Underscoring Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies aren't about stubbing one's toe. They're about life-and-death struggles, about suffering life-threatening injuries, about being driven insane.

But they can be about subtler, but equally horrific, experiences, although they seldom are.

In my own urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, one scene is about some worm-like monster that consumes a woman from within, on her wedding day, as she stands at the altar, about to exchange vows with her husband-to-be. The subtext relates to a bride's anxiety about entering a lifelong relationship and her questions, largely unconscious, perhaps, about what could go wrong with such a union.

Every scene in a horror novel should have a deeper layer, a theme beyond the literal horror, that goes to the heart of being human in a hostile world. (For example, the scene previous to that which involves the bride on her day of days concerns a college student who feels guilty about not spending enough time with his younger brother; collecting for the newspaper from one of his kid brother's peskier customers is an attempt to rectify such neglect, but it doesn't go well.)

By coupling scenes of horror with existential situations and predicaments, writers give symbolic significance to such action scenes, thereby enriching the story. Stories, even horror stories, are about people (i. e., characters), after all, not about mere incidents in themselves.

In A Whole World Full of Hurt, the scene involving the worm-things came to me, from who-knows-where—my imagination, the stockpile of horrific imagery I've accumulated over the years, my own unconscious fears?—as I wrote the scene. I hadn't planned it. I had worked out the structure of the novel, knew who most of the characters were, and had the setting firmly in mind, but the monsters, the plot twists, and the thematic significance of various scenes presented themselves out of the ether, if you like.

That's often not the case with me and with many other writers. Ideas come from everywhere, bidden and unbidden. One source is news, especially, if you're a writer of dark fantasy or horror (if there's really a difference between the two) is bizarre news.

Here's an item, for example, that might easily suggest the basis for a novel of fear and trembling. Part of a headline in a Daily Mail newspaper proclaimed, “Women's breasts 'eat' themselves after they finish breastfeeding.” Remove the quotation marks from around the verb “eat,” and the word acquires a literal, rather than a figurative, meaning: breasts actually consume themselves. By “eating” cells “left over from . . . breastfeeding,” a process known as “phagocytosis ,” breasts revert from their engorged, milk-producing state to their “natural state in a matter of days,” undergoing a type of self-destruction, the article informs us.

Male anglerfish (circled) attached to female; he will atrophy to little more than parasitic testicles.

In itself, this process could make a remarkable short story, if not a novel, but it could also be extended to other anatomical parts that essentially commit suicide after they've completed the process for which they've evolved to perform: the completion of ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation could cause the ovaries, the uterus, or the testes to cannibalize themselves or to be cannibalized by the body. That's pretty much what happens with the male anglerfish.

Different stories would result according to whether a woman or a man knew, ahead of time, the fate that ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation would bring or remained ignorant of this effect until the process was complete. If a person knew in advance that her ovaries or uterus would self-destruct or his testicles would consume themselves or be consumed bu their bodies, what type of character would sacrifice this part of him- or herself and why? Who would refuse to accept this fate and why? What effects would the decision have, either way?

Other news items that might suggest equally bizarre horrors are the one reported under the eye-catching title “Tapeworm Removed From Woman's Breast 5 Years After She Swallowed Live Frogs.” What kind of woman swallows live frogs? A carnival sideshow performer? A starving woman who raids a frog farm (yes, there are such places)? An overweight woman on a tapeworm diet? What would possess a person to embrace such an extreme measure—besides entertaining a rather kinky audience of voyeurs, staving off starvation, or losing a few pounds of unwanted weight? Such a story cries out for psychological and sociological exploration.

The important thing, though, is to associate the horror of the story and its scenes with character and theme. That way, your short story of novel will have something to present besides blood and guts; you will underscore the horror of your story by making it symbolize something meaningful beyond itself. You will emphasize your terror by making it represent something about human beings (your characters) that most people didn't realize or, in rare cases, perhaps didn't know at all.

Want a Revolution? Try Being a Reactionary

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Written horror fiction is a dying breed. There are plenty of reasons for this state of affairs. Anyone and everyone can write and deliver-on-demand a printed or electronic version of as many horror novels as he or she wants, selling them through Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble online, or some other website.

