Now Available on Amazon: The Secret of the Silver Star!

My latest book, a young adult novel, The Secret of the Silver Star, which has a science fiction theme and contains elements of horror, but reads like a thriller, just went live on Amazon!

Synopsis

After his dad abandons him, Cass refuses to listen to his mother. He hangs out with the wrong crowd. He begins to bully other kids. Finally, when he vandalizes his high school, the judge gives him a choice: confinement in a juvenile detention center or a camping trip with his mom's brother, Uncle Gabe, a highly decorated, no-nonsense Special Forces soldier. Alone in the great, deep wilderness, they encounter a threat that will change Cass forever--if he's man enough to survive.

Nightmare Posters

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What scares an audience? In selecting such frights, it's best to tap into general or universal fears. After all, a horror novel is written for a general audience.

The Internet is a good source for identifying the objects of such fears, some of which make sense, while others, the phobias, are irrational (at least from the point of view of those who don't suffer from one of them). Either rational or irrational objects of fear are acceptable fodder for the fiction of fear, aka horror stories.

Besides Internet lists, movie posters themselves are great sources for identifying general or universal fears. They should be: they're selling them, in the form of films.

By analyzing a horror movie poster, a writer can determine which particular fear the poster is tapping, but he or she can also obtain a few other valuable bits of information, learning a few tips about how to put a scary story together and how to emphasize its frightening aspects.

In analyzing such posters, one should focus only on the poster itself, without referencing anything from the film. That way, one is not biasing his or her interpretation of the poster itself with external information.

The poster for the movie Alien is a good example.

Before we consider it in detail, let's list a few facts about art and design upon which such posters rely:

Readers of English are taught to read from top to bottom and from left to right.

Artists appeal to the senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell), and sight, the chief of the senses, involves a variety of elements: color, distance (yes, we “see” distance, using depth perception), size, shape, and intensity (light or dark).

The central image (the selling point) is positioned near, but slightly off, center. Often, this image is of a model, who is shown larger or more intensely than other models, if others are pictured in the poster. Unless the context suggests otherwise (a Playmate, on the cover of Playboy, for instance), a female model is directed at women who are about the model's own age and economic station, while a male model is aimed at men of about the model's own age and economic level. The idea, it seems, is that the poster invites the viewer to imagine him- or herself in the model's place, relying on his or her wanting to be like the model.

Posters frequently use what Hollywood calls “props” (short for “properties”), objects which may have thematic or symbolic significance.

The overall design of the poster moves the viewer's gaze so that it ends up on the product.

Posters are divided roughly into thirds, horizontally, vertically, or (rarely) diagonally, so that there's a foreground, a mid-ground, and a background.

Often, a poster implies a metaphor. The metaphor is usually related to an intangible quality, such as an emotion.

The text, if any, is the key to unlocking the meaning of the metaphor.

Not all posters contain all these features, but the features are common to posters (and other print advertisements in general).

Okay, back to the Alien poster.

The first thing we notice is the word “ALIEN.” Centered at the top of the poster, it's printed, in all-capital letters. The white text stands out starkly against the black background, both the size, the color, and the capital letters drawing our attention. We know that, by convention, all caps indicates shouting or screaming, but there's something else unusual about the word. It looks unfamiliar, or alien, because its letters are spaced, as if to suggest that the thought the word expresses is, like the word used to express it, strange and is being spoken haltingly, perhaps with awe or dread.

Centered below the text, some distance down the poster, is an oval object that resembles both an asteroid and an egg. The ambiguity of the object heightens the sense of the alien, or the unknown. 

It's egg-shaped, and there's some sort of substance oozing from a crack in it, but the substance doesn't resemble egg yolk; it looks gaseous or, perhaps, radioactive; the crack in it seems to resemble a grinning mouth; and the object's outer surface is pitted and cratered, and bears strange bumps. We've never seen an egg like this! In fact, maybe the object isn't an egg.

Maybe it's an asteroid. It appears to be made of stone. It looks hard as a rock. The pits and bumps resemble those that mark celestial objects. It seems to be oozing gas or radioactivity. It's located in outer space. Whatever it is, the thing is certainly unlike anything else we've ever encountered; it's alien to us.

In small letters, beneath the asteroid-egg, is a sentence: “In space no one can hear you scream.”

I feel a slight shudder every time I read that!

This sentence is a masterpiece of copywriting. It locates us; we are “in space.”

It isolates us: “no one can hear [us[ scream.” (Why do we scream? To sound an alarm, to signal the need for help, but, since “in space no one can hear” us, we're completely on our own: no emergency medical technicians, no police, no firefighters, no military personnel are coming to our aid. We are isolated and alone.)

The sentence also gets personal with us; the sentence assures us that “no one can hear you scream” (emphasis added).

Below the asteroid-egg, a green shadow appears, which resembles a strange rising sun, just as the top of a strand of the cargo net looks a bit like a mountain range along the horizon.

What's in the cargo hold? We don't know, but the poster suggests, whatever it is, it's scary and dangerous.

The sentence below the asteroid-egg also identifies the types of audience who would probably be interested in seeing the movie the poster promotes: “space” suggests that the film is likely to appeal to science fiction fans, while “scream” implies that people who enjoy horror movies might want to see this film.

All that is quite a lot to pack into a single sentence!

The poster is divided roughly into thirds horizontally: the word “ALIEN” and the space between it and the central object (the asteroid-egg) is the top layer, or background; the asteroid-egg and the sentence below it are the middle layer, or mid-ground; and the cargo net is the bottom layer, or foreground.

As the eye travels down, the viewer's gaze is led from the notion of the alien to a visual representation of it, and finally to the cargo net, which leaves the viewer with a sense of mystery and uneasiness.

Finally, the black background represents space, where “no one can hear you scream,” but it also symbolizes the unknown, another word for the alien, unifying the poster's theme and helping, once more, to drive home the theme of the poster: the movie is about something beyond human ken.

By analyzing this poster, we learn:

Art, design, symbolism, and text work together to tap into an audience's fears. (In a novel, such elements can, and should, also work together to achieve the same type of result.)

One of the fears many people have is of the unknown, or “alien.”

Ambiguity can be both a source of fear and a way to heighten fear.

Visuals (images, or in novels, descriptions) can generate or heighten fear.

Well-thought-out, well-written sentences can suggest a variety of ideas and feelings, producing several related effects.

Colors can express symbolic meanings or associations.

A lack of context creates mystery.

Placement in a poster (or arrangement, or composition, in a novel's scenes) can, and should, promote both the writer's message (be afraid; be very afraid!) and its emotional expression.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

A poster is a promise. See this movie, Alien, and you will be scared to death—and you'll enjoy it (both the movie and the fear it generates) if you like either sci fi, horror, or both.

