Thursday, September 9, 2010

Man’s Best Friend, Vitalism, The Ghost in the Machine, H. R. Giger, and a Concluding Unscientific Postscript


Whoever has observed a kitten or a puppy play with a mechanical toy has probably noticed how the animal is confused by the automaton’s movement. Locomotion is one of the characteristics of living things, scientists tell us, and animals seem to be instinctively aware of this fact. Movement implies the possibility of danger, because things that move could attack. Alternatively, movement suggests food, because things that move, if only to flee, may be nutritious, even delicious, especially if they happen to be smaller than oneself--”nature, red in tooth and claw,” and all that.

However, the adult cat or dog is not fooled by mechanical toys: such playthings fail the smell test. For full-grown animals, scent--or, less delicately, body odor--distinguishes the living from the mechanical (and, among so-called cadaver dogs, the quick from the dead). As the Bible insists, life is in the blood (and other body fluids, Fido might add). In other words, life is organic. Movement is not, in itself, a sufficient attribute for determining life, nor, robotic assembly lines show, is reproduction.

If life is in the blood (a synecdoche for the organism’s organs), how much blood (or how many organs) are needed for something to be considered alive? Are cyborgs only partially human, while robots are not human at all?

Western culture’s Judeo-Christian religious tradition, like the idealism proposed by Plato and pagan beliefs in animism, posit the existence of a soul, or a vitiating principle, a life-force that makes the human (and, some argued, the animal) viscera quick rather than dead. It was this breath of God, so to speak, that made humans (and maybe animals) live; without it, their bodies would be as dead as the rocks and stones and trees in William Wordsworth’s “Lucy” poems, one of which (the hauntingly eerie “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”) laments,

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Rene Descartes argues that the universe is like a gigantic machine, as are the bodies of human beings themselves, wherein the spirit, or soul, is, as it were, a “ghost in the machine.” Scientists would later argue that the machine of which Descartes speaks is tenantless, that there is no such “ghost” haunting the machine. The spirit or soul is not necessary, they insist, to explain life, human or otherwise, any more, they add, than is a belief in a Creator. Most recently, Steven Hawking has claimed that the laws of physics, not God, created the Big Bang that gave rise to the universe, concluding, in The Grand Design,

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.
Most, but not all, scientists believe that nature is explainable without the need to invoke the existence of a divine Creator. Deism, like theism, has been cast off my the majority of scientists. However, some scientists do maintain Christian or other religious faith, many of them finding the cosmological argument a persuasive justification for such belief. The argument between atheists and theists is not likely to end any time soon, even among scientists.

Nevertheless, the secular world view is decidedly atheistic or agnostic, and, some contend, even militantly opposed to the “superstitious” beliefs of the religious. It is high time, they argue, that such outmoded systems of belief be committed to the dust heap of history so that humanity can “progress.” (The very belief in human progress is itself a highly debatable position, of course; see the quotation, for example, by Edgar Allan Poe in the column to the right.)

In science (or the rejected science of the past), animism was known as vitalism, which is the belief, as William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson point out, that “living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things” (“Vitalism,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy).  According to Bechtel and Richardson,

In its simplest form, vitalism holds that living entities contain some fluid, or a distinctive ‘spirit’. In more sophisticated forms, the vital spirit becomes a substance infusing bodies and giving life to them; or vitalism becomes the view that there is a distinctive organization among living things. . . . Mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena were extended to biological systems by Descartes and his successors. Descartes maintained that animals, and the human body, are ‘automata’, mechanical devices differing from artificial devices only in their degree of complexity. Vitalism developed as a contrast to this mechanistic view. Over the next three centuries, numerous figures opposed the extension of Cartesian mechanism to biology, arguing that matter could not explain movement, perception, development or life. Vitalism has fallen out of favour, though it had advocates even into the twentieth century. The most notable is Hans Driesch (1867–1941), an eminent embryologist, who explained the life of an organism in terms of the presence of an entelechy, a substantial entity controlling organic processes. Likewise, the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1874–1948) posited an élan vital to overcome the resistance of inert matter in the formation of living bodies.
The authors contend that there may vitalism as an explanatory theory of life and its processes is not as absurd as it is sometimes characterized--or caricaturized--as having been, although, in the end, they agree that the “mechanistic” view of life offers a superior empirical basis for experimentation:

