Scareless Horror

One of the distinct qualities of the horror genre is that it does not strictly have to rely on actually causing the emotion for which it is named. A crime novel cannot be without a crime in it. An action movie must have action. A science fiction role-playing game has to have science--though admittedly it need not be fictional science, the fiction stemming from either plot or character or the fact the gaming isn't real is sufficient.

Horror can have no scares for the reader or viewership. It can have no horror for the characters involved. What it needs is to have certain elements. A good example of this is the current trend with vampires. For these stories to be, say urban fantasies, they would have to have certain tropes that make it fantasy. This would cause its own problems since much of what describes fantasy is rooted in medieval or Tolkienesque fantasy.

Certain character types just scream horror (or fantasy) even if they engage in drama or action or comedy. Sometimes these rise to the level of cross genre, other times they do not. This seems to be very true of drama. There are no cross-dramas. Drama is integral to anything and everything that is dramatic or a dramatisation. So too is horror except in a pseudo form of reverse. This makes for great versatility and draws in a larger audience, which is good for all involved.

Mood: harried.
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Killing Time and Open Wound Marketing

It's good to be back from hiatus after the onslaught of the thirteen nights in October, even if it is only for a couple of weeks before the next one for the December holiday season. I thought that I would start the new entries with some news. I've released the first issue of my magazine Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™ in the Battered Spleen Productions™ store. I have also opened the Market section of the store with items in the Swag section. The Market section is where I hope to have other authors and artists sell their wares. They will provide me an image, a link to the sales page, and the name of the store or site that is directly selling their product. An author selling copies of their own book from their own site would send me that info. I will not handle the sales or take a commission, only charge for the space in the market.

I will of course have final say if a product is accepted. I want to view the promotional material to see if it's of proper professional quality, if it's going to offend people, and other similar things with which I do not want to be associated. Books for instance that are available places like Amazon or Barnes & Noble will get higher priority only because they've been through most of the checks I'd be concerned with. So why would an author do that? Authors often get copies of their book to sell for much more profit directly in their pocket. Signed copies are common in these cases. So why place a product with Battered Spleen Productions? Promotion. Your product available with those of others. This provides more variety and a chance to pick up a sale.

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the cost for inclusion at this point. I'm thinking a flat fee per item. Perhaps it will be an annual fee. My initial thought is it would cost about as much as your average paperback book. The main page for the market will have a primary featured item and then a selection of varied items. I have the market broken into three sections. Swag is for shirts, mugs, mouse pads and other similar items. Books is for printed books, which can be horror, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy or other similar related genres. E-books is for e-books only--in the same categories as the printed books. I'd also be interested in role-playing game books or art books in the same genres. Each product will have its own description page or go directly to your sales page as desired.

What do you think? Are you interested? Comments?

Mood: excitable.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-7: Horror Invasion

Is it incredulous or inconceivable to believe that an alien invasion could be the driving force of horror? There have been numerous invasion stories. Most of them do not come across as being creepy, scary, horrifying or even particularly terror-filled even with all the screaming that tends to accompany them. On the other hand there are great examples that fit perfectly into the horror mould. The best alien invasion horror has two versions, each called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is no coincidence that the next famous example also has two versions--War of the Worlds. Both of these are large-scale invasion stories. This does not have to be the case. At the small end of the scale there is The Thing, a remake of a non-horror invasion, which covers a broad spectrum of horror.

What is the first thing that this kind of story requires? Does it have to be amazing special effects; ships flying through the air, death rays vaporising all in their path, or grisly alien metamorphoses, and gory experiments of anatomy? Those don’t hurt in the cinematic medium, but are not necessary in the textual medium. H.G. Wells penned War of the Worlds and it saw publication in 1898. The horror of the situation in this seminal invasion novel runs deeper than its movie representations. It’s not about the number of deaths, or the exact how of the deaths, its about the portrayal of them. Horror needs to be about eliciting that eponymous emotion. The details do not matter nearly as much as the way they are put together. Since it is about emotion the best option is empathy.

It is a fine line between science fiction and horror in an invasion story. The events in the science fiction invasions leave the audience to empathise on their own. The horror tale will, or should, help the audience to empathise. For example take a single death. Who the victim is defines the response a stranger will have to their death. Children get a stronger response than an adult; women are more sympathetic than men, especially a mother versus a father. To get the maximum response requires contact with the people who are directly affected by the death. A scientist witness to the destruction of the invasion has much less impact than the father trying to get his children out of harms way. This is essential to any horror, and although it is about characters it can dictate your setting.

