’d visited the planet. I decided that the wisest course of action was to go along with him, and I said something on the order of “that’s nice.” He also told me that he’d tried to enlist in the army but had been refused admission on the grounds that he lacks a conscience. “They said I don’t know right from wrong,” was the way, I think, Herbert put it. He said, since, his ambition had changed, and he now aspired to end his days in prison.

As we pulled up to a tank at a filling station, Herbert, indicating his need for gasoline, asked me whether I had any money on me. “No,” I told him, “I’m broke.” It was after I’d replied that I saw Herbert’s friend nod toward a bank of nearby vending machines. Suspecting that they planned to rob the machines, I told Herbert I had to get home. Fortunately for me, he took me home without robbing the machines--or me--first.

I never saw Herbert again after that, but, occasionally, I wonder whether he’d ever realized his ambition, entering a prison somewhere.

At the time, Herbert hadn’t seemed especially scary, although I was wary around him. He’d always been strange, after all, and I’d known him, casually, most of my life. Mountaineering had built his body, and just his appearance showed that he’d become as strong as a bull. He could be dangerous, even deadly, if he wanted to be, I thought, and who knew what it would take to make him want to hurt, to maim, or to kill? It could have been nothing more than the desire to fill his gas tank or to secure enough money to buy a sandwich and a soda. I shouldn’t have gotten into his car, I shouldn’t have gone for a drive with him, and I am fortunate not to have incited him to anger by asserting my indigence. In retrospect, Herbert had been very scary, indeed.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface

From Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of the Amontillado” to Psycho and its sequels and The Silence of the Lambs and its sequel Red Dragon, the sociopath and the psychopath have been stock characters in horror fiction. Other horror stories in which madmen are the antagonists include:

• Brimstone, Dance of Death, The Book of the Dead (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child trilogy novels): Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast investigates a series of bizarre deaths in which Lucifer himself seems to be the killer (Brimstone); Pendergast’s brother, the evil genius Diogenes, rescues him from certain death so that the FBI agent can stop him from committing the perfect crime--if Pendergast is able to do so (Dance of Death); and Diogenes implements his plan to commit the perfect crime (The Book of the Dead).
• Good Guy, The (Dean Koontz novel): A stone mason mistaken for a mob hit man seeks to rescue the intended target from the real killers.
• Husband (Dean Koontz novel): A husband’s wife is kidnapped; the husband must save her.
• Icebound (Dean Koontz): An iceberg is the scene of this killer's horrific crimes.
• Intensity (Dean Koontz novel): A sadistic killer chases his prey across country before the woman he’s chasing, to save herself and the child she’s protecting, sets him afire.
• Misery (Stephen King novel): A romance novelist’s greatest fan is a nurse, but she has second thoughts about nursing him back to health after he wrecks his car in a blizzard when he kills off the woman’s favorite protagonist.
• Psycho (Robert Bloch novel): A mommy’s boy becomes his mother, murdering young women to whom her son takes a shine.
• Rose Madder (Stephen King novel): An abused wife escapes through a painting into the land of the minotaur (really).
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hunter film series): He’s armed and dangerous!
• Velocity (Dean Koontz novel): A bartender has to rescue a targeted victim before she’s killed by the psychopath who hunts her (if this plot seems familiar, maybe you read Koontz’s The Good Guy).
• Wheel of Darkness, The (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child): a sequel to the trilogy that pits the FBI’s Special Agent Pendergast against his evil genius brother Diogenes.

A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly (P - R)

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

P

Paganism--any of various religions other than Christianity or Judaism or Islamism.

Palmistry--telling fortunes by lines on the palm of the hand.

Pandora--in Greek mythology, the first woman; created by Hephaestus on orders from Zeus who presented her to Epimetheus along with a box filled with evils.

Panspermia--The theory that microorganisms or biochemical compounds from outer space are responsible for originating life on Earth and possibly in other parts of the universe where suitable atmospheric conditions exist (American Heritage Dictionary)

Pantheism--belief in multiple Gods.

