The Thrill of It All, Part 3

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Writers are often encouraged to “show” rather than to “tell,” as if their novels and short stories are motion pictures.

It can't be done, of course, any more than Las Vegas, Nevada (famous for its miniaturized reproductions of such world-famous landmarks as the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty), can reproduce an actual beach (although Mandalay Bay certainly makes an attempt to do so.)

The closest a novelist or a short story writer can come to “showing” action is to describe it in active voice (of course), using action verbs and lots of figures of speech. (Three masters of descriptive writing who come readily to mind, by the way, are the late Ray Bradbury, the late H. G. Wells, and the very-much-alive Frank Peretti. The late William Peter Blatty isn't bad, either, although his descriptions tend to be a bit on the weighty, even rather tangible, side.)

In addition, writers can be, and often are, inspired by movies, just as screenwriters often adapt novelists' books to the big screen or allude to them, more or less directly, in their films. Quentin Tarantino pretty well summed up the state of affairs when he said, “I steal from every movie ever made.” (He meant, of course, that he is inspired by the work of other moviemakers.)

Writers are a bit handicapped, dealing in words, rather than moving images. Nevertheless, a few techniques can help a writer translate other people's ideas, words, and images into the writer's own ideas, words, and images.

Some horror movie posters use red letters to attract viewers' attention. This device works best, perhaps, when the red letters are integral to the movie's plot. Think of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the Scarlet Letter, Stephen Crane's novel the Red Badge of Courage, or Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death”: posters for any movie version of these literary classics would almost certainly feature red letters in the posters' titles or captions.

One way that writers can accomplish a similar feat is to describe bloody graffiti. Here's an example:

Except for the peeling paint, the long, high wall of the building forming the left side of the narrow alley was featureless and nondescript—well, except for the peeling paint and the ominous word, spelled out in foot-tall, dripping, crimson letters: MURDER.

(Yes, a novel can include red letters, in all caps, bolded and italicized.)

 Some horror movies' titles include effective plays on words. A couple, Shutter and Shutter Island, use a homonym for “shudder,” a word that alludes to a reaction to fear: when one is sufficiently frightened, he or she is apt to tremble, or shudder. Although “shutter” means something quite different than “shudder,” the words sound enough alike that the connotative associations of “shudder” are transmitted to “shutter.”

Obviously, writers can use homonyms and other plays on words in their writing, but they shouldn't overdo it; the “punch” of a play on words comes from its unexpectedness coupled with its curious appropriateness. By overusing wordplay, writers defeat their own purpose.

Here's an example:

The reporter's use of “cereal” instead of “serial,” whether a puerile attempt at wit or an honest mistake that somehow escaped the proofreader's review of the article, was both shocking and ghastly: the report was about a killer who preyed upon children, after all.

The poster promoting Intruder prominently displays severed human body parts. One way that a writer can do the same thing, while avoiding plagiarism, is to describe the parts as realistic-looking props in a novelty shop's display window:

Scattered among the playthings spilled from the children's toy box in the novelty shop's display window were a man's “bloody” severed head and a dismembered forearm bearing a tattoo of a woman's name surrounded by a bloody pink Valentine heart.

Several horror movie posters depict skulls. In a few such posters, the skulls are composed of a variety of smaller images that, together, make up the image of the skull. It would be difficult for a writer to describe such a composite image (and it might take several pages). Instead, the shape, as a whole, could be described, supported by descriptions of only a few of the smaller pictures that make up a couple of the parts of the skull. Perhaps the skull could be a mosaic or a collage:

For the final exam, Jason's art teacher, Ms. Fenway, had assigned her students to create a collage, which had given him the perfect excuse to buy a dozen magazines devoted to horror. Unfortunately, now he had to cut them to pieces, excising pictures that, together, he could assemble so they'd form a giant skull. He'd already glued down the coronal suture, using the stitches from the back of one of Frankenstein's monster's hands. How, he cut out a decapitated head, a loop of intestines, a nest of vipers, and a seductive incubus, dark images all, to form the left ocular orbit; its twin would be made up of a single picture: a jack-o-lantern bearing part of Michael Meyers's face. When the collage was complete, Ms. Fenway would (a) have a heart attack, (b) give him an “A,” (c) suggest his parent hire a psychiatrist, or (d) all of the above.

Pictures similar to those which appear on posters for Halloween, Black Christmas, or other holiday-themed horror movie posters could be described as posters in pop-up stores devoted to particular holiday sales:

Santa looked especially old as he faced off against the demonic snowman. The human head on the Christmas tree was a novel, if rather grotesque, ornament. The blood leading up to the chimney on the snow-covered rooftop suggested that Santa had come to a bad end. The snow globe didn't replicate a blizzard, but a deluge of blood. Thaddeus Gorman smiled, as he set the hammer aside. The posters he'd hung by the chimney with care created a festive, if eerie, air to his pop-up Christmas shop. He was ready, now, for business!