It's up to the movie to deliver on this promise. Most people who've seen it, including critics, agree that the film is just as frightening as the poster promoting it indicated it would be.

In using similar techniques to identify and communicate the fear a novel's first sentence, its first paragraph, and its first chapter, indicating what will follow, are also promises that writers must keep.

Ambrose Bierce: A New Hope for Horror Fiction?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Like other literary genres, horror becomes, sooner or later, more lulling than chilling. The same formulas, repeated over and over, become tiresome. The originality of horror stories become mere banality, and where there was once a race of the blood through arteries, veins, and brain, there is now only but the yawn and the nod. Every so often, a genre needs to reinvent itself—or be reinvented—and horror is no exception.

Unfortunately, it is a rare talent, indeed, that can reshape, or even redirect, an entire genre of fiction. In horror, there are many would-be masters but few Hawthornes, Poes, Lovecrafts, and (at least, for a time) Kings.

What usually happens in such times is a falling away of the aficionados. Only the young, the inexperienced, and the desperate cling to a dying literary form. Others either stop reading fiction altogether or seek their pleasures in other genres or in more serious literature of a quality that stands the test of time.

Horror fiction has been moribund for some time, critics contend. The death vigil has been long and grievous. Now, perhaps, the cadaver stinks so badly that the truth cannot be any longer denied. Horror fiction, clearly, is dead.

At least, horror fiction as it has been known since its last revival, in the latter half of the twentieth century, which witnessed Robert Bloch's Psycho, Stephen King's Carrie, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, among others.

Now, though, the chills—and, indeed, the thrills—are gone again, and, like the narrator of William Butler Yeats' “The Second Coming,” we await the coming of some new “rough beast,” yet to be born.

For a while, it seemed the marriage of horror and science fiction might save both genres. There was hope, after all, such films as Alien, Jurassic Park, and the remakes of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and The Fly suggested.

Of course, the wedding of such an unlikely couple was really nothing new. Such authors as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and even Stephen King had married fear and wonder before. But, for a while, anyway it seemed new, as resurgences often do.

Alas, those days, too, are gone.

We get merely more of the same, with writers revisiting old themes, characters we have met before, and places we have been in times long past. Thus, we get Dan Simmons' A Winter Haunting, the sequel to Summer of Night, Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, and Dean Koontz's endless series of self-parody, the Odd Thomas spectacle. Been there, done that.

After a long night, the faint illumination of first light seems to appear upon the far horizon. There seems to be the dimmest hope that a trickle, if not as tide, of resurgence may again moisten, if not inundate, the infertile shores of the wasteland that horror fiction has become. When the genre seems not almost dead but a goner for sure, there may be some last vestige of hope, and, if there is, we have another great writer of horror to thank for it, none other, ladies and gentlemen, than Ambrose Bierce.

I would explain, but, alas, I am too tired at the moment and will save the explanation for another time.

Perhaps. . . .

. . . if the interest doesn't flag. . . .

Plausible Motivations

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

In life, people sometimes do things for no reason, just for the hell of it. In fiction, however, characters, like litigants in a courtroom, always have a reason--although not always a good reason--for doing what they do. When they undertake large-scale endeavors that require cooperative participation among many individuals, there's generally a correspondingly colossal motive to inspire such massive, purposeful interaction.

We've divided motives for characters' conduct into two broad categories and listed some motives that are plausible for actions among many people (or characters) operating in support of a common cause.

I. International, National, and Regional Scale

• Colonization
• Commission of genocide
• Conducting commerce and trade
• Conducting crime fighting and law enforcement activities
• Conducting diplomatic missions
• Conducting homesteading activities
• Conducting missionary activities
• Conducting scientific research
• Conducting search and rescue missions
• Exploration of new worlds or uncharted territory
• Freeing of an enslaved people
• Maintenance of prisons
• Mining
• Piracy
• Pursuit of the freedom to worship
• Showcasing of art and culture
• Waging of war

II. Community and Personal Scale

• Attending weddings and funerals
• Camping outdoors
• Conducting crime fighting and law enforcement activities
• Conducting home-improvement projects
• Conducting landscaping or community beautification projects
• Conducting political campaigns
• Courting; dating (Species)
• Educating oneself or one’s family; educating the local citizenry
• Engaging in sports
• Engaging in social protests
• Enjoying family vacations; traveling
• Entertaining or being entertained
• Fishing, hunting, or shopping
• Participating in children’s and family activities
• Partying
• Production of art and cultural artifacts
• Protecting one’s family
• Working to provide for one’s family
• Worshiping at a local church

In addition to such general motivations, some spurs to action are more apt to be found in stories that involve the fantastic and the bizarre, including horror fiction:

• Biological or viral contamination (Earthly or otherworldly); disease or plague
• Cryptozoology
• Demonic possession or other supernatural or paranormal intervention (including magic)
• Extraterrestrial intervention
• Genetic mutations
• Inter-dimensional travel
• Nuclear holocaust
• Paranormal influences
• Parasitism
• Psychosis
• Radiation poisoning
• Scientific experiments gone awry; unintended use of technology

Many more conventional (historical) reasons and causes are adapted to fantasy, horror, and science fiction as well, as when an extraterrestrial army attacks Earth, Earth’s scientists colonize another planet, mining operations are conducted on alien planets, other planets are converted into prisons, and so forth.

Basic Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Plots

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

My analysis of a number of horror novels, short stories, and movies has turned up no fewer than two dozen plots that are routinely used in horror, fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other genres of popular fiction. Don’t be surprised if they pop up in a few classic literary texts, too.

Invasion: An outside threat attacks a community. The community may be idealized, as a near-perfect place to live. Many residents are likely to be introduced. The reader is apt to like or sympathize with many of them. A few may be unlikable because they are arrogant, condescending, cruel, obscene, racist, or unfaithful. Some of these may become victims of the entity or force that attacks the community. Although the community may be a total institution, such as a hospice, a hotel, a nursing home, a private school, or a prison, it is often an entire town. A community, to some extent, may be regarded as an extension of one's home, as the term "hometown" suggests; therefore, one's neighbors may be regarded as one's extended family. In attacking a community, the invader is attacking one's home and family, both immediate and extended. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Invasion plot are Invaders From Mars, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Relic, ‘Salem’s Lot, It, Desperation, The Regulators, Summer of Night, The Taking, and Stinger. A non-fantasy/horror/science fiction story that is based on the Invasion plot is Taps, in which the students at a military academy repel an attempt by the police to shut down the school (to allow its conversion into a condominium complex) and, ultimately, take on the National Guard. Prototype: Satan’s invasion of the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

Fools Rush In: Characters enter the monster’s lair: To conduct a rescue, to neutralize a threat, to capture an unusual animal, to gather plants that may be the source for a new miracle drug, to conduct scientific research, or for a number of other (sometimes foolish) reasons, a character or, more often, a team of characters, enters the place in which a dangerous entity or force resides or is located, and the entity or force protects its territory with disastrous results for the character or team that has entered its lair. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Fools Rush In plot include Alien, Predator, King Kong, Anaconda, Subterranean, and Descent.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: Characters seek to capture, kill, or otherwise abuse or exploit a monster: This plot is a subtype of the fools rush in plot in which a character or team of characters enters the territory of an unusual organism specifically to capture it or to kill it. The reason for wanting to capture it varies. The capture may be for the purpose of displaying the organism, studying it, or neutralizing it. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Let Sleeping Dogs Lie plot are King Kong, Anaconda, and Predator.

