What is Horror Fiction?
That's a difficult question. In recent years the very term has
become misleading. If you tell people you write horror fiction, the
image that immediately pops into their minds is one of Freddy
Krueger or maybe Michael Myers, while you were hoping for Shelley's
Frankenstein or Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The popularity of the modern horror film, with its endless scenes
of blood and gore, has eclipsed the reality of horror fiction. When
you add to that a comprehension of how horror evolved as both a
marketing category and a publishing niche during the late eighties
-- horror's boom time -- it's easy to understand why answering the
question of what today's horror fiction actually is has become so
difficult.
But let's give it a try, shall we?
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of
horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands
to reason then that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those
emotions in the reader.
If we accept this definition, then horror can deal with the
mundane or the supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal. It
doesn't have to be full of ghosts, ghouls, and things to go bump in
the night. Its only true requirement is that it elicit an emotional
reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread. Alice Sebold's
The Lovely Bones is therefore just as much a horror novel as
Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Tim LaHay's Left Behind
series is just as full of horror as Dan Simmons' A Winter
Haunting. By this definition, the best selling book of all
time, the Bible, could easily be labeled horror, for where else can
you find fallen angels, demonic possessions, and an apocalypse
absolutely terrifying in its majesty all in one volume?
In his 1982 anthology Prime Evil, author Douglas Winter
stated, "Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction
or the western. It is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined
to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries or bookstores. Horror
is an emotion." He was correct and his words have become a rallying
cry for the modern horror writer.
What makes horror literature so pervasive is that its need to
evoke the necessary atmosphere and sense of emotional dread is
utterly dependent on who we are as readers -- as people. As
children, we might be afraid of the shadows looming from a
half-closed closet door or of the monster we believe lies under the
bed. Terrors of the imagination run wild at that age. As adults,
our fears become more sophisticated, more grounded in worldly
events. They become the death of a loved one, the terminal illness
of a small child, the fear of our lives running out of our control.
Horror, by nature, is a personal touch -- an intrusion into our
comfort levels. It speaks of the human condition and forcibly
reminds us of how little we actually know and understand.
Robert McCammon, one of the founders of HWA, said, "Horror
fiction upsets apple carts, burns old buildings, and stampedes the
horses; it questions and yearns for answers, and it takes nothing
for granted. It's not safe, and it probably rots your teeth, too.
Horror fiction can be a guide through a nightmare world, entered
freely and by the reader's own will. And since horror can be many,
many things and go in many, many directions, that guided nightmare
ride can shock, educate, illuminate, threaten, shriek, and whisper
before it lets the readers loose." (Twilight Zone Magazine,
Oct 1986)
Years later, Winter would echo these statements in the afterword
to his award-winning anthology Revelations. "Horror is that
which cannot be made safe -- evolving, ever-changing -- because it
is about our relentless need to confront the unknown, the
unknowable, and the emotion we experience when in its thrall."
Walk into any high school in the country and you will discover
that horror fiction has a rightful place in our educational system.
Whether it is the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe or the classics
like Dracula or The Picture of Dorian Gray, many of
the defining works of literature can be labeled as horror. So why,
you might ask, is horror so generally frowned upon by the literary
establishment?
The answer to that question lies in the nature of the publishing
industry. Back in the seventies, an unknown writer burst onto the
scene with a novel called Carrie. The work went on to be
made into a wildly successful film, and a new genre was born. The
author I'm referring to is, of course, Stephen King. King set the
stage for what horror was to become in the eighties and early
nineties.
Almost overnight, King's brand of fiction became a multi-million
dollar industry. Publishers saw the dollar signs looming before
them and charged full speed ahead, making horror into a product.
They gave it a specific identity, a specific formula. Writers then
popped out of the woodwork, eager to embrace and attempt to
duplicate the stunning success of Mr. King.
It was at this point that horror literature lost its
identity.
Instead of "evolving, ever-changing," horror became defined --
typecast if you will -- forced to conform to a certain method and a
certain manner. Publishers flooded the market with books that
matched this formula, giving readers more and more of what they
demanded. Hollywood got into the act, making movie after movie with
the same basic themes, the same old scares, so much so that today
we have horror films that parody these very elements. Before we
knew it, horror novels and horror movies had become synonymous.
Even worse, it was difficult to tell one horror novel from another,
so important had the formula become. A market glut swiftly
followed.
Horror's originality, its vital essence, had been stolen right
before our eyes.
As the horror boom of the eighties turned into the drought of
the nineties, horror went underground. In order to save itself, it
became a chameleon, masquerading as other genres, hiding itself in
other styles. And therein lay its salvation.
Horror has once again become primarily about emotion. It is once
again writing that delves deep inside and forces us to confront who
we are, to examine what we are afraid of, and to wonder what lies
ahead down the road of life.
It's a funny fact of today's market that those writers whose
works define the quintessential essence of horror are not
considered horror writers. Millions of people read Stephen King,
but the average King reader doesn't read other horror writers. Dean
Koontz's books are filled with the strange and fantastic, yet he
vehemently argues against being labeled a horror writer, despite
being the first president of this very organization. John Saul
thinks of himself as a writer of thrillers; Clive Barker a master
of the fantastic. HWA founder Robert McCammon stopped publishing
altogether to avoid being trapped in a box not of his own choosing
when the publishing world demanded more horror instead of the
historical novel he had so desperately wanted to produce.
Chain bookstores have for the most part now done away with
horror sections, allowing writers to stand on the strength of their
prose instead of how their work is labeled. Major New York
publishers are releasing books about witches and gargoyles and
ghosts with the word horror notably absent from their spines.
Recent entries onto the New York Times bestseller lists have
included two separate novels about nanotechnology run amuck, the
story of a brutally murdered young girl watching her family's life
unfold in the aftermath of her demise, the latest in a long series
about the end of the world and the coming of the antichrist, and,
of course, the latest paperback collection from Stephen King. Not
surprisingly, none of these books bear the horror label, yet every
one of them fit our definition of a horror novel.
Just as our fears and terrors change with time, so too will the
definition of horror, not just from age to age but from person to
person.
Precisely as it should.