Vitalism now has no credibility. This is sometimes credited to the view that vitalism posits an unknowable factor in explaining life; and further, vitalism is often viewed as unfalsifiable, and therefore a pernicious metaphysical doctrine. Ernst Mayr, for example, says that vitalism ‘virtually leaves the realm of science by falling back on an unknown and presumably unknowable factor’ (1982: 52). C.G. Hempel, by contrast, insists that the fault with vitalism is not that it posits entities which cannot be observed, but that such explanations ‘render all statements about entelechies inaccessible to empirical test and thus devoid of empirical meaning’ because no methods of test, however indirect, are provided (1965: 257). The central problem is that vitalism offers no definite predictions. Neither complaint has much historical credibility. Many vitalists were in fact accomplished experimentalists, including most notably Pasteur and Driesch. Moreover, vitalists took great pains to subject their views to experimental test. Magendie, for example, insisted on the importance of precise quantitative laws. Vitalism, as much as mechanistic alternatives, was often deeply embedded in an empirical and experimental programme. Typically, vitalists reacted to perceived inadequacies of mechanistic explanations; in many cases they rightly recognized that the forms of mechanism, materialism or reductionism advocated by their contemporaries were undercut on empirical grounds. In the end, though, their own proposals were supplemented by empirically more adequate mechanistic accounts.
Battles won in religion and in science are often still waged in the public imagination and, therefore, in the pages of fiction and on the stage of drama or the silver screen of cinematography. In each individual, the history of the one’s own culture must reoccur; the history of the species, including that of its ideas, must unfold. What is fought out in the cultural and social spheres must also be fought out in on the individual level. Each person must understand such notions as animism and vitalism for him- or herself. The collective and the historical remains both collective and social only insofar as it is also individual and personal.

Until all have agreed to disagree with Fido that life can be distinguished from non-life on the basis of scent, each thing, whether mineral, plant, or animal either passing or failing the smell test, ideas such as vitalism and even animism are likely to remain attractive alternatives to biology’s and chemistry’s no-nonsense, unromantic, and mundane explanations of existence in purely material and mechanistic terms. For science fiction devotees, the question of how much life (in terms of a soul) one should attribute to a cyborg (or, for that matter a machine, such as a computer, that possesses artificial intelligence) is a moot one. Indeed, the answer is already given. Neither a cyborg nor a computer has any more of a soul than a human being; the universe and all things in it are merely mindless atoms moving according to universal scientific principles without author or design.

In a sense, the artwork of Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger (pronounced like “eager”) is largely a representation of human existence in a post-vitalistic, atheistic age. In his paintings, men and women are hybrid beings, part human and part machine. The eyes in the human faces are either closed or vacant, the whites rather than the irises showing. Their humanity is lost in a hellish hybridization in which bodies--or, more frequently, body parts--seem to nourish mechanical apparatuses which feed upon them, as it were, as if the machinery were somehow parasitical.

Giger‘s art belongs to the horror genre as surely as anything ever written by Robert Louis Stevenson or Mary Shelley. It belongs, also, to the science fiction genre, as the artist’s work in creating the extraterrestrial monster in the Alien film series attests. In many ways, Giger’s work, which was, in part, inspired by the art of Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dali, is original. However, it also rests upon, if not arises from, earlier works in which human figures are dehumanized and their sexuality is desexualized. This earlier form is that of the animal-human hybridization that is common to Egyptian and other mythologies. Sexually, it is represented by bestiality, which is usually considered taboo beyond ancient times, suggesting, as it does, an equality between the animal and the human that many would reject and which would offend, perhaps, even those, such as PETA members and sympathizers, who would accept the equality of animals and champion their rights alongside human rights.

In the past, animals were regarded as occupying a lower ontological position than human beings occupied in the great chain of being. To be human was not to be merely different, but, more importantly, to be qualitatively superior to animals. Humans who behaved in a brutal fashion were regarded as being inhuman, which is to say, animal. As werewolf movies, H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, the movie Cat People, and many another story, including King Kong, warned, there is a gulf between the lower animals and the highest animal, man, that cannot be crossed--at least, not with impunity, whether this boundary was crossed ontologically, socially, or sexually.

Before the advent of machinery, during the Industrial Revolution, there was no other way to suggest the degeneration of humanity, of a man’s descent to a lower spiritual and ontological level of being, than to posit his reduction to a purely animal state. For this reason, sex between animals and humans became taboo, although, in earlier years, when a brotherhood of equality was posited between animals and human beings, such sex was either permissible or its occurrence was ignored.

With the invention of the machine, society acquired an even lower place to which men and women could sink than the animal realm. A person could lose both his or her soul and his or her body, casting off flesh as well as thought, and become purely robotic, or mechanical, going through the motions of life without actually being alive, as the cyborg destroyer in Terminator does or the robots in countless science fiction and horror movies, including I, Robot, do. Humanity could be reduced to a new and lower place that wasn’t human, animal, or even so much as organic--that of the mere automaton that could be switched off and on, to act upon preprogrammed instructions or to wait, idle, until its services were needed or desired. Where once it would have been insulting to have been called an animal or a beast, it was now offensive to be labeled a machine or a robot. Consequently, when stories did dare to suggest sex between a human being and a humanoid robot or cyborg, these tales were careful to also condemn such unions as horrific and repulsive and, most likely, a form of mechanical or mechanized rape on the part of the mechanical participant.