Possibilities are virtually endless, but two things are required:

1. Avoid plagiarism. A horror movie poster can inspire, but it shouldn't be copied, even in words. Instead, let the design, the use of color, the images, the text, and the other elements of the poster suggest similar (or even opposite) ideas. It's the ideas you want. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; specific creations based on ideas can, and usually are, copyrighted.
2. To describe the pictures you have in mind, don't use the same devices as the posters use. Change the ways you use and “display” word pictures. Instead of a poster's use of red letters in a string of text, describe only a single word, written as graffiti on a wall; in place of a poster's display of body parts next to a cash register, describe them as items among a child's toys; rather than employing a poster's exhibition of a skull made up of images (possibly of characters and settings and actions in the movie the poster promotes), show them as pictures cut out of a magazine as material for a collage: pictures similar to those on horror movie posters can be altered and appear as posters in a pop-up Halloween or Christmas shop. Use your own ideas (not the movie posters' or mine, as described here). How? Use your imagination.

There's more to learn from analyzing thriller (and horror) movie posters. We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.

Bits & Pieces: Story One-Liners

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pulman

No, I’m not endorsing USA Today. In fact, its political bent slants opposite of my own. However, I’m certainly not denigrating it, either. It’s a decent daily in many ways. Besides, I don’t depend upon it for my news (although, I must admit, I do enjoy reading its “Across the USA: news from every state” column. It offers something I don’t see anywhere else: news from every state.

But I also check out the “TV Tonight” listings on occasion. In doing so, I find, the one-sentence summaries of TV episode and movie plots frequently encapsulate, in nut-shell fashion, identifications of the protagonist, the antagonist, conflict (if only implicitly), and the conflict’s resolution. Not bad for a sentence. Here’s an example: “A man [protagonist] drinking himself to death [conflict] finds solace [conflict resolution] with a hooker [antagonist]” (6D). While this summary, which is of Leaving Las Vegas, is not of a horror movie, the same approach can be used to sum up a horror film. Here’s an example: Ben Mears (protagonist) leads a fight against vampires (conflict), liberating his boyhood hometown (conflict resolution) from the bloodsucking fiends (antagonists). The summary is, of course, of Stephen King’s novel ‘Salem’s Lot.

The one-sentence statement of a story’s basic plot keeps a writer focused on the narrative’s main character, antagonist, conflict, conflict resolution, and through-line, which is no mean feat when one writes novels of the length of ‘Salem’s Lot. The synopsis can fit on an index card that one can tape on his or her computer monitor, pocket to take with him or her to the library (for research beyond the Internet’s delivery capability), and keep close to hand during rewrites and revisions. Again, not bad for a sentence!

What’s in a Name?: More (and Less) Than One Might Think

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Anyone who has entered his or her name in an Internet image browser is likely, unless he or she has a truly unique appellation, to have had the rather disconcerting experience of having come face to face, so to speak, with a stranger who shares the same name. This experience is all the more unsettling if the other person is of a different race or ethnic group or (if one bears a unisex name) the opposite sex. Social utility websites allow the same distressing experience.

Sometimes, other media provide the same result. In Las Vegas, a billboard advertises George Wallace, an African American comedian who appears at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Younger folks often miss the irony of the entertainer’s name’s being identical to that of the racist former Alabama governor who resisted the initiation of segregation during the early years of the Civil Rights movement, standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium to bar the 1963 enrollment of the school’s first black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood (“George Wallace,” Wikipedia).

According to Wikipedia’s “disambiguation” list for “George Wallace,” no fewer than eleven more-or-less famous men share this name, among them the former governor; his son; the American comedian and two other such entertainers; a football player; several politicians; foreign and domestic; an actor; an army officer; and a politician. No doubt, there are several less-famous men with this name as well.
 



Occasionally, people also change their names, Norman Jean Baker becoming Marilyn Monroe and Marion Mitchell Morrison becoming John Wayne, for example, and others who would not have shared the names with such celebrities now having their names in common with such an entertainer. (One thinks of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, for example, sharing a name with the Western film star but not with the actor previously known as Marion Mitchell Morrison.)

