Stephen King's Bram Stoker Awards

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

It's unclear how prestigious the Bram Stoker Award is beyond the Horror Writers Association (HWA), whose members bestow the prize to writers (mostly among their own ranks) for “superior achievement” in the genre. The prizes were first awarded, in a variety of categories, in 1987. Winners receive a statuette made by Society Awards, the same firm that makes the Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the GLAAD Media Award.

Four HWA members have won multiple Bram Stoker Awards for the novel.

Stephen King won for Misery (1987), tying with Robert R, McCammon, the author of Swan Song; for The Green Mile (1996); for Bag of Bones (1998); for Lisey's Story (2006); for Duma Key (2008); and for Doctor Sleep (2013).

The award was conferred on Peter Straub for The Throat (1993); Mr. X (1999); Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003); In the Night Room (2004); and A Dark Matter (2010).

Robert R. McCammon took home the Bram Stoker Award for Swan Song (1983), which tied with King's Misery; for Mine (1990); and for Boy's Life (1991).

The prize went to Sarah Langan for The Missing (2007) and Audrey's Door (2009).

In the absence of specific HWA criteria for determining who should and should not receive a Bram Stoker Award for his or her novel, we'll take a look, backward in time, in this post, to see how the critics of the day assessed King's prize-winning novels. In future posts, we'll consider the other multiple award winners' “superior accomplishments.”

While the HWA's secret criteria for determining “superior achievement” appear to vary from one HWA member to another (candidates for inclusion on ballots in votes for nominations are made both by members and, on a separate ballot, by judges), Amazon customers' reviews give a pretty good idea why readers rate the books they review. Interestingly, Amazon customers apparently often disagree with HWA's assessments of the Bram Stoker Award winners' “superior achievement” in the genre.

We may never know what's “superior” about King's achievement in having written Misery, but, whatever it was deemed to have been, it was enough for him to be awarded one of the two 1987 prizes for such accomplishment with regard to the novel. The best we can do, perhaps, in attempting to surmise what the HWA organization found to be of “superior” quality concerning King's novel, is to recall what a professional critic wrote about it.

Here's what John Katzenbach of The New York Times had to say, in part, about the novel in his May 31, 1987, review, “Summer Reading: Sheldon Gets the Ax.” The novel is “different” from others of its genre in that it has a limited cast of characters (two, in fact) and a restricted setting (“the confines of a single house”—indeed, almost exclusively . . . one room”). (Has Katzenbach ever read Edgar Allan Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” or “The Tell-Tale Heart”?)

In addition, Katzenbach finds King's implicit allusions to The Arabian Nights “sophisticated” storytelling: “But the novel functions as well on a more sophisticated level. Mr. King evokes the image of Scheherazade.” The critic also enjoys King's characterizations of protagonist Paul Sheldon and his psychotic nemesis, Annie Wilkes, the novelist's suggestion “that real torture can solve the problems of writer's block,” and its many cliffhangers.

Again, we have no idea what went through the minds of the HWA judges who decided Misery was an example of “superior achievement” in the horror genre, but, if Katzenbach provides any insight, such accomplishment has a lot to do with rehashing elements as old, or older than, Poe; suggesting an allusion to another, older work of literature; writing characters interesting to one's readers (fairly standard); and evoking an unusual—one might say, in the case of Misery's idea that torture is inspiring, an absurd—theme. Oh, yes, Kazenbach likes King's “cliffhangers,” too.

Although the techniques Katzenbach zeroes in on are typical of the genre, exhibiting nothing truly “different” in horror fiction, King's apparently virtuoso performance topped those of Ray Garton (Live Girls), Kevin Nunn (Unassigned Territory), and Chet Williamson (Ash Wednesday), and was matched only by Robert R. McCammon (Swan Song), who shared the 1987 Bram Stoker Award for the novel. It seems Katzenbach, like King's readers and the HWA itself, is easily impressed.

What about The Green Mile (1996)? What made this particular novel a “superior achievement” worthy of the HWA prize for what is essentially the best horror novel of the year? We don't know for sure, of course, given the association's tight-lipped stance on divulging its criteria—at least online—so, again, the best we can do is to get the take of a professional critic of the day.