Human beings have long defined themselves by what they are not as much as by what they are. In the past, they learned that they were not animals--or, at least, not lower animals; presently, they insist that they are also not mere machines, although, perhaps after Descartes, some may have nagging doubts as to whether they are ghosts (that is, spirits or souls) inside the machines, so to speak, that are their mechanical bodies.



Giger’s art violates the taboo against sex between men (or, more often, women) and machines (often represented as male). In the process, he also suggests the consequences of such an outrageous act. These consequences are severe, indeed, most often involving the total loss of the self, as the human body, having been incorporated, as it were, into the mechanical assembly, is reduced to organic parts: the eyes either close, blotting out consciousness, or show their whites, as if the human component (in this case, the usually feminine face) has been rendered comatose. Frequently, the human part of the machine retains only her face, anus, and genitals, but when other appendages, such as her arms and legs, are also present, they are festooned with hoses, cables, and wires that make them as much mechanical as human.

The sex itself is perverted as well: non-reproductive by its nature, it is, by necessity, sterile. Giger’s mechanical phalli are incapable of inseminating the mechanical females’ orifices, whether they are of human or mechanical design. Instead, the sex act seems to be a means for the masculine components of the machine to draw energy into itself. Even sex, in Giger‘s work, is parasitic, not fecund, and mechanical rather than animalistic. Human beings are reduced to machinery in this regard, just as they are in every other manner.

Horror springs from a culture’s Weltanschauung as much as it does from anything else, and the Weltanschauung of the Western world is material and mechanistic. There is no place for the soul, no place for God, and no place for anything but the relentless, fluid, and utterly meaningless goings through of the motions of life that Cartesian ontology has laid out for us--unless one happens to question, perhaps, why anyone should agree, disagree, or even care about the end-products of a purely mechanical automaton’s thought processes. If ideas are but the results of atoms in motion, obeying impersonal, mechanistic laws of nature, why should anyone care what conclusion such particulates of matter in motion reach?

The horror is, perhaps, not without exit, Samuel Beckett’s assertions to the contrary. As Descartes argues, the existence of thought implies a thinker, or a ghost in the machine. There is someone, an “I,” inside the body, even if this “I” is simply an effect of the entirety of the physiological processes, a consciousness, as it were, of the physical organism. In humans, this consciousness is self-evident: we know that we know; we feel that we feel; we think that we think; we value that we value. Our selves are known by themselves. As Soren Kierkegaard argues, in an age of scientism, the self, or “I,” is leftover as a “concluding unscientific postscript.” Giger’s art, like Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed (1973), David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), much of Ray Bradbury’s fiction, Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), Rachel Talaway’s The Ghost in the Machine (1993), Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (2009), and a host of other novels, short stories, and films, arises from the doubt and insecurity that human beings have as ghosts in the machines of their flesh, but such artwork also presupposes that there is a ghost, however comatose and moribund, among the cogs and wheels, the clamps and gaskets, the pipes and hoses, and the nuts ad bolts of their otherwise mechanical existence. Otherwise, why should one paint, write, read, or do anything else?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Dinner Parties

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


One way to devise plots is to picture people sharing a meal at a restaurant. The diners could be a man and a woman, two men, or two women. Something as simple as the sex of the diners may suggest storylines. A man and a woman could be involved in a romance; two men could be business rivals; two women could be lifelong friends. Any number of other diners is fair game, too, of course. In fiction, what binds a relationship together, whether the nature of the relationship is, for example, one of romance, rivalry, or friendship, is conflict. As Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren point out in Understanding Fiction, “no conflict, no story.”

More than two can dine together at the same table. The addition of a third diner complicates the plot. The number of combinations of characters increases from three (two men, a man and a woman, two men, or two women) to six: a man and two women, a woman and two men, two men and a woman, two women and a man, three men, or three women. What’s on the menu? As always, conflict. Once again, in some cases, the combination of diners itself may suggest the nature of the conflict itself in which the diners are involved.

For example, let’s say that our combination of diners consists of one man and two women. I intend the dining scenario to be an analogy. The restaurant = the setting; the diners = the characters. The menu = the conflict. What the diners say and do during their meal = the dialogue and the action, respectively. The whole dining experience = the story. However, in this example, involving one man and two women, the setting could be an actual restaurant and the characters actual diners.

Imagine that the story starts with just two of the characters, Alex and Beth, present. However, three places have been set, because, as Beth informs Alex, she has invited someone else to join them. Perhaps she is vague about the other person’s identity, referring to him or her as “an old friend” or “a mutual acquaintance.” The occasion of the meal might be the celebration of Alex’s and Beth’s anniversary. They might recall the times that they have shared as a married couple--those that were amusing, challenging, enjoyable, adventurous, and romantic. Their reminiscences might include the times they have shared with their children over the years of their marriage.