To most of us, our name is a representation not merely of syllables of sound but of who we are, of ourselves. We think of ourselves as unique. Indeed, we are told, in our youth, that there is no other person quite like us, that we are in a class by itself, the one and only of our kind. Discovering that we share a name with someone else or that we can change our names or that our names can come from other names, even from names that are associated with the opposite sex, is surprising; it is also a bit disconcerting, suggesting that our identities might not be as fixed and permanent as we had previously supposed them to be. If we can share our names with others, maybe we could also become other. We could become a member of the opposite sex. We could become a serial killer. We could become a bigot. We could (if we are women) lose our own identities to those whom we wed. The truth of the matter, of course, is that our identities are not as fixed and permanent as we might believe. Over time, our attitudes, our beliefs, our feelings, our tastes, our values all change; we change. Nevertheless, we believe (or hope) that, at the very core of our being, our hearts and souls remain unchanged. We trust that the essence of ourselves remains unique and incorruptible, both to time and to events. Otherwise, we fear, at some point, we would cease to exist. The loss of identity is the loss of the self to madness or to death. Eve on our gravestones, our names remain--for a time. When the elements have finally obliterated our names, it shall be as if we never existed. There will be no remnant of our identities, of our being, or ourselves.

Therefore, we are jealous of our names, and we guard them zealously, fearing identity theft as much because it is a violation of who we are as because it promotes financial disaster for us as individuals.

Prisoners abhor the loss of their names, which occurs when they are issued numbers in place of their names. They feel that they have been made less than human by being designated numerically rather than alphabetically, as if their identities have been reduced to the nomenclature of mechanical parts and assemblies. Marines also dislike drill instructors’ refusal to allow them, as recruits, to refer to themselves in the first person, as “I” or “me,” and the demand that, instead, they speak of themselves only as “the private.” They perceive the dehumanization that such attempts at resocialization have upon them as individuals.

Horror fiction plays upon our fears of transformation, of loss of identity, and of life itself. Horror writers and filmmakers know what is and is not in a name and how to translate these fears onto a printed page or onto the silver screen. Human beings undergo terrible transformations, becoming werewolves or vampires. They lose themselves to madness. They suffer agonizing deaths at the hands of others who have lost their own minds and souls.

Such films as David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), a remake of the 1958 version directed by Kurt Neumann; Paul Schrader’s Cat People (1982); the several versions of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Norman J. Warren’s Inseminoid (1982), John Carl Buechler’s Troll (1986), and Laurence Huntington’s The Vulture (1967) are just a few of the many, many titles of horror movies involving transformation that Buried.com lists for this category.

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories often feature protagonists who suffer a loss of themselves to madness, but this is a current theme among writers and filmmakers today as well, as is attested by such stories as John Fowles’ 1963 novel The Collector, the Friday the 13^th movie series, the 1995 John Carpenter film In the Mouth of Madness (based upon the 1936 H. P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness), and, of course the classic 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho (based upon Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same title).

Why should our sharing our names with strangers be disconcerting? I think it is because we invest symbolic value in them. Our first names are given to us by our parents. Our last names identify our families and, therefore, our lineage. Perhaps it is unsettling for those women who opt to take their husbands’ names in lieu of the surnames by which, until they marry, they have been known all their lives. Certainly, the custom alters their perspective--and that of society’s--to some degree as to married women’s identities. Women are seen as more fluid than fixed in their identities. Not only do they shift shape (during pregnancy), but they are also likely to change their very identities, Miss Emily Jones, for example, becoming Mrs. Emily Smith. In formal correspondence, married women may be stripped even of the very remnant of their personal identity and their femininity that their first, or given name, provides them, becoming the “Mrs. John Smith” whose name appears after her husband’s: “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.” Even women who remain single often derive their identity from another person of the opposite sex: Paulette and Paula both owe their names to the masculine Paul, for instance, just as the name Denise is derived from the masculine name Dennis. It must be disconcerting, indeed, for a Samantha to realize that her feminine name is based upon a variation of the masculine Samuel.

Death is a staple of horror stories, novels, and films. Virtually every one of them alludes to or, more often, features at east one (and usually several, or even many) savage murders. However, the so-called slasher movies, wherein nubile hotties for the most part, are sliced and diced for audience members’ vicarious viewing pleasure, is perhaps the most extreme sort of this type of fare. Slasher titles include Jack Sholder’s Alone in the Dark (1982), John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) (based upon the 1973 Lois Duncan novel of the same title), Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers (2001), Kevin Connor’s Motel Hell (1980), Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp (1983), Rob Schmidt’s Wrong Turn (2003) (reminiscent of my own 2008 Blue Mountain Detour), and a host of others.

While writers and filmmakers are careful to disguise the fact that they are playing with readers’ and moviegoers’ identities by casting their treatments of this theme in terms of other “people’s” names (those of the characters who populate their pages or screens), make no mistake about it: a reader or a moviegoer by any other name would suffer the same existential angst as the characters who experience physical transformation, madness, or death in place of their voyeuristic audiences.

What’s in a name? More (and less) than one might think!

