Bram Stoker Award Winners, 2006

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Named for Dracula’s creator, the Bram Stoker award has been presented annually since 1988 by the Horror Writers Association in recognition of “superior achievement” in the horror genre. The award is an eight-inch model of a whimsical haunted house designed by sculptor Steven Kirk. The door opens to disclose a miniature brass plaque bearing the title of the winning work and its author’s name. Award categories have changed over the years. Presently, these categories are:

• Novel
• First Novel
• Short Fiction
• Long Fiction
• Fiction Collection
• Poetry Collection
• Anthology
• Nonfiction.

On occasion, a writer may receive a lifetime achievement Stoker for his or her entire body of work, provided that the oeuvre has had a significant effect on the genre.

For 2006, these were the winners; the awards were presented March 30, 2007:

Novel: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Lisey Landon, the widow of award-winning novelist Scott Landon, realizes, as she cleans her late husband’s study, that there's much she doesn’t know about his past, and, with the help of Dooley, an eccentric acquaintance, Lisey must figure out what she’s hidden from herself (and what Scott has planned for her) if she's to remain alive.

First Novel: Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry

Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, is a small town under attack from within and from without. The novel in which the small town is featured, although it comprises a self-contained story, is the first in a trilogy, which fans and fellow horror writers compare to Stephen King’s The Stand, Dean Koontz’s Whispers, and Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life. The book’s bad guys? A serial killer, a ghost, a pair of wicked mechanics, madness, greed, sexual repression, religious fanaticism, and fear. Ghost Road Blues’ sequels are Dead Man’s Song and Bad Moon Rising. Its author, 49-year-old Jonathan Maberry, maintains a MySpace site.

Long Fiction: Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

A scarecrow-like monster rises, like the Great Pumpkin, from a cornfield on Halloween to test the mettle of the boys who reside in the small town nearby.

Short Fiction: "Tested" by Lisa Morton

Fiction Collection: Destinations Unknown by Gary Braunbeck

Anthology: Retro Pulp Tales edited by Joe Lansdale and Mondo Zombie edited by John Skipp (tie)

Nonfiction: Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo and Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Vision of Hell on Earth by Kim Paffenroth (tie)

Final Exits is a book of trivia concerning death and dying, replete with typographic errors and factual mistakes. Gospel of the Living Dead analyzes the symbolism and themes of George Romero’s zombie movies.

Poetry Collection: Shades Fantastic by Bruce Boston

Speciality Press Award: PS Publishing

Lifetime Achievement Award: Thomas Harris.

Solipsism, Claustrophobia, Vampires, and Zombies

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

As we age, the objects of our fear change. As children, we fear the dark. We fear monsters. We fear strangers. Later, we learn, as the Beatles sing,

What do I see when I turn out the lights?
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.

There’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light, we learn. There’s nothing to fear, even if the jacket on the back of the chair looks, in the dim light, among the shadows, like a crouching troll. Monsters, we learn, are imaginary. There are far worse things--real things--to worry about. Disease. Sickness. Death. Strangers, we realize, are potential friends.

Like shape shifters, our fears change. They transform themselves. They metamorphose, becoming different, becoming other. Often, even when they’ve changes, they are still in mask and costume, impersonating our deeper, truer fears. Take the fear of close spaces. In “The Premature Burial,” Poe describes the terror of one who, thought to be dead, awakens inside his coffin, having been buried alive:

Fearful indeed the suspicion--but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs--the stifling fumes of the damp earth--the clinging to the death garments--the rigid embrace of the narrow house--the blackness of the absolute Night--the silence like a sea that overwhelms--the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm--these things, with thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed--that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead--these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth--we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell, is of my own actual knowledge--of my own positive and personal experience.

Terrifying, indeed, would it be to find oneself in the situation that Poe describes! It is such “premature burials,” historians suspect, that gave rise to the legends of vampires. Awakening within the narrow, close confines of a buried coffin, the panicked person would rip and tear at the lining or the bare wood of his or her confines, possibly turning over, if there were room enough for such an action to be accomplished, all the time wild with terror and horror, screaming in unheard anguish until there was no more air to gasp and stillness and silence put a merciful end to the victim’s horrific struggles and desperate pleas. Later, should the coffin be exhumed for some reason, the corpse within, now on its stomach, rather than on its back, and the casket itself disheveled and scratched, would seem to prove that the dead was not dead, but, rather, is one of the undying, one of the undead.