Music: Invaders by Iron Maiden and Tommyknockers by Blind Guardian.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-6: Extraterrorestrials

Across the vast, nearly unfathomable stretches of space they come to deliver horror on the primitive, disorganised, backwater planet Earth. They are unknown, their intentions incomprehensible, and their arsenal of terror tools vast. As if that were not bad enough, watching the skies for their vessels and looking for little grey men may only leave the unsuspecting to fall prey to less intelligent but much more insidious incursions. This is just a general overview of the forms that science-fiction horror stories involving aliens may take. The first line of horror offence when dealing with extraterrestrials is as before, the unknown. Next comes the intimacy and scale of contact. Then there are the ramifications inherent at several different levels of depth.

Working with the unknown is a point that really deserves some belabouring. The first question to ask when starting the creation process is how apparent will it be that it is a story about aliens? UFOs immediately figure into this question even to the degree that mysterious lights in the sky will be an immediate tip-off unless obfuscation and misdirection are used, requiring that the audience not end up feeling cheated by it. The aliens--greys aside--are much easier to keep out of the spotlight by comparison. As with any inhuman personage aliens should remain unnamed-so until it is well obvious. Furtive figures with unnatural shapes in the shadows, seeing the results of their actions rather than them, and inexplicable events are the way to go when keeping to the strictest level of the unknown.

The big reveal, whenever it occurs in the timeline, begs the question of intimacy. Do one or more members of the main cast come directly into contact with the aliens? Is it at a distance or directly? Is it in a neutral location like a deserted road or something more frightening such as the science lab aboard their ship? Is it even worse than meeting aliens, and be experimented upon, than to be infected with an alien organism or virus? How many aliens are involved, or how many humans are affected or infected determines scale. The scale directly infers what kinds of ramifications will be a part of the author’s considerations. While a handful of people may be directly affected by the alien encounter an even greater number will be party to after effects. What of the bigger picture as well?

Music: Perfect by Alice Cooper and Dead Again by Type O Negative.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-5: Horror Boldly Goes

Space... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Event Horizon... its seven-year mission... to return from Hell... to seek out a new crew to torment... to boldly go where the Nostromo has gone before. Space is no stranger to horror. The basic conditions of the actual area known as space is dangerous and it is a seeming antithesis to life; cold, barren, and empty for the most part. For the longest time space was a great unknown. It still is a source of many questions and a never-ending parade of mystery. What is out there, waiting to be found, or ready to come here and find us? Science fiction that takes place in space doesn't fit into a particular sub-genre of its own unless it contains certain other hallmarks, which can then make it Space Opera.

Space Opera seems like an odd genre to which to add horror. It is historically know for its melodrama and romantic plots. It is also a heavily clichéd form of science fiction. By definition its characters, plots, and the civilisations, which inform most of the settings, all tend toward the massive, powerful, and grandiose. It is working in contrast to all of that where the best horror might be found. In keeping with Space Opera's past, horror doesn't have to be the only other genre added in, though of course such additions should tend toward being tropes and the like only. These additional elements can be from other science fiction sub-genres or from other full genres entirely. The use of vast space faring empires in Space Opera opens up several facets upon which to build.

The new frontiers of the galactic empires, governments, and federations lend themselves well to plots that are perfectly at home in Westerns, or Adventure stories. Those frontiers can be filled with horror. The series Firefly is a fine example of fusing Space Opera and Westerns. With the addition of the Reavers it veers straight off into horror. Cyberpunk is another possible addition to Space Opera and horror. Though lacking the 'Opera' aspects per se the movie franchise Aliens and its assorted book series' is certainly cyberpunkish with the company conspiracies of Weyland-Yutani Corp. Moving from Alien to its sequel Aliens moves from space horror to Military Science Fiction horror. Military Science Fiction often overlaps with Space Opera sometimes by necessity.

Mood: cold.
Music: Cyanide by Metallica and Satellite by Def Leppard.

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In space no one can hear your spleen!

Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-4: Cybernetically Enhanced Horror

I have personal experience with cyberpunk horror. My first consideration was not deciding why put horror into a cyberpunk story. The base storyline was in place and the main characters were set. A strong sense of urgency was missing though. The story needed punch. Oddly enough the sense of overpowering dread was lost with the level of hopelessness and desperation that the story had. What it needed was a shot in the arm, something to kick the horror up a notch. That horror boost came from the sense of security mentioned last article. It came not just in shattering that greater security than a modern setting held. The danger, the fear in facing the horror of such a plot and antagonist was actually heightened by grounding it versus the best that science and ballistics could offer.