Dean Koontz, Past and Present

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Before he wrote horror and cross-genre fiction, Dean Koontz wrote science fiction. Arguably, his earlier stuff is better than his current material. In “Undercity,” which appears in the anthology Future City, edited by Roger Elwood (Trident Press, NY, 1973, pp. 81-95), Koontz extrapolates from contemporary cities, such as Las Vegas, Nevada, using its gambling enterprise and its reputation, as “Sin City,” for vice as the basis for his own criminal world of nefarious Mafia-like criminal characters, the narrator, who goes by the alias Lincoln Pliney, included.

The title of his story is not all that original, but, in the 1970s, many were just as mundane, and what counted was the twist to which an author could put to a then-contemporary situation or state of affairs. Koontz’s story successfully establishes and maintains the allegory of a futuristic “undercity” representing the underbelly of the modern criminal world in which members of rime form an “underworld.” In case one of his more obtuse readers misses the extended comparison, Koontz is careful to have his narrator inform the reader that the undercity replaced what had once been the underworld, a loose confederation of criminals in which characters like Pliney were “feared” and “envied.”

Huge subterranean megalopolises of towering structures, undercities are hives of gambling, prostitution, legalized prostitution, dueling, and other vices. Perhaps in an attempt to thwart crime, the government has legalized most such activities. Adultery is no longer stigmatized, and hired killers need no longer apply, for dueling provides a legal means of settling one’s scores. In fact, if one is challenged to a duel, he or she must accept the challenge, unless he or she has a pass.

Pliney is telling a younger person, referred to throughout the story simply as “kid,” about his day, to show how hard it is to make a living as a criminal in an environment in which most activities that were once outlawed are now legal. To m make a living, he says, an individual must constantly “hustle.” To illustrate his contention, he describes his activities, which, he implies, are typical of any day’s dealings in the undercity.

He started his day with an accomplice, sabotaging Gia Cybernetic Repairs, a robot fix-it plant. Then, he delivered a map of part of the undercity’s sewer system to Gene and Miriam Potemkin, a couple who want to escape from the undercity, despite the rumors that, beyond its protective dome, the atmosphere is contaminated by poisons and is inhospitable to life. They are willing to risk death, they say, to avoid the constricting limits of their environment.

Pliney next visit’s the megalopolis’ garbage dump, where he works with K. O. Wilson, who manages the operation’s first shift, and Marty Linnert, who manages the operation’s second shift, allowing Pliney to skim off valuables from the undercity’s refuse before it is “catalogued and sent up to the city’s lost-and-found bureau.” During this visit, Pliney is able to scavenge rings, watches. Coins, and a “diamond tiara.”

Following his visit to the garbage site, Pliney learns that the sabotaged robot-repair plant has been repaired--by men on his payroll, who have charged an exorbitant fee. He then arranges an illegal marriage between Arthur Coleman, a dominant, sexist man, and his submissive girlfriend Eileen, in defiance of the undercity’s Equal Rights Act, which forbids male chauvinism.

Revisiting the garbage dump, Pliney scavenges “silver dinnerware an antique oil lantern, and a somewhat soiled set of twentieth-century pornographic photographs” worth big money as “comic nostalgia.” Then, he illegally sells an oversize apartment--that is, one that is larger than the law allows a single man--to a customer with a yen for more spacious accommodations than he now enjoys.

The Potemkins are caught by a maintenance crew as they seek to escape through the sewer tunnel on Pliney’s map, and afraid that, during their interrogation by the police, the couple will implicate him in their escape plan, he burns down the office--a front doing business (or not) as Cargill Marriage Counseling--in which he keeps additional escape maps. (During his recounting of this adventure, he tells his listener that he must be careful to avoid arrest, even to the point of wearing “transparent plastic fingertip shields to keep from leaving prints.” It‘s obvious that, as he recites his day‘s activities, Pliney takes every opportunity to lecture the “kid” concerning the tricks of the criminal trade. He is not merely a raconteur; he is a mentor.)

Coleman advises Pliney that he and his girlfriend want to marry this evening, instead of waiting the customary six months to do so, and if Pliney refuses to arrange the ceremony, he will take his business elsewhere. Afraid that Coleman will hire “some incompetent criminal hack who’ll botch the falsification of Eileen’s death certificate,” which is needed before a new identity can be fabricated for her, making her a person without a past that the police can check, and that Coleman and Eileen will be arrested, informing the police about him, Pliney agrees to meet with the couple to “finalize things” that night, although, to do so, he must postpone an appointment with a man who wants to buy a “Neutral Status Pass” that will exempt him from accepting duel challenges.

