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Guest Post: Bring Out Your Undead – Carrie Harris’s Favorite Zombie Books

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Continuing our horror Mondays series is a guest post from Carris Harris, author of the zombie comedy Bad Taste in Boys. She’s already told us a bit about why we should read paranormal books, and she’s also told us a little bit about herself, but we thought it was about time she got down and dirty and tell us what we should be reading when it comes to the world of zombies. So, if you’re ready for a little horror of the undead variety, Carrie’s got some ideas for you.

Bring Out Your Undead — My Favorite Zombie Books

My apologies for the gratuitous Monty Python reference. I’ll have you know that I’m reading this entire post in a very atrocious French accent.

Anyway. Zombie books. I’ve heard from a lot of people that they don’t read them because they’re not horror fans, but the reality is that there are so many literary undead hordes these days that I honestly believe you can find a zombie book to suit any taste. It doesn’t matter whether you like silly, thought-provoking, or the kind of book that brings out your inner teenage boy (assuming that, like mine, your inner teenage boy likes anything that reads like a video game). I SHALL FIND YOU A ZOMBIE BOOK OR DIE TRYING AND THEN COME BACK AS A SHAMBLING CORPSE. WHICH WOULD BE IRONIC.

I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t mention my book, BAD TASTE IN BOYS, which is the kind of zombie book you’d like if you’re a fan of Shaun of the Dead. There’s a bit of violence, yes, but it’s mega campy. Another over-the-top silly zombie read is HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER by Lish McBride. Don’t go into this book taking things seriously. There is potato hockey in it. And, of course, zombies.

For the more thought-provoking zombie read, I have to tote out two of my all time favorites. ROT AND RUIN by Jonathan Maberry made me cry, and I’m not talking a little water in the eyes that you can pass off as a stray eyelash. I’m talking full on horking of snot. Yes, there’s some awesome zombie chills in this one, but it’s also about what makes us human. My second recommendation here is actually an adult title that I think has some crossover potential. FEED by Mira Grant did not make me cry, but at the end, I actually howled the word “NOOOOOOO!” out loud and scared the everloving daylights out of my kids. Ever wonder what the political scene would be like in the zombie wasteland? Read FEED.

If you’re looking for non-stop action, I highly recommend THE WALKING DEAD series of graphic novels by Robert Kirkman. Know how people generally say the book is better than the movie (or in this case, show)? Yeah, that. Also PATIENT ZERO by Jonathan Maberry. This is classic zombie horror. As in, it will scare the crap out of you and then scare the crap out of you again. And then, for a change, it will scare the crap out of you. People keep stealing my copy. It’s that good.

In short, there’s quite a bit more variety in the zombie genre these days. Even non-horror fans can enjoy the right title without shaking in fear, hiding under a blanket, and clutching your crème brûlée torch for comfort. Especially if you read it in an atrocious French accent.

Do you have any zombie book suggestions? We’d love to hear them!

Classic Horror: One Cover’s Evolution Through Time

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Since we’re posting about horror on Mondays here this month, I thought it would be fitting to talk a bit about covers — that can set the whole mood for the novel. But rather than give a showing of many covers, I thought I’d instead take a walk through the evolution and changes of one classic horror novel: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This novel has been in print since it first published in 1897, which is really impressive and suggests just how important this particular book is to our literary history.

It’s fascinating to see how it’s been interpreted over the years and how it’s been repackaged to appeal to different readers and to call attention to different aspects of the story itself. The book had both American and British publication, so the covers vary a bit therein as well. For more details about the history of Dracula’s publication (and where I picked up my source information), check out this site. It’s much more in depth and offers an interesting look at the parallel lives of the book in Britain vs the US. Since it would be a book-length post to talk about all of the cover versions through the years, I’m offering just a sample of some of the most interesting ones. First, though, a couple original covers to see where everything started:


This is the original cover for the novel. The cover is pretty typical of covers in that era, yellow cloth over board (yes, you now know I did take an entire course on the history of the book and that I do, in fact, remember a lot of it). It’s a very simple cover but I think the font for the title does hint at exactly what lies inside: it’s a little bit Gothic, with the R reaching further below the lines of the other letters following it. It’s also red, which stands out a little differently than a black or white would at the time. This is the original British cover, for those interested in the British vs. American publication histories.