Talent doesn't much matter, nor does familiarity with the history of the genre, nor does respect for the genre or its readers. Just put it out there, and nobody will buy it. (Sales are spectacularly dismal for any but established writers, and sales are dismal enough for 99 percent of them). However, the sheer volume of “novels” now available in cyberspace clogs publishing arteries, offering so many choices that readers are apt to make none at all, unless its a novel by somebody like Stephen King, whose best work seems to be far behind him.

We prefer movies to books, because we're more visually than cognitively oriented, preferring images to words. Besides, we don't have to use our imaginations or think much when we watch a movie: the writer, director, actors, special effects team, and others have done most of the work for us. Watching a movie, as opposed to reading a book, is almost pure entertainment and unadulterated pleasure. Reading, by comparison, seems a laborious, often unrewarding, burden.

Novelists have tried to emulate screenwriters, writing tighter scenes, eschewing exposition and long-winded dialogue, foregoing interior monologues and stream-of-consciousness, restricting themselves, more and more, to the limited third-person point of view, avoiding “head-hopping,” and making something happen every other page or so. They strive to show, avoid telling, and still—readership declines and declines. Some statistics have suggested even moviegoing isn't as popular as it once was, although it's way more popular than reading. Times change, and written horror, the horror of the pages, as opposed to the soundstages, is a casualty of these changing times.

I'm not blaming technology. Times, as I said, change. Those who don't change with them—well, we know what happens to organisms that fail to evolve. Emulating the techniques of the screen isn't enough. Novels—and novelists—are on their way out. (That's why Borders went bankrupt and Barnes & Noble may be next.) No, they won't be gone overnight. (The dodo was last seen alive in 1662.). But novels and novelists, it seems, are doomed. Their day has come and is just about gone.

Like most people, I'm a movie fan, although I find I watch fewer and fewer each year, and I watch the few I do watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu. I prefer to see them streaming into my living room, on my big-screen TV, than to go to all the trouble and bother of leaving home, driving to a theater, waiting in line (or buying online so I don't have to wait in line), finding a seat (usually, an uncomfortable one with limited space for my arms and legs), being interrupted by late arrivals and talkative neighbors, and being blasted by sound that's much louder than necessary, even for me (and I'm hearing impaired). If I want to buy snacks or visit the restroom, my moviegoing experience is much worse. Then, at the end of the movie, I have to file out of the theater, find my car, and drive home, through the fairly heavy traffic of Las Vegas. (And, oh, yes, pay about $10 for the ticket, not to mention the round-trip cost of gasoline and the snacks, if any, I buy.) No, thanks, I'd sooner stay at home and watch a movie from the comfort and convenience of my living room couch.

I'm suggesting that movie theaters may be on their way out. The future of fiction (i. e., movies), it seems, is streaming—but it isn't.

What is the future of fiction? Who knows? Nobody has a crystal ball, including the few who have crystal balls. Maybe movies will happen inside the theaters of our skulls, as sounds and images are uploaded to our brains, either by wire or through wireless technology (I prefer the latter—I think).

Instead of dreaming at night, we'll watch the streaming movies of our choice. For those who enjoy nightmares, horror movies will likely be available. During the day, we might be immersed in 3-D holographs. (Princess Leia was ahead of her time.) Instead of a movie's coming soon to a theater near you, it will be coming at once, all around, or inside, you.

Maybe on our way to or from work, if we're still working outside our homes—or working at all—we'll be able to upload a movie trailer or two. A few forward thinkers also suggest our fiction may be written by robotic devices using linguistic-mathematical logarithms, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). (The “fake news” of our own day suggests that “non-fiction” may be produced and delivered in much the same way.)

Once the few remaining, die-hard horror novelists, the Stephen Kings, the Peter Straubs, the Bentley Littles, and the Whoever-Elses, expire, the horror genre, as far as the novel is concerned, at least, is likely to become extinct. Movies will probably continue to be made, promoted, released, watched, and critiqued until something more evolved comes along. Then, they, too, will go the way of all celluloid.

The process is already in progress. This trailer from 20^th Century Fox (courtesy of IBM's AI program, Watson) is about a superhuman AI. To create the trailer, Watson analyzed “100 horror movie trailers, studying each scene and looking for common ground,” before selecting 10 of them from the 90-minute movie Morgan that Fox had produced. The whole process took Watson a mere 24 hours. Humans take as long as a month to make a trailer. Watson cheated, though: a film editor had to piece “together the scenes,” because the AI program lacks the ability to “understand and calibrate . . . emotions,” Morgan's director, Luke Scott said.