His meeting with Coleman and his bride to “:finalize things” is the reason, he tells his listener, that he is late getting home. The next day, he says, the “kid” can tag along as he goes about his business, so that he can provide tips as he teaches her “the business.” He adds that he has no doubt but that her late mother would be proud of their daughter, who has all the qualities of a successful career criminal.

Koontz’s tongue-in-cheek story suggests that human beings are innately wired, as it were, to sin. Even if vices were legalized, others would flourish, because it is the nature of men and women to seek that which is forbidden and to indulge themselves in the pursuit of the banned and the prohibited. It is this impulse, he suggests, which explains the existence of both Las Vegas and organized crime, just as it explains the fact that, despite the existence of a “Sin City” and the mob, ordinary men and women, like the everymen and women who populate his undercity, vice, sin, corruption, and crime will continue to thrive everywhere. No city limits can contain the transgressions of the human heart. The undercity is every city. Moreover, Koontz suggests, even if humanity were to legalize activities which are currently illegal, forbidden desires would manifest themselves in the pursuit of objects and activities that would fall outside the laws of even the most permissive societies. The problem is not in the doing, he implies, but in the doer--or the wrongdoer.

That’s quite an impressive theme--original sin--for such a slight story. In this early piece of fiction, Koontz is as deft as ever in sketching characters (he has never been adept at true characterization, such as novels demand), at delivering the surprise ending (the criminal narrator’s protégé is his own daughter), at describing the setting, and at extrapolating from the actual and the familiar to the imaginary and bizarre, abilities which served him well as a science fiction writer, which served him well as an author of horror fiction, and which serve him moderately well as a writer of cross-genre fiction.
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He hasn’t lost his touch, even today, but his fiction has lost some of its heart and soul, as any body of work must do when it is stamped out by the cookie cutter of formula with interchangeable characters, settings, plots, and themes--the same story, time and again, wherein only the names change. In his heyday, which, alas, was yesterday, Koontz could write more engaging fiction than the pap he produces today. “Undercity” is worth many of his current works, although it is but a short story and his current stuff takes the form of the novel.

There’s another plus about “Undercity” that a reader doesn’t get in any of Koontz’s more contemporary works. There’s no dog in the cast.

Bases for Fear, Part I

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in this and the next couple of posts, we ask of life, “How do I fear thee? Let me count the ways.”

Animals. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re faster and stronger than we are; they have greater stamina than we have; they have teeth and fangs or other offensive weaponry; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. In addition, humanity’s relationship, as it were, with the beasts has been as much one of exploitation on our part as it has been one of faithful service on the part of those which we’ve been able, as we say, from our point of view, to “domesticate.” There may be, we fear, as much loathing as loving in the animals’ feelings toward us, their presumed “masters.” Among those that are not “domesticated,” there is not the least pretense of affection for us; there is but the “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun” of William Butler Yeats’ “rough beast” that, “it’s hour come round at last,/ Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.” Occasionally, wild animals that circus performers or magicians believe they have “domesticated” cripple or kill their “masters,” as the white tiger mauled the Las Vegas magician Roy Horn, formerly of Siegfried and Roy. In one of The Chronicles of Narnia novels, one of C. S. Lewis’ characters warns others that Aslan “is not a tame lion.” The same may be said of all other wild animals as well. Exploitation, whether of nature, animals, or other human beings, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U .S. Government Photos and Graphics

Bats. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re faster than we are; they may have greater stamina than we have; they have talons and teeth; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. They’re associated, traditionally, with vampires. They’re also hybrid creatures--at least in the popular imagination--part mouse and part bird, as it seems, and, therefore, an anomaly, a perversion, as it were, of nature. They can’t even get the wings right: they’re leathery rather than feathery, and the damned things can’t see; they use a bizarre “radar sense.” Perversity, real or apparent, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U. S. Government Photos and Graphics