Serendipity: A chance discovery leads to mayhem. The Thing, Alien, and Rendezvous With Rama are based on the Serendipity plot. Prototype: Pandora’s Box।

Hubris: Pride goes before a fall: (Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, The Island of Dr. Moreau). Prototype: Satan’s rebellion against God in Paradise Lost, which is suggested, but not dramatized, in the Bible.

Deliverance: A hero or a company of heroes seeks to slay or otherwise get rid of a monster: Often, this plot, although it can stand alone, is an extension of the Invasion plot. Once the invader has invaded, one or more characters seek to deliver the community by evicting the invader. Occasionally, the character or characters may travel from one location to another in pursuit of the invader, driving him, her, or it from one invaded community after another. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Deliverance plot are Beowulf, The Exorcist, It, Summer of Night, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Taking. Examples of non-fantasy/horror/science fiction stories that are based on the Deliverance plot are Have Gun, Will Travel, The A Team, and Pale Rider. In Have Gun, Will Travel, a gunfighter offers his services for hire, sometimes in the deliverance of a town that is being run by corrupt officials and their hired guns. The A Team is a group of four Vietnam veterans, framed for a crime they didn't commit, who help the innocent while on the run from the military; often, their help consists of ridding a town or a group of people of a bully. In Pale Rider, a gunfighter poses as a preacher for a group of gold prospectors, delivering them from local gunmen when he seeks revenge for having been shot and whipped by the gunmen and their leader. Prototype: Moses’ deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage in Exodus.

Call To Duty: A prophecy must be fulfilled, a quest must be undertaken, or a mission must be accomplished: Often the call to duty has worldwide, or even cosmic, implications and long-lasting, or even eternal, consequences and may involve supernatural entities and forces, including God and his angels or Satan and his demons. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Call to Duty plot are Excalibur!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Dark Crystal, Star Wars, It, and Summer of Night. Prototype: Abraham’s call to become the “father of many nations,” which was preceded, on a smaller scale, by God’s call to Noah to build the ark that saves a remnant of humanity (Noah and his family) from the universal flood of God’s wrath against sin.

Need To Feed: A monster is hungry; people are its food: To survive, characters must figure out a way to outsmart or circumvent the monster. The Need To Feed plot may be regarded as the Freudian oral stage of psychosexual development out of control. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Need To Feed plot are Tremors, Jaws, and Dracula.

Need To Breed: A monster needs to reproduce, but, to do so, it requires a human mate: A search, with a series of fatalities, may be needed before the monster can find the right mate with which to breed, and the breeding itself may have fatal consequences to the human partner. Sometimes, the Need To Breed takes a technological rather than a biological form, as in Rejuvenator and Demon Seed. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Need To Feed plot are Species, Rosemary‘s Baby, and Demon Seed.

Something To Prove: The main character has something to prove--courage, innocence, judgment: Jurassic Park is, in part, based on the Something To Prove plot.

Too Good To Be True: Beware a bargain! The main character makes a deal, usually with the devil, only to find that the price that he or she must pay far outweighs the benefits, power, or gift that he or she receives in exchange: (“What profits a man who gains the world and loses his own soul?”) Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Too Good To Be True plot are Faust, The Amityville Horror, Needful Things, and The Devil’s Apprentice.

Redemption or Assuaged Guilt: A character attempts to redeem him- or herself or someone else (a family member or a friend) for a past misdeed: Usually, the past misdeeds will be monstrous--far greater wrongs than are done by most other people (matricide, patricide, the killing of a sibling, rape, perjury that results in another person’s imprisonment or execution)-- and, consequently, the redemption, if it comes at all, will be a laborious and protracted process. Often, the character will doubt that he or she can ever be pardoned or forgiven and that, for him or her, the whole process is futile; nevertheless, out of a guilt and a sense, perhaps, of moral responsibility, if not hope for ultimate redemption, the tortured character will persist in performing his or her penance. Example of stories that are based on the Assuaged Guilt plot are The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Angel. Prototype: The redemption of humanity in Christ, as told in the Gospels.

Avengers, Assemble!: A wronged person seeks revenge (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The X-Men). Non-fantasy/horror/science fiction movies that are based on the Avengers, Assemble! plot are Sudden Impact, in which the sister of a woman whose gang rape caused her to become catatonic becomes a vigilante, avenging her sister by tracking down and killing her assailants; Rolling Thunder, in which a war hero seeks revenge against the thugs who, in stealing silver dollars from him, kill his wife and son and destroy his hand; and the Death Wish series, in which A New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad against those who have killed his wife, his daughter, and other innocent people.

The Devil Made Me Do It: A character does evil because he or she is possessed by the devil or a demon or is the literal or figurative child of Satan: Examples of novels and movies that are based on The Devil Made Me Do It plot are The Exorcist, The Omen, Faust, The Regulators, Desperation, and The Devil‘s Advocate). Prototype: Satan’s tempting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

Greed: Greed outweighs common sense and decency; as a result, someone is usually maimed or killed: In part, King Kong, Jaws, and Poltergeist are based on the Greed plot.

People Are Such Animals!: Men and women turn into beasts: Such transformation stories tap into the sometimes-fine line between the human and the bestial, suggesting that, despite art, culture, and civilization, human beings are closer to the so-called lower animals than they’d care to admit and may act on the same instincts as those upon which animals act, especially on the need to feed and the need to breed. Usually, the only way to end the nightmare is to kill the beast. Examples of novels and films that are based on the People Are Such Animals! Plot are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wolfman, The Howling, and Silver Bullet.

Experiment Goes Awry: A mad scientist’s research runs amuck: This is often a subtype of the Hubris plot, the scientist’s arrogance leading to his or her manipulation of nature with disastrous, unforeseen effects. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Invasion plot are Frankenstein, The Fly, The Island of Dr, Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The Food of the Gods.

Cannibals: Human monsters enjoy gourmet food--people: Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Cannibals plot are Soylent Green, The Silence of the Lambs, The Hills Have Eyes, and Ravenous.

Wrong Turn: A simple mistake or a purposeful cover up has fatal consequences: Wrong Turn and I Know What You Did Last Summer are based on the Wrong Turn plot.