In his book review of King's prison horror story for Entertainment Weekly, “The Green Mile (Entire),” Tom De Haven says that, having read the introductory chapter of the novel, which was serialized, he was “hooked” by the many questions it raised. Raising questions, it seems, was King's biggest ploy in maintaining readers' suspense:

Is Coffey innocent? I don’t know. Just as I don’t know what happens to the other prisoner on death row, a timid Frenchman named Eduard Delacroix, who has befriended a small brown mouse with an eerily unrodentlike intelligence. Nor do I know what mayhem vicious prison guard Percy Wetmore is going to inflict. (He’s going to do something, though. Bet on it.) Is this going to turn into a gore story or a ghost story? Or both? I don’t know that, either.  

Although the reviewer has read only the first installment, he ventures the opinion that “King has written — so far — his best fiction in years, a Depression-era prison novel that’s as hauntingly touching as it is just plain haunted.” In fact, De Haven gives King's first chapter an “A” grade. 

To the impressive list of plot cliches, the use of literary allusions, characterization, abundant cliffhangers, and a dubious theme, we can now add to King's repertoire his ability to raise suspenseful questions. In fact, this last technique is the primary one De Haven credits for “hooking” him. Is it enough to build a novel on? At the time he wrote his single-installment book review, even De Haven couldn't say for sure, but, apparently for the HWA, whose judges, hopefully, read more, this was enough to designate King's work as one of “superior achievement” in the field. No wonder The Green Mile beat out Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse, Owl Goingback's Crota, and Peter Straub's The Hellfire Club.

Although Jim Argendeli (“Once again, Stephen King delivers”) says that Bag of Bones is “standard fare for a Stephen King novel,” he also finds the book “business as usual” and full of “cliches.” Its saving grace, Argendeli implies, is King's ability to suggest questions by which he maintains readers' suspense.

Apparently, there is nothing new here, either, as De Haven mentions this trick as one that's been in King's bag at least as early as 1996 and, in fact, suggesting questions through incidents and other means is as old as fiction itself, as are the “plot twists” and “red herrings” that Argendeli singles out as responsible for keeping “you rapidly turning the pages to discover the answers” to the questions King has implied.

Was King's use of ancient literary techniques and “business as usual” enough to make Bag of Bones the winner of the HWA's 1998 Bram Stoker Award for Novel? If so, it's difficult to see how his performance in having written Bag of Bones represents “superior achievement” and why it won over Dean Koontz's Fear Nothing, S. P. Somtow's Darker Angels, and Thomas Tessier's Fog Heart.

For The New York Times reviewer Jim Windolf (“Scare Tactician”), King's 1998 Bram Stower Award winner, Lisey's Story, succeeds where “its fraternal twin,” Bag of Bones, failed because the former novel's characters, “Lisey and Scott make much better novel subjects than their 'Bag of Bones' counterparts,” being “loopy and dramatic,” rather than, as in Bag of Bones, simply chewing “up creaky plot machinery.”

A novel that investigates who an author is while he (the author in Lisey's Story is male) is writing, doesn't merely have intriguing (i. e., “loopy and dramatic”) characters, but it's also chock full of “solid descriptions . . . indelible images . . .” interrupted sentences, italics, alternating points of view, and even verse.

Haven't other writers used the same devices for centuries? There seems to be nothing, in Windolf's catalog of King's “tricks” that set King apart from those of his peers who lost the 1998 Bram Stoker Award for Novel to him. The reason Lisey's Story is a winner, in the eyes of HWA's judges, remains a mystery.

In 2008, King won the HWA's Bram Stoker Award for Novel yet again, this time for Duma Key. Why was this novel considered a “superior achievement” in the field of horror fiction while the losing contenders—Gary Braunbeck's Coffin County, Nate Kenyon's The Reach, and Gregory Lamberson's Johnny Gruesome—were judged as inferior works?

In “Dark Art,” New York Times book reviewer, James Campbell, sings the praises of King's Duma Key, despite King's inability to meet the challenge of describing paintings in words: “The difficulty of evoking the wonder of graphic art that cannot be viewed has confounded many writers before King.”

Although the novel's painter, Edgar Freemantle, thinks of his own works as “reheated Dalí,” Campbell finds it “hard to square that comparison with the descriptions of four [of the character's] recent works,” one of which King, via Freemantle, describes as “a dead seagull . . . found on the beach,” which Freemantle then magnified to “pterodactyl size.” (Either King doesn't think much of Dalí or he hadn't seen many of the surrealist's paintings, if he confuses Dalí's work with that of Freemantle.) If it's not King's poor descriptions, perhaps it was his “overextended” plotting or “flimsy” characterization that endeared Duma Key to the HWA judges.