This cloth over board cover is the first American version of the novel, published in 1899. Unlike the British version, this one offers us an image on the cover, though we get a bit more of a bland cloth. It features Dracula’s castle on the hill, along with bats along the side. I pulled this cover up from an auction site, which also talks about how there is a gilt sun in the image, too, which you can see if you squint at the image in the valley to the right of the castle. I’m a big fan of the thin and unimposing font and design, as I think it heightens the creepy vibe.


This is the 1901 British edition of Dracula. Quite a difference from the last two covers — this one features Dracula scaling down the castle walls. It’s also only in black and white and looks very much dime-store novel to me, rather than classic.

Just as a contrast, here’s the 1902 US edition — white boards with green and red on it, along with garland in the center. It seems like a weird choice for me, as it feels much more like Christmas novel than a horror. This is a small thing, but I do like the font choice quite a bit; the “c” in particular has a depth and darkness to it that sort of stands out against the rest of the cover. Like the original British cover, too, this one has an “r” that dips below the other letters.

Since I don’t want to make this a history lesson in the publication of the book (you can get that at the site I linked to earlier), I’m going to dive right into offering a ton of different cover interpretations, including some that work marvelously and some which are flops. There’s no particular order to these covers.


This cover scares me to no end. This Wordsworth Classic cover is from 1997, and it features a creepy vampire. Maybe it’s creepy because it feels like it’s quite a realistic portrayal of a vampire: the pale skin, the scraggly hair, the teeth, and the hooded cape. There’s also the layer of the landscape in the background that is dark and spot-on Gothic. As much as the cover creeps me out and I think does justice to the story, it’s also not a cover I’d want to pick up because, even for 1997, it feels quite dated. Perhaps it’s the font for the title and author, along with the picture-style cropping that centers the cover image on the jacket and leaves plenty of room for black space (which doesn’t add to the image at all). Moreover, it strikes me as the kind of book that you’d have to read in high school and wouldn’t enjoy.


This cover rendition might be one of my favorites, despite not sharing a whole lot through image. It was published in 2005 by Back Bay Books (Hachette). What works so well for this cover is the red damask — for me, this reads horror. The half face image, flipped on its side, heightens that creepy factor, as well. And the font is spot on, a gold color that utilizes just the right amount of script. This cover looks plush almost, and I think that works really well for conveying the story; it’s a bit of a trick, if you will. Comparing this one to, say, the cover immediately before it tells two different stories. The last cover is cold and classic, but this one feels warm and current. That warmth, though, isn’t the cuddly kind.


Here’s a cover I love and a cover that would make me pick up the book — this is the 100th anniversary edition of Stoker’s book, published in 1986 (not sure how that works), published by Signet Classics. This is a haunting cover in a very different way from the Wordsworth Classic — this one features the castle on the hill, along with a fog dusted forest of tangled limbs. But there’s also this glow of icy blue in the back of the castle that offers just a little hint at something else. While the font is dated, it, too, contributes to the classic Gothic feel of the novel. I don’t find it obtrusive, as the image really jumps from the cover. Perhaps what I think stands out to me about this cover is how much it’s reminiscent of the first American edition of this novel, right down to the lightness in the valley by the castle.


The first illustrated version of Dracula was the cover posted above in only black and white, with the vampire scaling down the wall of the castle. This illustrated version was published in 2006, and it might be the most uncomfortable cover I’ve looked at of this novel. It reminds me a lot of a possessed vampire — perhaps alien or robotic possession? The hands are like daggers, but it’s the eyes of this vampire that make me extremely uncomfortable. Frankly, this cover reads more like a science fiction novel than a horror novel in execution. The white behind the vampire’s head is a little unsettling for me, too, given how dark the rest of the cover is.