Toward the end of their meal, Alex might profess his deep and abiding love for Beth, just before the couple is joined by the mysterious third party whom Beth has invited to join them--Alex’s second wife, Cynthia. Alex is a bigamist, and both Beth and Cynthia, having discovered their mutual husband’s secret, have agreed to confront him together concerning his matrimonial betrayals.



The idea for this story is based on the life of Charles Kuralt (1934-1997). A television journalist, Kuralt is best known, perhaps, for his distinguished career with CBS, and especially for his series On the Road with Charles Kuralt, which aired as segments of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He traveled the nation, filming sentimental and nostalgic interviews with everyday Americans, offering viewers a sort of Norman Rockwell vision of the country and its citizens that proved immensely popular with viewers and earned him two Peabody Awards. After he died, however, it came to light that Kuralt had, in effect, had two marriages, one legitimate and the other the result of common law, and had had children by both wives:

But two years after his death, Kuralt's personal reputation came under scrutiny when a decades-long companionship with a Montana woman named Pat Baker was made public. Kuralt apparently had a second, "shadow" family with Baker while his wife lived in New York City and his daughters from a previous marriage lived on the eastern seaboard. Baker asserted that the house in Montana had been willed to her, a position upheld by the Montana Supreme Court (“Charles Kuralt,” Wikipedia).
The journalist’s actual life, it was clear, had been at odds with the homespun, morally upright subject matter of his series, and his reputation never recovered from the bigamist lifestyle that he had led.

Kuralt’s victims--his two wives--never met over dinner, with or without him, but the possibility of their having done so could inspire a story such as the one that I envision here. Again, such characters need not meet in a restaurant. The confrontation might take place in a less hospitable and far more dangerous environment, the two women having conspired to kill their two-timing husband after confronting him about his years-long infidelities. The analogy of dinner as a story is intended as a way of setting the stage, not the table.

In using this technique, a writer should also assign a vocation to each of his or her characters. Giving those who attend the dinner party different vocations could, in and of itself, suggest interesting possibilities for plot, character, and conflict. There are quite a few possible combinations even when three characters share the same general vocation. For example, three business rivals might each be the chief executive officer, or CEO, of his or her respective company, with one attempting a hostile takeover of his rivals’ businesses; the three may wish to establish an illegal monopoly by secretly fixing prices for the goods or services that they provide; the trio may be conspiring to “steal” the natural resources of an emerging nation; the threesome may be in cahoots against a foreign government’s attempts to control their market through tariffs or even military means. . . . the list goes on and on.

Once a writer has worked out the appetizer, the entrée, and the desserts of the story’s menu, the story itself can begin, possibly in media res, as, say, an army of mercenaries attacks a South American nation guarding the rain forest habitat of the rare species of plant that a pharmaceutical company needs (and can obtain nowhere else) for a new drug that cures the disease of the writer’s choice. At first, the mercenaries, wearing the uniforms of an adjacent nation, might be taken for actual troops of the neighboring state. As a result, war could loom between the two countries. Perhaps this was the real goal of the mercenaries’ attack. The companies financing their paramilitary operation might have wanted to instigate a protracted war against the two countries so that their own collection of the plant they need could proceed apace as the nation whose resources they are plundering is occupied with the war it is waging with its “aggressor.” The story would progress from this point, perhaps after another “dinner” among the business executives or other parties to stimulate ideas for further plot development.

The same process (a dinner between a couple or among a group of parties) can work as well for horror as for any other genre of fiction. Grave robbery was once big business. Fresh corpses were in high demand among medical schools whose professors wanted to use actual cadavers for dissection in anatomy classes despite religious and sociopolitical prohibitions upon such uses of the dead. There was a demand for dead bodies, both male and female, but no supply--until enterprising grave robbers stepped forward, pickaxe and shovel in hand to fill in--or, I should say, to uncover--the gap. Now that such sanctions have ended and men and women donate their bodies to medical school students to slice and dice--posthumously, of course--grave robbery has gone out of fashion, pretty much, even among desperadoes.

There are a few exceptions, though. Imagine Ed Gein, Jack Hughes and “Big Jim” Kennally, and Molly and Clayton Daniels having g dinner together. Entrepreneurial madmen that they were, they might find some reasons for digging up the dead even when there isn’t a large demand for their, uh, services. In fact, they actually did find reasons for doing so. Gein robbed graves so he could skin female corpses and wear their flesh as masks, vests, and leggings. After Molly came up with the idea, Clayton dug up a woman’s body to use as a stand-in for his own, and they set the corpse afire inside his car in an ill-fated attempt to fake Clayton’s own death. Hughes and Kennally conspired to steal the body of President Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. Even when a market doesn’t exist for one’s goods or services, the enterprising individual can create one, even if the market consists of only him- or herself or an aggrieved nation.

