Gargoyles and Shifters and Demons, Oh My! with Sarah A. Hoyt
When I was little I had sharks under my bed. I figure I did so, because I couldn’t have monsters in my closet, due to not really having a closet. A child of the sixties, I had this thing mom had made from cheese crates, painted white and hung with blue-flowered curtains. No self respecting monster would hide in a white-painted cheese crate. So I had sharks under the bed. The sharks had chainsaws - no, truly, don’t ask, just roll with it - and lay in wait for me to stick a limb over the edge of the bed. At which point they would presumably start up their chainsaws and I would go through life being known as stumpy.
I understand people with more normal - saner - childhoods had monsters in their closets, though. They had vampires, or werewolves, or other, stranger creatures. They probably did what I did with my chainsaw sharks and begged their parents to get rid of them, only to have the parents shake their heads (and in mom’s case wonder if I should be on valium.)
So how come for the last two decades the monsters have been out of the closet and dancing with our main characters in the terrace under the full moon? How come the examples of seductive vampires, werewolves, shape shifters of various kinds are too many to mention?
Well, for one, there was always a seductive element to these creatures. Vampires, as representatives of the death wish, shape shifters as representatives of duality and sometimes animal nature, all of them appealed to something very basic and sensual in every woman - and man. The original Dracula was seductive and if anyone here hasn’t read Robert Aickman’s Diary of A Young Girl find it and read it to the shiver-inducing line.
But why is this type of literature so fascinating all of a sudden? Why are there vampires and werewolves or shape shifters in every other novel, from romance to fantasy, from YA to Mystery?
The simple answer is that the complexity of modern life drives us to it. Simple and convoluted too, because once you get into what’s underlying the complexity, it is far more than the nine to five world, or the availability of online games, or the ability to converse with friends around the world instantly and without cost. It is all of those put together and more. We are living longer than our ancestors. The extended family is more splintered than ever - riven apart equally by social pressures and a mobile society driven by an even more mobile job market. For the first time in history - to coin an image - perhaps the majority of the people who eat eggs have never seen a live chicken.
Add to this an ever accelerating rate of technological change, which in turn drives social and cultural change, and contemporary humans are becoming, moment to moment, more like the gods that our ancestors imagined.
So what does this have to do with a sudden fascination with monsters?
Simply put for most of us, the closest we come to nature in the raw is our own nature and the convoluted twists of our own whispering animality, our irrational attraction to the morbid, our hunger for and fascination with things we know, objectively, are bad for us. Couple this with the fact that most fantasy monsters also have attributes to which modern technology is bringing us ever closer, be they extreme longevity, near invulnerability or great strength, and you can see that in a way our fascination with monsters is very similar to the early twentieth century fascination with amazing machines and cool engineering.
Perhaps this is why I find myself vaguely put off by the vampire that no longer needs to drink blood; the werewolf whose transformation is wholly painless and who no longer feels the pangs of his animal nature. In my shape shifter books, both the Magical British Empire series, out from Bantam books, and the Shifter Series out from Baen, shifters struggle and suffer for their powers. In my vampire stories, I burden vampires with many if not all of the traditional draw backs. This feels more appropriate to me. It feels right that there be a price and a penalty, that there be challenges to overcome in the pursuit of great gifts.
Perhaps because as we, shambling god-monsters, shift out of the closet and into the full light of twenty first century life, we are not going to leave our darker side behind. No. It will go with us into the future. We are not going to become angels, possessed only of good. Our animal nature, our baser impulses, will always be there. And, like the vampires in the most satisfying vampire stories, we must learn to overcome our darker nature even as we embrace the gifts of our enhanced life.
Only then can we waltz with the main character under the moonlight.
Magical British Empire series
HEART OF LIGHT, Bantam
SOUL OF FIRE, Bantam
HEART AND SOUL, Bantam
Shifters series
DRAW ONE IN THE DARK, Baen
GENTLEMAN TAKES A CHANCE, Baen
I understand people with more normal - saner - childhoods had monsters in their closets, though. They had vampires, or werewolves, or other, stranger creatures. They probably did what I did with my chainsaw sharks and begged their parents to get rid of them, only to have the parents shake their heads (and in mom’s case wonder if I should be on valium.)
So how come for the last two decades the monsters have been out of the closet and dancing with our main characters in the terrace under the full moon? How come the examples of seductive vampires, werewolves, shape shifters of various kinds are too many to mention?
Well, for one, there was always a seductive element to these creatures. Vampires, as representatives of the death wish, shape shifters as representatives of duality and sometimes animal nature, all of them appealed to something very basic and sensual in every woman - and man. The original Dracula was seductive and if anyone here hasn’t read Robert Aickman’s Diary of A Young Girl find it and read it to the shiver-inducing line.
But why is this type of literature so fascinating all of a sudden? Why are there vampires and werewolves or shape shifters in every other novel, from romance to fantasy, from YA to Mystery?
The simple answer is that the complexity of modern life drives us to it. Simple and convoluted too, because once you get into what’s underlying the complexity, it is far more than the nine to five world, or the availability of online games, or the ability to converse with friends around the world instantly and without cost. It is all of those put together and more. We are living longer than our ancestors. The extended family is more splintered than ever - riven apart equally by social pressures and a mobile society driven by an even more mobile job market. For the first time in history - to coin an image - perhaps the majority of the people who eat eggs have never seen a live chicken.
Add to this an ever accelerating rate of technological change, which in turn drives social and cultural change, and contemporary humans are becoming, moment to moment, more like the gods that our ancestors imagined.
So what does this have to do with a sudden fascination with monsters?
Simply put for most of us, the closest we come to nature in the raw is our own nature and the convoluted twists of our own whispering animality, our irrational attraction to the morbid, our hunger for and fascination with things we know, objectively, are bad for us. Couple this with the fact that most fantasy monsters also have attributes to which modern technology is bringing us ever closer, be they extreme longevity, near invulnerability or great strength, and you can see that in a way our fascination with monsters is very similar to the early twentieth century fascination with amazing machines and cool engineering.
Perhaps this is why I find myself vaguely put off by the vampire that no longer needs to drink blood; the werewolf whose transformation is wholly painless and who no longer feels the pangs of his animal nature. In my shape shifter books, both the Magical British Empire series, out from Bantam books, and the Shifter Series out from Baen, shifters struggle and suffer for their powers. In my vampire stories, I burden vampires with many if not all of the traditional draw backs. This feels more appropriate to me. It feels right that there be a price and a penalty, that there be challenges to overcome in the pursuit of great gifts.
Perhaps because as we, shambling god-monsters, shift out of the closet and into the full light of twenty first century life, we are not going to leave our darker side behind. No. It will go with us into the future. We are not going to become angels, possessed only of good. Our animal nature, our baser impulses, will always be there. And, like the vampires in the most satisfying vampire stories, we must learn to overcome our darker nature even as we embrace the gifts of our enhanced life.
Only then can we waltz with the main character under the moonlight.
Magical British Empire series
HEART OF LIGHT, Bantam
SOUL OF FIRE, Bantam
HEART AND SOUL, Bantam
Shifters series
DRAW ONE IN THE DARK, Baen
GENTLEMAN TAKES A CHANCE, Baen