Showing posts with label Robert McCammon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert McCammon. Show all posts

Saturday, March 12, 2011

For a Writer, Too, Two (Or More) Heads Are Better Than One

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman


Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Lawrence E. Miles, Lars Pearson, and Christa Dickson, includes a sidebar concerning “Spike’s Nature” in which the author (presumably Dickson, since she waxes poetic about “the sight of James Marsters half-naked [sic]) suggests that the series’ writers view the same character differently, creator Joss Whedon seeing the vampire as redeemable and Doug Petrie as unredeemable. Other writers also have their own points of view concerning Spike’s nature: “Any attempt to work out whether he’s good, bad, or just going through his second adolescence is doomed to failure,” the author or authors conclude, “because frankly it’s hard to find three episodes in a row which all agree” (203).

In an earlier post, “Writing as a Schizophrenic,” I suggested that one way to layer a character (that is, to give him or her several, sometimes conflicting traits, making him or her a round and dynamic, as opposed to a flat and static, character) is to develop schizophrenia. Not real schizophrenia, of course. Vincent Van Gogh’s ear aside, there’s a limit at which an artist should draw the line when it comes to making personal sacrifices for the sake of his or her art (or the man or woman of his or her dreams). I meant imaginary schizophrenia or, even better, the sprouting of several heads, each with a mind of its own. By adopting different perspectives (political, religious, philosophical, and otherwise) and different points of view even among these perspectives (Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, conservative, moderate, liberal, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheistic, agnostic, dualistic, monistic, materialistic), one could add depth to one’s depiction of a character.


The authors of Dusted suggest another way of accomplishing the same enrichment of one’s characters: imagine him or her the way that several established authors might portray the same character. How might Stephen King depict your protagonist, antagonist, or other type of character? How might Dean Koontz represent the same literary person? How about Robert McCammon or Dan Simmons or Bentley Little? By sketching your character as other writers--and famous or at least well established ones, at that--might see him or her, you can yourself develop a richer understanding and appreciation of him or her. If the character is a complex one, you can even create various scenes that show his or her perhaps conflicting characteristics. Perhaps you started with a cartoon-style hero or villain. Now, he or she has developed into a dramatic persona worthy of William Shakespeare (or maybe King or Koontz, Whedon or Petrie).

Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Adaptation of the Gothic

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


South cloister of Gloucester Cathedral, looking eastwards.  By William Avery.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Images of the Gothic no longer haunt us, perhaps, as they did earlier generations. Americans, in particular, do not identify much with aristocratic living or, for that matter, peasantry. Most Americans live in apartments or single-family dwellings. Their houses, although often spacious, are seldom the size of castles, and Americans are more likely to be haunted by natural, as opposed to supernatural, events. War, sickness, broken relationships, the deaths of loved ones, upward mobility, taxes, and the heartbreak of psoriasis are apt to frighten Americans more than things that go bump in the night.

Writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and James Rollins have survived the decline of fantastic literature in general and of horror fiction in particular by adapting the Gothic in various ways. King and Little bring it to contemporary small-town or rural America, substituting mansions, hotels, universities, and resorts for castles and middle-class neighbors for the peasantry. The nobility is pretty much gone from the picture altogether, with the exception of such stand-ins as occasional politicians, celebrities, and business tycoons. Koontz’s fiction adapts the fantastic and the horrific to modern life, too, but, in doing so, makes both the fantastic and the horrific merely elements of a more inclusive, “cross-genre” body of fiction that includes elements of such other genres as romance, science fiction, adventure, thrillers, and mystery. He even includes, more often than not, a dog of a purer and nobler character than any of his protagonists is likely to develop.

Simmons’ Summer of Night, a slow starter, is a rewarding read similar to King’s It, and other of his early novels tread ground that is likewise familiar to Gothic and contemporary readers alike as well: vampires (Carrion Comfort), ghosts (A Winter‘s Haunting), and even an irate volcano goddess (Fires of Eden). His more recent work, when it has dealt with horror rather than with science fiction, has reworked Gothic themes (Drood) or historical events (The Terror). McCammon’s novels often deal with sociological (The Sting) or psychological (Mine!) themes, especially as they relate to growing up (Boy’s Life). Preston and Child introduce elements of the police procedural and the thriller into their uncanny fiction by having the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast solve unusual, X-Files-type crimes that often take the reader into such exotic locales as museums, subway and sewer systems, cruise ships, Buddhist monasteries, and dream worlds, at the same time acquainting fans with specialized and esoteric knowledge about ancient artifacts, engineering marvels, the maritime trade, the finer points of Zen, and astral projection. Rollins brings special forces personnel into stories set in Amazon jungles, subterranean worlds, and other places similar to those of his literary mentors, the Doc Savage authors, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Frank Baum, C. S. Lewis, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne.

The Gothic elements, although transformed, persist not so much in imagery as in mood and tone. Darkness. Shadows. Monstrous faces appearing out of the gloom. Fog. Images of decadence and death. Hints of a stranger, deeper cosmos beyond the familiar, everyday world. Portals to nowhere--and everywhere. Wraiths and apparitions that may be merely imaginary. Intimations of immortality. Mysterious ruins. Beautiful, but deadly, women. Hideous, half-seen shapes. The falling of divine judgment, like lightning, at the stroke of midnight. Time out of joint and space deformed. The themes and images may be interpreted to fit the prejudices and needs of the day, but they remain eternally Gothic, even when they are disguised.

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Sunday, January 3, 2010

Learning from the Masters: The Art of the Publicity Ploy

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes it seems that some novels (and movies) are like Douglas MacArthur’s old soldiers; they “never die, they just fade away” (eventually). Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have published a “lost” chapter of their first novel Relic on their official website, with the caveat that the chapter really isn’t lost, and never was; it was “just asleep,” which is to say replaced by a substitute. In it, the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast interviews Margo Green, a museum employee who “knows a lot more about what's really going on than she realizes” about the murders Detective Vincent D’Agosta and Pendergast are investigating.