Papyromancy--divination using paper (the author).

Paradigm shift--“a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science” (Wikipedia).

Paranormal--seemingly outside normal sensory channels; not in accordance with scientific laws.

Parapsychology--phenomena that appear to contradict physical laws and suggest the possibility of causation by mental processes.

Penile plethysmograph--“that measures changes in blood flow in the penis in response to audio and/or visual stimuli. It is typically used to determine the level of sexual arousal as the subject is exposed to sexually suggestive content, such as photos, movies or audio” (Wikipedia).

Pentagram--a star with 5 points; formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon.

Perpetual motion machine--a machine which, once it is set in motion, moves continuously thereafter, requiring less energy to operate than it generates; perpetual motion machines are impossible, as they violate the first law of thermodynamics (the author).

Pets, homing of--the ability of pet animals to find their way home over long distances by unknown means (the author).

Phrenology--a now abandoned study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties.

Philosopher’s stone--a substance that is alleged to be able to transform a base metal, such as lead, into gold (the author).

Physicalism--the doctrine that only physical things exist and that, consequently, all things that exist are physical (the author).

Physiognomy--the human face, believed to be a key to interpreting character (the author).

Piltdown Hoax--a fraud in which the jawbone of an orangutan was represented to belong to and a human skull which had belonged to an undiscovered early form of human being (the author).

Placebo effect--a therapeutic effect without a pharmaceutical or medical basis, simply as a result of the belief that the substance provided will help to alleviate symptoms or remedy physical condition (the author).

Plant perception--the theory or belief that plants are sentient or conscious of their environment and react to stimuli (the author).

Plesiosaur

Plesiosaur--extinct marine reptile with a small head on a long neck a short tail and four paddle-shaped limbs; of the Jurassic and Cretaceous (dictionary.die.net); some believe that the Loch Ness monster may be a plesiosaur (the author).

Pluto--the Greek god of the underworld.

Poe, Edgar Allan--American author of “tales of the grotesque and the arabesque”; Poe gave the modern horror story its structure and many of its themes (the author).

Poltergeist--a noisy ghost, which is alleged to cause mischief and may be destructive and dangerous (the author).

Polygraph--see “lie detector.”

Possession, demonic or Satanic--the alleged take over and control of a person’s body by Satan or a lesser evil spirit; priests may attempt to evict the spirit by exorcising it (the author).

Post hoc fallacy--see “magical thinking.”

Pragmatic fallacy--“the pragmatic fallacy is committed when one argues that something is true because it works and where ‘works’ means something like “I’m satisfied with it,” “I feel better,” “I find it beneficial, meaningful, or significant,” or “It explains things for me” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Precognition (foretelling the future)--knowledge of an event before it occurs.

Prometheus--in Greek mythology, the Titan who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind.

Pseudo science--knowledge that appears to be or is represented as being scientific but does not conform to scientific principles or cannot be demonstrated as true or false by use of the scientific method; see pyramidology (the author).

PSI--”A term used to demarcate processes or causation associated with cognitive or physiological activity that fall outside of conventional scientific boundaries (ESP, for example)” (Wikipedia).

Psychic--pertaining to forces or mental processes outside the possibilities defined by natural or scientific laws; "psychic reader"; "psychical research"; a person apparently sensitive to things beyond the natural range of perception.

Psychic detective--a person who uses alleged osychic abilities to investigate crime (the author).

Psychic surgery--allegedly, the use of psychic means to perform surgical procedures (the author).

Psychoanalysis--a set of techniques for exploring underlying motives and a method of treating various mental disorders; "his physician recommended psychoanalysis."

Psychokinesis (moving objects by mental means)--the power to move something by thinking about it without the application of physical force.

Psychologism--the explanation of physical, social, historical, cultural, religious, or other facts, principles, beliefs, or values through psychological theory; often used derisively, when this approach is considered reductionistic (the author).

Psychology--the science of mental life.

