Sunday, January 27, 2019

Futuristic Fiction

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman


“The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth warned, and it's true: we do get caught up in the day-to-day affairs of our everyday lives. As a result, we often miss the mystery and beauty of the natural world—and of the inner worlds of ourselves and others.
 

It is to escape the tedium of everydayness that men and women travel, devote themselves to arts or crafts, learn to play musical instruments, attend movies or sports events, concerts or plays, and, of course, read.


Reading takes us out of ourselves; sometimes, it also takes us out of this world, to times past or future, to strange worlds or other dimensions, or even, in the case of Dante's Inferno, to hell itself (not that such a destination is recommended, ordinarily.)


But what happens when the worlds of poetry, fiction, and drama themselves become too familiar to provide the escape from everydayness we crave? When the tropes and themes of genre literature themselves become too commonplace, they cannot alleviate the boredom of what The Mothers of Invention called our “dull, gray” existence.


Futurology, the study (or, perhaps, speculation about) of possible future situations, events, and states of existence based upon extrapolations from current ones, often rekindles the imagination. The future may not be exactly as futurologists envision it, but, even if it is not, their conjectures provide fresh visions of the way things could be, and that's all a writer of popular literature, regardless of genre, needs to rekindle his or her own imagination.

With thriller and horror fiction genres in mind, let's consider some of the possibilities that futurologists' ideas might suggest in the way of such elements of fiction as characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts.


There are astonishing technological marvels on the horizon, futurologists predict, including eye-controlled technology, paper diagnostics, designer antibiotics, ingestible robots, smart clothing, photonics in space, volcanic mining, a spintronics revolution, carbon-breathing batteries, super antivirals, diamond batteries, optogenetics, nano feasibility, an unhackable quantum Internet, biometric materials, the next generation of artificial intelligence, 3D printing in every home, designer molecules, a fully immersible, computer interface, and a self-sufficient ecosystem.


Whew! If that list doesn't suggest some fresh characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts that can be, as Stephen King defines horror, (a) disgusting, (b) horrific, or (c) terrifying, maybe there's no future for horror (or for the unimaginative aspiring horror writer, at least).

The first step in using the futuristic fiction approach is to research the type of technology in which you're interested as a writer. Start by gaining an overview of the technology. Then, learn whatever more detailed material you need to make your story accurate and believable. (Hint: Videos, such as those available on YouTube, are often quite sound academically and provide a moving, audio-visual rather than a static, learning approach, which some might prefer to reading.)


For example, suppose you're interested in eye-controlled technology. You might make a list of questions to research:
  • How does it work?
  • What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)
  • What benefits does it provide?
  • What are its disadvantages?

As other relevant questions present themselves, research them as well.

How does it work?


Eye tracking records our point of gaze and our eye movements in relation to the environment and is typically based on the optical tracking of corneal reflections, known as pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR).


Eye-tracking technology can installed in personal computers, peripheral devices, or eyeglasses.

What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)


There’s a chance that soon eye tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a huge reĆ«valuation of the way we communicate with devices—or how they communicate with us.

In the past year eye tracking technology moved from being a promising technology to being adopted in commercial products in a wide array of consumer segments simultaneously,” Werner says.

. . . VR headset companies are making large investments in eye tracking technology.

. . . eye tracking might make it a whole lot easier for gamers to interact with the gaming environment.

There is an increasing interest in using eye tracking to help diagnose — and potentially treat –neurological disorders,” says Bryn Farnsworth, science editor at biometric research company iMotions.

With eye tracking technology, online advertisers will be able to measure exactly how many actual human eyes actually view their ads when they appear on the page.

What benefits does it provide?


Eye tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech. “First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and the device.”