As terrible as claustrophobia is, there is something worse, perhaps. What if no one existed but oneself? What if all the world were but aspects of oneself, as are the artifacts of one’s dream? The existence of inanimate objects, of plants and animals, of other persons, of the universe itself cannot be proven, after all; rather, all things other than the experience of one’s own mind at work is all that one can know directly. The existence of everything else is merely inferred. Inferences can be misleading. They can be false. They can be illusory. The mirage on the highway seems to exist, until a car, traveling toward it, gets close. Then, it seems to vanish. In fact, it was never really there at all, perhaps, any more than is a rainbow or a dream. Psychologists believe that infants are natural solipsists, believing that they alone feel and think.

It may seem delightful to have a tropical island all to oneself, and, perhaps, for a while, it would be. What would it be like, though, after a week, a month, a year, or a decade? What would it be like to be alone in the world? The solipsist knows, or would know, were this philosophical position tenable for long in the thoughts of a person both mature and sane.


Even if solipsism is untenable to the vast majority of people, its possibility, even as but the topic of argument and debate, suggests the extremes to which people can go in challenging common-sense realism and, indeed, common sense itself. Some, standing upon the precipice of solipsistic madness, fall over the brink and into the abyss. But for the grace of God (or, perhaps, only chance), there go we as well. Claustrophobia may represent more than a fear of close spaces and of being trapped physically. It could symbolize the fear of being trapped inside oneself. There are various ways to be imprisoned within oneself. Solipsism is only one, and the unlikeliest one of all. Other, more probable alternatives to psychological imprisonment are the large number of mental disorders and even inarticulateness. If we cannot speak, if we are unintelligible or inarticulate or incoherent, we cannot make ourselves known. Therefore, we are trapped within the circle of our own thoughts and within the sphere of our own emotions. Our minds and hearts become the coffins in which we are buried alive. This, in fact, is the theme of Sherwood Anderson's novel, Winesburg, Ohio, which is, while not a horror story per se, full of moments of horror.

In horror fiction, we use cramped spaces--narrow hallways, tunnels, cages, cells, and the like--to symbolize such fears. We also employ the zombie, a creature much like us but slow-witted and slow-moving, shambling, stumbling, and unable to speak or think. Dead men walking, the zombies are we, as the solipsists of our fears.

The Appeal of the Esoteric

Copyright 2008 by Gray L. Pullman

Your fingers weave quick minarets,
Speaking secret alphabets

--Doors, “Ship of Fools”

Everyone likes secrets. We all want to know them, harbor them, divulge them. Secrets make us powerful. They put us, and not others, “in the know.” They generate curiosity, envy, fear, and a host of other, not always subtle or decent, emotions. They also make us holy, in the literal sense of the word, which is “set apart.” Secrets set us apart from others. Secrets make us stand out. They make us special, in our own minds if not in the minds of others. This is the appeal of the esoteric--or part of it.

But in horror fiction, the esoteric takes on another dimension as well. In horror fiction, the esoteric is dangerous. It threatens. It could harm or even kill. It is, therefore, in some sense, evil. The esoteric is blasphemous or heretical or treasonous, and it--and its devotees--must be put down, must be put to the stake, if necessary; they must be crushed that we may stand; they must be slain that we may live. The esoteric separates those who know, the initiates and the masters or adepts, from those who want to know, the uninitiated, the ignorant, the unenlightened.

The esoteric has been with us always. In Judaism, the Cabbalists claimed secret knowledge. They alone, they said, understood the true, the mystical, the actual meanings of the Hebrew scriptures. In Christianity, mystics and others also claimed to know what others of the faith did not know. The Gnostics crippled, and nearly killed, the early church by insisting that only they knew the secrets of the Gospels and, therefore, how to be saved from death and damnation. Even Jesus, in the Gospels, says that the knowledge of some scriptures are hidden and may be revealed only to those he elects to know and understand them. Some have ears, but they may not hear, and some have eyes but they may not see.

Throughout the Middle Ages, secret societies organized around esoteric doctrines and texts; many, perhaps in altered forms, are with us still: the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Although many may laugh at the absurdity of such secret orders, others are curious about them, or envy their members, or are afraid of them. They fear their secret alphabets, their hidden texts, their clandestine meetings, their strange symbols and rites and rituals. In many cases, outsiders, peering in, see Satan in their midst and conclude that these cults are composed of devil worshipers.

