I have no idea why I read horror fiction.
A friend emailed around a two question questionnaire about horror fiction.
I did a bad job of answering and now I'm sharing it with the world.
Why do you read horror fiction?
I read horror fiction because I want to question what it means to be alive and what it means to be scared. One could argue that reality bores me and I want the frission (chilly tingle) of emotion that comes from seeing a world that's more interesting and addresses the boredom: "There must be more than this. Wouldn't it be cool if monsters ate the lame people?" But I think it's more than that. Death and deep mortal questions get shuffled aside in our society. I want to chip through our cultural denial and examine those things. Since most people have no interest in examining what we as humans hide as our deepest darkest secrets, I love to read books that examine those questions.
Pick one horror story/novel more than twenty years old and one horror story/novel that is less than twenty year old that any aspiring horror writer simply must read or re-read right now. Briefly defend your choices to the death.
If I had to pick one novel, ever, it would probably be Clive Barker's The Damnation Game. It is a dark, deranged, weird and uncomfortable book. I'm more of a short story person. To me, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti are the three most powerful voices in dark and weird fiction. I love many others but those are the big three. Regardless of the defending concept, if sacrificing my life somehow prevented their stories from being erased forever, I'm willing to die for those three. These are not well people. They're the best horror writers in English in human history that I know because they're voices of darkness. Probably Robert Aickman too. They, to me, are important because they demonstrate what the universe and life mean, without platitudes, varnish or trickery.
I did a bad job of answering and now I'm sharing it with the world.
Why do you read horror fiction?
I read horror fiction because I want to question what it means to be alive and what it means to be scared. One could argue that reality bores me and I want the frission (chilly tingle) of emotion that comes from seeing a world that's more interesting and addresses the boredom: "There must be more than this. Wouldn't it be cool if monsters ate the lame people?" But I think it's more than that. Death and deep mortal questions get shuffled aside in our society. I want to chip through our cultural denial and examine those things. Since most people have no interest in examining what we as humans hide as our deepest darkest secrets, I love to read books that examine those questions.
Pick one horror story/novel more than twenty years old and one horror story/novel that is less than twenty year old that any aspiring horror writer simply must read or re-read right now. Briefly defend your choices to the death.
If I had to pick one novel, ever, it would probably be Clive Barker's The Damnation Game. It is a dark, deranged, weird and uncomfortable book. I'm more of a short story person. To me, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti are the three most powerful voices in dark and weird fiction. I love many others but those are the big three. Regardless of the defending concept, if sacrificing my life somehow prevented their stories from being erased forever, I'm willing to die for those three. These are not well people. They're the best horror writers in English in human history that I know because they're voices of darkness. Probably Robert Aickman too. They, to me, are important because they demonstrate what the universe and life mean, without platitudes, varnish or trickery.