Dinner parties needn’t be moribund affairs. In fact, imaginary ones can suggest endless ideas for stories that, once conceived, can be developed in numerous ways that have nothing to do with appetizers, entrees, and desserts and everything to do with characters, conflict, and suspense.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Everyday Horrors: Bacteria!

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Although some bacteria are, from a human point of view, good guys, many of them wear black hats or monster masks. They are the bogeymen, as it were, among the microbes of the microscopic world. As such, as much as any of the other natural wonders featured in Chillers and Thrillers’ “Everyday Horrors” series, bacteria are everyday horrors.

Since I’m no scientist, this article will be more heavily sourced than most that I write, although, of course, I will include my own peculiar takes on the topic as well.



According to Unusual Microbes, bacteria come in all shapes and sizes. There are “big” boys, such as Epulopiscium and Thiomargarita, which are “big enough to be seen with the naked eye.” This bacterium “cheats.” No, it doesn’t take steroids. Instead, “it is mostly vacuole,” using “nitrate ions in its respiration” to enable itself to “respire at great depths.” Like the Leslie Nielsen character in the Creepshow, Thiomargarita can hold its breath for a long time!

At the other extreme is the archaeon, which “is very near the "limit" of what people think might be the smallest possible organism.”

Other capabilities of unusual bacteria, the same website declares, are those which “give birth to live young” (Epulopiscium and Metabacterium), “square bacteria” (Haloquadratum walsbyi), bacteria that can live at extremely hot temperatures (Strain 121, an archaeon can survive a temperature of 249.8 degrees Fahrenheit), bacteria that have survived for millennia in arctic ice, magnetic bacteria (Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum), cannibalistic bacteria (Bdellovibrios), and multi-cellular bacteria (Myxobacteri).

Some bacteria have adopted unusual diets, too, including those that enjoy each other (the cannibalistic Bdellovibrios and the Vampirococcus, which, Wikipedia informs its readers, “attach to their prey in order to digest them and absorb nutrients), dead organisms (Saprophages), and even human flesh (Necrotizing fasciitis)!


The flesh-eating Necrotizing fasciitis is so disturbing that it bears more than a mere mention, so, courtesy of Wikipedia, here goes:

"Flesh-eating bacteria" is a misnomer, as the bacteria do not actually eat the tissue. They cause the destruction of skin and muscle by releasing toxins (virulence factors), which include streptococcal pyogenic exotoxins. S. pyogenes produces an exotoxin known as a superantigen. This toxin is capable of activating T-cells non-specifically, which causes the overproduction of cytokines and severe systemic illness (Toxic [sic] shock syndrome) (“Necrotizing fasciitis”).
As bad as this sounds (and it sounds pretty damned bad!), the symptoms of the condition are even more horrific. According to the same Wikipedia article:

The infection begins locally, at a site of trauma, which may be severe (such as the result of surgery), minor, or even non-apparent. Patients usually complain of intense pain that may seem in excess given the external appearance of the skin. With progression of the disease, tissue becomes swollen, often within hours. Diarrhea and vomiting are also common symptoms.

In the early stages, signs of inflammation may not be apparent if the bacteria are deep within the tissue. If they are not deep, signs of inflammation, such as redness and swollen or hot skin, show very quickly. Skin color may progress to violet, and blisters may form, with subsequent necrosis (death) of the subcutaneous tissues.

Patients with necrotizing fasciitis typically have a fever and appear very ill. Mortality rates have been noted as high as 73 percent if left untreated. Without surgery and medical assistance, such as antibiotics, the infection will rapidly progress and will eventually lead to death.
The cosmological argument, which is better known, perhaps, as the argument from design, contends that the design that seems apparent in the universe suggests the existence of an intelligent Creator. There are several counterarguments to this view, the strongest of which may be the so-called problem of evil. According to this refutation of the cosmological argument, the existence of cancer, birth defects, mental illness, and, one might add, necrotizing fasciitis, among other evils, suggests either that God is cruel or that he is well-meaning but too powerless or incompetent to have created or to have sustained a universe where all is good and there is no suffering. However, there are various replies to the problem of evil as well, one of which states that the temporal evils that humanity endures allow greater eternal blessings. The microscopic impinges upon the macroscopic, just as time encroaches upon eternity and evil may itself become the instrument of greater and timeless good.