The authors find their characterization of Prendergast and their planting of a red herring concerning the criminal past of New York Times reporter Bill Smithback awkward and unnecessary, respectively, and include the “lost” chapter, presumably, to show their readers that they are not perfect, that writing is a process, and that the resurrection of a discarded chapter can seem, at least, to offer something that, although not new or original, is still somehow worthwhile to a website. However, one gets the impression that the point of publishing the piece is more promotional than pedagogical.

Robert R. McCammon seems to take the opposite approach to generating publicity for his works, refusing to allow his first four novels to ever again see the light of day because of their inferiority to the rest of his oeuvre. Gee, a writer who is that concerned with the quality of his writing must be a writer, indeed! we’re apparently to think. I mean, here is a guy who’s willing to put his art above mere profit. One doesn’t encounter such integrity very often, in or out of the publishing world. The problem with such reasoning is that several of his other early novels are little, if any, better. Usher’s Passing (1984), The Wolf’s Hour (1989), and Mine (1990), for example, are certainly not among the best of which McCammon is capable, although they are still in print. Still, as a publicity ploy, his refusal to allow the republication of Baal (1978), Bethany’s Sin 1980), The Night Boat 1980), and They Thirst (1981) has surely earned him attention and even some respect. (Of course, these volumes may well be published again,. posthumously, earning his estate the money they are not now making for the author himself.)

Friday, November 21, 2008

Unworthy Books

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Robert McCammon refuses to let his four earliest books be published because they are unworthy of him; as he explains on his website:
I always hear about writers who've written four books that end up in a drawer, and their fifth book is the one that gets published. The first book I ever wrote was published, flaws and all. For better or worse, I was allowed to learn to write in public. I think those books are simply early efforts. You have to take them as they are. I don't think they're very deep or anything; I think they're okay, but they simply represent where I was at that particular time.
(At least he’s honest. Dean Koontz has a different approach; he rewrites his earlier stinkers and foists them upon the public again, usually with a different cover so they appear, to the unwary or the forgetful, to be new novels rather than recycled trash.)

The books of which McCammon is too ashamed to let see the light of day ever again are Baal (1978), Bethany’s Sin (1980), The Night Boat (1980), and They Thirst (1981). A summary of them is sufficient, perhaps, to indicate the soundness of his judgment in this matter:


Baal:

A woman is ravished. . . and to her a child is born. . . unleashing an unimaginable evil upon the world! And they call him BAAL in the orphanage, where he leads the children on a rampage of violence...in California, where he appears as the head of a deadly Manson-like cult...in Kuwait, where crazed millions heed his call to murder and orgy. They call him BAAL in the Arctic's hellish wasteland, where he is tracked by the only three men with a will to stop him: Zark, the shaman; Virga, the aging professor of theology; and Michael, the powerful, mysterious stranger (from the back cover of the Avon paperback edition of Baal).



Bethany’s Sin:

Even God stays away from the village of BETHANY'S SIN. For Evan Reid, his wife Kay, and their small daughter Laurie, the beautiful house in the small village was too good a bargain to pass up. Bethany's Sin was a weird name, but the village was quaint and far from the noise and pollution of the city. But Bethany's Sin was too quiet. There were no sounds at all...almost as if the night had been frightened into silence. Evan began to notice that there were very few men in the village, and that most of them were crippled. And then there was the sound of galloping horses. Women on horses. Riding in the night. Soon he would learn their superhuman secret. And soon he would watch in terror as first his wife, then his daughter, entered their sinister cabal. An ancient evil rejoiced in Bethany's Sin. A horror that happened only at night. . . and only to men (from the back cover of the Avon paperback edition of Bethany's Sin).




The Night Boat:

From the living hell of her watery grave she rises again. . . THE NIGHT BOAT. Deep under the calm water of a Caribbean lagoon, salvage diver David Moore discovers a sunken Nazi U-boat entombed in the sand. A mysterious relic from the last war. Slowly, the U-boat rises from the depths laden with a long-dead crew, cancerous with rot, mummified for eternity. Or so Moore thought. UNTIL HE HEARD THE DEEP HOLLOW BOOM OF SOMETHING HAMMERING WITH FEVERISH INTENSITY. . . . SOMETHING DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET OUT! Beneath the waves she will seduce the living and devour the dead...THE NIGHT BOAT (from the back cover of the British Sphere paperback edition of The Night Boat).



They Thirst:
A MASS MURDER. A DISAPPEARANCE. A CEMETERY RANSACKED. It looked like another ordinary day in Los Angeles. Then night came. . . . Evil as old as the centuries has descended upon the City of Angels--it comes as a kiss from the terrifying but seductive immortals. Slowly at first, then by the legions, the ravenous undead choke Los Angeles with bloodthirsty determination---and the hordes of monstrous victims steadily mount each night. High above glitter city a deadly contest begins. In the decaying castle of a long-dead screen idol, the few remaining human survivors prepare to face the Prince of Evil and his satanic disciples. Whilst the very forces of nature are called into play, isolating the city from the rest of the world and leaving it at the mercy of the blood-hungry vultures of the night. . . . THEY THIRST. Theirs is a lust that can never be satisfied (from the back cover of the British Sphere paperback edition of They Thirst).

When the blurbs are better than the novels they promote and the covers all look pretty much alike, it’s not a good sign; it may be evidence, however, of McCammon’s wisdom in “retiring” such tripe and in deciding to turn his attention and talents, such as they are, to “writing novels that” are “not as easily categorized,” to employ the explanation that his webmaster supplies for the master’s newfound aversion to the genre on which he cut his authorial teeth. Like Dean Koontz, and, more recently, Stephen King, McCammon seems intent upon putting distance between himself as a serious artist and the fecal matter that first bore his name in the cesspool of horror fiction. To be taken seriously as a writer, one must not write humor or horror, it seems. Even the few who occasionally beat the odds and enter the illustrious and glorious, gilt-edged canon of Western Literature, such as Edgar Allan Poe, are sometimes said to be only “three-fifths. . . genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,” as James Russell Lowe (now largely forgotten) remarked concerning the still-remembered Poe.