In 2013, King's novel Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining (1977), won the Bram Stoker Award for Novel. There's no telling why the HWA judges judged this novel as being worthy to receive King's seventh such award, but Margaret Atwood's review of the novel, “Shine On: Stephen King's 'Shining' Sequel, 'Doctor Sleep',” suggests some reasons the book may have been recommended. 

It's full of “wordplay and puns and mirror language,” she notes; it offers a mix of good and bad in each character; it includes “all [the] virtues of his best work” (namely, he knows his way around “the underworld”); his fiction connects with (feeds upon?) earlier American literature (especially earlier horror stories), and it's “about families” (but, of course, not all of the families are human).

For Atwood, King is the Norman Rockwell of American letters, stemming from the same “literary taproot” that runs through the literature of Edgar Nathaniel Hawthorne, Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry James, and Ray Bradbury. King may not be the “Lincoln of our Literature,” as William Dean Howells called Mark Twain, but, hey, it's all food. Good enough, at least, for the HWA to have awarded King his sixth Bram Stoker prize.

Scholars may contend, as Dr. Harold Bloom certainly does, that King writes nothing more than the modern equivalents of Victorian “penny dreadfuls,” but what does the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University know?

Whom are we to believe, the HWA, or Bloom, who, in writing of the bestowal of a different award on King, evaluates the horror author's contributions to American letters this way:

The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for “distinguished contribution” to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J. K. Rowling (“Dumbing down American readers”).

Unsafe

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

For most, home is a sanctuary, where it's safe to be oneself, to relax among loved ones, and to share one's innermost thoughts and feelings. In such a place, we let down our guard; we lower our defenses; we unbend. It is a safe place, free from the “slings and arrows” of everyday life, if not of “fortune.”

Other safe places, other retreats, include resorts; city, country, state, or federal parks; churches, temples, or mosques; friends' or neighbors' houses; the lodges of fraternal organizations; schools; and workplaces.

That is, they are usually safe.

Which is why they're all the more horrific and terrifying when they turn out to be anything but safe. 

Part of the horror and terror we feel when safe places are no longer safe stems from the overturning of our expectations. We expect to be safe, to be secure, to be protected. Experience has taught us that we need not fear danger in our homes, resorts, parks, houses of worship, lodges, schools, or workplaces. We have come to believe they are protected havens. When these expectations are upset, the horror and fear we experience are intensified.

In horror fiction, our safety is violated by various means. A sanctuary may be invaded. Certain parties may defy laws or moral strictures. Poor judgments on our part or another person with whom we're associated may lead to unpleasant, injurious, or even fatal consequences. We may be subjected to the cat-and-mouse maneuvers of an obsessed stalker or the machinations of a serial killer. A house guest may become our worst nightmare. Someone we trust may prove untrustworthy. 

Horror movies and novels play on our fear that, even in a retreat, we may not be safe, that there may, in fact, be no safety, no matter where we are, where we go, or with whom we spend our time, whether with family, friends, neighbors, vacationers, worshipers, lodge brothers or sisters, faculty or classmates, or workplace colleagues. When a safe place proves to be dangerous, there is no safety anywhere.

Such truly is the case, of course: none of us is safe, not entirely, not really. At every moment, our lives hang in the balance. We could die of disease, of injury, of poisoning, of automobile or airplane crashes, of workplace accidents, of falls, of animal attacks, of drowning, of choking on food or drink, by fire, by insect bites or stings, by drug overdoses, through starvation, from complications of surgery or medical care, by explosives, to name but a few common causes of death. Life is fragile. 

Our susceptibility to harm and our dependency on nature for the fulfillment of our needs puts us at the mercy of disease, pestilence, famine, flood, wild animals, each other, and a host of other dangers. We are not as in control as we might have supposed; we are not as able to defend or provide for ourselves and others as we might have thought.

In horror fiction, our dependency, our fragility, our vulnerability are highlighted by extreme dangers. We face monsters, not germs; aliens, not insects; paranormal and supernatural figures and forces, not natural disasters. Such adversaries personify these actual threats, giving them, if not exactly a human face, a personality. Anthropomorphism makes the monstrous relatively human. In the monsters of horror fiction, we encounter that which both is and is not ourselves.