Here’s a really recent rendition of Dracula, published in January of this year by NMD Books. I love the title font; it’s perfectly representational of the horror feel, red and dripping. I like, too, that that font isn’t used again for the (too much) author/preface text below or it would have impacted the power it has. I can’t say, though, much else appeals to me about this cover. While I like the idea of the hand and the necklace chain woven between the fingers, it’s cropped and Photoshopped strangely. The white-gray color is too sharp a contrast with the black and red. The image looks amateur, especially compared to other takes on the cover image.


Let’s go back to a 1957 version, published by Perma Books. Something about this cover screams classic horror to me; it’s quite reminiscent of a lot of the movie covers of the time. This might be one of the few iterations of this cover that doesn’t feature a Gothic typeset, but I think this font works quite well. Aside from being red (a trend, you’ll notice), it’s a bit shivery. It’s got that horror vibe without being over the top nor too obvious. But the illustration and image on the cover? I’m not sure. The blue is actually kind of light hearted, along with the pink box with a yellow sun. The shadowed hand with the claw-like fingers almost feels comical as it reaches toward the woman, which is an actual image, rather than clip art or illustration. While those things don’t really add up to the vibe I get about the book, there is something classically pulp about this cover that I really do enjoy.


This Modern Library edition is from 2001, and the reason I wanted to talk about this one wasn’t the red (though that’s been a theme), nor is it because it fits into the style of all the Modern Library editions. But I wanted to talk about the symbolism here: the neck with a cross on it. One of the things that really stands out to me in looking at the different versions of Dracula is the choice of images used to represent the novel. We’ve seen castles, we’ve seen vampires, and we’ve seen variations on both those themes. But this cover crosses into something completely different, and that’s the symbolic. The cross carries a lot of weight on the cover and offers an interpretation of the story that’s different than so many of the others. I don’t want to say there’s hope in this cover because I don’t think that’s the case; rather, this cover suggests the idea that religion is strong and powerful. It’s over the model’s neck — a place of vulnerability — and protects it.

The last cover I want to talk about is this recent (September 2011) Vintage Spanish edition. I’m not sure why, but I think of all the covers of Dracula, this one might be the most evocative and most provocative for me — it gets to the heart of the story without ever once giving a hint at this being a vampire novel. We know, though, looking at the bare neck. Placing the title and author right there only add to that. I love that this is a painting and not a photo, too, as I think it makes it just that much different and yet conveys the classic feel of the book. We all know what’s going to happen here, too.

I’ve taken a little walk through a handful of Dracula covers, and I’m eager to know what you think — do you like any more than another? Maybe what interests me more is what your favorite covers are; there are hundreds of versions of the cover, some that were published and some that are straight up fan art. Share a link in the comments with your favorite. What better way to set the mood for a good horror read than a gallery of covers of one of the classics in the genre?