Ragnarok: Something or someone is trying to end the world, often as a prelude to establishing a world of its own: This plot differs from the Invasion plot because the antagonist’s threat is not merely occupation but the annihilation of the invaded community, and the community is not merely a total institution or a town, but the entire world (although the annihilation may begin on a local scale). Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Ragnarok plot are War of the Worlds, Invaders From Mars, and The Taking. Prototypes: Revelation in the Bible, Ragnarok (in Norse mythology).

Starting Over: Having survived an apocalyptic catastrophe, natural or man-made, such as a universal flood, a nuclear holocaust, or a plague, a remnant of humanity overcomes extreme hardship and dangers as they rebuild their lost civilization. This plot requires a vast setting and many characters. Often, several small groups will compete against one another for dominance or to become the sole survival, Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Post-apocalyptic Starting Over plot are Damnation Alley, The Stand, Swan’s Song, A Boy and His Dog, The Omega Man, and Road Warrior (a. k. a. Mad Max II).

Dystopia: The world has gone to hell, without the hand basket: The dystopian world is the opposite of a utopia, or heaven on earth, in which, frequently, human beings have been reduced to slavery and are ruled by a ruthless, often barbaric, elite. George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are non-horror examples, as is Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Do or Die: A heroic character must complete a series of tasks or he or someone he loves will be killed; sometimes, a clock is ticking: An examples of a story that is based on the Do or Die plot is Dean Koontz's Velocity. Prototype: The 12 Labors of Hercules.

Copycat Killers: Crimes (usually murder) are based on urban legends or are copied from other, previous crimes. Often, in committing these crimes, the perpetrator seeks to share the notoriety of the original criminal (Urban Legends).

Building Up the Plot

The 24 basic plots identified above may be too simple, by themselves, to keep readers or moviegoers interested in the story. However, they provide the foundation for building a more complex plot that will keep readers or audience members’ interest. These are some ways that writers build from the 24 simple plots to more complex plots:

Outer and Inner: Relate the basic plot’s outer (natural or social) conflict to the protagonist’s inner (psychological) conflict: For example, in The Exorcist, the battle is between the priest and the devil, but it is also a struggle between the priest and himself, as he tries to hold on to the tattered remnants of his faith, which was shattered by his mother’s protracted suffering and death (a concrete example of the philosophical concern for the so-called problem of evil).

Bigger Is Better: Relate the basic plot’s outer conflict to an area of human concern (religion, politics, art, science) that is bigger than the protagonist and his or her immediate concerns: In Pale Rider, the protagonist avenges himself against sadistic men who shot and beat him; in the process, he prevents similar men from expelling gold prospectors from their goldfield and the denial of the better life that they hope to create for their families with the gold that they find. The individual, while serving his own needs, serves those of the community (or the world).

Fantastic Reality: The basic plot’s outer plot, especially if it is fantastic, can be related to a realistic psychological, social, or other outer struggle: In King Kong, the film producer who captures the giant ape hopes that, by displaying it for admission, he can avert the financial ruin that threatens him during the Great Depression.

Metaphorical Monsters: Make the monster a metaphor for a real-life problem that the protagonist faces (neglect, ostracism, drug addiction, spousal abuse); by vanquishing the monster (if vanquish it he or she does), the main character finds acceptance, self-acceptance, or freedom: In “Dead Man’s Party,” Buffy Summers attacks zombies which, as her friend Xander Harris informs her (and the viewer), are symbolic of thoughts, attitudes, and emotions that she has sought to repress: “You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get you.”

Social Commentary: Like Huckleberry Finn, fantasy/science fiction/and horror novels and movies can provide social commentary about current events or eternal questions, examining such topics as dehumanization, euthanasia, interracial marriage, poverty, racism, religious intolerance, or repression of free speech, or war: The Regulators examines the negative effect of children’s television, particularly its violent content, on children’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Children of the Corn shows the murderous and suicidal results of an unquestioned devotion to religious doctrine. ‘Salem’s Lot and Needful Things shows the conformity, hypocrisy, corruption, and greed that often underlies the ideal image of the American small town.

Questioning Politically Correct Assumptions: Some fantasy/science fiction/and horror novels and movies question politically correct assumptions, one of which is that xenophobia is unnecessary and bigoted: Since it is directed at anyone who is a stranger, xenophobia is the most general form of bigotry, indiscriminate in its prejudice. One should welcome, not fear, strangers, critics of xenophobia contend. Such novels and movies as Childhood’s End challenge the truth of the politically correct assumptions behind xenophobia’s critics’ contentions. Offering friendship to strangers, these stories suggest, could get a person--or an entire people--or the whole human race--destroyed.

This Is That: This treatment of the basic plot is similar to that of the Bigger Is Better and the Metaphorical Monster treatment: In fact, it is a combination, of sorts, of these two treatments in which one state of affairs is a metaphor or an analogy for another, greater state of affairs that is similar to it. An example is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which some critics contend, is, paradoxically, simultaneously both “an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy under Communism and as a satire of McCarthyist paranoia about Communism” (Wikipedia article on “Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film)”). A non-fantasy/science fiction/horror story that uses a This Is That plot treatment is Animal Farm, in which the farm represents a Communist society (Soviet Russia) ruled by an elite (the Communist Party, headed by Vladimir Lenin.)

Strength In Numbers: This treatment suggests the importance of community or at least cooperation among individuals, for it demonstrates that by such means, a group may vanquish a threat that individuals alone could not hope to conquer: Examples of this treatment abound and include It, Summer of Night, ‘Salem’s Lot, Desperation, The Regulators, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Excalibur!, The X-Men, Tremors, and many others.

New World Exploration: Another way to build a simple plot into a more complex one is to set the action in an undiscovered or new world. This treatment is especially appropriate for fantasy and science fiction novels. Even in novels set in the everyday world, a fresh perspective on a familiar environment can make the familiar seem unusual or bizarre. (Situation comedies often use this technique, making the main character or characters new kids on the block or fish out of water, as it were.) By displacing them from a familiar to a strange environment, writers broaden these characters’ experience; at the same time, writers can depict the new environment as it is seen by the displaced person. James Rollins frequently employs this technique in his novels, as do the writers of The Beverly Hillbillies television series.

11/22/63: A Book That Shall Live in Infamy

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Stephen King can’t seem to help himself. For the past twenty years or so, he’s been writing when he really has little or nothing more to say (worth saying, at least). Instead, it bashes Republicans, conservatives, or whatever he sees as the monster of the moment.

His self-indulgent attacks upon all-things-not-Kingly are tiresome, not entertaining.