Horror writers are not frequently considered great writers because, well, the field, fertile though it may be, seldom attracts the most sober, talented, and brilliant authors, except, besides Poe (and yours truly, of course), a few who have made an occasional foray into the cemeteries of darkness, such as Charles Dickens (“The Signal-man”), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw), William Faulkner (“A Rose for Emily”), and Mark Twain (“Cannibalism in the Cars,” “A Ghost Story,” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”).

The genre is helped by the astute, well-read, well-educated, and thoughtful reader (a species rapidly approaching extinction, alas!) who can bring to bear upon these slight narratives the world of his or her own knowledge, experience, interests, and more-or-less well-cultivated tastes. Robert Block could learn from H. P. Lovecraft the same way that Lovecraft could learn from Poe--because all of these masters of the form had in themselves the capacity to be taught and to gain skills.


Some were formally instructed; others were not, but all were autodidactic and interested in the darker and hidden aspects of their lives and those of others, past, present, and, mayhap, future as well. Because of who they were and what they had inside themselves, they were able to create masterpieces of horror fiction, the genre to which their own inner demons drew them. They would have been just as likely to have been able to write so-called mainstream, or literary, novels and short stories had their hearts and minds and souls been in it. Fortunately, for the horror aficionado, these authors’ hearts and minds and souls were in horror instead.


Until such as a Hawthorne, a Poe, or a Lovecraft appears again in this “goodly realm of gold,” we shall have to be content with the Koontzes and the McCammons. At least, unlike the former, the latter cares enough about himself and his work to be properly ashamed of the worst of it and refuses to foist it off upon the public again in a supposedly new and improved edition.


Others, like King, follow a middle road, rewriting the same tired stories again and again, calling Christine, for example, From a Buick 8 the second time around, or simply recycling the tales of terror that others have told, as King does with his retelling of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House as Rose Red or H. G. Wells’ “The Red Room” as “1408.” At least, King “borrows” from the masters and, when he regurgitates previous stories, they have the semblance of something new, if not improved, rather than being slightly edited re-releases of previously released--well, you can supply your own epithet.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Learning from the Masters: Robert McCammon, Part 2

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Robert McCammon is the author of A Boy’s Life, Stinger, Swan Song, Gone South, and several other highly readable horror novels. He has also written his share of short stories, and it is to one of these that we turn in this post, that we may learn from another master of the genre in its rather abbreviated form.

For those who have not read his short story, “Black Boots,” which originally appeared in Razored Saddles (1989), a summary is in order:
Davy Slaughter is running from his nemesis, Black Boots, whom he has killed eight times. The problem is that his enemy keeps coming back, from the dead, and, Davy believes, he’s on his trail again now. The young gunfighter becomes so keyed up with the thought that he is being stalked by Black Boots that he challenges a distant figure, firing several bullets in its direction, before he realizes that “he was shooting at a cactus.” Davy also finds that his gun hand is stiff, the fingers aching. As he crosses the desert for Zionville, he spits and plucks white worms from his mouth. He runs out of water and drools blood.

In Zionville, Davy is greeted by a two-headed dog that runs circles around his mount, both mouths yapping, and Davy observes that the sheriff has been “long gone,” leaving the bank and its meager holdings easy pickings should Davy decide to go to the trouble of robbing it.

He bellies up to the bar in the town’s saloon and exchanges a few words with the bartender, Carl Haines, whose face, one moment seems covered in flies but the next moment is “clear again, not a single fly on it.” Davy asks whether the town has a sheriff. One is on the way, from El Paso, Carl tells him, asking whether Davy intends to cause any trouble.

Davy is disturbed to see the “snout of a rattlesnake” appear inside the “black, empty socket” of the one-eyed bartender’s face. Carl assures Davy that the Zionville populace are “peaceful folk” who “don’t quarrel with nobody.” As Carl speaks, Davy is “fascinated” to see that the rattlesnake’s head now completely extends from Carl’s eye socket. Davy feels as if his own skull may explode. The next moment, the snake is gone and Carl has two eyes again.

Davy asks whether anyone has been asking for him, and Carl assures him that no one has. He describes Black Boots, asking whether Carl has seen him in particular. When the bartender says he has not, and that no one else has been asking for Davy, the young gunfighter confides in Carl that he has killed Black Boots eight times and that Black Boots is, nevertheless, stalking him at the moment.

The saloon’s swinging doors open behind him, and Davy spins, gun drawn, and nearly shoots Joey, a youth who’s followed him to the saloon, fascinated by Davy’s appearance and demeanor. Carl and Davy tell Joey to go home, but the youth asks whether Davy knows how to use his gun. Davy sees Carl’s brain matter seeping through a wound in the bartender’s brow and thinks it an “interesting sight.” Davy asks, “Don’t that hurt?” and ventures to poke the wound with his finger when Davy discerns that Joey is really Black Boots in disguise, “wearing a kid’s skin.”

Davy kills Black Boots, watching him die as Joey’s mother, having come in search of her wayward son, finds Joey dying in front of the saloon and Davy standing over him. Where Black Boots had been, Davy sees, the body of a youth lies, dead.

From behind him, Black Boots, now armed with a rifle, shoots at the same time that Davy, alerted by the sound of the weapon being cocked, wheels and fires his own weapon, and Black Boots goes down, behind the bar. Davy shoots his adversary again, but, as he stares down at the body behind the bar, he sees that it is not Black Boots anymore; it is the bartender, Carl.

Davy staggers outside, where his horse is a skeleton, its heart and lungs visible and alive within its ribcage. He mounts the steed, but it resists his effort to turn it, and Black Boots dashes out of a store, gun in hand, and he shoots Davy three times, one of the bullets knocking him from his skeletal steed. Davy tries to return fire, but he’s out of ammunition. Black Boots shoots Davy twice more, killing him.

Davy is declared to have been “crazy as hell” and to have shot Joey for no reason.