Psychometry--any branch of psychology concerned with psychological measurements; The art of measuring the duration of mental processes, or of determining the time relations of mental phenomena.

Pterodactyl--extinct flying reptile.

Pyramidiocy--the supposedly scientific study of pyramids and their effects; a pseudo science (the author).

Q

No entries.

R

Rama--avatar of Vishnu; any of three incarnations: Ramachandra or Parashurama or Balarama.

Ramtha--“a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in JZ Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington, in 1977” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Randi's paranormal challenge--the offer of “a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power,” made by James Randi, a “magician and author of numerous works skeptical of paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscientific claims” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)

Reflexology--the massaging of feet to diagnose and cure disease” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)

Relic

Relic, holy--a memento, such as bones, a garment, or a body part, that is believed to have belonged to a holy person or saint; see “Christ, foreskin of” (the author).

Reincarnation--a second or new birth.

Remote viewing--the use of psychic powers (and map coordinates) to discern targets or other items of intelligence at specific locations from which the “viewer” is physically absent (the author).

Repressed memory--”the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Retrocognition--“a type of clairvoyance involving knowledge of something after its occurrence through psychic means” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Revelation--The act of revealing, disclosing, or discovering to others what was before unknown to them.

Rod--“an insect caught in the act of flying by a video camera” and passed off as “some sort of unknown alien life form” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Roswell (New Mexico), UFO--site of the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spaceship and the recovery of its injured occupants (the author).

Rumpology--“the art of reading the lines, crevices, dimples, and folds of the buttocks to divine the butt owner's character and get a glimpse of what lies ahead by analyzing what trails behind” (The Skeptic's Dictionary).

Rune--any character from an ancient Germanic alphabet used in Scandinavia from the 3rd century to the Middle Ages; "each rune had its own magical significance."

Fear: A Cultural History: A Partial Review and Summary, Part 3

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In Fear: A Cultural History, Joanna Bourke distinguishes between fear, as a reference to “an immediate, objective threat” and anxiety, as a reference to “an anticipated, subjective threat,” but cautions her readers that, however useful psychologists may find this distinction, “historians must be extremely wary about imposing such distinctions on emotional states in the past,” because what may be feared by some may not be feared by others. In an interesting side note, she also suggests that scapegoating is a means of converting anxiety into fear, because, in creating a scapegoat, a society creates an “immediate, objective threat” as a substitute for their previously “anticipated, subjective threat,” thereby gaining an adversary whom they can confront. This is a tactic widely used in politics, Bourke says, “influencing. . . voting preferences against an ‘outsider’ group.” (It may be recalled that this was a frequent tactic during the American civil rights movements, during which representatives of the status quo referred to activists and protesters as “outside agitators” who had come to their towns to “stir up trouble.”) The opposite is also true, Bourke notes: “If anxiety can be turned into fear, and thus provide an enemy to engage. . . fear can, similarly, be converted into anxiety,” an effect of which is to reduce collective, participatory behavior and isolate individuals with their own misgivings: “Anxiety states tend to make people withdraw from one another, unlike fear states, which are more likely to draw people together, either for comfort or to defend themselves more effectively against the danger.” Once again, politicians use this tendency as a tactic, pitting one group against another:

The political implications of this are evident, with groups ‘playing off’ fear and anxiety, according to their aim. Between the 1950s and 1970s governments tried to convince people that their fears of nuclear war were ‘irrational’ anxieties rather than ‘rational’ fears, thus discouraging the impulse to unite with other fearful persons against the common threat.

The same tactic is at work in the invention of new “phobias,” such as “homophobia,” as a defense against debate by those--the statistical majority, as it turns out--who do not share the ideas, beliefs, and values of this community or in the labeling of those who oppose open borders as “racists” simply because they believe in and endorse national sovereignty and the integrity of their homeland’s borders.