Guest Post: All Hallow’s Read: Creepy Stories You (Probably) Haven’t Read Yet

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Frequent guest contributor Matthew Jackson is back with a special post for the season on lesser-known horror stories. He wrote a series for us last year on Horror Lit 101. Matt is an entertainment writer for Blastr.com, film critic for the Huntsville Item, and frequent contributor to nerdbastards.com. Visit him at his personal blog at www.awalrusdarkly.blogspot.com.
Last year
rock star author Neil Gaiman suggested via his blog that we should begin a
tradition of giving each other scary books for Hallowe’en (British spelling;
it’s cooler). Bookish nerds (like myself) rallied around him, and All Hallow’s
Read was born. If you weren’t aware of this development last fall, you can read
all about it (really not much more than “Hey, give each other books.”) right
here (http://www.allhallowsread.com/). 
I gave an
All Hallow’s Read book last year – a collection of short fiction edited by the
wonderful horror writer Peter Straub – to a friend with a fortuitous October
birthday, and I also spent some time talking here on this very blog about some
essential horror writing from the last two centuries. When I was asked by the
lovely ladies of STACKED to reprise my role as horror geek this October, I
started thinking about the books people might give (and get) to celebrate
Hallowe’en (again, cooler), and I realized that quite a few of them would be
the same book. 
There are
essential horror texts, of course. A good portion of the Stephen King canon,
the complete works of Poe (particularly if you get one of the cool black
leather, gilded editions like I have), Gaiman’s own creepy all ages story Coraline and a host of others that
lovers of scary stories have already devoured. But what about the others? What
about those books that you thought about picking up, but didn’t, or those books
written by the bestselling author that didn’t quite go the distance? What about
those stories that have been forgotten by all but the enthusiasts? 
With this in
mind, here are a few of those stories that I’ve discovered during my life as a
horror reader. If you’re a lover of creepy tales, you might’ve read a few of
these, but if you’re a casual reader who just gets the urge for such a story
around this time of year, you’re very likely in for some new experiences.
The
Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
H.P.
Lovecraft praised it in his critical writing on supernatural literature, and no
less than Stephen King labeled it the finest horror story in the English
language. The Great God Pan is the
story of a scientist who performs a horrific surgery in the hope that his
patient can see a god and the terrifying results of the experiment that emerge
years later. Published in 1894, it remains an essential precursor to the
classic weird fiction of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, and even more than a century
later is still among the more disturbing horror tales I’ve ever read.
Cabal
by Clive Barker
Lately Clive
Barker has been noted more for his fantasy fiction, but he began as a horror
writer, perhaps the most effective of the 1980s, and it’s those early tales of his
that I still read with the most affection. Cabal
is a novella from the sixth volume of Barker’s Books of Blood anthologies. It was made into a critically panned
but still interesting film, Nightbreed,
by Barker himself, but it’s the story that sticks in my head. It’s the tale of
a man whose life just feels wrong until he stumbles upon a group of
otherworldly creatures living in a sprawling necropolis. Cabal is one of the great modern monster stories, endlessly weird
and ambitious, filled with the imaginative power of all of Barker’s more famous
stories, and the same visceral punch of each of his other horror writing.
Zombie
by Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol
Oates has won loads of awards for her fiction, but she probably never expected
to get one from the Horror Writers Association. Zombie won the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in
a Novel in 1995, and even though it’s hard to find these days, it remains
worthy of the distinction. Oates is no stranger to dark writing, but this is
easily her greatest confrontation with literal horror. Based on the life of
serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, it’s a first person account of one man’s desire
to create a human slave for himself, and the victims he dispatches in the
process.
Song
of Kali by Dan Simmons
The great
Harlan Ellison (who is known as much for his temper as his brilliant writing)
profusely praised this debut by Dan Simmons, who won the World Fantasy Award
for this novel and went on to win a host of other awards for later novels like Hyperion, Carrion Comfort and Drood. Song of Kali is the story of an American who travels to Calcutta and finds himself
embroiled in the horrific deeds of a cult worshipping the Hindu goddess Kali,
but in many ways the real star is Simmons’ layered and gorgeous writing.
The Wine-Dark Sea by Robert Aickman
Aickman
didn’t consider himself a writer of horror. He called his work “strange
stories,” short fiction that was deeply evocative, dark and often
unclassifiable. There are Aickman stories that I have finished without even
really knowing what just happened, but I’m left with a feeling of glorious
doom, the kind of feeling that only a really good and creepy story can leave. Most
people don’t remember Aickman, but he’s experiencing a resurgence lately
(thanks in part to Neil Gaiman’s praise of his work). If you absolutely can’t
find any of his collections, do what I did and ask your local library for an
interlibrary loan.
Ghost
Story by Peter Straub
Ghost Story was one of the most popular
horror novels of the 1970s, and Peter Straub has written a ton of really wonderful
work since, but I’m always surprised how many people either don’t know about it
or just haven’t taken the time for it. It’s the classic New England hamlet
plagued by evil setup, but rarely has that tale been told so elegantly or
eerily. Straub is one of the greatest living horror writers, and Ghost Story is one of the most effective
and haunting horror stories of the 20th century.
Hellboy:
Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola
Me being me,
I can’t get through this without recommending at least one comic book, and Mike
Mignola’s Hellboy was the first that came to mind. Seed of Destruction is the first story starring Hellboy, the
working class demon birthed by dark magic in World War II who’s now working for
the U.S. government, just trying to make the world a better place. It’s not
exactly nightmare-inducing, but it’s a dark, often funny and infinitely
ambitious take on a classic horror subgenre: the monster story. I started
reading Seed of Destruction about a
year ago and have since read every Hellboy story Mignola and company have
produced. They’re that addictive.
It’s time
for spooky stories. Read your favorites, discover some new ones, and give a few
to friends. Happy All Hallow’s Read.