It is we ourselves who make our safe havens unsafe, just as it is we ourselves who are endangered by these threats. We are both hunter and hunted, victimizer and victim, killer and killed. We are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, the man and the wolf as well as the wolfman.

Movies and novels in which such threats occur, as reminders of our own finitude, vulnerability, dependency, fragility, and relative helplessness, include:

When a Stranger Calls (1979): A baby sitter is terrorized by a stranger who calls her repeatedly, asking whether the children she has checked on the children she is watching. Later, the babysitter, now a married woman and mother, is enjoying dinner at a restaurant when she receives a telephone call. The caller, the same man who'd called her years ago while she was babysitting the children he killed, asks, “Have you checked the children?”

The Resort (2004): Bentley Little's 2004 novel is summarized by the publisher, Signet:

. . . Welcome to The Reata, an exclusive spa isolated in the Arizona desert. Please ignore the strange employees and that unspeakable thing in the pool. And when guests start disappearing, pretend it isn't happening. Enjoy your stay, and relax. Oh...and lock yourself in after dark.

Club Review adds.

. . . Opulent doesn't begin to describe the Arizona getaway where Lowell Thurman, his wife, Rachel, and their three young sons have come for one glorious week. Everything at The Reata is perfect-although Rachel is a bit unnerved by the openly lustful gaze of one of the gardeners, something she doesn't mention to Lowell. Nor does he tell her about the frightening sensation he has in the pool of hands clutching at him, trying to pull him under. . . . . To the Thurmans' horror, guests begin to disappear.

For those who'd like to test the waters, here's a dip into The Resort:

He was halfway across the pool when someone grabbed his foot.

Lowell kicked out, flailing wildly, shocked more than anything else, but the grip on his foot tightened, bony fingers digging into the thin flesh, holding him firm. For a brief moment he was swimming in place like a cartoon character, then the hand let go and he floundered [sic] in the water as he fought against a force that was no longer there. 

Twisting, spluttering, trying to keep himself afloat and determine who had grabbed him at the same time, Lowell looked down into the choppy bubbly water beneath him, then scanned the surface of the pool. It was empty. There was still no one in the room but himself (48).

Summer of Night: A Barnes & Noble overview of Dan Simmons's 1991 novel, which has been favorably compared to Stephen King's It, states:

It's the summer of 1960 and in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, five twelve-year-old boys are forging the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. From sunset bike rides to shaded hiding places in the woods, the boys' days are marked by all of the secrets and silences of an idyllic middle-childhood. But amid the sun-drenched cornfields their loyalty will be pitilessly tested. When a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the night, the townsfolk know it marks the end of their carefree days. From the depths of the Old Central School, a hulking fortress tinged with the mahogany scent of coffins, an invisible evil is rising. Strange and horrifying events begin to overtake everyday life, spreading terror through the once idyllic town. Determined to exorcize this ancient plague, Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin must wage a war of blood—against an arcane abomination who owns the night One of the most frightening scenes of this novel occurs in the town's park, during the showing of a free movie. It is impossible to do more than to merely suggest the eerie, frightening quality of the scene's setting, but this excerpt will, hopefully, provide a slight indication:

“What's that?” whispered Lawrence, stopping and clutching his bag of popcorn.

“Nothing. What?” said Dale, stopping with his brother.

There was a rustling, sliding, screeching from the darkness in and above the elms.

“It's nothing,” said dale, tugging at Lawrence to get moving. “Birds.” Lawrence still wouldn't move and Dale paused to listen again. “Bats.” 

Dale could see them now, dark shapes flitting across the pale gaps between the leaves, winged shadows visible against the white of First Prez as they darted to and fro. “Just bats.” He tugged at Lawrence's hand. 

His brother refused to move. “Listen,” he whispered. . . .

Trees rustling. The manic scales of a cartoon soundtrack dulled by distance and humid air. The leathery flap of wings. Voices.

Instead of the near ultra-sonic chirp of bats scanning the way ahead, the sound in the motion-filled darkness around them was the screech of small, sharp voices. Cries. Shrieks. Curses. Obscenities. Most of the sounds teetered on the brink of actually being words, the maddeningly audible but bot-quite-distinct syllables of a shouted conversation in an adjoining room, But two of the sounds were quite clear.

Dale and Lawrence stood frozen on the sidewalk, clutching their popcorn and staring upward, as bats shrieked their names in consonants that sounded like teeth scraping across blackboards. Far, far away, the amplified voice of Porky Pig said, “Th-th-th-that's all, folks!”