The isolation of the individual from his or her larger society so that the person is alone with his of her fears and must cope with them as best he or she can is a characteristic of contemporary culture and society, Bourke observes, which seems to have increased anxiety:

Whereas in the past the frightened individual might turn to the community or a religious institution for advice and comfort--a process that often involved the delineation of an evil ‘other’--as the twentieth century progressed, the emotion became increasingly individualized, appropriated by the therapist or, in the most isolated fashion, the contemporary ‘self-help’ movement. . . . As a consequence, anxiety may have been higher. . . .

The information in this part of her book (and the chapter on “Combat”) are especially fertile for horror writers who wish to develop credible scenes in which the fear and anxiety derive from situations and behavioral tendencies that have been subjected to psychological scrutiny.

The “Combat” chapter of Bourke’s book offers these observations, many of which will help horror writers to create believable characters and realistic situations:

. . . [In combat] fear was beneficial, so long as it did not spill over into
hysteria or anxiety neuroses. . . .

. . . in battle ‘normal’ was always pathological. In the words of the author of ‘Psychiatric Observations in the Tunisian Campaign’ (1943): ‘A state of tension and anxiety is so prevalent in the front lines that it must be regarded as a normal reaction to this grossly abnormal situation. Where ordinary psychological signs of fear end, and where signs and symptoms of a clinical syndrome begin, is often difficult to decide.’

[Lieutenant Colonel Stephen W. Ransom considered] “it. . . perfectly normal for combatants to suffer muscular tension, freezing, shaking and tremor, excessive perspiration, anorexia, nausea, abdominal distress, diarrhea, urinary frequency, incontinence of urine or faeces, abnormal heartbeat, breathlessness, a burning sense of weight oppressing the chest, faintness and giddiness.”

. . . the technology of long-distance killing, with its emphasis on anonymous agency and random aggression, placed an intolerable strain on men’s physiological inheritance.

. . . this physiological crisis was exacerbated by a cognitive problem: too many modern soldiers were educated, and thus resistant to rationalizations and primitive conversions (such as the psychological process of ‘converting’ fear into a physical symptom like mutism or paralysis).

According to Bourke’s survey of fear in combat situations, officers were less likely to suffer from incapacitating cowardice, because they have a greater “ego ideal” and feel responsible for not only their own welfare but for that of many others as well. Women are less likely to suffer hysterical breakdowns in combat situations than men are likely to suffer because men fear exhibiting cowardice more than they fear death itself and because society allows women to express their emotions, including their fears, directly and openly; consequently, many discuss these feelings with their peers, whereas men, for the most part, deal--or try to deal--with their fears by themselves. There is also a racial element to white officers’ characterizing black men as being especially prone to fear, anxiety, and panic, despite these officers’ own admissions that black soldiers fight every bit as valiantly as the most gallant white soldier. Physically, blacks, as soldiers, are the equals of their counterparts, such critics contend, but they are weaker mentally and lack the white soldier’s confidence and autonomy.

The prolonged uncertainty, apparent randomness, and fear associated with military combat takes a toll on soldiers’ ability to think and act in a consciously purposeful manner, converting them to “automatons” who go through the motions of defensive and offensive operations. In addition, it was found that “if a combatant could not act, he was more susceptible to fear.” Likewise, soldiers feared most the advantages that indirect fire or long-distance enemy weapons gave them, for, again, it was impossible for the attacked to fight attackers that were not physically present before them and that they could not see: “It was a feeling of ‘inequality’--often described as ‘injustice’ by the men--which was at the heart of fear. When asked why they were afraid of a particular weapon, the ‘inability to retaliate,’ the ‘feeling of vulnerability,’ and the ‘speed and surprise of the attack’ were all as important as ’effectiveness’ or ’accuracy.’”