Apparently, he’s now given up even pretending to write about horror. Instead, he’s taking up alternative history--or alternative history and science fiction--as his new “literary” genre--or genres. In his latest tome, which is quite the doorstop at over 800 pages, King stretches his readers’ ability to suspend their disbelief to the breaking point and beyond by introducing a time machine (in the form of a “wormhole.”) A local butcher has been using the device to slip back a few decades and buy some cuts of meat at way more than bargain basement prices for resale in the here and now. King’s protagonist has a better idea: he uses the time machine to throw himself (and horror fiction) back more than half a century so he can prevent the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or “JFK,” as King prefers to refer to the former president.

The whole idea sounds rather more tiresome than entertaining.

But that’s understandable. After all, 11/22/63 is King’s fiftieth book. Apparently, he’s too tired himself, at this point in his career, to trouble himself to write words when numbers will do--or, perhaps, in his pastiche-prone way, he’s simply trying to associate his book with 9/11, another date which, like 12/7/41, lives in eternal “infamy.”

Apparently out of gas (or maybe full of gas), King trots out the trite and the familiar: time travel, JFK’s assassination, chaos theory, high school, teacher-writer protagonist (the novel’s hero, Jack Epping, is a high school English teacher, as King himself once was, before he became the Big Mac and fries of the literati), domestic violence, and a classic car (shades of Christine and From a Buick 8). He even tosses a little Groundhog Day into the mix. (Something’s gotta stick, right?) About the only thing missing is a St. Bernard.

Recommendation: Don’t buy it; if you must read it, wait until your local library pays for a copy out of your tax dollar.

Giger's Art: A Lesson for Horror Writers of the Biomechanical Age

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horrific sex is about domination and submission, about control and being controlled, about power and powerlessness, about pleasure and pain, about joy and misery, about elevation and degradation. Its fulcrum is neither love nor affection, but power. It is the use and abuse of another human being--not only sexually, but also physically and emotionally--for one’s own purposes. It is the reduction of a person to a thing and the use of him or her as a means to the end of satisfying one’s own psychosexual needs and desires.

H. R. Giger’s art is horrific because it depicts such behavior. In his nightmarish biomechanical worlds, men and women--mostly women--are cyborgs--part human and part machine, and their situations (and their postures) are indicative of their degradation and humiliation. Indeed, the very purpose of Giger’s art seems to portray, as starkly as possible, the abject nature of fleshly incarnation, of the fleshly aspects of human existence, of the body that houses the soul. It is in the flesh that humanity is lost; it is in flesh that the animal within is to be found--except that, in Giger’s art, even the flesh and the animality of human existence is transformed; it is reduced to an even lower level, that of the mineral and the mechanical. In Giger’s art, free will is denied in favor of the mechanistic and the material, the mechanical and the determined. At best, people (mostly women) are what is leftover of them--half faces, half bodies, partial personalities, all immersed in a mechanical apparatus that is greater than themselves, in which they are, quite literally, mere cogs in a machine.

When a face does appear, amid the wires and cords, plates and pipes, tubes and gears, hose connectors and clamps, presses and compressors, motors and switches, the eyes usually show only their whites. The irises are missing, signifying, perhaps, the agony or the death of the individual enmeshed in the machinery. Emphasis, in general, is given to the sex organs--breasts, vagina, buttocks, anus, penis, and testicles--the animal parts of men and (mostly) women. These organs are hooked into the machinery or, in some cases, have become one with the machines of which they are part, penises becoming pistons, vaginas sockets, breasts dome-shaped lids with nuts instead of nipples.

Paradoxically, it is humanity itself who has manufactured the machinery that enslaves men and women, that dehumanizes them, that humiliates them. Human beings have created of the natural world a hell on earth, wherein they have reduced themselves, along with nature, to something lower than the beasts. They have become one with, and part and parcel of, their machinery, as determined and soulless as the engines that perform ambiguous functions without direction or, it appears, purpose. Having been set in motion, they do whatever task they have been designed to do--usually something, in Giger’s art, that is as horrific as it is bizarre and absurd. The human (mostly female) cogs in his machinery are there, it seems, mostly to be raped, tortured, and possibly killed. This is the earth that we have made, Giger’s work suggests; this is the world as we would have it to be, not a garden of Eden but a nightmarish mechanical world in which we are not the image and likeness of God but cogs in a giant and incomprehensible, but horrific, machine of our own making. The biomechanical world is the world that we have created in our own image and likeness.

In Giger’s art, sadomasochism is taken to new heights--or lows. It has become passionless, it has become a matter of course, it is mechanical and perfunctory, operating under the same laws of physics as any other impersonal force in the universe. Penile pistons pump back and forth inside tubular vaginas without love, affection, or any kind of emotion, except, perhaps, mute horror, with the machine-like efficiency of a cog in a machine. Impaled, women seem to be all but unaware of their rape by the monstrous machines that ravish them, sometimes vaginally, sometimes orally, sometimes anally--sometimes in all these ways, simultaneously--to no purpose or end but, it seems, efficiency of motion, for, obviously, no machine is capable of inseminating a woman, nor is a woman who is partly--or even mostly--machine able to conceive or bear a child. The sex in Giger’s art is mechanical and purposeless, as absurd as the rest of the machinery in his factories of the damned. Sex, which, in times past, united couples, does not depend upon even the presence of a complete man or woman. All that is needed is the sex organs themselves and a face to register the misery and horror of dehumanized, mechanical existence in a determined and material world apart not only from God but from spirituality itself. This is the true horror of Giger’s horrific art.

In fantasy, science fiction, and horror, the theme had emerged--and had been emerging--for decades, even centuries. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had warned of artificial reproduction which bypasses sexuality. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack warned us about the dangers of bestiality in King Kong. Dean Koontz portrayed the dangers of sex with computers in Demon Seed. Some fundamentalist Christians are also warning us that sex with robots might not be without menace. According to “Why Sex With Robots Is Always Wrong: The Impending Demise of the Human Species,” a somewhat histrionic, and perhaps tongue-in-cheek article (it‘s written as if its incidents occur in the 2030 and “is not about sex with robots at all,” but “increasing sexual perversion and increasingly pervasive virtual sex happening through the expanding acceptance of online pornography”), “the idea that sex with robots will radically effect the attitudes of practitioners also comes from studies of those involved with pornography on a regular basis,” and “studies have found that viewing of pornography results in“ the following outcomes: 

1. increased callousness toward women
2. trivialization of rape as a criminal offense
3. distorted perceptions about sexuality
4. increased appetite for more deviant and bizarre types of pornography (escalation and addiction)
5. devaluation of monogamy
6. decreased satisfaction with a partner’s sexual performance, affection, and physical appearance
7. doubts about the value of marriage
8. decreased desire to have children
9. viewing non-monogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior

Even in the “real world,” some are predicting that men and women may, within the present century, fall in love with, marry, and have sex with robots.  According to Dr. David Levy, a researcher at University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, as paraphrased by Charles Q. Choi in the MSN online article, “Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen,” “psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, “and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships.” Some, if not all, of these reasons could be programmed into robots, Levy argues: “For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too.”