Jim Smith, a fellow with Machine Vision—IBM Research, said a lot must happen before Watson or any other AI program could develop an entire movie, if such a program is ever able to accomplish such a feat at all. It's unlikely AI will “be able to create art,” Smith believes, because it is incapable of the “original thought . . . essential in creativity.”

Yes, all this may (or may not) happen, but, in the meantime, as comic book writers are fond of writing, what, if anything, can be done about the current, stagnant state of horror novels?

We need a revolution of sorts, and that's the problem. Historically, revolutions in art start as reactions against the art of the status quo. In painting, impressionism started as a reaction against traditional artistic conventions. Other times, innovations occur within a revolutionary cycle itself, as when Vincent van Gogh “carried Impressionism to its limits by using expressive colors [and] Fauvism went one step further in using simplified designs in combination with an 'orgy of pure colors.'” Likewise, Expressionism can be considered “a German modern art version of Fauvism.”

New forms of painting also originated as reactions against commercial transitions, such as that which occurred when an industrial economy began to replace the earlier agrarian economy: “Art historians tend to interpret this new movement [art nouveau] as a natural reaction to the Industrial Revolution.” In turn, the Industrial Revolution might also have affected art nouveau, as Art Deco, which followed art nouveau, represented a “simplified” movement that was “closer to mass production.” 

Surrealism turned inward, seeking to emphasize the importance of the unconscious mind. It wasn't restricted only to painting, however; it also influenced literature and film.

A reaction against abstract art, popular art, or pop art, sought “to bring art back into the daily life of people” and took, as its subject matter, “objects from everyday life.”

Literature has long allied itself with painting, as it has with the other arts. It has also long been allied with theology, philosophy, history, geography, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, with the sciences. In fact, one of the great strengths of literature—perhaps its greatest—is that it unites human experience, bringing together a wide variety of interests that, although seemingly unrelated, have a common source in humanity itself, in individuals, society, and culture. In fiction, human beings truly are “the measure of all things.”

Too often, writers are caught up in the moment, not only representatives, but also prisoners, of their own times. It is by venturing out of one's habitat, by setting forth to explore new lands, that creativity is excited and originality is awakened. By writing the same thing over and over that has proved to have a market, writers (and publishers)—and, yes, readers as well—sell and buy the same sort of fiction over and over again. Why take a chance on writing something new, on publishing something different, of buying an unknown quantity, when we already know another Stephen King novel, no matter how familiar the characters, setting, plot, and theme, will be a New York Times bestseller. We get the type of horror fiction we want and, some might suggest, deserve.

Until AI can write movie scripts for us to play inside our heads or surround us on every side, if we want something different, readers are going to have to demand it, writers write it, and publishers publish it. Maybe the history of recent art movements among painters can suggest some ways writers can write some new forms of fiction, horror and otherwise. Our world suggests, more than ever, perhaps, many things to which horror novelists (and moviemakers, for that matter) could react, if they've a mind to do so.

Otherwise, look for yet another "blockbuster" by Stephen King, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, or Whoever-Else; it's probably being written, published, or distributed this very moment.

"Teeth" and the Horrors of Sexual Repression

 Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although on a literal level, Teeth, a movie about a teenage girl with a toothed vagina, or a vagina dentata, is—there's no polite way to say it—imbecilic, on a figurative level, the film, despite its sophomoric plot, offers more than its mixture of horror and comedy: it has something significant to say about the effects of sexual repression on teenage girls. 

It's difficult for young male moviegoers to envision, much less to appreciate, the social and psychological pressures teenage girls are under. By virtue of their having been born female, rather than male, they're subject to social expectations concerning sex that do not apply to males. Girls, after all, can become pregnant; males cannot. Therefore, women are encouraged to avoid sexual intercourse until they're married, when, having wed, they've acquired a potentially secure means of providing for the welfare of their children. Indeed, unmarried women, especially teens, are discouraged from participating even in non-procreative sexual behaviors, which could lead to sexual intercourse.

Teenage boys rarely face such taboos, although, in the interests of sexual equality and political correctness, lip service may be given to the importance of their committing to abstinence until marriage as well, as they are encouraged to do in Teeth. It's obvious, however, that the boys don't take their vows very seriously, and most of them seek to have sex whenever possible. 