Davy’s body is wrapped in a canvas sheet, stood against the wall and photographed for the new sheriff to examine upon his arrival from El Paso, and buried without benefit of a pine box, and “the man who,” burying his corpse, “threw dirt on the gunfighter's face wore black boots.”
Like others in McCammon’s body of short stories, “Black Boots” is based upon a stereotypical character, that of the itinerant young gunfighter who is haunted by the reputation that his speed and deadly accuracy have earned him. An obviously paranoid character, Davy’s fear of being killed by another gunfighter who is seeking a reputation of his own seems to have given form to his fear, creating Black Boots as a representative of the predatory wannabe killer who stalks him--in his own mind, if nowhere else. Davy claims to have killed Black Boots “eight times,” to no avail. His nemesis returns, a revenant reborn of his own imagination and fear. Black Boots cannot be killed, because he is a product of Davy’s own paranoia.

The opening paragraphs of the story show the reader that Davy’s thoughts are focused upon death. He imagines that his mouth is full of worms. Perhaps they are maggots. If so, their presence suggests that he is in a state of decay, and the blood in his mouth suggests that he has been wounded or injured, perhaps severely. However, his nonchalant demeanor suggests that he has suffered this condition for some time. Since his response--or near-non-response--to his discovery of worms and blood inside his mouth is not normal, he also appears to be, well, abnormal. Likewise, his belief that a dead man has returned to life (not once, but eight times) marks him as being a seriously disturbed individual--unless, that is, the context of the story, which is of the horror genre, after all, subsequently validates his belief as being, in the horrific and bizarre world that he seems to inhabit, possible. However, the reader, awaiting further evidence, as it were, is certainly apt to reserve his or her judgment concerning Davy’s sanity or the lack thereof. His thoughts about the mysterious Black Boots, whom he believes is stalking him with the intent to kill him, also establishes Davy’s fixation with death and dying.

Davy mistakes a cactus for Black Boots, firing several bullets at it, but this error can be attributed to his fear and need not mean that he is insane. However, when he arrives in Zionville and sees a two-headed dog, the reader is likely to place another tick mark in the “Insane” column. Still, it may be that the story takes place in a world of mutants, perhaps, for all one can know at the moment, following a nuclear holocaust. One thing is clear, though: Davy definitely bears watching!

The bizarre incidents keep coming, as Davy observes--or, hallucinating, imagines--the bartender’s face to change, undergoing extreme--indeed, impossible--transformations. First, it is covered in flies, next he loses an eye and a rattlesnake inhabits the vacant socket, and then his brain tissue starts to seep through a wound in his skull. Finally, he believes that his nemesis, Black Boots, can “wear a kid’s skin,” thereby disguising himself as someone else by actually becoming another person. The jury, in the form of the reader, is no longer out; the verdict is in: Davy is a stark, raving lunatic, completely established as an unreliable narrator. Much, if not all, of what he believes is the product of hallucinations, caused, it seems, by his psychotic paranoia.

The reader who guesses the plot twist is not surprised by the story‘s ending. McCammon offers many clues that all is not as it seems with the protagonist. However, the reader may, nevertheless, be amused by the tale. The same technique that piques the reader’s curiosity--Davy’s bizarre visions--gives away its secret. Still, it is interesting to hallucinate along with him. Like many other stories in the horror genre, “Black Boots” relies upon a confusion of the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the everyday and the astonishing. The duality soon exhausts itself, though, and it would not work at all in a longer piece. Surprisingly, this split between the sane and the insane that results from a life lived in fear of a one-upmanship that is not merely unpleasant but, in fact, fatal, is slim, indeed, pointing, perhaps, to the inadvisability--the foolishness--of living one’s life on such terms. The thin plot ploy supports the narrative’s much deeper theme, making this slight tale worthwhile reading, after all.

There is one more thing to say about this story, too, which shows McCammon’s inventiveness all the more, especially since he relies upon such a slim story line: the last line of the story, referring to the “black boots” worn by the nameless, faceless man who buries Davy, suggests that Black Boots was not, perhaps, a phantom of his victim’s madness, after all. He may be, as Davy believed him to be, a supernatural being, capable not only of raising himself from the dead and assuming the forms of others but also of warping reality itself, making Davy believe that a cactus was his stalker, that a dog had two heads, that Joey and Carl and the shopkeeper were other incarnations of the predatory gunfighter whom Davy feared and fled, and that his horse had become a living skeleton. Perhaps in his shootouts with other gunfighters, Davy had, at last, met his match in a monster that is as much beyond life and death as he is beyond good and evil, a monster that wears black boots.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Learning from the Masters: Robert McCammon

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


Robert McCammon is the author of A Boy’s Life, Stinger, Swan Song, Gone South, and several other highly readable horror novels. He has also written his share of short stories, and it is to one of these that we turn in this post, that we may learn from another master of the genre in its rather abbreviated form.

For those who have not read his short story, “The Thang,” which originally appeared in Hot Blood (1989), a volume of erotic horror, a summary is in order:

Dave Nielson has traveled 700 miles to visit a magic shop in New Orleans, where he hopes to find a solution to his problem (nature was not generous in endowing him with the essentials of masculinity). He hopes a voodoo practitioner may be able to help him. He meets one, Miss Fallon, at the shop, who offers to remedy his anatomical deficiency, asking for half her $300 fee up front and the rest after Dave has seen the results. She mixes him a drink, replying to his query as to its ingredients, “You don’t want to know.”

After he manages to drink the potion, Miss Fallon orders him to return to her after the weekend, eating nothing, meanwhile, but gumbo and oysters. Dave rents a room in a nearby motel.

He feels “different” almost immediately, and is able--or imagines himself to be able--to hear “the blood racing in his veins.” However, when he checks himself, he is distressed to see that his problem remains. He sees a gentleman’s club across the street from his motel, and he decides that, since he’s unable to sleep, he may as well enjoy the show. “Without thinking,” he orders a beer.