Guest Post: Horror Lit 101, Part the Fourth

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Guest blogger Matthew Jackson continues his series of posts for the month of October on horror literature. Today’s post is part four of four. Make sure you’ve read up on the entire series by reading the first installment here, the second installment here, and the third installment here.
Horror Lit 101, Part the Fourth: In which we attempt to crystal gaze.
Some say horror fiction is dead. It’s bleedin’ demised. It’s passed on. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its Maker. It is a late genre. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-genre.
These people are cynics, but I won’t hold that against them. If you read as much grim fiction as people like me have, you tend to lean toward grim opinions. But I’m not among this crowd. I don’t believe the genre is dead. It’s evolving, just like it always has.
It’s not what it used to be, of course. It would be easy to argue that horror is alive because vampires and werewolves and the like are alive. A quick browse of any bookstore will tell you that. But they don’t exist solely in horror anymore. They’re busy with other things. Seducing teenage girls (But not going all the way. That’s important.), seducing women, brooding, seducing more women, brooding some more, getting thrown into scenes of Victorian courtship and, most importantly, sparkling. 
I’m not judging, by the way. If paranormal romance is your bag, read your heart out, but don’t mistake it for horror. Horror can titillate and romance and erotica can horrify, but we’re talking about different things here. It would also be easy to argue that horror doesn’t exist on its own anymore. Sci-fi horror exists, and fantasy horror, and modern horror and mystery horror and so on and so on. But this to me is a misstatement as well, because these genres don’t encapsulate horror. The fact that horror is the only unifying part of these terms means that horror is the broader encapsulating genre, not the other way around.
So where is all of it going? Do we need to fear the loss of our beloved ghouls and ghosts? What is the future of horror? If we attempt to gaze into that psychic voice of trembling future visions, what will we see?
In attempt to answer these questions, we will have to comb the details. Rather than look at bodies of work, we must look at individual works by authors currently working in horror. To keep things brief and tidy, I’ll focus on five works (long and short) by five different writers working to some degree or other within the genre. I do not claim to be a soothsayer by any means, just someone who cares a great deal about these kinds of stories. Still, I shall attempt to delight you with feats of psychic talent. Dim the lights, please.
From Hell by Alan Moore
This is the oldest of the works on my list, published in volumes from 1991-1996, but it’s worth talking, not only because it represents a return to horror in the graphic novel form (Horror comics were big in the early part of the 20th century, but died off when the Comics Code Authority came to prominence.), but because it was written by one of the great writers of our time, Mr. Alan Moore (The Great Bearded Wizard of Comics). 
From Hell is a massive (more than 500 page) re-interpretation of the Jack the Ripper tale that employs holistic crime solving theories (To solve a crime you must solve the society in which it takes place. See Douglas Adams for more information.), psychogeography and other realms of the bizarre where Moore is king. In addition to all this complexity, it’s simply a terrifying portrait of a murderer. Never once are we in doubt of who the Ripper is, but the fact that we get to follow him around just makes it scarier. Moore’s story, like most of his other genre-bending masterpieces, raised the bar for both comics writers and horror writers. The new face of horror was going to be a more complex one, and Moore, along with Clive Barker, whom we discussed last week, was among the first writers to declare it so.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Scary stories are becoming more of an all-ages phenomenon than ever before, stretching even beyond that cutesy Roald Dahl kind of scary stuff. Apart from having a wonderful fairy tale feel, Coraline is just damn scary, from its atmospheric treatment of things going bump in the night, to its creation of an all too familiar monster in The Other Mother, the title character’s Mom in a parallel universe. Buttons for eyes, long, clawing fingers and a tendency to devour beetles are just a few of the more terrifying traits of this witchy creation, and the fact that the whole tale is grounded in the perspective of a young girl who’s just bored and tired of her own parents makes it all the more real. 