These prohibitions against premarital sexual intercourse are represented in the movie by the protagonist's devotion to her vow to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage. Dawn O'Keefe doesn't merely commit to this goal, but she champions it in speeches to her abstinence group, The Promise.

Unlike other girls, Dawn is equipped with a sharp set of teeth in her nether region. They seem sentient enough to know when their territory, so to speak, is threatened with invasion. As a toddler, her future stepbrother Brad's curiosity gets out of hand while he's seated in a wading pool, next to Dawn, and her teeth bite off the tip of the forefinger he's inserted into her vagina.

Despite her sincere devotion to her ideals, teenage Dawn's resolve is tested. With Tobey, a boy to whom she is attracted, Dawn goes to a cave in which teenagers often retreat to have sex. Although she returns Tobey's kisses, she refuses to have sexual intercourse with him. Angry, he becomes aggressive. When he tries to rape her, Dawn struggles, and her head strikes the ground, dazing her. Tobey rapes her. Recovering, Dawn fights back, and her teeth bite off Tobey's penis. Horrified, Dawn flees the scene.

Feeling guilty and depressed at having succumbed to temptation, Dawn, nevertheless, addresses The Promise, but the pastor seems to see that she has been sexually active and ushers her away from the group. Returning to the swimming hole near the cave in which she involuntarily lost her virginity, Dawn throws her Promise ring, a symbol of her vow to preserve her virginity until marriage, into the water. She sees a crab crawling on Tobey's severed penis, and the horrible sight inspires her to research her condition.

Realizing she may be in possession of the legendary vagina dentata, she visits a gynecologist, asking him to examine her to determine whether there is anything inside her. When her gynecologist slips his bare hand into her during a pelvic examination, her teeth bite off his fingers. Terrified, Dawn flees the clinic on her bicycle.  

Her coy demeanor during her first visit to a gynecologist—and a male one, at that—; her nakedness under the hospital gown she's made to don for the occasion; her humiliating position on the examination table, with her feet in the stirrups and her legs spread wide; her having to follow the doctor's repeated instructions to “scoot down”; and the cold, barren, antiseptic, clinical setting dehumanize and objectify her while, at the same time, they emphasize her sexuality. The scene brings home the way women, especially young women, are made to feel alien and “other.” Their sex even requires them to have a medical doctor who specializes in problems and issues related strictly to women. 

Horrified, Dawn flees on her bicycle from the scene of carnage, only to see a police officer driving Tobey's car. She returns to the swimming hole, where she sees police retrieving Tobey's corpse from the water. He appears to have died of shock and blood loss as a result of his injury. Her sexual repression has led her to take a boy's life, just as, indirectly, sexual repression may have prompted Tobey to commit rape, although, of course, ultimately, from a legal and societal point of view, both Dawn and Tobey are responsible for their own actions, despite the pressures, social, psychological, and sexual, under which the teenagers find themselves.

At home, Dawn is further traumatized by her discovery that her mother, who is seriously ill and has collapsed on the floor, must be rushed to the hospital. This incident, like Dawn's first, forced sexual experience, marks the end of her childhood. Her mother is unavailable, which means that her experience and wisdom as an adult female is also unavailable to Dawn. The daughter becomes entirely responsible for herself, at least as a female, which puts even more pressure on her to act responsibly. 

The boy's half-hearted “devotion” to their vows of abstinence (and, therefore, their relative freedom from the social and psychological, if not the sexual, pressures placed upon them) is highlighted by the behavior of Ryan, who pretends to befriend Dawn, only to take advantage of her when the opportunity arises. She goes to him, disturbed by Tobey's death, the gynecologist's dismemberment, and her mother's condition. Although he pretends to sympathize with her and to comfort her, Ryan offers her a tranquilizer only so he's able to masturbate her with a dildo while she's in an acquiescent state of mind. Relaxed, Dawn's vagina dentata do not defend her as she engages in quasi-consensual sex.

When they have intercourse the next morning, the couple is interrupted by a telephone call from one of Ryan's male friends, and Dawn learns that the boys had placed a bet as to whether Ryan would be able to “score” with Dawn. In her anger, she bites off Ryan's penis with her vagina, leaving him to seek help from his mother. 