Note: Illustrations are from Wikipedia.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Narrative and Dramatic Technique

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman



Lately, I have become more and more interested in narrative and dramatic technique, in the use of the more sophisticated, less apparent methods by which authors and filmmakers convey meaning and nuance in the tales they show and tell. Some of these techniques include incongruity, juxtaposition, symbolism, metaphor, and imagery. Indeed, on occasion, two or m ore of these techniques are combined, one as the vehicle of the other. For example, image or juxtaposition often conveys symbolism. In Deleuze and Horror Film, Anna Powell offers an interesting and insightful explication of Stanley Kubrick’s use of imagery both to set the tone of the movie and to symbolize the state of protagonist Jack Torrance’s mind:
Inflation and detachment shape the cerebral aesthetic of The Shining and its virtual experience by the viewer. The wide-angle lens and overblown strains of Berlioz plunge us sensorially into a world of inflated grandeur. Extremely wide vistas of the mountainous landscape induce a cold, detached and depersonalized perspective. Humans are unimportant in this vast physical, and metaphysical, terrain. The mechanic motion of an uncannily independent camera surveys the landscape in an omniscient gliding motion. We experience the perspective of an eagle’s eye, or a divine power, as we become-god. Mental detachment and ego-inflation key in the delusions of Jack Torrance. The disturbed writer’s deranged consciousness forms and is formed by the film’s mise-en-scene and cinematography.

The landscape, like the music, has a sublime grandeur yet the ominous chords and the dizzying, extra-human perspective render it sinister. It threatens to engulf the small, insect-like car, leading it ever upwards into a land of eternal snow. As the narrative moves inexorably onwards, it mobilizes a process of becoming-frozen. Jack undergoes a freezing of emotional warmth and empathy. His blood runs cold, both figuratively and literally, as he becomes one with the forces of winter and death (43-44).
Powell’s analysis is powerful and insightful, and Kubrick’s use of the external world to reflect the internal world extends beyond the mountainous countryside to the interior-exterior world of the Overlook Hotel as well, which, like the landscape without, also conveys, even mirrors, the unstable state of Torrance’s mind:

Shining as affective force dominates the mise-en-scene. The interior of the Overlook Hotel is lit and coloured preternaturally. No daylight can penetrate, and fire, candles and electricity replace natural light. Polished surfaces like metal, glossy paint and marble magnify their impact by varying degrees of reflection and refraction. These artificial light qualities objectify Jack’s derangement. They highlight the colours and tones of gold that express and modify the power of light itself. The hotel’s gold function room is the locus of vampiric energy. Its tonal quality spreads through the building to drain the human life force. Light grows brighter and colours grow richer enhanced by the psychic horror it generates.

A distinctive light quality reinforces the cold white of the larder / cold storage room, lit by a fluorescent tube that drains all other colours. This space is the cold heart of the building, where Jack is trapped until his final murderous apotheosis. . . . As well as the qualities and tones of colours, light evokes tactility, we virtually feel the snow’s bitter coldness. This is effected by Kubrick’s use of cold blue light and a back-lit mist that rises as the snow’s surface evaporates. In his dying, Jack becomes completely overwhelmed by blueness and light in a becoming-ice (45-46).
In a previous post, I explained how, in “Dracula’s Guest,” Bram Stoker’s inclusion of potentially hallucinatory perceptions as part of descriptions within descriptions of persons (characters), places (settings), and things, from the point of view of the story’s protagonist, creates almost-subliminal tension and anxiety in the reader as this device produces, in the reader’s consciousness, a cognitive double-take, so to speak. In another article, posted previously, I explain how H. P. Lovecraft’s various descriptions, always in different terms, of the same monstrous entity increases the horrific character of the monster in the reader’s imagination as he or she strives, in vain, to make sense of the puzzling series of differing descriptions of the same creature.  In yet another previously posted essay, I comment upon the disturbing effect of Stephen King’s offhanded inclusion of nonsense words and phrases in the otherwise-normal dialogue of a character, Junior Rennie, who is losing his grip on reality (and, as it turns out, is suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed brain tumor).  All of these techniques are ways by which horror writers have conveyed both convey meaning and nuance as well as horror and repulsion in the tales they tell.

Writers have discovered or (more often) created yet other techniques, too, for suggesting subtle shades of horror and tones of terror. My essay, previously posted, concerning the symbolic nature of the ogre-like monsters in The Descent (they appear to represent aborted fetuses who torment the women who descend into the more extreme depths of feminist demands for “choice,” even when such exercises of free will result in haunting guilt concerning one’s decision to end the lives of children growing in the womb) indicates yet another authorial means of conveying horrific meanings within a text or, in this case, a film.  Ray Bradbury often effects horror through characterization. The protagonist of his short story “Heavyset“ is frightening, indeed, simply because of who he is. Shirley Jackson, like Flannery O’Connor, uses a measured cadence to march her readers ever forward, through her often absurd situations and past her usually grotesque characters; her matter-of-fact, somehow insistent rhythm keeps readers reading as much as if they were participants in a parade.  In “Bad Girls,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith accidentally kills Deputy Mayor Allan Finch; before this horrific incident, the viewer is warned about imminent danger as Faith and Buffy walk down a dark alley, splashed with crimson as, on a nearby construction sawhorse, an amber caution light flashes.