“Run!” whispered Dale (52).

Summer of Night also presents harrowing scenes set in its characters' homes (especially Dale's basement!), the children's school, and a local church.

Another novel by Bentley Little, The Revelation (2014), recounts the evil deeds that ensue the arrival of a revivalist following the mysterious disappearance of a small-town preacher. According to Library Journal—

—In Randall, Arizona, portents signal a looming disaster of apocalyptic proportions: there are stillbirths, animal sacrifices, church desecrations, and mysterious disappearances. An ancient-eyed and omniscient preacher arrives and claims that Satan is collecting the souls of the stillborn infants and murdered townspeople, causing them to commit further grotesque crimes. He recruits the sheriff, the Episcopal priest, and expectant father Gordon Lewis, whose unborn daughter is, apparently, Satan's goal, but how this will cause the apocalypse is never explained. However, Little's story, is as typical of his novels in general, ends poorly, with no logical or believable explanation of the central conflict, and Library Journal contends, ill-defined and unmotivated characters, the lack of “revelations,” and a “flimsy plot” make “a forgettable book.”

Most of Little's books end the same way, unraveling toward their conclusions, which is more than frustrating. His faithful readers know this will happen and forgive him, because, until the end, he takes them on one hell of a scary, eerie ride and almost always includes some form of unconventional sex which is, although disturbing, titillating enough.

Stephen King also offers a novel set, among other locations, in a church, but Revival (2015), like The Revelation, has an unconvincing, theologically shallow—indeed, absurd— ending, suggesting that the author was writing from the hip, as it were, with no clear idea of the story he was telling. Would Little and King to take the advice Edgar Allan Poe offers in “The Philosophy of Composition,” and write their stories backward, with a solid, believable (within the context of the story itself) conclusion firmly in mind, their fiction would improve immensely.

A blurb summarizes the story, such as it is:

The new minister came to Harlow, Maine, when Jamie Morton was a boy doing battle with his toy army men on the front lawn. The young Reverend Charles Jacobs and his beautiful wife brought new life to the local church and captivated their congregation. But with Jamie, he shares a secret obsession—a draw so powerful, it would have profound consequences five decades after the shattering tragedy that turned the preacher against God, and long after his final, scathing sermon. Now Jamie, a nomadic rock guitarist hooked on heroin, meets Charles Jacobs again. And when their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, Jamie discovers that the word revival has many meanings.

Sorry, I don't have a sample excerpt on hand, having tossed my copy a while back, which is just as well.

IMDb offers a succinct synopsis of director Robert Angelo Masciantonio's Neighbor (2009), a horror film in which “a mysterious new girl arrives in posh suburban neighborhood and quickly sets out to terrorize the town. As she starts breaking into homes and torturing the occupants, they begin to realize that she isn't just another girl next door.”

An oldie but goodie, The Stepford Wives (2004), directed by Frank Oz, involves a fraternal organization of wealthy men who have perfected a way to give their wives a complete makeover worthy of a modern-day Pygmalion who uses high tech rather than a hammer and a chisel to create his version of the perfect woman.

High schools and universities are frequent settings for both horror novels and horror movies. The Roommate (2011), directed by Christian Christainsen, is one of the latest to locate its eerie incidents in a university: “a college freshman who realizes that her new best friend is obsessive, unbalanced . . . and maybe even a killer” (IMDb). Disturbing Behavior (1998), director David Nutter's part-sci fi and part-horror movie, set in a high school, is a junior version of The Stepford Wives, in which “The new kid in town stumbles across something sinister about the town's method of transforming its unruly teens into upstanding citizens.”

These films and others of these types reflect many individuals' fears as well as societal insecurities. If one's home is not inviolate, what place is? If we are not safe in our homes, are we safe anywhere? Dangers often come without, in the form of stalkers, serial killers, or murderous burglars, but they can also come from within, in the form of abusive parents, deviant children, or, as in Stephen King's novel Cujo, and the film adaptation of the same title, the family pet. 

Resorts are supposed to be places at which we can get away from all the petty concerns of everyday life and enjoy ourselves as we pursue pleasures we don't usually have the time to indulge, but, when things go awry, these retreats can become anything but a place of refuge; they can be transformed into places from our worst nightmares or from hell itself.