Cemeteries. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They are full of dead bodies, entombed or buried, but dead bodies, nevertheless, or ashes. Those buried are buried for a reason, which has little to do with public sanitation and everything to do with their designation as “human remains,” the physical decay of the corpse, and the revelation that, in the end, we may be nothing more than bones and dust, which makes life both rather horrible and absurd. Cemeteries, like the dead bodies or human ashes they contain, the remains or the cremains, are, as mementoes of death, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Demons. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They represent the embodiment of evil. Whether they are legion or represent only a particular vice or depravity, they are malevolence incarnate. Often, they are depicted with claws and fangs. They may have fur and tails. They may have horns and hooves. Bestial in appearance, they are frightening because they’re faster and stronger than we are; they have greater stamina than we have; they have teeth and fangs or other offensive weaponry; and, wild, they are unbothered by the niceties of civilization and culture. They are enemies of God himself and tempt men and women to sin and, ultimately, to denounce God and to be damned for eternity to hell. Demons frighten because they represent the powerful temptation to defy God, surrendering one’s will to self-destructive impulses. The pursuit of the inner demons of self-destructive behavior is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Evil. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. Evil is a mystery. It is an ambiguity and an inscrutability, and the incomprehensible and the irrational are seductive. Evil is a song sung by more than a few sirens. Evil is dark. It is fascinating. It is compelling. It is insistent and enchanting. It is hypnotic. It is spellbinding. It captivates because it has no center, no self, no soul, and its shape is ever changing, always shifting, becoming whatever one lacks but wants and should not have. Its root is pride, but it often puts forth tendrils of envy and leaves of spite. Evil’s protean ability to be all things to all people is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Frogs. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They don’t. That is, they don’t frighten many, but they do frighten some, and, if we let them represent not merely themselves but all amphibians (let’s throw in reptiles, too, for good measure), these creatures are frightening to the majority of people, for those who do not fear frogs are likely to fear lizards or turtles or snakes or eyes of newt. These creatures are primordial in appearance. They suggest the earliest of beasts, the hopping and crawling and creeping ones as much as the running ones, and, as such, they seem to suggest the least evolved life forms, those closest, as it were, to the primordial soup. They’re living embodiments of the days before we existed, suggesting that a world without us is possible--perhaps, someday, even probable. They’re also suggestions that we, who pride ourselves upon having evolved to the very pinnacle of nature, may perhaps regress to the level at which we are, once again, subhuman creatures whose only act of communication is the primal scream. Reptiles and amphibians (and imaginary and imaginative creatures derived from them), represented here as frogs, are reminders of our animal origins and of the possibility that we could regress instead of progressing and are, therefore, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

In this drawing by Gustave Dore, God gets cranky, drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea he parted to facilitate Moses' escape with the Hebrews

God. Why does he frighten? The answer is simple. God is not only powerful, but he is also all-powerful. There is no recourse against his will. As Alexander Pope succinctly phrased the matter: “Man proposes; God disposes.” We are all in the hands of God, like it or not, and his will is our fate. Some fates, we understand, are more pleasant than others, but ours, whatever they may prove to be, are chosen for us, are, in fact, assigned to us from the foundation of the world. Free will is an absurdity and an illusion. God is sovereign, and we are his subjects. God is love, but, sometimes, from the human point of view, love can seem cruel, for the ways of God are not the ways of man. It can be, as Jonathan Edwards said, “a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and, if anything, it is his servants who suffer the most. God is executing his will, not ours. God is a transcendent and wholly other power against which nothing avails unless he suffers it to do so, and it can never be known with certainty what he will suffer and what he will not, and such uncertainty and dependency upon the omnipotent and wholly other is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Hell. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. Hell is nowhere. It is the end of the line. It is endless and eternal futility. It is the “vanity of vanities,” the bottomless pit of despair, an existence apart from the ground of being, from being-itself, from God, the creator and the sustainer of life, of meaning, of purpose, of value, and of love. It is an outer darkness of death-in-life, of meaninglessness, of purposelessness, of worthlessness, of nothingness. “Abandon hope all ye who enter herein,” Dante’s portal to hell warned. Existential meaninglessness is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

Source: U. S. Government Photos and Graphics

Ice. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. It freezes. It makes frozen objects brittle. According to the History Channel’s series Ice Road Truckers, even steel, when it is frozen, can snap like a rubber band under pressure. One episode, in fact, shows a thick chain shatter. Truck engines, in the Alaskan wilderness, must be kept running overnight when the temperature is low enough, and equipment that is idle too long may refuse to start. Ice can also snap large branches from mighty oaks, and its weight can crush a roof. Although strong--the diesel big rigs of Ice Road Truckers travel upon highways that are, to a large extent, nothing more than rivers and an ocean that have become solid ice--ice remains treacherous. It can cause vehicles to skid out of control or to plummet through its thinner parts, into a watery grave. Ice can also cause a body to freeze to death, despite layered clothing, heavy boots and coats, and shelter from the storm. Ice is symbolic of a cold nature, of a hostile and inhospitable temperament, of a lack of love and compassion, of the inability or refusal to sympathize and empathize. For all these reasons, and, especially, because ice is treacherous, it is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

In the next post, additional bases for fear will be identified and considered, but, ‘ere we part, let’s summarize our findings with regard to the nine bases of fear that were listed in this post:

• Exploitation, whether of nature, animals, or other human beings, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Perversity, real or apparent, is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Cemeteries, like the dead bodies or human ashes they contain, the remains or the cremains, are, as mementoes of death, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• The pursuit of the inner demons of self-destructive behavior is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Evil’s protean ability to be all things to all people is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Reptiles and amphibians (and imaginary and imaginative creatures derived from them), represented here as frogs, are reminders of our animal origins and of the possibility that we could regress instead of progressing and are, therefore, a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• God is a transcendent and wholly other power against which nothing avails unless he suffers it to do so, and it can never be known with certainty what he will suffer and what he will not, and such uncertainty and dependency upon the omnipotent and wholly other is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Existential meaninglessness is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.
• Because ice is treacherous, it is a basis, in horror fiction, as in life, for fear.