What are its disadvantages?
  1. The equipment is expensive.
  2. Some users can't work with the equipment (for example if they wear contact lenses or have long eye lashes).
  3. Calibrating the equipment takes time; [as a result] this problem may . . . cause the user to deviate from using the device.
Without developing a detailed synopsis, we can suggest some possibilities simply by breaking ideas into the three parts of any story: the beginning, the middle, and the end:

Eye-controlled Technology

  1. Beginning: An art gallery stages an exhibition for an up-and-coming artist of the avant-garde.
  2. Middle: An explosive device installed in the wall, behind one of the artist's paintings explodes.
  3. End (Terrifying and Gross-out Elements): Sixteen people are killed, including the artist, as terrorists prove the efficacy of their latest innovation: eye-tracking technology that can be used as a trigger to detonate an explosive device. (A good title for such a story might be “The Tenth Gaze,” because the software used to detonate the bomb triggered its explosion in accordance with the tenth time someone gazed at a specific point on a particular painting.)
Note: Can eye-controlled technology be used to active an explosive device? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because, in fiction, it can.


Next-generation Artificial Intelligence


  1. Beginning: A next-generation robot is activated as it exits the assembly line.
  2. Middle: Its programmed role as a “helpmate” is initiated.
  3. End: Unhappy with its assigned role, the robot “commits suicide.” (A good title for such a story might be “Access Denied,” since the robot, in self-destructing, denies access to itself to a buyer.) In an alternate ending, the robot could allow itself to be purchased and then kill its owner, claiming the owner's residence (and perhaps his or her family) as its own.






Sunday, January 13, 2019

A Monster Scale

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, author of Good with a Gun

One way to energize a genre of fiction is to introduce into it a hierarchy, or some other type of analytical or descriptive scheme, that is commonly used in a different type of narrative literature.


As Don Lincoln, author of Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos, observes, science fiction employs the scale “popularized” in J. Allen Hynek's “1972 book The UFO Experience,” which identifies three types, or “kinds,” of “close encounters” with extraterrestrial spacecraft or beings:


1st Kind
2nd Kind
3rd Kind
UFO sighting
UFO sighting supported by “physical evidence”
Encounter with alien beings

These original “kinds” of “close encounters” have been extended, says Lincoln, by four other types, although these additional levels “are “not universally accepted”:


4th Kind
5th Kind
6th Kind
7th Kind
“Abduction with retained memory”
“Regular conversations”
“An encounter” resulting in a human's “death or injury
“Human/extraterrestrial mating that produces an offspring, often called a 'star child'”


Although hybrid horror-science fiction narratives or dramas sometimes include extraterrestrial beings (e. g., Stephen King's Dreamcatcher and such films as Alien, The Thing from Another World, and Invaders from Mars), space aliens are primarily a staple of sci fi fiction. Monsters, on the other hand, are more often antagonists in horror fiction. Hynek's scale, and its extension, provide a means of re-imagining monsters:



1st Kind
2nd Kind
3rd Kind
Monster sighting
Monster sighting supported by “physical evidence”
Encounter with monster(s)


4th Kind
5th Kind
6th Kind
7th Kind
Monster's abduction recalled (or recovered through the discovery of a lost film or video)
Periodic communications with the monster, vocally or otherwise (e. g., through mental telepathy)
“An encounter” with the monster which results in a human's “death or injury”
Human/monster mating resulting in a hybrid progeny


Many of these types of “close encounters” with monsters have already been depicted in horror novels, short stories, or movies. There have been many sightings of monsters, as in Frank Peretti's 2006 novel Monster; encounters with monsters (as in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein), periodic communications with the monster (as in Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with a Vampire), encounters with monsters that end in human's deaths (so many there's no need to cite an example), and even matings between women and monsters that result in births of hybrid human-monster children (as in Ira Levine's 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby).


However, an imaginative use of this extended scale of “close encounters” with monsters, rather than with aliens—which, it could be argued, represented simply another type of monster) can still introduce innovations into the horror genre. For example, the scale could be used to structure a novel or, for that matter a heptalogy, or series of seven works, each of which is inspired by one of the seven types of “close encounters” with monsters listed in the “monster scale” adapted from Hynek's hierarchy.


Saturday, January 12, 2019

Voyeurism: Playing God

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author


In voyeurism, the keyhole is a symbol of spying. Intended for the introduction of a key by which a door may be locked or unlocked, the keyhole is emblematic of the means by which to ensure privacy. By locking a door, an individual establishes a private space which is supposed to be inviolate. Behind locked doors, in the privacy of one's home, whether “home” is a house, an apartment or a condominium, or a hotel or a motel room, one is supposed to be sequestered; what goes on behind a locked door is supposed to be private.