The science fiction nature of the cyberpunk milieu allows for the characters, and the reader, or viewer, with them to share a moment of dawning terror without stepping over the line into the usual impossible odds ethos of Lovecraftian horror for example. The horror is greater because it is less of a man vs. nature conflict. It takes away the resignation that the end is inevitable. It leaves room for hope. Hope that is then crushed. The horror is kept fresh and within arms length. It is much more satisfying to pit characters of skill and power against something that ultimately terrifies them than it is for the everyman. That which frightens the usually fearless, or appals the morally bankrupt, is something with which to be reckoned. At least this is true with the right set up and the right situations.

It is easy to slip away from the horror into a more action-oriented mode where the importance is placed on survival more than dealing with the cause and coping with the fear elicited by the situations. The conventions of cyberpunk can be used to add different layers of horror. The dystopian nature, moral grey areas, and the tough choices arrayed before the protagonist can be bent to psychological horror. Good and evil are strained and skewed. The cultural commentary brought to life by the dark science can be darkened further by the horror elements added. Greater depth, and nuance, is possible when adding cyberpunk’s essential layer of man vs. himself conflict, and setting that against or in contrast to the external conflict. Personal horror of oneself could even in itself be a goal.

Mood: retro.
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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-3: Do You Feel Cyber, Punk?

An easy pairing for near future science fiction horror begins with the cyberpunk genre. Cyberpunk deals with technology that is more advanced than today and focused in two main directions. The Internet, computer software, and artificial intelligence play an important role. This is followed a close second by human augmentation that is commonly in the form of cybernetics, and military hardware. The technological level of sophistication depends on how many years in the future the story takes place. Another factor common to the genre is that most settings involve massive, global corporations that control just about everything between them, even the governments that are supposed to be running the world’s countries. These companies are great motivators of plot in the stories.

The protagonists in cyberpunk are the punk part of the equation. They battle against the monolithic corporations and work outside of the often-corrupt law. Keeping with the dark dystopian mood that permeates the genre these protagonists are not always the most moral of characters. To the common people they are indistinguishable from the criminal element. The heroes of the setting are aware of the true nature of their society and unwilling to leave things the way that they are. They end up fighting, incapacitating, and often killing people in authority even as they do the antagonists. They steal information Robin-hood style. It is not uncommon for them to work with and for criminals, and tread the fine line between doing what they’re paid for and what is right.

Horror is as natural a fit with cyberpunk as it is with modern settings, in some ways perhaps more so. The powerful cyborgs, the futuristic weapons, the surveillance society, and the great scientific achievements all make for a world--human emotions and intentions aside--that is strongly grounded in reality, practical, and logical. The power available to even a single person with the right connections lends to a sense of security unfelt any time before. What better place and milieu is there to shatter with the illogical, the incomprehensible, and the supernatural? Powerful technologies versus the supernatural have a long history hearkening back to the spectacular but ineffective lightning cannons in the Gojira movies. Cyberpunk brings this to the more intimate, personal, horror level.

Mood: roguish.
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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #3-2: Binomial Nomenclature Horrorificus

There are three classes of science fiction that are the initial focus of the horror/science fiction cross-genre author. There is Hard Science Fiction where there is great accuracy to the science. There is Cyberpunk, essentially already a fairly dark genre. Then there is Soft Science Fiction where the science is not that strictly correct. These classes can be broken down further. In addition there are other classes of science fiction. The class with the least to say about mixing it with horror would be the Hard Science Fiction. The reason for this is that focus on accuracy and reality. This is not to say that it is flawless, but it does not particularly settle for verisimilitude. The Hard sub-genre requires horror strongly based in reality and might be best relegated to thrillers.

Cyberpunk has restraints upon it that also limit the horror that can be mixed into it. Or so one would think. Anyone who has come across GURPS Cthulhupunk or Catalyst's CthulhuTech RPG will agree. Though the focus isn't on horror Shadownrun is another example of cyberpunk and the fantastical. Cyberpunk can actually be written as horror without stepping outside of the technology that makes up the backbone of its science. It's all a matter of focus, where criminals with advanced weaponry like cybernetics and smart guns roam the streets, and hackers get their brains fried plying their skills against faceless monolithic corporations that are more sadistic and powerful than the worst dictators. Still, it is a genre ripe for adding upon in even more nefarious ways.

Soft science fiction is the most open class of science fiction covering a multitude of different styles from Space Opera like Star Wars, to modern day uses of unconventional science like Fringe, to the goings-on of Utopias with trouble like Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel--itself a mystery cross-genre work--to dystopian stories like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Soft science fiction immediately has a built-in cast of characters directly usable for horror in the form of aliens. There is no lack of alien horror stories. Being alien means extra-terrestrial beings are an unknown. Its already been discussed that science can be used for nefarious purposes, however even benign purposes can have unseen affects. Soft science fiction often has strong social overtones, which lend themselves to horror.

Mood: bright.
Music: Iron Maiden by Iron Maiden and Before the Winter by Stratovarius.

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