The Nature of the Beast

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu

Adam Smith points out, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that, President Bill Clinton’s claim to “feel your pain” notwithstanding, people can know only their own feelings. To the extent that an individual empathizes and sympathizes with another, he or she does so only vicariously, by imaginatively putting him- or herself in the other’s place. The ability to identify with other people, only if imaginatively, creates a sense of community as a “fellow-feeling” develops, which allows people to regard others as their kith and kin. Occasionally (and usually to their regret) people project their own feelings onto animals, including bears, gorillas, and lions, regarding them as their fellows as well. Something of such a fellow-feeling between humans and animals may be evident in the half-human, half-animal hybrid creatures of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Indian mythologies.

When an animal attacks, without warning, as wild animals are wont to do, people who have invested the animals with personalities similar to their own are sometimes at a loss to account for the beasts’ apparent betrayal. Other times, such individuals make an attempt to psychoanalyze the animal, as a female diver did after the whale she was petting, gripping her leg in its mouth, dove to a depth of approximately fifty feet before releasing her, and, short on oxygen, she barely made it back to the surface of the water. The whale, she believed, was annoyed at her for her invading its personal space. In past times, animals have even been condemned and executed for the “crimes” they committed against individuals, and in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, Captain Ahab stalks the great white whale that bit off his leg.

It may be that people prefer anthropomorphism to the truth that animals are not people and, therefore, do not aspire, believe, doubt, feel, imagine, or think as people do. Although animals are definitely sentient and may be capable of limited cognition, including the ability to experience emotions to a degree, they are obviously not as sophisticated as even a young child in their ability to engage in complex, prolonged cognitive processes. Most animals do not have opposable thumbs, of course, which is a serious handicap, no doubt, in using (or even manufacturing) tools, but there are many other obstacles to their creation, maintaining, and developing art, science, and the other accoutrements of culture. No matter how fond one may be of one’s goldfish, hamster, guinea pig, rat, snake, canary, cat, dog, pot-bellied pig, or horse, the animal is not going to write a symphony to rival one by Johann Sebastian Bach, devise an invention to rival Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb, or put one of their own on the moon.

Animals are not human. By nature--even by definition--they are other-than-human, the closest approximation that we have to the extraterrestrial biological entities of science fiction and horror, as alien as the great gelatinous mass of The Blob or H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. We cannot put ourselves in their places, because they are not the same as we; they are not our equals in consciousness, memory, cognition, imagination, emotion, or any other mental process. In short, they are as William Butler Yeats describes the “rough beast” that, in “The Second Coming,” “slouches. . . towards Bethlehem to be born,” its “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.” Anyone who has ever studied the eye of a rattlesnake, an eagle, or a tiger knows the gaze that Yeats describes. It is unnerving precisely because of its inhumanity. The eyes, for men and women, may be “mirrors of the soul,” but animals have no souls to mirror, which is the very reason that their “blank and pitiless” stare is horrible and terrifying to us. Their gaze proves, to the intuition, if not to reason, that the animal is other-than-human and that it may be dangerous. There is no “fellow-feeling” between a man or a woman and a serpent, a hawk, or a lion for the simple reason that there cannot be. Therefore, beasts are dreadful.

Poets know this, as Yeats’ description of his poem’s “rough beast” shows. Emily Dickinson knows, too, the alien nature of the animal, as her poem about the “narrow fellow in the grass” whose presence leaves her “zero at the bone” shows. D. H. Lawrence also knows the alien nature of the serpent, as his poem, “The Snake,” indicates. Steve Irwin believed that he knew animals, although he was never sentimental enough to suppose that they feel as he felt or think as he thought. He loved the beasts of the field and the forest, the air and the sea, but, the moment he was careless, he paid with his life, a stingray’s barb through his heart, and Roy, of the Las Vegas magic act billed as “Sigfried and Roy,” was mauled by the white tiger that the duo used in their act, despite his love for the great cat.