Aroused by a dancer, his manhood springs free, now “the size of a small artillery piece,” his testicles as large as “cannonballs.”

Horrified, Dave flees the club, its patrons terrified of him. He returns to his motel room, where, after having reached a length of 17 inches, Dave’s “thang” returns to its
former puny size. He struggles to prevent himself from having erotic thoughts, but a woman’s announcement, on the street below, that she seeks immediate intimacy with a man causes him to lose control over his libido. As the woman, Ginger, continues to voice her need, Dave struggles with his monstrous organ, causing enough noise to capture the attention of his neighbors, an elderly couple, who, having appeared in the doorway, witness “what appeared to be a naked man fighting a pale python.”

Apparently, they call the desk clerk, because he and a security guard arrive within moments. The clerk declaring, “We don’t permit. . . this kind of behavior in our establishment,” and Dave is summarily evicted. When he arrives to open the magic shop, the shop’s owner, Malcolm, takes one look at Dave, “suitcase in his hand and his shirttail out,” waiting “on deserted Bourbon Street,” and concludes, “You done screwed up, didn’t you?”

When Miss Fallon arrives at the shop, Dave confesses to having drunk a beer, learning the bad news that there is no antidote to the potion that has extended him--not, that is, unless he is willing to allow Miss Fallon and her Aunt Flavia to “experiment” on him by concocting various elixirs. In three months or so, she says, the two women might be able to produce an antidote.

However, there is one not-so-small catch. Dave must agree to become Aunt Flavia’s boarder. She is an unattractive woman, a husky octoroon woman with copper eyes, her long-jawed face like a wrinkled prune,” whose feminine parts are as oversize as Dave’s masculine counterparts--so large, in fact, that Dave is horrified to see “something loose and fleshy was brushing against the front of her caftan, down between her thighs. . . Something very large.”

This story is almost entirely situational. There is little development of character. It is similar to a medieval fabliaux, in which the foolishness of a protagonist is highlighted and exemplified by his or her behavior, which is motivated by a simple desire to engage in sex. This desire is, in turn, usually frustrated or complicated by another character, often with the result that the protagonist is humbled, if no wiser. These cautionary tales sometimes end with the statement of an explicit moral, but, just as often, they conclude without making their messages clear. It is difficult to imagine how a reader could not conclude for him- or herself the moral of a story like “The Thang.”

Men are as obsessed with the size of their genitals, it seems, as women appear to be preoccupied with the dimensions of their breasts. Those of both sexes who find themselves dissatisfied with their endowments in these particulars often seek to enlarge them, whether through the use of chemicals, instruments, or surgery. For many, the results are satisfactory, but, occasionally, something goes wrong, as it certainly does in McCammon’s story. Reducing the whole of himself to a part (or parts) is dehumanizing, and, therefore, absurd. Dave is a grotesque character, because his overriding concern with the size of his manhood in particular and with sexual considerations in general reduce him to silly dimensions as a human being. He is ruled by his libido, which makes, for him, the matter of his endowment of extreme importance. He discovers, only after the trauma of getting what he has wished for, that his dream, having come true, is a nightmare. His having to live with and satisfy the fleshly appetites of a woman who is as self-absorbed with sex as he himself is--or has been--is an ironic penance. However, matters could be much worse, for Dave’s apparent promiscuity obviously makes him susceptible to risks that far outweigh even a nearly uncontrollable phallus the size of a “python.” The gargantuan member seems to symbolize Dave’s own infatuation with sex and size. As the story’s title suggests, Dave’s gargantuan member is itself a manifestation of his obsessive interest in such matters. The story shows--literally--that his obsession with sex and size is monstrous.

He seems more in need of a psychologist than of a pair of voodoo priestesses. McCammon’s bawdy story pokes fun at the proclivity of men in general to be ruled, in sexual matters, by their passions. Dave, for better or for worse, is an everyman, whose sexual obsessions amuse, annoy, mystify, and anger women who can’t understand why a man can’t simply be satisfied with what nature has given to him (even if, in their own cases, they may seek to “enhance” their breasts with surgical implants.) Perhaps McCammon will pen a sequel that focuses upon such damsels in distress.

There is, at times, a fine line between humor and horror, and, in “The Thang,” McCammon has found, if not crossed, this line.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Duma Key: The Decline of Horror?

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


In recent years, it seems that Stephen King has begun to think of himself as a great American writer who can write simply to please himself. In reality, most of his fiction is apt to be forgotten soon after his demise. One or two books, perhaps, will survive their author. Duma Key isn’t likely to be one, any more than the self-parody that was Lisey’s Story. His latest (and certainly not his greatest) is self-indulgent and pretentious and disappointing as hell.

The protagonist, Edgar Freemantle, loses his right arm and then his wife. He becomes suicidal, and his shrink tells him to seek a change of scenery, which leads him to Duma Key, Florida. Too bad the shrink didn’t tell Edgar to go ahead and end it all. His having done so would have spared readers his endless bellyaching.

At Duma Key, Edgar tries his hand at art. He also meets a lawyer who also wanted to commit suicide (and should have) after his wife and daughter were killed; he did manage to put a bullet in his brain, and although even that didn’t end it for him, at least he made the attempt, which is more than can be said for Edgar.

There’s something supernatural about Edgar’s artistic talent; he can use it to kill or to heal and to paint a mysterious “ship of the dead” that troubles him. From here, the plot, such as it is, sickens further, dying well before the story’s absurd denouement. Suffice it to say that this is another King-size ripoff, involving, this time, a goddess-doll that collects servant-souls and commands the ship of the dead that Edgar spends most of his days trying to paint. After the goddess-doll kills Edgar’s daughter Ilse, Edgar encounters a giant alligator, and--well, who cares, really? Certainly, King doesn’t seem to have.

For the most part, since his own death-defying accident, King’s fiction has become increasing self-indulgent and unnecessarily circuitous, losing any pizzazz, suspense, or horror. They’re just interminably boring. Maybe there’s another book up King’s sleeve that’s worth reading, but he hasn’t written one in the past 10 years or so.