We often visit city, county, state, or national parks to picnic with family or friends. Companies may treat their employees to picnics in the park. We go there to walk our dogs, to ride horses, to visit nature (but on our own terms, in comfort, maintaining communications with the outside world at all times), or to witness wonders we can't imagine in our backyards back home. When earthquakes, flood, fires, landslides, or wildlife threaten us, we realize just how alone we are. If we're not well versed in the techniques of survival, we're not apt to live to tell of our adventures. 

Horror novels and movies, such as Stephen King's 1999 novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, director Adam MacDonald's Backcountry (2015), and Maurice L'Heureux's Into the Back Country (1982), director Keith Kurlander's Cold, Creepy Feeling (2010), and a slew of others show that human beings, no matter how much they might like to believe they've tamed nature and domesticated animals, are definitely not in control of their destinies.

Millions of people around the world believe in God, although their concepts of the divine sometimes differ widely. What is common to the majority of the world's great religions, however, is faith in Providence. God, the members of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam believe, not only created the universe but also takes a direct, personal interest in its operations, including the affairs of the men, women, and children He created. God loves and protects humanity, adherents of these religions believe, although He is also a God of justice and righteousness. That doesn't mean sinners and God's own greatest adversary, the devil, won't resist, defy, and disobey their Creator. Many exorcism films, such as William Friedkin's The Exorcist (based on William Peter Blatty's 1973 novel of the same title), director Scott Derrickson's film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and director Mikael Håfström The Rite (2011) explore the conflict between the divine and the diabolical, with humans as their battlegrounds.

It's not a neighbor, but a landlord, who represents danger for the young married couple in director Victor Zarkoff's voyeuristic thriller 13 Cameras. The problems with neighbors today is that they're not very neighborly. We don't really know them, and they don't really know us. Occasionally, when we chance to meet, we exchange pleasantries with them, smile, and wave, but they are essentially strangers to us, and strangers are unknown quantities. What we don't know could get us killed, horror novels and movies insist, so it's best to avoid them, as much as possible. Such movies as director Craig Gillespie's Fright Night (2011), director Mac Carter's Haunt (2013), director Rodney Gibbons's The Neighbor (1993) remind us of some of the dangers neighbors can represent, including vampirism, murder victims' ghosts, and adultery.

Bentley Little's novel The Association (2017), Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story (1979) and the 1981 film adaptation by John Irvin, suggest, respectively, that homeowner's associations and men's clubs are evil or possess evil secret that can destroy or end lives.

Are our children safe at school? (The spate of school shootings since 1999 suggest, quite clearly, the answer is no.) Are they being taught what they need to learn, or, worse yet, are they learning lessons no child should be taught? Are the teachers helping or hurting my child? A lot of parents are uneasy about school staff and educational curriculum. More than a few teachers, at every level of public education, except, perhaps, preschool and kindergarten, have had illicit sex with students, some of whom have, indeed, been raped. Not every parent wants young children to learn about every sexual practice imaginable. Novels like Little's The Association play on this fear, while King's novella Apt Pupil, examines the threats that students sometimes pose toward faculty members. Other novels and movies explore themes associated with colleges and universities: Little's University ( 2017) and such films as director Mark Rosman's The House of Sorority Row (1983), The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), directed by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow, Black Christmas (1973), director Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (1983), and a host of others depict college and university days as something much less nostalgic than most graduates are likely to remember them.

Many horror novels and movies are also set in workplaces: director Tobe Hooper's The Mangler (1995) (one of the silliest premises for a horror movie ever!), Psycho (1960) (a classic Alfred Hitchcock set largely in the roadside Bates Motel), The Funhouse (a carnival setting, courtesy of director Toby Hooper) are only a few of the myriad. Novelists, too, favor such settings, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child do in Relic (2003) and as Bentley Little does in The Consultant (2015) and The Store (1998), and as Dean Koontz does, in part, in Watchers (2003) and several of his other novels, including his Odd Thomas series (2007-2015), to mention but a few. We all have to work, but few of us truly enjoy our jobs, some of which are dangerous in themselves. On top of that, we may have a diabolical manager, monstrous colleagues, and crazed clients. These books and movies tap into these daily frustrations and annoyances, exaggerating them to the point that our jobs don't look all that bad, after all. At least, no one's trying to kill us (as far as we know).

Of course, urban fantasy novels in the horror mold, including my own A Whole World Full of Hurt (2016) have cities as their settings, but that's the topic for a different post.