Gaiman himself has been pushing a “new tradition” in which we give each other scary books for Hallowe’en, something the blogosphere has dubbed “All Hallows Read.” This is the book I would recommend for anyone in your life, young or old, who could use a good fright.
“Abraham’s Boys” by Joe Hill
The son of Stephen King has proven himself quite the scary scribe in his own right, producing two acclaimed novels (Heart Shaped Box and Horns) and a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, which includes “Abraham’s Boys,” a tale of the sons of Abraham Van Helsing and their education in the art of executing vampires. 
All of Hill’s work is wonderful, but “Abraham’s Boys” is my favorite, because it seems to be the best indicator of the kind of badass horror story to end all horror stories he sets out to write. It ties in a legendary character from what some would call the greatest horror novel ever written, gives it a slightly more modern twist, and gives a fresh perspective to the vampire phenomenon by setting his story in the hearts and minds of children just learning about such terrors, even as their father is the world’s foremost expert. It’s an example of the ambition of modern horror. There are fewer writers attempting to pursue the genre in the classic sense, but the ones that are give it everything they’ve got.
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Like Stephen King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, The Passage is a book about the end of the world and how the remnants of humanity cope with what’s happened. While both King’s and McCammon’s stories use somewhat supernatural elements pitting man against man, Cronin’s pits humanity against a super and/or subhuman element, a horde of vampiric creatures known as “virals.” They were humans once, beginning as a few laboratory test subjects given injections of a virus that might have given them powerful healing ability. Instead they turned into monsters and took over the world, and now what’s left of the uninfected are just fighting to survive. 
This is the first book in a proposed trilogy on the battle to overcome the virals, so it’s not clear yet exactly where Cronin will wrap all of this up, but The Passage itself is certainly a novel of very modern fears. We’ve always worried that technology would be the death of us, and Cronin takes that one step further, creating a very literal metaphor for how man makes its own monsters. Horror of this kind is no longer about a foreign beast come to conquer us. It’s about how we devour ourselves.
“The Cult of the Nose” by Al Sarrantonio
You can find this story in the wonderful anthology titled simply Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Sarrantonio and featuring tales by both editors along with Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Michael Moorcock, Jodi Picoult, Diana Wynne-Jones, Jeffery Deaver and more. Some of the stories are scary, but all are wonderful. The one that affected me the most was Sarrantonio’s. It’s a simple tale of paranoia in which a man begins to see grinning, masked figures everywhere he looks, including historic paintings and photographs. It’s a story about the paranoia of always being watched, of always being closed in on by phantom shapes. In an age where privacy is ever-shrinking, it’s a tale that’s both highly contemporary and timeless, and it’s a deeply unsettling read.
So, with these random samplings at hand, we can conclude that…Well, this is embarrassing, but I don’t really seem to have a definite conclusion. Did I have that planned all along? Maybe. I’m a crafty little bugger. But perhaps it’s good we can’t arrive at a conclusion. It’s fortunate for readers that we can’t find a trend. There are too many trends in the realm of speculative fiction these days. Too many mash-ups, too many sparkly vampires and sensitive werewolves, too many perversions of things that used to be cool. It’s good that horror is still unpredictable. The field is not dead, but it has shrunk, shrunk to a band of writers who are doing it because they love it, because they’re really gifted. The future isn’t clear, but it is full of startling and wonderful possibilities. And for that, we can be thankful.
That being said, I’d like to say that it’s been a great pleasure to spend four weeks here at STACKED with all of you. I hope you enjoyed the experience as well, and I hope I can visit here again in the near future. In the meantime, please do participate in “All Hallows Read” should the spirits move you, and Happy Hallowe’en.