What does this decline mean? If it’s only King’s decline, not all that much, but if his deterioration heralds that of horror fiction per se, then it’s noteworthy--and scary. For many years, King’s name has been more or less synonymous with contemporary horror fiction and with horror fiction that was relatively good. If anything, it’s since become tantamount to wallowing in the slime of narcissism. Dean Koontz, who cut his fangs in the science fiction and horror genres, is pretty much writing cross-genre stuff about as meaningless as Duma Key and Lisey’s Story, recycling the same sad story lines as he’s been using for the last 20 or 30 years. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have discarded everything but Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and his tiresome ward, Constance. Dan Simmons has gone over to the science fiction side of the Farce, and his writing has become impossibly self-important, denser than Herman Melville or William Faulkner or Henry James on their worst days. Bentley Little has told the same story, in different settings, nearly a dozen times--and still hasn’t figured out how to end the damned thing. James Rollins’ stories, although not horror per se, are page-turners, but, again, each seems much the same as the next, since he writes, as do so many in the genre, according to a fairly rigid formula. Robert MacCammon hasn’t written anything worth reading in well over a decade. True, there’s Speaks the Nightbird, but it’s not worth reading.

It may not be merely King who’s petering out; it may be the whole horror genre. Maybe a moratorium on horror is needed. Maybe the ingredients need to steep a while or new ingredients need to be brewed.

King’s attempt to pass the torch to his son, Joe Hill, is proof that more of the same isn’t going to work; the best thing about Junior‘s book is its title, Heart-Shaped Box. The rest is of the same quality as an expletive deleted.

Unless there’s an Edgar Allan Poe or an H. P. Lovecraft waiting in the wings, the horror genre’s immediate future seems bleak, indeed.

Bleaker, perhaps, even than Duma Key.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Contemporary Horror Fiction Bookshelf

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


In other posts, we have dropped the names of several of the horror genre’s greatest authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft. In addition, in his 10-part series concerning “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Lovecraft himself lists many additional big names among the masters of the genre. What’s missing is a roster of the names of horror fiction’s contemporary masters. This post fills this gap on the horror fiction bookshelf by naming the names of many of those who are missing in action, so to speak.

A word or two of explanation is in order, though, for those who are new to this type of reading. First, contemporary horror fiction tends, more so, in many cases, than its predecessors, to mix various other genres with its own, so that science fiction, fantasy, detective, adventure, folklore, myth, legend, and even romance and Western elements become part and parcel of the bogeyman stories. That’s quite a literary stew, but anyone who follows any literary genre long enough will find that, along the way, whatever path it takes, it will include, from time to time, not only elements from other types of fiction, but also a good many themes and topics from such academic disciplines as theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, geography, geology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, botany, zoology, astronomy, history, art, and a host of others. Fiction’s value lies, largely, in fact, in its capacity to impinge upon all these territories, bringing together in dramatic or narrative form, the whole experience of humanity. Horror fiction is no exception. For this reason, expect to find, in the works of the authors whose works belong to the contemporary horror fiction bookshelf many of these other literary genres and academic disciplines. Second, even a list of contemporary horror fiction won’t likely to be exhaustive. This one certainly won’t be. Rather, it offers a roster of many of the names of writers who are writing today whose names would show up on almost anyone’s list of such authors. Once one becomes a fan of horror fiction, he or she will no doubt find additional writers to add to his or her own contemporary horror fiction bookshelf. The names in this post are a start, and a good and reliable one at that. (The works listed are novels; short stories, although, in some cases, they are numerous, are not included in the list.) As with all writers, some of their works are better than others; I have indicated the ones I found to be superior in red font.

Stephen King: Bag of Bones, Black House, Blaze (written as Richard Bachman), Carrie, Cell, Christine, The Colorado Kid (detective, rather than horror), Cujo, Cycle of the Werewolf (illustrated), The Dark Half, The Dark Tower series (seven novels), The Dead Zone, Desperation (companion novel to The Regulators), Dolores Claiborne, Dreamcatcher, Duma Key, The Eyes of the Dragon, Firestarter, From a Buick 8, Gerald’s Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Green Mile, Insomnia, It, Lisey’s Story, The Long Walk, Misery, Needful Things, Pet Semetary, The Plant, Rage, The Regulators (companion novel to Desperation), Roadwork (written as Richard Bachman), Rose Madder, The Running Man (written as Richard Bachman), ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Talisman (written with Peter Straub), Thinner (written as Richard Bachman), Tommyknockers. (King’s official website).

Dean Koontz: Odd Hours, The Good Guy, Brother Odd, The Husband, Forever Odd, Frankenstein (three-book series; two have been written to date), Velocity, Life Expectancy, The Taking, Odd Thomas, The Face, By the Light of the Moon, One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, False Memory, Seize the Night, Fear Nothing, Sole Survivor, Tick Tock, Intensity, Icebound, Strange Highways, Dark Rivers of the Heart, Winter Moon, Mr. Murder, Hideaway, Cold Fire, The Servants of Twilight, Shadowfires, The Bad Place, Midnight, Lightning, Watchers, Twilight Eyes, The Mask, Whispers, The Funhouse, The Voice of Night, The Key to Midnight, The Vision, Face of Fear, Night Chills, Invasion, Dragonfly. (Koontz has also written a number of science fiction novels, the genre with which he started his career. He wrote some of these novels and others under various pen names: David Axton, Brian Coffey, Deanna Dwyer, K. R. Dwyer, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige, Owen West, Aaron Wolfe, and Leonard Chris. Although Koontz denies it, some researchers contend that, much to his current regret and dismay, under the Leonard Chris pen name, Koontz wrote a 1970 erotic potboiler, Hung, and, according to Stu Weaver, Koontz may also have written “13 other erotica titles under as many as 5 other pseudonyms.”). Koontz and his dog Trixie maintain a website.