Recognizing that “The only difference between a brave man and a coward is the fear of the one is controlled whilst the fear of the other is uncontrolled,” as the author of Psychology and the Soldier declares, the military seeks to reduce this tendency in various ways. Since soldiers were found to fear most that which they couldn’t fight against directly, such as passivity (for example, “crew in medium bombers” that “were forced to keep to course irrespective of danger” or to take cover in trenches during enemy artillery attacks which sometimes buried them alive), officers were encouraged to assign their troops busy work to occupy them during breaks between combat and to keep their minds off their fears. They were allowed to expend ammunition even after a target had moved beyond the range of their weapons so as to expend their fear. Men were trained “to respond automatically to orders, to ignore rumours, to focus on the leaders and comrades and to be accustomed to the fog and noise of battle,” but “automatic training” was found to be “less important than training men to obey orders immediately. . . . realism training” being seen as “crucial. . . because it taught men to think under terrifying conditions and it developed their self-confidence” and because not every contingency could be imagined and rehearsed in advance: “only a limited number of routine actions could be taught.” Officers were expected to be models of confidence themselves, keeping any reservations or concerns about their missions to themselves and always exhibiting a calm sense of purpose, on basis of “the belief that people were innately imitative, so fear could be reduced through witnessing the fearlessness of superiors or comrades.”

Of course, the reality of war itself helped, gradually, to harden soldiers to combat and its lethal consequences. Eventually, the sights of massive casualties seemed commonplace, which helped to reduce soldiers’ fears of their own demise.

Anyone who has seen Alien has seen many of these principles dramatized on the silver screen, and anyone who has seen The Descent has seen their opposites on display. The information that Bourke supplies in her “Combat” chapter enables aspiring horror writers to characterize survivors in the former manner and to fashion victims in the latter’s mode. In addition, Bourke’s review of the literature pertaining to the effects of long-term combat on combatants offers a storehouse of other tips for maintaining and heightening suspense, characterizing various dramatic personae, and representing various themes associated with violence, death, and destruction. There are quite a few suggestions, too, concerning the psychology of terror and horror and the motivations of behaviors which, in normal situations, would be classified as psychotic but, in extreme situations, such as combat (or a monster’s attack) might well be simply normal. Perhaps this is the true horror of horror fiction--that we create such situations in the first place. Mark Twain once opined, “If the human race isn’t damned, it ought to be”; war in being not only hell, shows us, as such, that we are the damned.

On that note, we will pause, taking up the last of our review and summary of Bourke’s survey of the subject of fear again in the next post.

The Monsters Within

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Most of us think of monsters as external threats which take familiar forms: bats and cats and dogs and frogs; vampires and werewolves; witches and zombies; and nameless, faceless things that go bump in the night. These are the creatures of which many of us first think when we recall the monsters that send shivers down our spines. There are others, though, of a whole different kind. Internal monsters. They may be visible or not, objective or not, but, whatever form, if any, they take, they have this in common: they are the monsters within.

Some inner demons are mental states, conditions, or disorders that the rest of us (who don’t suffer from them) label as “abnormal” or “aberrant.” Psychology textbooks are full of the names, symptoms, and supposed treatments of these states and conditions and disorders. We classify, categorize, and divide them, adding some, subtracting others, and voting on which should be included or excluded from this or that particular edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM:

• Developmental disorders


• Disruptive behavior disorders


• Anxiety disorders


• Eating disorders


• Gender identity disorders


• Tic disorders


• Elimination disorders


• Speech disorders


• Disorders of infancy, childhood, or adolescence


• Dementias


• Psychoactive substance-induced organic mental disorders


• Organic mental disorders


• Psychoactive substance use disorders


• Schizophrenia


• Delusional (paranoid) disorders


• Psychotic disorders


• Mood disorders


• Anxiety disorders


• Somatoform disorders


• Dissociative disorders


• Sexual disorders


• Sleep disorders


• Factitious disorders


• Impulse control disorders


• Adjustment disorders


• Personality disorders

While the more cynical among us claim that the DSM represents, more than anything, the psychiatric and psychological professions’ attempts to maintain and extend their own self-interests, it seems difficult to deny that at least some of these states, conditions, and disorders have an objective or factual basis. Some people--Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer come to mind--are hard to get along with, no doubt about it, and their problems seem to be self-generated, to come, whether organic or otherwise, from within. Even when they speak of an “entity” who directs them, as Bundy did, or a voice that speaks to them, as David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) contended, most of us are reluctant to let these killers off on the grounds that the devil made them do it. We insist that they take responsibility for their actions. We incarcerate them, treat them, and/or kill them.