Guest Post: Horror Lit 101, Part the Third

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Guest blogger Matthew Jackson continues his series of posts for the month of October on horror literature. Today’s post is part three of four. Make sure you’ve read up on the entire series by reading the first installment here and the second installment here.

Horror Lit 101, Part the Third: In which we contemplate America’s Boogeyman and other modern monsters.

The 20th century added four new, powerful delivery systems for horror stories: radio, the motion picture, the comic book and the television. As with every other genre, this resulted in a kind of cultural overload. Suddenly the number of influences for aspiring storytellers was through the roof, and for many of our finest authors of modern horror fiction, these new mediums were an abundant source of inspiration.

We’ve talked about the roots of great horror, and the most influential early writers in the genre. This week we’ll cover some of the biggest names in horror fiction in the 20th century. Again we’ll cover essential works in their respective canons, why they’re important, and what they contribute overall to the genre. We will begin, as you might have guessed, with the King…

Stephen King (1947-)

Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to overestimate the cultural impact Stephen King has had over the past 35 years or so. Since his first novel Carrie was published in 1974 King has sold over 500 million books, and a quick search of the Internet will tell you that more than 50 feature film adaptations have been produced to date of various stories and characters from his work. Fifty movies. From one guy. And that’s not counting all the television miniseries and episodes, comic books, short films and other things that bear his mark.

In the 1980s, during the height of his commercial success, pretty much everyone with eyes was reading a King novel at some point, and not much has changed since then. His name alone is enough to send a volume to the top of the bestseller lists, a feat particularly impressive for someone who has been largely “typed” as a horror writer since the mid 70s (a designation that is to some extent unfair, we must all admit). Short of singular instances of pop culture explosion like Harry Potter and Twilight, Stephen King is pretty much the most successful writer of popular fiction who’s ever lived.

King’s immense popular appeal has been a subject of debate for even the writer himself, but the consensus seems to be that he’s sold so many books because he’s found a way to tap into a set of universal fears. Poe wrote macabre but often farfetched horror scenarios, and Lovecraft wrote about the discovering of big scary monsters. Cool, but not exactly relatable.

King, on the other hand, even when he’s at the height of sensationalism, always ties his fiction back to something a little more universal. The Shining is on the surface a haunted house/hotel novel, but it’s really a book about how people are haunted, and how our own misdeeds can follow us and drive us mad. Pet Sematary is a fairly simple story of a forbidden resurrection, but more importantly it’s about a deeply tragic loss and how far over the edge we might go if we had a chance to bring someone back (King found this book so disturbing that he didn’t originally intend to publish it.).
These subtexts may seem simple if you’re not familiar with the individual works, but believe me when I tell you that King’s great talent is to wrap his characters in these concepts, to make it permeate the manuscript, but not so much that it’s the only thing the book’s about. You have to walk a fine line in horror fiction, especially when you’re trying to make it do more than just be icky, and there is no one better than King.

He’s gotten more thematically complex in his later years, as exhibited by books like Desperation and Lisey’s Story. He still has the same knack for generating terrifying conceptual work, but he’s also grown as a writer, and how often can we say that for producers of commercial fiction? Don’t believe the critics. Hail to the King.

Essential Reading: King’s best novel by far is The Stand, a massive apocalyptic book about how the world ends that was written in the midst of the 1970s energy crisis but still holds relevance today. Other brilliant things include his “ultimate horror” novel It, his fantastic short fiction collection Night Shift and his 7-part epic The Dark Tower (not always horror, but it definitely bears mentioning). As far as nonfiction, pick up his Danse Macabre if you want to learn more about the horror genre than little old me could ever tell you, and his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft if you want to read the most useful and entertaining book about writing fiction that I’ve ever encountered.

Clive Barker (1952-)

We will continue with the man Stephen King once, in so many words, declared his successor. The quote “I have seen the future or horror and its name is Clive Barker,” attributed to King, was pasted on the front of Barker’s first books in the mid-1980s, and I’m sure it went a long way to selling a good deal more of them than Barker ever expected.

The only English writer I’ll mention in this post, Barker began his career as a playwright and theatrical producer before breaking into popular fiction with his enormously influential Books of Blood series beginning in 1984. Six volumes of these horror stories were published between 1984 and 1987, and they contain everything from serial killers to secret societies to werewolves to comically mischievous spirits. Barker earned a lot of critical and commercial attention for his use of graphic violence and sexuality in all of his stories, and was dubbed the new splatterpunk wunderkind.

