by Attack Ships on Fire » Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:16 am
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Does it not also pull the horizon closer? The boundaries are not physical, but mental.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Yes, you're absolutely right. Even a physical horrific transformation makes a mental impact, but it's not ever the other way around (unless the brain is giving orders to the body to mutilate oneself/others, but really the horror would be "felt" first in the mental psyche state.)<br><br>That's why I love apocalytic horror fiction a great deal, particularly the sub-genre that presents humanity facing something unenvisioned before in the annals of man but now has to be faced. Matheson's protagonist in "I Am Legend", the survivors in Romero's "Dead" films, Lovecraft's heroes about to lose their saving throw against insanity when they face the unspeakable horrors from beyond...all that kind of horror fiction resonates with me. What would you do if the nightmare you faced was something you never conceived of before (unlike the very real nightmares of nuclear war) but came from beyond space or the shadows of the nightworld? I think that by making the terror come from a completely unnatural place (like Romero's flesh-eating zombies or Lovecraft's deities) but by raising the stakes to be the very soul of humanity hanging by a thread, the creator is able to make not only great fiction from it but also reveal some very rarely seen depths that our souls traverse in their solitude.<br><br>I know that there are many admirers of Lovecraft's dystopic horror fiction on here, so I'd like to make a recommendation in case you're looking for more. There was once a horror writing partnership named Skipp & Spector (aka John Skipp and Craig Spector) that produced some great apocalyptic horror fiction. They broke up and went their separate ways a few years back but starting around the late 80s 'til sometime in the late '90s they wrote some great scary stuff, in particular an ecological apocalypse novel titled "The Bridge" (here's my easy way to describe it: imagine if the alien from Carpenter's "The Thing" got out of Antarctica.) They also edited and assembled two volumes of short stories set in George Romero's "Dead" universe which had some moments that really pushed the envelope moments.<br><br>One of the most unnerving horror books I've ever read was Dan Simmons' "Carrion Comfort", about these sorta mind vampires that can control humans to a degree, and the concept of how ultimate power corrupts absolutely. Even though the book's central bad guys are these supernatural humans that have this one mind ability, I think what Simmons was writing about is the ability for *any* human to transform themself into an unbelievable monster. One of the bad guys was a Nazi in a concentration camp, and that's an easy, identifyable real world monster that Simmons can use to establish just how bad these guys are. However, there's a scene that happens on Christmas Eve to a minor character and his family that is so utterly horrific that it became one of the very few instances that I found myself *mad* with an author for writing what he did. The thing of it is, while it's an awful nauseating thing that the author is describing, it's not anywhere as graphic as anything in the Skipp & Spector zombie books; if anything, what makes that scene in "Carrion Comfort" so unnerving to me is that this is the kind of real world horror that happens every goddamn day on this planet, quietly, behind the scenes, deep under the surface of the top news story that you might have seen this evening. Bad, unspeakable things happen, but the fact is that they *do* happen, and to combat such monsterous evil you must confront that kind of nightmare and overcome your revulsion to it if you want to learn how to break it and destroy it. If you want to understand how fathers, brothers, husbands and good men can stand guard and file paperwork at places like Treblinka, Auschwitz or anywhere else such monsterous evil takes place, you have to look at it. I also don't think that you will lose oneself if you have to become aware of the nature of evil to combat it, just as I think watching horror doesn't desensitize oneself from empathy for one's fellow man/woman.<br><br>Though I just unleashed some heavy praise for "Carrion Comfort", I don't think Simmons is a literary god. In fact, his stuff is hit/miss with me. I think "Hyperion", his science fiction novel, is absolute genius, and sure enough there's quite a few horrific things in there too. "Fires of Eden" and his short story collection -- ehhh, not that great.<br><br>There's been a couple of mentions of some horror films that I've not heard of before and now my radar has been alerted to them (like that one described as this blog done as a movie!) Thanks for the recommendations and if anyone else has others they'd like to toss out, please do!<br> <p></p><i></i>