Bentley Little: The Academy, The Vanishing, The Burning, Dispatch, The Resort, The Policy, The Return, The Association, The Walking, The Town, The Ignored, The House, The Store, Dominion, University, The Summoning, Death Instinct (written as Phillip Emmons), The Mailman, The Revelation. Little does not maintain a website.

Robert McCammon: The Queen of Bedlam, Speaks the Nightbird, Gone South, Boy’s Life, Blue World, MINE, The Wolf’s Hour, Stinger, Swan Song, Usher’s Passing, Mystery Walk, They Thirst, The Night Boat, Bethany’s Sin, Baal. (McCammon’s official website is robertmccammon.com).

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child: Relic, Reliquary, Cabinet of Curiosities, Still Life with Crows, Brimstone, Dance of Death, Book of the Dead, Wheel of Darkness, Mount Dragon, Riptide, Thunderhead, The Ice Limit. (Both Preston and Child have also written both novels and non-fiction separately, under their own individual bylines--Child has written Death Match and Deep Storm; Preston has written Monster of Florence, Blasphemy, Tyrannosaur Canyon, The Codex, Cities of Gold, Ribbons of Time, The Royal Road, Jennie, and Dinosaurs in the Attic). The authors maintain a joint website, located at Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child).

James Rollins: Amazonia, Deep Fathom, Excavation, Subterranean, Ice Hunt, Sandstorm, Map of Bones, Black Order, The Last Oracle. (Rollins maintains a website at jamesrollins.com).

Dan Simmons: Carrion Comfort, Song of Kali, Summer of Night, Children of the Night, Fires of Eden, A Winter’s Haunting. (Simmons, who also writes science fiction, thrillers, and mainstream novels, maintains an official website at dansimmons.com).

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Everyday Horrors: Plagues

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


When most people think of the plague, they are likely to think of the bubonic plague, or “Black Death” that decimated the populations of medieval Europe and other parts of the world. Caused by bacteria carried by infected rats and the fleas who regarded their rodent hosts as moveable feasts, the plague killed as many as 30,000,000 Europeans, or about a third of that continent’s population, in the 13th century. About 550 years later, the same disease killed about 12,000,000 Chinese. Although the plague continues to kill men, women, and children today, its death toll has been greatly reduced, there having been a mere 2,118 fatalities in 2003. A handful of individuals in the United States succumb to the disease each year, but “there has not been a case of person-to-person infection. . . since 1924.”

Usually, the plague attacks the lymph nodes, causing flu-like symptoms within three to seven days, including “fever, headache, chills, weakness, and swollen tender lymph glands,” or buboes (“hence the name bubonic”). Today, the plague is treated with antibiotics.

In addition to rats, “many other rodent species, for instance, prairie dogs, wood rats, chipmunks, and other ground squirrels and their fleas,” also “suffer plague outbreaks and some of these occasionally serve as sources of human infection.” In addition,

Deer mice and voles are thought to maintain the disease in animal populations but are less important as sources of human infection. Other less frequent sources of infection include wild rabbits, and wild carnivores that pick up their infections from wild rodent outbreaks. Domestic cats (and sometimes dogs) are readily infected by fleas or from eating infected wild rodents. Cats may serve as a source of infection to persons exposed to them. Pets may also bring plague-infected fleas into the home.
According to a source that the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, does not bother to cite:

The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it cannot quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation.
In The Decameron, Boccaccio provides an account of the plague; even a small excerpt of his narrative conveys something of the horror of the black death:

. . . in men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they shewed themselves.


There are other plagues besides the Black Death, a famous series of which were the 10 plagues described in Exodus.

  1. Water turned to blood
  2. Sky raining frogs
  3. Lice
  4. Flies
  5. Diseased livestock
  6. Boils
  7. Rain of hail and fire
  8. Locusts
  9. Darkness
  10. Deaths of firstborn sons

Professor Roger Wotton of the University College of London identifies several natural events that might have caused the Biblical floods:

A large storm may have caused the rivers of blood with heavy rain on the dry, baked soil of Egypt causing sediment-rich underlying soils and rocks to flow from tributaries into the Nile, which could also explain the killing of fish.

The fiery hail as described in the Bible could have been large hail and ball lightning that often followed dramatic storms, as could the darkening of skies.

The lice plague could be explained through the sudden mass hatching of lice after rainfall that followed hot and dry weather and the plague of frogs was explained by the emergence of spadefoot toads from hiding places in damp undersoil following a large rain.

The described biblical swarms of flies may have been clouds of biting midges which could have been seen as pestilence that killed cattle and caused boils on humans.

Both the Black Death and the Biblical plagues have inspired both horror novels and films, including Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, Stephen King’s The Stand, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Reaping, among others:

Swan Song:

On the edge of a barren Kansas landscape, an ex-wrestler called Black Frankenstein hears the cry. . . . . "Protect the Child!"--In the wasteland of New York City, a bag lady clutches a strange glass ring and feels magic coursing through her--within an Idaho mountain, a survivalist compound lies in ruins, and a young boy learns how to kill.

In a wasteland born of nuclear rage, in a world of mutant animals and marauding armies, the last people on earth are now the first. Three bands of survivors journey toward destiny--drawn into the final struggle between annihilation and life!

They have survived the unsurvivable. Now the ultimate terror begins.

The Stand:

One man escapes from a biological weapon facility after an accident, carrying with him the deadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that--in the ensuing weeks--wipes out most of the world's population. In the aftermath, survivors choose between following an elderly black woman to Boulder or the dark man, Randall Flagg, who has set up his command post in Las Vegas.

The two factions prepare for a confrontation between the forces of good and evil.

Dreamcatcher:

Four lifelong friends gather in the woods of western Maine for their annual hunting trip. When they were young, they were bound together forever by an act of bravery involving a fifth friend, whose influence has given these men special powers. Their trip is disrupted when a stranger, disoriented and delirious, wanders into camp, muttering about light in the sky. Before long, the friends find themselves pitted against an alien invasion and must draw on their old friend's strength once again to fight for their lives.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes:

Dr. Anton Phibes, a mad doctor (his Ph.D is in music!). . .was horribly disfigured in an automobile accident while racing to see his wife in the hospital, where she was undergoing unsuccessful surgery that left her dead. . . .