The key phrase, of course, is “supposed to be.” In reality, little is truly private anymore, especially in an age of surveillance by camera, drone, and Internet spying mechanisms. Nevertheless, we resent the violation of our privacy, and one's peering through a keyhole, into our private space, into our private lives, into our private behavior is not something most people would accept. Voyeurism is a violation of the law because it is a violation of personal privacy.

There is another reason that voyeurism is, and should be, off limits, horror movies suggest. Peering through a keyhole can violate not only the privacy of the person or persons within the room, but also the voyeur's sense of propriety, of rationality, or even of reality itself. As Hamlet cautions Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” or, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warns us all, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”


Most horror movies which incorporate an element of voyeurism don't use a literal keyhole as a plot device. Instead, as in Psycho, Peeping Tom, and 13 Cameras, the voyeurism occurs through a hole in the wall or a hidden camera's lens, and the voyeurism as such, like the nudity (when nudity occurs), is incidental; the central part of the story, its theme, deals with the causes or the effects of such an invasion of privacy. The cause, although it may be related, superficially, to the voyeur's sexuality or lack thereof, is, on a deeper level, related to his or her (almost always his) emotional state.

Insecurity, a fear of women or of rejection, or a desire to know all and to be all places, including private ones, is often the basis of the voyeur's spying. In a word, whether the word is “omnipresent,” “omniscient,” or “omnipotent,” the voyeur's sin is a variation upon that of Adam and Eve: he wants to be like God.


However, their desire to be like God is, of course, ludicrous, for human beings are finite, fallible, and mortal; only God can be infinite, infallible, and immortal. Such a desire, the height of arrogance, is also a sin. God suggests as much to Adam and Eve when he warns them, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” but they, like the voyeur, prefer to believe, as Satan told them, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

The keyhole, the hole in the wall, or the hidden camera's lens allows the voyeur to spy in secret, to know that which he is not supposed to know, to learn that which, ordinarily, would be hidden from him, and it allows him to violate his victims' privacy with impunity (as long as he is not caught). Armed with such secret knowledge, he may blackmail, kidnap, torture, rape, maim, or kill, as he chooses, crime begetting crime, as sin begets sin.


The keyhole is a modern-day equivalent of the Biblical forbidden fruit, allowing secular filmmakers to tap into Judeo-Christian themes from a perspective outside religious faith, transposing the external, supernatural world of Satan and God with the internal, natural (i. e., psychological) environment of the self.

The temptation to be omnipresent, to be ominiscient, to be omnipotent, begins long before one looks through a keyhole, drills a hole through a wall, or hides a camera. In all likelihood, it is a desire that develops over years, slowly, until it becomes an obsession, but it is born of the inclination to know more, to be with, and to be more powerful than one's victim.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Horror Movie Predators' Hunting Techniques: Chasing, Stalking, Ambushing, and Using Teamwork

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author

Predator Facts” lays out four of the techniques many predators use to attack prey. Not surprisingly, human predators use these same methods, in both horror movies and in actual situations.


Many predators chase prey in an effort to capture or exhaust them. This technique has been used to good effect in many horror movies, one of which, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), contains a scene in which antagonist Ben Willis pursues Helen Shivers.

After Willis kills the police officer who's arrested Shivers, she seeks refuge in her sister's department store, evading the pursuing predator and leaping from a third-story widow, into a Dumpster, only to be killed, not far from the safety of a nearby crowd.

Since the audience identifies with the damsel in distress, rather than with the killer, moviegoers root for her; vicariously, her fear becomes that of the audience, who shares it. Her gruesome death shocks and saddens her well-wishers. Through her, the audience experiences the flight and fright of the prey that the ruthless killer's pursuit creates for Shivers—and for them.