So far, the robots resemble human beings. “There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans,” Levy said. Indeed, he predicts that realistic sex dolls of the type manufactured by RealDoll will be the prototypical robotic paramour: “It's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration,” Levy contends, and maybe equipping the robots with the ability to coo a few sweet nothings. “That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there.” Levy’s is only one vision of the future of sex with robots, however, and it is a decidedly utopian dream Alongside it is Giger’s dystopian nightmare. It remains to be seen who, Levy, the artificial intelligence expert, or Giger, the surrealistic artist, will prove more prophetic.

Learning from the Masters: M. Night Shyamalan

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman



One hates to beat a dead horse, but M. Night Shyamalan isn’t dead--not yet, not quite: people with more money than they know what to do with continue to fund his “films.” Usually, Chillers and Thrillers’ “Learning From the Masters” series analyzes successful stories, whether in print or on film, but one can learn from artistic failures, too, of course--it’s generally just less pleasurable.

I saw Sixth Sense, which I think is a good thriller, and Signs, which I wasn’t as enthused about, whether it is regarded as a science fiction film, a horror film, or a monstrous hybrid spawned by both. Then, I watched the last film by this alleged filmmaker that I ever plan to see, whether on the screen or courtesy of a DVD: The Happening, in which, despite its title, nothing happens--at least nothing believable or meaningful.

What’s wrong with Shyamalan’s films? They are predictable (there will always be a more-or-less unbelievable “twist” to the plot at the end of the story, a supposedly surprise ending that most moviegoers see coming from the beginning, especially now that they’ve learned, as it were, to expect the unexpected: the child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (in The Sixth Sense) is a ghost; security guard David Dunn (Unbreakable) is a superhero; water hurts aliens (Signs); the village (in The Village) is the laboratory, as it were, for a modern-day experiment; the lady trapped in the swimming pool returns to the Blue World (The Lady in the Water); plants become serial--or is that cereal--killers (The Happening).

The films are superficial. There’s nothing to them. Their themes are sophomoric--or maybe just moronic.

The characters, like the plots and themes, also lack depth. They’re cardboard cutouts mouthing annoyingly unrealistic and, at times, exceedingly tedious dialogue--and dialogue about either inconsequential matters or incredible ones. Some of them are even Shyamalan himself, poorly disguised.

Character’s motivations are sometimes unconvincing. In The Happening, the protagonist regards his wife as virtually unfaithful to him because she had lunch with one of her male coworkers once. That was it. That was all. Lunch. Only in a Shyamalan film does a shared meal equal adultery. However, it is this shameful incident--lunch with a colleague of the opposite sex--that has caused a bit of a rift between the main character and his better half and it is the overcoming of this rift in reunited love (if such a relationship can involve true love) is part of the thematic glue that bonds--or is supposed to bond--these two characters (who receive a child by way of informal adoption, after the child’s parents are killed) together so that, having recovered their respect and affection for one another after living through a hellish encounter with America’s flora, they can become, once again, a family. The sentimentality level sinks to new lows, even for Shyamalan.

Although Shyamalan bills himself as an auteur, he is really an amateur. Unfortunately, his first couple of movies were lucky forays into the world of mass entertainment, and he gathered, from them, a fan base of young bloods who are, well, too easily entertained. For them, the trite themes, the stilted and tiresome dialogue, the feckless characters, the false dilemmas, and the inevitable plot twists are enough--and more than enough--as long as the master’s movies contain some cool special effects and a wink and a nod to the moviegoers’ geekiness.

Shyamalan makes films for himself. If he were a good filmmaker, that would be fine. The problem is that, in modern America, there are too many like him or too many who are likeminded. As long as there are chills and thrills, the rest of the movie doesn’t have to amount to much in the way of art. The filmmaker’s box office receipts have proven that dreck, like sex, sells, and if there’s one thing Shyamalan has in abundance it’s dreck.

So, what lessons can be gleaned from Shyamalan’s failures?

Unless you’re Dean Koontz, be clear as to your genre.

Make sure something actually happens during your story’s action--and something important, not trivial.

Unless you’re O. Henry, resist the desire to employ a “twist” or “surprise” ending. (Brush up on Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece, “The Philosophy of Composition” to learn how to write a successful ending to a story.)

Develop satisfying, significant, or even multivalent themes.

Create sympathetic and compelling characters.

Provide credible motivations for characters’ conflicts.

Write credible, if not sparkling, dialogue.

Do not insult your audience! Respect their intelligence and their commitment to the art of fiction, filmed or printed.

The Monster as the "Mediator Between the Human and the Nonhuman"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In Alien Encounters, Mike Rose, writing about science fiction, offers several insightful observations that also have application to horror fiction. Indeed, Chillers and Thrillers has made some of the very same claims that Rose makes, so Rose’s own insights often complement my own. However, since he is writing about science fiction, rather than horror fiction, some of his observations about his topic do not appear to apply to horror fiction as well.

One of the typical horror plots, I’ve argued, begins by introducing a threat, usually monstrous in some way, that disrupts the characters’ everyday lives--lives that they have often come to take for granted. Rose sees a similar situation as comprising the inciting moment of many science fiction stories, in which, he says, the basic conflict pits science against nature and the human (or spiritual) against the nonhuman (the natural or the material). The result of the clash of these adversaries, he contends, is a change in the way in which human beings relate to themselves, other human beings, or nature itself:

All forms of the fantastic--the gothic, the romantic tale, and modern fantasy as well as science fiction--are concerned with the relationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary (29).

In science fiction, Rose declares, the threat to humanity’s everydayness and the security that the ordinary often provides (or appears to provide) is apt to take one of four forms: space, time, machine, or monster:

At the level of theme and motif, science fiction seems bewilderingly diverse, composed of such disparate elements as aliens, time machines, spaceships, robots, and telepaths. If we proceed to a higher level of abstraction, however, we can observe the way the concern with the human in relation to the nonhuman projects itself through four logically related categories, which I shall call space, time, machine, and monster (32).

Interestingly, in science fiction, the conflict between such adversaries sometimes ends with the adoption of the nonhuman or with an extension of the concept of the human to include the nonhuman--or, at least, the particular instance of the nonhuman that the threat represents:

Science fiction’s role as mediator between the spiritual and the material is in alignment with its role as mediator between the human and the nonhuman. Generally speaking, the spiritual may be identified as the human, the realm of meaning that is opposed to the meaningless realm of the nonhuman. An atom, a star, or a galaxy in itself means nothing; it is, in every sense of the word, insignificant. The nonhuman acquires significance only when it is brought into relationship with the human. And when this happens the human versus nonhuman opposition is inevitably subverted: the nonhuman becomes part of human experience (48).