Set in 1925, the plot follows the mad musician as he kills off the surgical team behind the failed operation, using grimly imaginative methods (bees, rats, bats) inspired by the Old Testament plagues Moses called down upon Egypt (it seems Phibes also studied theology while getting his musical degree). . . .

The Reaping:

Investigative scholar Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) is a debunker of modern "miracles," bringing scientific light to superstition and fraud. But events in tiny Haven, Louisiana, defy even her expertise. There, the 10 Biblical Plagues seem to be reoccurring. And the more she seeks answers, the more she questions her own beliefs.

Not to be outdone (or left behind) by the masters of horror, several science fiction novelists and scriptwriters have also based stories upon the idea of plagues, one of which arrives from outer space (Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain), and another of which resulted from a disease caused by biological warfare. The victims undergo bizarre mutations that transform them into vampire-like creatures. The Omega Man is a military scientist who’d injected himself with an experimental vaccine against the disease. It’s up to him to try to save the world.



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

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Bram Stoker Award Winners, 2006

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman


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

  • Novel
  • First Novel
  • Short Fiction
  • Long Fiction
  • Fiction Collection
  • Poetry Collection
  • Anthology
  • Nonfiction.
On occasion, a writer may receive a lifetime achievement Stoker for his or her entire body of work, provided that the oeuvre has had a significant effect on the genre.

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

Novel: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

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

First Novel: Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry

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

Long Fiction: Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

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

Short Fiction: "Tested" by Lisa Morton

Fiction Collection: Destinations Unknown by Gary Braunbeck

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

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

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

Poetry Collection: Shades Fantastic by Bruce Boston

Speciality Press Award: PS Publishing

Lifetime Achievement Award: Thomas Harris.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Plotting Horror Fiction: The Invasion Plot

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman
 
Note: Refer to "Basic Plots" for other horror plot patterns that are common to this fiction genre.
 
This method of plotting works best for the Invasion plot. Other methods work better for other types of horror plots. We may outline these other techniques in future posts. In plotting, first develop the back story. In horror fiction, this is the true cause of the bizarre incidents that transpire in the story proper. For example, in Dean Koontz’s novel, The Taking, what seems to be reverse-terraforming on the part of invading aliens turns out to be a visit by Satan. The devil’s call is the true cause of the bizarre incidents that occur in the story.
 
In Koontz’s novel. The Good Guy, hints are distributed throughout the story proper concerning the reason that the protagonist is adept with firearms and strategizing. The back story, which is told toward the end of the novel explains why: he is a war hero and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who was instrumental in rescuing hundreds of hostages from their murderous captors. By delaying the explanation until most of the story proper has been told, Koontz maintains suspense. However, the back story, once it is told, provides a believable explanation as to why the main character is adept with firearms and developing battle plans. 
 
After plotting the back story, start with an everyday situation. Introduce the main character and important supporting characters. Set up the conflict. Establish the setting. Characterize the characters. Let the reader get to know and understand the characters. Let the reader like the ones you want him or her to like and dislike those whom you want him or her to dislike.
 
Dramatize the first of the bizarre incidents. Show it happening. Show it affecting the characters--victims and friends alike. Relate it to the main character’s basic emotions and goals. Perhaps tie it to the protagonist’s past or to the past of the locale--the story’s setting. It may be advantageous to do both. Stephen King does this by making the monster in It appear periodically, attacking a new generation of children in the same town every thirty or forty years. He also has the children who face the monster as preteens return to their hometown, when the monster next returns, to face it again, as adults.
 
Allow other bizarre incidents to occur. Usually, it’s best to let the incidents befall several characters, rather than the same character (although either course is possible), as doing so keeps the reader wondering why the monster is attacking various characters and looking for the common thread that ties the attacks together.
 
Remember that whatever causes or motivates the monster (whether it’s an impersonal force or an intelligent being) must be accounted for--in a believable fashion--in the back story.
 
If your story has a subplot (or two), weave it into the main plot. Often, horror stories have a romance between the main character and another character. Perhaps the main character is the new kid in town, rejected by everyone until he saves the most popular girl in school. Then, he wins her over (but no one else), and they become friends, with her losing her other friends as a result. Possibly, a woman comes to town seeking peace after an especially traumatic experience and, instead, encounters one even more terrifying and dangerous--the monster at the center of your story. Your protagonist will save the day--and her. Maybe there is not romance. Maybe, instead, your main character lacks something--self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, or whatever--and his fight against the monster allows him (or her) to gain what he (or she) originally lacked, as Beowulf does. In the poem named for him, Beowulf is considered a weakling who is, as such, unworthy of respect. When, in destroying Grendel and his mother, the warrior shows he’s as strong as he is courageous, he gains the esteem of his people; later, he becomes their king.
 
Of course, a story can have a romantic subplot as well as a plot that involves recognition, or self-discovery. However, you don’t want to have too many subplots, because your story is liable to lose its unity and focus.
 
The main character leads the fight against the monster, protecting his friends and townsfolk from them to the best of his ability. The main character and many others take the initiative at some point in the fight against the monster.
 
At some point, toward the end of the story, your main character must discover the cause of the bizarre incidents. Armed with this knowledge, the main character sets up a battle plan by which to overcome the monster. He or she takes the fight to the monster. This is a common plot convention. Characters in It, The Taking, Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night, Robert McCammon’s Stinger, and many other horror novels seize the initiative once they determine how to slay the monster. 
 
Nevertheless, the monster proves hard to kill, and it may have a trick or two to use against the protagonist and his or her loyal (or, as in Beowulf, not-so-loyal) band.
 
Ultimately, the main character is often triumphant (but he or she need not be). If so, the story frequently ends with an epilogue that suggests that the monster may return or that it may be reincarnated in some new form--in case the writer wants to write a sequel to the original story.

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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