It is the otherness of animals' nature that compels horror writers to use them--or parts of them, such as their fangs, their claws, their scales, their wings, their impervious hides, to describe monsters. By assigning animal characteristics to human beings, such writers reverse the process of which Smith writes, causing readers to alienate themselves from the monster who is too unlike them, fanged and clawed as these monsters are, to allow identification and sympathy. There can be no fondness, no fellow-feeling, no trust between the human and the other-than-human, because whatever is inaccessible to the imagination is beyond empathy. This is true despite the fact that some people--the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers and Adolph Hitlers and Saddam Husseins among us--are worse than any lion, tiger, or bear, oh, my. Therefore, in science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction, readers may continue to expect such monsters as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the ape-like mutants of “The Lurking Fear,” the gigantic spider of It and The Lord of the Rings, and the human-animal-alien hybrids of the thousands of horror stories, in print and on film, that have been are, and are to come.

Since the days of Job, when God asked his loyal servant whether he’d considered Leviathan and his ways, such has been the nature of the beast.

Everyday Horrors: Bureaucrats

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Come on, come on, come on, now, touch me, babe.
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?

-- The Doors

Caution: The Yuck Factor of this paragraph is 8.8 on a scale of 10! A couple of years back, upon visiting a restroom at a fast-food restaurant, I witnessed an employee exit a toilet stall. He didn’t so much as pause at the sink on his way out. Sure enough, I saw him behind the counter, in the food preparation area, and I promptly notified his manger, who was chewing him out (but should have fired him on the spot) as I left, making a mental note never to frequent this establishment again.

In public restrooms, we put paper sanitary shields on toilet seats before using the commode (although we’re not sure how effective a barrier to germs a thin layer of paper really is) and most of us use a paper towel as a makeshift glove before turning the door handle to let ourselves out of the facility (although we’re not sure how effective a barrier to germs a thin layer of paper really is).

Caution: The Yuck Factor of this paragraph is 9.8 on a scale of 10! The ladies among Chillers and Thrillers' vast audience of readers and writers may not realize this, as most of them are unlikely to have entered many men’s rooms, especially when men have been present within these rooms, but many men do not wash their hands after urinating! They simply walk past the waiting sinks as if neither these fixtures, hand soap, nor paper towels are there. (Fortunately, with a few exceptions, such as the one mentioned in the first paragraph, men do wash their hands after performing the other restroom task.) What’s frightening about men with poor hygiene habits is that not washing one’s hands after urinating is a known transmission route for hepatitis, a particularly nasty disease. (Mothers, do us all a favor, and teach your boys to wash up after using the toilet or the urinal, please!)

We are all victims of systems beyond our control.

-- The Jefferson Airplane

In more innocent days, we used to believe that the government (a) cared about us, (b) was looking out for our welfare, and (c) is competent. We’ve since learned the truth that the government (a) cares only about our tax dollars, (b) is looking out for its own welfare, and (c) is incompetent. In the old days, the government sometimes subjected its citizens to bizarre medical or scientific studies, as when, during the Tuskegee Experiment, black American males who’d become infected with syphilis went untreated so that doctors could study the progress of disease--up to the point, at least, that it killed the subjects.

Now, as far as anyone knows, the government isn’t seeking our death and destruction by any such active neglect (except by its refusal to protect and defend its own borders, which may be creating a resurgence of diseases that the medical establishment once had on the ropes).

The government's incompetence and indifference to its responsibilities causes many significant and dangerous problems, such as the possible infection of 40,000 patients of a handful of medical clinics in Las Vegas, Reno, and Henderson, Nevada, in which medical personnel reused syringes while administering anesthetics to endoscopic and other patients. It turns out that, in many cases, the Clark County Health Department may have been remiss in inspecting these facilities. A lawsuit is in the works, but cash awards and prison time for the doctors and nurses (if, indeed, any are punished in such a fashion) is little comfort to someone who may have been given hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV along with their joy juice.

Science fiction and horror writers have warned readers of the amoral and immoral conduct of government officials and mad scientists for years, but many have supposed such fictional accounts of human greed, sloth, and the other so-called deadly sins inherent in such behavior to have been purely imaginary. Such indifference, arrogance, and greed might provide fodder for suspenseful fiction, many thought, but the U. S. of A. is not, and never will be, Nazi Germany. Americans, in government offices and in scientific laboratories, have morals. They are principled. They have consciences. Doctors even swear to “do no harm.” The terrors unleashed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods or The Island of Dr. Moreau, in Robin Cook’s Coma, in Stephen King’s Firestarter and The Stand, in Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, in Douglas Preston’s and Lincoln Child’s Mount Dragon, in James Rollins’ Amazonia, and the many other novels devoted to bureaucratic and scientific insanity and malice couldn’t happen here, not in America.
In most cases, of course, this is true, if for no other reason than that these novels, for the most part, depict terrors and horrors that remain beyond the possibility of science and technology.

For the moment, at least.


“Everyday Horrors: Bureaucrats” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured on Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.