In horror fiction, such inclusion is rarely entertained; instead, the threat is overcome; the monster is cast out, neutralized, or destroyed. A strong rift remains between the human and the nonhuman. Between them, the chasm is usually unbridgeable and eternal.

One instance, however, in which an uneasy acceptance of the extraordinary in the context of the everyday occurs in horror fiction is the acceptance of Daniel (“Oz”) Osbourne, a werewolf in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by his girlfriend Willow Rosenberg and the other members of their clique, the so-called Scoobies: protagonist Buffy Summers, Xander Harris, Cordelia Chase, and Buffy’s mentor, Rupert Giles.

In most werewolf stories, the beast is hunted down and dispatched with a silver bullet (and, indeed, a werewolf hunter seeks to do just this in “Phases,” an episode of the series). However, as Giles observes, it seems inhuman to kill a werewolf when, except for three days each month, he is human rather than animal. The more merciful and moral course of action would seem to be the one that they take, which is locking Oz in a cage during the three nights that he transforms into a wolf.

However, in a different episode, “Beauty and the Beasts,” Oz escapes during Xander’s watch, and, in his werewolf form, is thought, at first, to have killed a person. Oz eventually leaves Sunnydale rather than to continue putting those for whom he cares at risk. Later, upon returning, after believing himself cured of his affliction, he does try to kill Tara Maclay, Willow’s girlfriend, when he learns that Willow is in an intimate relationship with her, preferring her newfound lesbian lover to him.

Ultimately, the series seems to suggest that accepting the bizarre into the realm of the ordinary is perilous and foolish. Compassion, mercy, and the desire to do the right thing can have problematic effects on the community, and harboring unnatural or supernatural outcasts could be not merely dangerous, but also fatal, indeed.

Perhaps science fiction more readily embraces the otherness of the nonhuman because the genre emerged from a tradition--science itself--that has accepted humanity’s displacement from a geocentric (and, indeed, an egocentric) world view to one in which human beings are understood as being insignificant, if not altogether irrelevant, motes, not in God’s eye, but the in the eyeless, nonhuman universe.

This willingness to accept the nonhuman was not initially the case, even in science (or science fiction). Indeed, early science fiction writers resisted the nonhuman (as some still do). The protagonist of H. G. Wells’ short story, “The Star,” hangs on to his humanity, even when the nonhuman, represented by a planet hurtling toward the Earth, threatens to destroy him, expressing a sentiment much like that of the speaker of one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, who asserts:

The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

--whereas the protagonist of “The Star” argues, as Rose observes, that he is capable of understanding the very nature that would seek, as it were, to kill him, and that he would not, therefore, trade places with, even if he could do so:

At one point, Wells’s mathematician is described as gazing at the approaching planet “as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. ‘You may kill me,’ he said after a silence. ‘But I can hold you--all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this little brain. I would not change. Even now’ (30).

At first, even scientists themselves were reluctant to let go the anthropomorphic universe in which suns and planets were once thought gods and over which the one true God still ruled. “Galileo founded modern science,” Rose says, “but the shift from a sacramental to an alienated sense of the cosmos did not come into being until long after Galileo,” and even Copernicus himself maintained faith in the divine reality of an eternal Creator: “For Copernicus himself the solar system was a temple,” Rose reminds his readers, “and the sun was a magical sign of God” (51).

Later, however, Rose argues, science fiction accepted, if all of humanity has, as yet, not, the insignificance of humanity in the cosmic scheme of things, and, with this acceptance, they (and science fiction writers) experienced an alienation from the ground of their being. “The sense of alienation that informs science fiction is inseparable from the modern scientific view,” which followed, if it was not caused by, the scientific revolution, and this sense of alienation continues to affect humans today: “The Victorian situation of urban man disconnected from God, cut off from nature, separated from other men, is of course our own; it is in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century spiritual loneliness as a manifestation of our culture’s longing to escape the prison-house of the merely human” (53).

Paradoxically, Rose suggests, it is science fiction that enables readers to bridge, if only imaginatively, the gulf between the human and the nonhuman. When nature was sacramental, God’s presence was perceived and, indeed, felt, in his creation, but once nature was conceived of as being merely material, and not spiritual, and was understood to act according to purely physical laws, rather than in response to a divine will, an anguished sense of alienation resulted. Orphaned by the death of God, humanity grieved--and continues to grieve. However, if science, in part, at least, helped, as Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet: To Science” suggests, bring about the death of God, its offspring, science fiction, might help readers to bond again, as it were, with the nonhuman and material universe.

Poe laments:

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

--to which Rose seems to reply:

Science fiction operates, then, not merely by sustaining the human versus the nonhuman opposition but by simultaneously and continuously subverting it, generating fables that transfigure both the idea of the nonhuman and the idea of the human. The space that the genre inhabits is not a prison, rigid and unyielding, but a flexible and dynamic field of semantic tension. It is this condition that makes a living genre possible (49).

Horror fiction, as I pointed out, takes a different tact. Instead of seeking, or, usually, even allowing, a reconciliation of the human and the nonhuman (usually, that is, the monstrous), horror fiction requires that the nonhuman, or the “other,” be vanquished, whether by exile (as Grendel is exiled, in Beowulf), neutralization (as Caliban is neutralized, in The Tempest, when he agrees to serve Prospero), or destruction (as Grendel is destroyed, in Beowulf, when he won’t accept his exile but, instead, attacks the Danes). Accepting a wolf into the fold, as it were, is too dangerous, as Buffy’s example of the Scoobies’ acceptance of Oz into their circle demonstrates (and as does their acceptance, for that matter, at one time or another, of the vampires Angel and Spike).

Rose sees monsters as symbolic representations of “self-alienation,” rather than existential alienation, a separation of the self from itself, which, he says, may or may not be associated with the split between man's consciousness of himself as distinct from his nonhuman, or material, opposite, nature, or a “violation of conceptual categories” (176-186).

When monsters arise from self-alienation, he says, they appear in “narratives of metamorphosis, stories of the transformation of man into something less than or more than human” (179). When they emerge from the continuous play between “conceptual categories,” monsters take the forms of the grotesque: “The grotesque, as Wolfgang Kayser suggests, may be understood as an aesthetic form associated with the violation of conceptual categories such as vegetable and animal, animal and human, dead and living” (186).

How does this process occur? “The grotesque,” Rose contends, “is the estranged world, the world made over according to new principles,” and, as such, it is also “the estranged world” and “implies the daemonic” (186-187). It is a world born, as it were, from “a continuing play with the categories of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the human and the nonhuman” (188), and “all mediating figures, whether machines of human origin or monsters or supermen of evolutionary or extraterrestrial origin, move readily toward the daemonic, playing roles in science fiction analogous to those of good and evil spirits of older forms of romance” (187).