When one examines many of the esoteric texts of secret societies, one finds not so much doctrines to fear as teachings that amuse. It is difficult to read many of these sects’ secret writings without smiling or even laughing out loud. For example, “The Esoteric Philosophy Homepage” offers its visitors a perplexing welter of strange ideas, half-baked notions, and assorted trivia, perhaps with a few lotions and potions thrown into the pot--or cauldron--for good measure, offering tips on such seemingly profound matters as:

• “Esotericism: Energy in the Universe” (something conventional physicists will want to read, no doubt)
• “The Nature of Consciousness” (answers to age-old questions about which psychologists admit continued confusion)
• “Education in the New Age” (for staid professors, perhaps, who still labor under the influences of Benjamin Bloom, John Dewey, and their ilk)
• “Esoteric Healing” (for physicians who’ve yet to heal themselves)
• “Esoteric Laws” (for lawyers to argue about)
• “The Process of Evolution” (for neo-Darwinists)
• “The Nature of Illusion” (for the David Copperfields among us)
• “Reincarnation, Karma, and Past Lives” (written, perhaps, by Shirley McLaine)
• “The Christ and the Buddha” (for two-thirds or so of the planet’s faithful)--

and dozens of more articles concerning claptrap and nonsense. The site truly offers something for everyone--and that, it seems, is another appeal of the esoteric. It’s all things to all people. As the Freemasons say, one’s faith doesn’t really matter among lodge members; anyone of any religious background, or none, may be a member of the Craft. The esoteric is something like the child (or puppet) in the Pinocchio song:

When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true

However, such fulfillment is available only to the members of the cult, the sect, the inner circle, the secret society. To others--namely, the world at large--the opposite conditions apply: ignorance, disappointment, failure, despair, death, and destruction.

As one might suspect, horror fiction makes good use of secret societies.

A hooded figure scurrying about dark, subterranean chambers among shifting shadows in pursuit of God-only-knows-what are frightening because, well, they’re nameless, they’re faceless, and theyre hip to God-only-knows-what dark secrets and may, who knows?, be hell-bent on taking over the world. Often, their haunts are the dungeons of medieval castles, catacombs, caverns by the sea, or mountaintop retreats, protected and remote, situated, at times, upon unhallowed ground whereupon even angels fear to tread.

In most cases, cults, sects, and secret societies don’t really threaten society (as far as we know, anyway) (although Germany has outlawed Scientology), but, occasionally, as in the cases of the Jim Jones mass suicide at Jonestown, Ghana, the FBI’s murder of the Branch Davidians in the massacre at Waco, Texas, and the Heaven’s Gate members’ mass suicide in San Diego, California, such secret orders do do harm, albeit mostly to themselves--to date, at least. They have proven that they can be dangerous, even deadly. By not being open about who they are, what they believe, and what they are about, secret societies perpetuate the mystique that makes them feel special and unique, a self-appointed elect.

As long as the devotees of such organizations skulk about among rats and bats and cats, or whatever it is that they do skulk about among (the imagination is one’s only limit when one considers secret societies and their doings), they will appeal to outsiders and to horror fiction, which, more often than not, is concerned with the plight or the perspective, or both, of the outsider. Their mystery is their appeal, and their secrecy makes them mysterious. They have a secret, and they won’t tell. We want to know what they know, to know their secrets. It’s as simple, and complex, as that.

Poe and King: Two Unlikely Beauties

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Since the term “aesthetics” is generally used in relation to beauty, it may strike one as odd, or even bizarre, to see it associated with horror. A word of explanation is in order.

Structure has beauty. Unity has beauty. Coherence has beauty. Harmony and balance have beauty. A work, even if it treats of the horrifying and the terrifying, is beautiful if it exhibits these qualities. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and poems show these attributes. Therefore, such narratives as The Raven, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of the Amontillado,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” are beautiful. They are works of art. Each word, each image, each figure of speech, and each part of the whole, in each case, builds toward a single effect--fear. Poe means to frighten his readers, and he carefully plots every incident of his story’s action to do just this. In his theory, outlined in “The Philosophy of Composition,” every word has a place in the bigger scheme of things, and every word must be in its place. The fact that his name remains in lights a century after his death is a measure of his success.