After her mother dies, Dawn learns that Brad continued to have sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Melanie at the O'Keefe family's house, instructing Melanie not to go to the aid of Dawn's mother after she had collapsed at home. (Brad is the son of Bill, who marries Dawn's mother.) Bent on revenge, she seduces Brad (who had previously tried to seduce her), bites off his penis with her vagina dentata, and leaves him, presumably to die of shock and blood loss, as Tobey had done. The previous times during which Dawn used her vaginal teeth to kill or maim, she'd been attacked, humiliated, or insulted; this time, she acts with premeditation, so this incident marks a wholly voluntary, conscious, and deliberate act, not an instinctive or reflexive reaction to sexual, physical, or emotional trauma. With this act, Dawn has crossed a moral line. She is no longer innocent; she has become as monstrous as those who have committed crimes against her. She is definitely now a criminal. 

After leaving home, Dawn is picked up while hitchhiking. Exhausted, she sleeps, awakening after nightfall. When she tries to get out of the driver's vehicle, the old man repeatedly locks the doors. He looks at her, licking his lips, and she, understanding his intentions, smiles seductively at him, implying that she intends to commit another murder.

Despite its comic elements, this seemingly simple horror movie is disturbing because it indicates how rigid expectations of sexual repression, reinforced by societal, parental, and religious support, can create psychologically pressures that can be dangerous to oneself and others. The movie does a good job of showing how a teenage girl, in particular, is affected, emotionally and otherwise, by such taboos. 

Francisco Goya's painting, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, suggests that terrible consequences can spring from irrationality. Teeth suggests that it is irrational, perhaps unnatural, to fetter young adults, particularly teenage girls, with ironclad expectations that, difficult to meet, place unbearable pressure on the young. It might be hyperbolic to suggest, as this movie does, that the result of sexual repression could transform a normal, “nice,” or “good” girl into a monstrous killer, but hyperbole gets attention, especially when the girl involved in the nightmarish situation is as likable, appealing, and familiar as the schoolgirl played by Jess Weixler, who, despite a silly script, does a good job of portraying the girl next door. The movie's theme saves it from being the clunker it would have been without the depth the movie receives from its explorations of vows of abstinence, sexual repression, on one hand, and underage, premarital sex in a permissive society on the other.

The Bram Stoker Award: Some Concluding Thoughts

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

As I mentioned in the first installment of this four- (now five-) part series, it's unclear how prestigious the Bram Stoker Award is beyond the Horror Writers Association (HWA), whose members bestow the prize to writers (often among their own ranks) for “superior achievement” in the genre. 

The prizes were first awarded, in a variety of categories, in 1987. Winners receive a statuette made by Society Awards, the same firm that makes the Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the GLAAD Media Award.

It's surprisingly easy to become a member of the HWA. As the organization's website indicates, “You needn’t be an established professional writer to join HWA. Your demonstrated intention to become a professional writer is all that’s required to join HWA at the Affiliate level.” “Demonstrated intention” is indicated by “one minimally paid publication in any of several categories.” There are opportunities, at various other “levels,” for several other types of membership; one need not have written anything at all for the “Associate level” of membership, which is open to “non-writing professionals with an interest in the field (such as illustrators, librarians, booksellers, producers, agents, editors, and teachers).” The question doesn't seem so much who is eligible to join the HWA as who is not allowed.

Nomination for the HWA's annual Bram Stoker Award, “an eight-inch replica of a fanciful haunted house, designed specifically for HWA by sculptor Steven Kirk,” is also an easy process, open to many: “any work of Horror first published in the English language may be considered for an award during the year of its publication.” Currently, “the eleven Bram Stoker Award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel and Non-Fiction”—something, it seems, for everyone. To add yet another opportunity to win an award, the HWA recently added a twelfth category: “Short Non-Fiction.”

Any member of the HWA can nominate an author for placement on the preliminary ballot, and a panel of judges prepares a second preliminary “ballot” of potential winners. Then, “two rounds of voting by our Active members . . . determine first the Final Ballot (all those appearing on the Final Ballot are “Bram Stoker Nominees”), and then the Bram Stoker Award Winners.”

One should be skeptical of the value of a prize for “superior achievement” that is often awarded to the members of the organization who vote for the winner, especially when the contest is open to a wide segment of the population of published authors and any member can place a name on the ballot. Outside the HWA, how seriously is the Bram Stoker Award for Novel taken? Is the prize considered prestigious by anyone outside the HWA?