When monsters arise from self-alienation, he says, they appear in “narratives of metamorphosis, stories of the transformation of man into something less than or more than human,” Rose contends, but, one might argue, in some cases--that of Buffy’s Oz, for example--that such a transformation is simultaneously “into something” that is both “less than” and “more than human,” for Oz certainly loses everything that makes him human (except, at times, at any rate, his bipedal gait), but he also gains the strength, stamina, heightened senses, and speed of a wolf who is unimpeded by moral, or even rational, decisions and choices. As werewolf-Oz, the taciturn Scooby is a beast to be reckoned with (except that, of course, he can’t be reckoned with).

In any case, following such a transformation, Rose opines, “dehumanized man, man as either monster or superman, is in principle indistinguishable from any other kind of alien” (179), and, as such, one might add, should probably be treated as such.

Rose’s book is full of comments and observations that spark one’s own imagination. For example, horror fiction’s monsters tend to disappoint once they come crawling out of their dark domains, into the light, and the reader sees, as it were, the form of the monster, for nothing can disturb or frighten as well as the shapes of things unseen except in the mind’s-eye. Theoretically, such disappointment need not occur, however, Rose suggests, in either horror fiction or in science fiction: “Since the universe is limitless, so too are the possible shapes of man,” a possibility that is associated, he thinks, with “the pervasive science-fiction concern with infinity. The vision of the genre as a whole is the conviction of infinite human plasticity” (184).

However, in practice, this ideal can never be realized. The day awaits the writer who can somehow transcend the limits of human imagination and envision a truly monstrous monster, because, alas, it is not possible to think outside one’s own frame of reference, which is the universe (or that portion of the universe about which humanity has learned the secrets of nature). The writer who pierces this limitation must, of necessity, be him- or herself an alien or a deity. Nevertheless, too often, in horror fiction, the monster is derived from the application of the same few principles, such as addition, subtraction, substitution, and the like, as I have argued in previous posts, including “Monster Mash: How To Create a Monster,“ Part 1  and Part 2 when others may exist that should be sought.

Interestingly, Rose includes transgender characters in his gallery of grotesques, listing “the androgynous Gethenians of The Left Hand of Darkness” alongside “the two-headed Mrs. Grales of A Canticle for Leibowitz” and “the monstrous children of Childhood’s End” (186). Likewise, until the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed male and female homosexuals from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1974, same-sex lovers were considered mentally ill; before they were included with the mentally ill, they were criminals and, indeed, moral monsters. Today, transsexuals are still considered mentally ill (they suffer, it is said, from “gender dysphoria”).

Nevertheless, the public, like the psychological and psychiatric experts, seem to have, perhaps under political pressure, come to change their own minds concerning the nature of homosexuals, if not the transgender, regarding them, for the most part, as sane and moral. In other words, these individuals, who were once seen as monsters who must be cast out, are now regarded as having a place at the table with the rest of humanity. They, who were once seen as exceptional, if not nonhuman, are now regarded as unusual but human. More and more, they are accepted among the rest (that is, the majority) of humanity.

Having returned, rather indirectly, to the matter of humans’ acceptance of the nonhuman, there is also another reason, it would seem, for horror’s rejection of such otherness (or most of it). To adopt the world view that science suggests is to jettison a belief in God and, as a consequence, the basis, some would argue, of morality itself. If God is dead, such apologists would contend, there really is no objective basis for a belief in good and evil or right and wrong. Were God to be excluded from the picture, there would be, at best, a social contract between members of a society, and among societies, in which it would be agreed that this act is permissible, whereas the other is not, a contract that is arbitrary and capricious, allowing, for example, slavery in one century; suppressing the voting of minorities, including women, in another; and outlawing both in still a third.

A system of morality that is as susceptible to political change as situation ethics or moral relativism is too fragile and subjective, such critics contend. Horror fiction maintains its hold, rather fiercely, on the possibility of God’s existence and, therefore, the possibility of the existence of good and evil. Human behavior, horror fiction implies, can be right or wrong. Human conduct is not necessarily a matter of the alignment of the stars. The alternative to a moral universe has been expressed well by one of the monsters whom horror fiction would exile, neutralize, or destroy and whom American society, in fact, did put to death, serial killer Ted Bundy:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

In Western society, the solution to the dilemma of who and what merits a place at the table of humanity and who and what, for the common good, should be ostracized, neutralized, or destroyed rests, at present, upon such notions as the need to protect the public on one hand and the need to permit individuals to engage in activities, in private, which may offend many but do no physical harm to the participants (or need not do any such harm), as long as there is mutual consent between the adults who would participate in such conduct, whether the conduct is sexual or otherwise.

Therefore, were Ted Bundy a homosexual who had had an affair with a like-minded and willing partner, and had consummated his decision to do so in private, he would have been considered human, if unusual, and would have been accommodated by society. However, even as a heterosexual (whom society accepts unreservedly), he was sentenced to death, because he had raped and killed over thirty women, one of whom was only fifteen years of age. In other words, his acts were neither consensual nor harmless.

By carving out exceptions, qualifications, and extenuating circumstances, society has worked out a scheme for accepting some sorts of otherness while rejecting other sorts. Even so, yesterday’s monsters do not fare well in many horror stories, and those that society accepts, more or less, are often still rejected by horror fiction. For example, in general, homosexual characters still do not fare well in horror stories.

Horror fiction is more traditional than science fiction. Moreover, it clings to the possibility of the existence of the supernatural, including God. Consequently, it is more concerned with, even dedicated to, the defense of the status quo, the existing order, the way things are. Threats against everydayness may be welcome as a means of shaking up the complacent and reminding them that life is short and precious, but after the monster has done so, most writers’ stories give them the heave-ho or destroy them, if they cannot be made subservient to the reigning power elite or otherwise neutralized.

Science fiction is more alienated from both the world and the self, perhaps, than horror fiction tends to be, and what the latter rejects, the former may be inclined to accept. However, Howard Hawks’ 1951 horror-science fiction movie The Thing from Another World offers scientists a warning, because it was one of their own who reached out to the extraterrestrial invader, even trying to protect it from the military representatives of his own species, only to be killed himself by the monster.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it may well be that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. It may well be, too, that some things are better left alone and that vampires should never be invited into one’s home--or to one’s table.



Note: I have no animosity myself toward gays or lesbians, but, in the Western world, they are sexual “others” to the predominantly heterosexual majority in their culture and society and, as such, fit the monster mold, for some, albeit, less convincingly now, perhaps, than they did prior to 1974, when the APA declared them no longer victims of a “mental disorder.” It is for this reason that they (or the transgender) sometimes appear as threats to the status quo, as do “the androgynous Gethenians of The Left Hand of Darkness.”