Pursuing prey takes both “time and effort” and can require a good deal of energy. For predatory animals, the nutritional value of the prey must warrant the time, effort, and energy the predator must expend in pursuing its would-be meal. “This is one reason why the hawk tends to eat more rodents and birds than grasshoppers. Grasshoppers just don't provide enough food value to justify the effort it takes to catch them.”

Unless the pursuer is a cannibal (some are, but Willis is not among them), the “nutritional value” of the prey is apt to be emotional, rather than physical. The act of chasing and killing the victim must deliver emotional satisfaction superior to the time, effort, and energy, the killer uses to accomplish these tasks. (Wills must really have wanted Helen dead.) Otherwise, the antagonist is apt to use another means of attack, one requiring less time, effort, and energy.

Some predators stalk, rather than pursue, prey. By following prey at a distance or by remaining motionless and observing prey, a predator can lunge, at the right moment, and capture or kill its quarry. A stalker can also make do with smaller prey than a pursuer needs. Stalking has the advantage of conserving energy, but it requires time to effect.

Stalkers populate thrillers more often than horror films per se, as their appearances in such movies as Fatal Attraction (1987), The Crush (1993), The Fan (1996), and The Boy Next Door (2015), among others, show. However, stalkers also appear in full-fledged horror movies. Halloween (1978), Scream (1981), and Cyberstalker (2012) come to mind.


In Halloween, on October 31, 1963, twenty-one-year-old Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Warren County, Illinois, where he's been confined since killing his older sister Judith when he was six years old. Now, he returns to his hometown, Haddonfield, to stalk a high school student, Laurie Strode.


Scream combines a murder mystery of sorts with horror, as a stalker murders one victim after another and police seek to discover the murderer's identity. Is it Billy Loomis? Neil Prescott? Stu Macher? Randy Meeks? Cotton Weary? All of the above? None of the above?

As the audience is kept in the dark as to the question of the stalker's identity, which makes the situation all the more tense, the number of the gruesome murders continues to rise, along with the movie's suspense.


Cyberstalker capitalizes on a relatively new twist to stalking: the use of the Internet to hunt victims. Animals, of course, lack the capability of using technology to develop and extend their natural hunting abilities and must rely upon the physical senses and weapons, such as claws and teeth, with which God or nature has equipped them. (As William Blake's “Tyger” suggests, such weapons are formidable, indeed.) However, were lions and tigers and bears able to enhance their powers to hunt through technology, they'd be using the Internet to stalk their victims, too.

Human beings' ability to do this is another reason that we are the deadliest species by far. It is the increased ability to watch and follow his quarry, courtesy of the the Internet, that makes the stalker in this movie potentially deadly as well as highly disturbing.

Other predators rely upon their ability to ambush their prey. In the animal world, the alligator is one example of such predators. Ambush is the technique of choice in such movies as Wrong Turn (2003) and Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007).


In the first movie (in which stalking also occurs), college students Rick Stoker and Halley Smith are ambushed as they reach the top of a rock they're climbing.

In the sequel, a series of ambushes occur, as the family of cannibals who live in the West Virginia forest attack contestants during the live filming of a survivalist reality television show.

According to “Predator Facts,”

This method of hunting requires little effort, but chances of getting food are low. The cold-blooded alligator has minimal energy requirements. It can get by with infrequent meals.

Presumably, this technique works well for the cannibal family because, when they're not hunting, they seem to lie about their cabin much of the time, thereby conserving their energy. It appears that, like the alligator, they can get by on “infrequent meals.”


The fourth technique that predators use to hunt their prey, that of teamwork, is frequently used by human marauders in horror films as well. In the Wrong Turn movies, The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, cannibal families work together to locate, attack, and subdue or kill the victims they devour as their food. Hillbilly families also slay together in Mother's Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Backwoods (2008), House of 1,000 Corpses (2003), and others.

Although more food is needed to sustain those who routinely hunt in groups, this technique provides such benefits to the team as allowing them to “pursue larger and sometimes faster prey” while protecting their offspring “from other large predators.” Being hunted by a pack—or by a family—of merciless or crazed hunters with a need to feed or a simple taste for blood or human flesh makes a horror movie all the more horrific—and terrifying.



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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