To say these tales are important just because they’re courageously gross is a huge mistake. Barker ushered in a new way of thinking for horror fiction. While everyone around him was introducing monsters and then killing them, Barker was dreaming of perverse and often enlightening ways in which monsters could be embraced, a theme that runs through numerous Books of Blood tales like “The Life of Death,” “Dread” and even “Skins of the Fathers” (Is that a badass title, or isn’t it?). Barker’s stories were less about abolishing the alien and more about exploring how the alien is actually a part of us, and as an added bonus you get to read about buckets of blood. It’s not an overstatement to call his work a revolution in the horror world.

Essential Reading: Books of Blood are on top of the list, of course, but his first novel The Damnation Game is important for its new usage of Faustian archetypes, and his novella The Hellbound Heart (the basis for the classic film Hellraiser, which Barker directed) is a modernized horror fairy tale.

Richard Matheson (1926-)

Going backward a bit, we look at the author without whom there would probably be no Stephen King, or George A. Romero, or Anne Rice. Matheson was the king before King. His work launched subgenres, created new fears for the 20th Century and still has tremendous influence (as the success of the recent adaptation of his novel I Am Legend shows). Matheson wrote novels beyond the scope of past horror writers (with the exception of Lovecraft, of course).

I Am Legend is among the first apocalyptic horror novels, documenting the adventures of a man who believes he is the last human after everyone else has been taken over by a vampire-like virus. This story has been echoed over and over since, in films like Dawn of the Dead and novels like Stephen King’s Cell and Justin Cronin’s The Passage, which we’ll cover next week. Likewise his novel Hell House is in many ways the ultimate haunted house story. There’s nothing particularly insightful on a human level about Matheson’s work, but on the level of pure fun there’s no one better. He wrote the novels he knew horror fans wanted, and that’s why he’s great.

Essential Reading: I Am Legend and Hell House, of course, but also check out things like A Stir of Echoes and The Incredible Shrinking Man, not to mention his long list of short fiction.

Joyce Carol Oates (1938-)

Yes, that’s the Joyce Carol Oates: National Book Award winner, Pulitzer nominee, literary legend and widely considered one of the great writers of our time. I’m not kidding. She’s a horror writer. No, seriously.

Anyone familiar with Oates’ work, even the really populist sort of stuff like We Were the Mulvaneys, knows that it’s perforated with very dark undertones. Many of her novels – My Sister, My Love, Black Water and Beasts, to name three – aren’t strictly horror, but they deal with horrific things in a very real and unpolished sense, and in that way they often become terrifying. She’s also a ridiculously adept practitioner of the Gothic tale, which isn’t horror but certainly specializes in the ominous.

Oates, like Cormac McCarthy, is among those wonderful writers of “serious” fiction who are far more concerned with their stories than with other people’s perception of their stories, therefore she’s a writer who uncompromisingly believes in the tale she’s telling, whether it’s scary or not. The result is a diverse body of work that includes numerous things that are either almost horror or just flat out horror. The world of popular speculative fiction got a little jolt in 1996 when Oates won the Bram Stoker Award (pretty much the highest prize you can get for a horror novel) for her book Zombie, a serial killer story based in large part on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Zombie is a first person narrative concerning a man who slowly gives over to his urges, drifting further and further away from a normal life as he begins taking young men back to his home and killing them, then making an attempt to turn them into his own private slaves by debilitating their brains (hence the title). It’s a horrifying idea made all the more horrifying by how deftly Oates gets into the head of this man, who goes nameless throughout the story. We always wonder how the guy next door becomes a killer, and countless pages of fiction have appeared trying to explain it. So far, only this one seems to come close.

Essential Reading: The aforementioned titles as well as her two anthologies of “Tales of the Grotesque,” Haunted and The Collector of Hearts.

Honorable Mentions (because I’ve rambled long enough.): Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, the entire body of work of Ramsey Campbell, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Dan Simmons’ The Terror and Carrion Comfort and of course the sublime and wonderful work of the great Harlan Ellison, including Deathbird Stories and the two legendary anthologies he edited: Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions.

Once again, I could go on, but I’ve gone on quite long enough for one week. Hit up Google for a list of Bram Stoker Award winners and you’ll be off to the races with even more terrifying reads.

Tune in next week when we conclude this adventure with a look at contemporary horror…and a glimpse into the future.