We also write about them and make movies about them. Some of these books and films are fictional, some are biographical, and some are a hybrid of the two. Edgar Allan Poe wrote stories and poems, such as “The Cask of the Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” that had, at the bases of their plots, “madness and sin”; Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs are based, in part, upon the exploits of Ed Gein; The Stranger Beside Me is inspired by Bundy; and In Cold Blood details, in a semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional manner, the murders of a Kansas farm family by Perry Smith and his fellow sociopath-partner, Dick Hickock

Psychology started out as the study of the soul or mind. In more materialistic times, the discipline, losing its soul or mind, became a study of human behavior and its motives. Along the way, its practitioners discovered that pretty much whatever can go wrong with the soul or the mind or human behavior and its motives or whatever psychiatrists and psychologists claim, at any time or another, to study will, at some point, with some people, go wrong.

Medical doctors have learned, likewise, that whatever can go wrong with the body often will do so, whether it is diabetes, epilepsy, hypoglycemia, jaundice, paralysis, or worse. These physical conditions and diseases are also real or potential demons within. For the purposes of horror fiction, however, as horrible as they are in reality, they must be dramatized. Therefore, a germ may be given an extraterrestrial origin, as in Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, or a microbe may be created in the laboratory, most likely by a mad scientist. (In H. G. Well’s The War of the Worlds, the microbe is this-worldly and brings about the deaths of the novel’s Martian invaders.)

Another way to glamorize germs is to strengthen them to the point that they represent the microscopic world’s equivalent of the comic book super villain. In other words, they are super-resistant. Ordinary antibiotics don’t work. The germ maybe mutates, almost by the split second, becoming ever more robust. As scientists learn more and more about microbes, representing one as being super virulent and resistant may become increasingly difficult. Fiction may be hard put to keep up with fact. For example, “The World’s Toughest Microbe” is “a bacterium first discovered in spoiled beef and believed sterilized by radiation turned out to be ‘Conan the Bacterium’ (aka Superbug)--the most radiation-resistant life form ever found. Deinococcus radiodurans is highly resistant to genotoxic chemicals, oxidative damage, high levels of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation, and desiccation; it can survive 3,000 times the radiation dose that is lethal to humans.”

Writers shouldn’t forget to exploit the human aspect of microbes. There’s fertile material for fiction in the amoral, immoral, and criminal behavior of people who deal with microscopic villains, after all. Perhaps the germs were mishandled, so an element of government incompetence or even corruption is introduced and the resulting story becomes as much a cautionary tale about ineptitude, laziness, greed, and the abuses of personal and political power as it does about the bug itself. Alternatively, maybe the story’s theme concerns negligence. Could the people we trust to look out for us be asleep at the switch rather than simply looking out for their own interests? Maybe the Centers for Disease Control needs a wakeup call. A number of movies are also based on the killer-microbe-from-space theme, including the film version of Crichton’s novel and The Omega Man.

Before long, there will probably be a germ that causes mental disorders or aberrant behavior (or both). Oops! Too late! Don’t we have this in Stephen King’s The Stand? Meanwhile, these writers’ treatment of not-so-sexy inner demons in a sexy manner offers tips as to how to jazz up these types of threats to make them more palatable, as it were, to readers.

Dramatize them: make the germs bigger and badder than those that routinely threaten human life.

Make them exotic: have them come from the rain forest, an uncharted island, the ocean floor, an abandoned spaceship (or a spaceship full of dead aliens), or another planet.

Relate them to human nature: Tie them in to something social, political, religious, or historical--basic human emotions such as greed and lust for power (or just lust) and fear are good.

Make them criticize something related to human beings, such as politics, folkways, mores, or customs.