In horror fiction, Poe remains the master of masters. In our time, Stephen King is often held up as, well, the king of the horror genre. It’s doubtful that even King himself would claim to be of the same rank as Poe as a literary artist, though, however popular and prolific in output King may be. In fact, he refers to himself as the “literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.” Can it be said, though, that King has an aesthetics of horror? Maybe.

If we regard Aristotle as correct in his judgment that plot is the most important element of narrative, we may charge King with having an aesthetic. King knows how to tell a story, creating and maintaining suspense alongside pace and throwing a curve to his readers at just the right moment to keep them guessing (and reading). If Aristotle was right, King, in plotting his novels, might be said to create things of lasting beauty.

If, in striving for effect, Poe created whole new literary genres, King, in plotting his tales, recreated at least one--the horror genre. He took age-old, moldering themes, such as the vampire, and reenergized them. In bringing the parasitic bloodsuckers from Europe’s Gothic landscapes and installing them in small-town 'Salem's Lot, King not only gave them a local, and an American, home, but he also modernized them, making them, in a willing-suspension-of-disbelief-kind-of-way, believable and, therefore, frightening. King knows that home is not where one hangs one’s hat, but, rather, where one’s heart is, and, by making old world horrors at home in small-town America, he shocked and terrified and repulsed his countrymen, here and now. He also revolutionized the horror genre, which is no small feat in itself.

Home is Eden, King knows, and, so, he brought the serpent back into the garden. He did it by plotting his novels to demonstrate something simple but vital: what threatens one’s local community, one’s hometown, or one’s neighborhood, threatens oneself. That’s what’s scary nowadays, whether the threat takes the form of ancient vampires and werewolves or contemporary shape shifters and extraterrestrial entities beyond human ken.

Of course, some believe that Aristotle is mistaken about plot’s being the most important narrative element, pointing, instead, to character. The creation of memorable and significant literary personages who embody a great and lasting insight into humanity, as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, or even Scarlett O’Hara, does, is, these critics argue, what counts as great literary art. One Huckleberry Finn or Carrie White is worth any number of plots, they say.

If their point of view is true, King stands, on less certain ground in having developed a horror aesthetic, for, in fact, character doesn’t depend upon horror; stories of all types are peopled, as it were, with characters, many of high artistic quality. Many of Charles Dickens’ novels have little to do with horror as a genre that is represented by Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, King, and the like, but his characters certainly are giants among their peers or, in many cases, hey are peerless.

For many, Henry James solved the problem of plot, raised, on one hand, by Aristotle and of character, raised, on the other hand, by the philosopher’s critics, asserting that the two are but flip sides of the same coin. Action (the incidents of which comprise the plot) represents character, James suggested, just as character determines action. To put it in simpler terms, one is what one does, and what one does is what one is. An alcoholic, for example, is someone who drinks to excess, and someone who drinks to excess is an alcoholic. If James is right, in plotting the action of his novels, King is representing his characters, and his characters, in turn, determine what will happen in his books.

Action, one may quibble, is not the same as plot. Action is what happens; plot is how and why it happens. Action is what a character does; plot is how and why he or she does it. E. M. Forrester (I believe) distinguished between the two with a simple example--or two simple examples, actually. This is an example of action, he said:

The queen died. Then, the king died.

This is an example of plot, he said:

The queen died. Then, the king died of grief.

The addition of the two words “of grief” explain how and why the king died. In the first instance, there is no necessary connection between the incident of the queen’s death and that of the king’s demise. The two incidents are related strictly through chronological sequence: one happens before the other. In the second instance, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two incidents: the king’s grief, which was caused by the queen’s death, effects his own demise. A plot is a series of causally related incidents, each of which is cause by its antecedent and, in turn, causes its successor to occur.

In King’s fiction, bizarre, horrifying incidents (actions) occur with great regularity, but they don’t occur in a vacuum. They are related by a chain of cause and effect. Moreover, these plots happen in relation to a specific type of character--the man, woman, or child who lives in small-town, modern-day America. In tying together plots that involve strange incidents with today’s small-town residents, King unites past with present, old world with new world, tradition with innovation, childhood with adulthood, monsters with contemporary fears and anxieties. This marriage, whether made in heaven or in the other place, has a structure, a unity, a coherence, a harmony, and a balance that is beautiful to see--and to read. It seems safe to say that King’s horror fiction has an aesthetic; it’s just not lik, e Poe’s.