Obviously, the answers to these questions depend on the person (or organization) asked. Authors who've won one—or more—of the awards often boast of their “superior achievement” on their websites or in interviews and plaster their book covers with HWA badges. After all, one of the expressed purposes of the HWA is to promote its authors' works. Many successful horror authors are, after all, HWA members, and members pay dues. Therefore, the HWA itself and its author-members are likely to agree that the Bram Stoker Award is prestigious. Publishers, whose goal is to sell books, are apt to concur, as are other organizations, such as universities, with which a horror author may be affiliated.

On the other hand, fans (as opposed to groupies) are often a lot less impressed with the award; many a Bram Stoker Award winner's prize-winning novel has received low ratings on Amazon and other book-selling websites, and, as we've seen in previous posts, book reviewers and literary critics are often unswayed in their opinions of books and authors by the fact that a writer is a Bram Stoker Award winner. What matter to readers, reviewers, and critics is the reading experience and the quality of the book, not an award by a professional organization to which many of the award winners belong. If readers consider a book to be a stinker, its having won an award won't matter. For a literary critic, such as Harold Bloom, whose disdain for Stephen King is widely known, no number of such awards is going to change his or her mind about the quality and value of the award-winner's work or of horror fiction in general.

Die-hard fans and groupies, for whom a favorite author can do no wrong, are going to love a writer no matter what; whether he or she happens to have been awarded a prize isn't going to have much of an effect on such followers, so, for them, the Bram Stoker Award also isn't likely to matter much one way or the other.

The unavailability of the criteria by which the Bram Stoker Award is awarded also leaves the matter of its prestige open to question. The HWA doesn't publish the criteria its judges use to determine what constitutes “superior achievement,” so there's no meaningful basis for agreeing or disagreeing with their awarding of the prize to any particular author. The awarding of the award is merely a consensus of opinion based on who-knows-what?

Why has Stephen King, one of the most prolific and profitable authors of horror (or any other genre), with 350 million book sales, won no fewer than six Bram Stoker Awards, while his colleague and fellow HWA member, Dean Koontz, also a prolific and highly successful author of horror and dark fantasy, with 450 million book sales to his credit, has never won a single such award? Popularity cannot be equated with quality, of course, but is it really realistic to suppose that Koontz, who's been nominated three times for the award, has never once, in a career spanning half a century, demonstrated “superior achievement” in the writing of a horror novel, while, according to the HWA, King frequently does? It seems absurd that Koontz has been slighted in this way, while other, far lesser-known writers have received an award. What's going on behind the doors and curtain of the HWA? Politics? Nepotism? Cronyism?

King has been declared, by a few promoters, as having eclipsed even Edgar Allan Poe as the best horror writer of all time. While it is undeniably true that King has written far more than Poe wrote, quantity is not the same as quality.

Popular with ordinary readers and with literary critics alike, Poe not only wrote superb horror stories, but he also popularized and greatly improved the horror story, at the same time introducing psychological horror, and he invented the detective story. Both accomplishments are nothing if not “superior achievements.” The invention of an entire genre alone is a peerless feat. In addition, while serving as de facto editors of important literary magazines, he wrote both book reviews and essays in literary criticism and established specific criteria for writing both poetry and short stories that are still influential to this day.

Had the HWA existed in Poe's day, he might have been a member—indeed, he might have been a founder—and he probably would have won Bram Stoker Awards for Short Fiction, Anthology, Poetry Collection, and Lifetime Achievement—and deservedly so.

If the HWA wants its award to become prestigious beyond its own membership, winners, and publishers, the association should adopt a few reforms. Specific criteria should be developed and published, and these standards should lean heavily toward literary excellence. William Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw, “The Jolly Corner”), Nathaniel Hawthorne (Twice-Told Tales), Edgar AllanPoe, Charles Dickens ("The Signal-man"), and other top-flight writers have, after all, written horror stories.

The awards should be occasional, rather than annual (“superior achievement” of any kind doesn't generally occur in a narrow field such as horror fiction, on a dependable, yearly basis).

The judges should be drawn from among scholars, literary critics, and professional book reviewers as well as HWA members. There's probably room for improving the processes for ballot inclusion and nomination, too.