Horror writers can learn from authors of other genres of fiction, too, appropriating for their own purposes the narrative and dramatic techniques that their peers have developed in the service of their own storytelling ends. Images can bracket the action of a story, forming bookends, as it were, and transforming a narrative or a drama into a frame story, as the car wrecks that begin and end Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool do.


Imagery can provide an antithesis to the nature of a character, as do the thick glasses that the visionary Hollywood producer Stanley Motss wears in Wag the Dog. Images can symbolize the transcendent subhuman nature of a character, as the soulless Man With No Eyes’ mirrored sunglasses do in Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke or a character’s transcendent qualities, as the snapping turtle that “won’t let go” even when it’s “deader than hell” does, in the same film. The mirrored sunglasses prevent anyone from seeing the “walking boss’” eyes and suggest that he has no eyes to see--in other words, that he is inhuman. The eyes are the mirrors of the soul, but rather than mirroring the Man With No Eyes’ Soul, the sunglasses mirror only the eyes (and the souls) of those whom the walking boss’ sunglasses reflect. The turtle symbolizes Luke’s own refusal, as it were, to “let go” his hold on his fellow convicts, whom he inspires even more after he is “deader than hell” than he did when he was alive in their midst. Horror writers can use similar devices to frame stories or typify, or even deify, characters.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Science Fiction Creature vs. Horror Monster

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Many horror movies have science fiction underpinnings or, to put the same thought the other way around, many science fiction movies have underpinnings of horror, as the tagline for the movie Alien, for example, clearly indicates: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

However, this uneasy alliance between the two genres notwithstanding, Vivian Sobchack has devised an interesting, perhaps useful division of the menaces which appear in science fiction movies (creatures and human monsters) and horror films (monsters). However, in judging her distinctions according to the science fiction creatures and human monsters and the monsters of horror that appear in a variety of literary media, including novels, short stories, films, comic books, and video games, it soon becomes apparent that there is a good deal of overlap between Sobchack’s neat, twofold dichotomy and that things that go bump in the night are not as simple as her classification suggests. Perhaps her insights are useful to both science fiction and horror writers not because of the alleged differences between these genres’ respective menaces but because they suggest different ways by which creatures and monsters, human or otherwise, may be employed in fiction and the various existential, moral, and natural threats and, indeed, cautionary warnings, that such entities may represent.

The following charts are based upon her classification scheme and the words and phrases in its columns are taken directly, word for word, from chapter 9 (“The Narrative Principles of Genres”) of Peter Verstraten’s Film Narratology (translated by Stefan van der Lec), page 180.



Sources

Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Verstraten, Peter. Film Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Print.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Perspective and Setting: An Overlap of Cinematographic and Literary Technique

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


In Film Narratology, Peter Verstraten explains how, in adopting the perspective of the birds as they sweep down from the sky to attack the residents of Bodega Bay, California, Alfred Hitchcock forces The Birds audience to “reflect on the sadist in ourselves” (122).

Other films require us to see ourselves from the victims’ point of view, thereby presumably encouraging us to consider the masochistic element of our personalities. The infamous shower scene in Psycho is a notable example: it puts the audience in the shower with Marion Crane, letting us see the curtain as it is torn aside and the knife’s blade as it flashes toward us.

Indeed, one might argue that the shower scene is sadomasochistic, alternating between the perspective of the murderer and the perspective of the murdered, so that, in effect, we become suicidal, the killer and the killer of, and the killed by, ourselves.

Some stories create suspense by including a killer among a team of investigators as they seek clues and argue theories as to how a murder may have been committed or who may have committed it, with the killer, perhaps, offering his or her own ideas concerning the topic. In her nonfiction book, The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule includes an alternative version of this perspective by including serial killer Ted Bundy among the university students who discuss a mass murder on their campus. Bundy disagrees with their view of the crime and the killer. One of the students considers the murderer “a lunatic” who is “probably lying low as the police investigation accelerated.” Bundy disagrees: “No. . . this was a professional job; the man has done it before. He’s probably long gone by now” (344). Bundy, typically, is telling a half-truth. He, the killer, has definitely “done it before,” but he is far from “long gone”; he is in the midst of the students with whom he debates the issue. His presence is an eerie and disturbing incident among many other such incidents.


In Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema’s “Making Up Monsters: Set and Costume Design in Horror Films,” Tamao Nakahara explains how, in Psycho, “décor becomes the narrative’s organising [sic] image” (141):
In the film‘s trailer, Hitchcock makes a point to associate the killer, Norman Bates. . . with his safe have and with the birds he sews up: “his favorite spot was the little parlour [sic] behind his office in the motel. . . . I suppose you’d call this his hideaway. His hobby as you see was taxidermy. A crow here. . . an owl there”. During the scene in which Norman invites his future victim, Marion Crane. . . into the parlour [sic] for supper, he is visually defined by the way that the frame unites him with the various stuffed birds in the room. As the shots and shot-reverse-shots alternate between Norman and Marion during their conversation, the camera remains generally in the same position for all of Marion’s shots, while those for Norman change angles to frame him with one bird and then another in the set design. While the conversation is light, the camera shows Norman from the waist up to the right of a dresser with a couple of small birds. As soon as the topic of “mother” is broached, the camera angle changes to show him in a low angle medium shot in front of two paintings (one of a nude) and two menacing spread-winged birds near the ceiling--an image that suggests Norman’s conflicted feelings of sexual arousal and self-censure for that arousal. Finally, when Marion suggests putting Norman’s mother away in an institution, the enraged Norman is shown in close-up flanked by two birds abutting against his ears. As if to provide a wall ornament for each mood and emotion, Norman’s sanctuary, and his behaviour [sic] in it, hints at his multiple personalities (142-143).
Although, as Verstraten observes, “the narrative techniques and stylistic procedures in cinema are inevitably fundamentally different than those in literature (or those in comics, music, painting, sculpture, and theater, to name but a few),” and, in some cases, the twain between these “techniques and. . . procedures” in one medium will never meet those of another medium, there are narrative and stylistic techniques that do, in part, overlap, such as do (to some extent) both point of view (in both media) and set design (in cinema) and description (in literature), from which both cinematographic and literary artists can, and should, learn from on another.

Sources

Nakahara, Tamao. "Making Up Monsters: Set and Costume Design in Horror Films." Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, 2010: Print.

Rule, Ann. The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy. New York: Pocket Books, 2009. Print.

Verstraten, Peter. Film Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Print.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Horror from the Mouths of Babes

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

One, two,

Freddy’s coming for you!
Three, four,
Better lock the door.
Five, six,
Get a crucifix.
Seven, eight,
Better stay up late.
Nine, ten,
Never sleep again. . . .
A Nightmare on Elm Street opens with innocent children singing this haunting rhyme as they skip rope.

Stephen King’s novel The Tommyknockers is based upon another poignant and horrific verse, the third and fourth lines of King himself wrote:

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.
I want to go out, don't know if I can,
'Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.
“Hush,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also features a nursery rhyme-like ditty:

These songs are eerie and unsettling, disturbing and creepy. One reason that they are distressing is that they are sung by children. In one case, the children are playing; they are skipping rope. Their play is a reminder of their youth. Their voices are high and sweet, pure and natural. However, the lyrics to the ditties they sing are anything but sweet and innocent; they are vile and wicked--or, at least, they refer to wicked acts, to someone who is stalking or hunting a victim, to the need to lock oneself behind a door, the need to seek divine assistance or protection, the need to maintain nightlong vigilance (A Nightmare on Elm Street); to remain at home rather than to go outside (The Tommyknockers); the need to remain silent, to lock oneself inside one’s house, and the need to say nothing even to one’s own mother, possibly lest “The Gentlemen,” who are “coming by,” likewise harm her (“The Gentlemen”). This juxtaposition of innocence and wickedness is itself alone troubling. However the inclusion of nursery rhymes concerning such brutal action as the verses describe is also unsettling for other reasons.
Can't even shout, can't even cry,
The Gentleman are coming by.
Looking in windows, knocking on doors,
They need to take seven and they might take yours.
Can't call mom, can't say the word,
You're going to die screaming but you won't be heard.
How is it that the children who sing such songs have an awareness of the atrocious deeds about which they warn their listeners? Were they victims? Do they know others who were victims? Were they eyewitnesses to the attacks and visitations they describe? Since these songs are not traditional nursery rhymes, they seem to imply first-hand or close secondhand knowledge.

The sings are creepy, too, because they seem to imply a deadly inevitability. Whether it’s Freddy who’s “coming for you” or the Tommyknockers who are “knocking at the door” or The Gentlemen who “need to take seven,” it seems that they are relentless, that they will keep coming, no matter what, and that, sooner or later (probably sooner), they will succeed. They will kill, mutilate, eviscerate. Nothing, these songs suggest, can stop them, whether it’s locking one’s windows and doors, arming oneself with a crucifix, staying awake all night, remaining home rather than venturing out, shouting, crying out, or calling one’s mother. Freddy, the Tommyknockers, and the Gentlemen will succeed in carrying out their violence and murder no matter what one does to thwart them.

Moreover, the words of these rhymes threaten the listener (and, therefore, the moviegoer or the reader him- or herself) directly, employing the second person: “Freddy’s coming for you” and “They need to take seven, and they may take yours.”

Almost as an afterthought, one realizes that these ditties also function on a practical level, advising the moviegoer of the movies’ basic storylines as the songs, at the same time, acquaint viewers with the film’s genre.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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