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The Top 10 Horror Stories: Stephen Jones’ Picks

There’s a short but very interesting article by Stephen Jones at Publisher’s Weekly. Jones, editor of the recently published anthology A Book of Horrors (which received an enthusiastic review from our own Dave Simms– you can read the review here). Jones named his top ten picks for horror stories, and I’m going to link to his list here. See if you agree!

The authors he mentions are well-known in the genre, and if you don’t know exactly where you can find the stories he mentions, most of them have collections or longer works that might already be in your library. Some of the choices are ones you might not expect, like Ray Bradbury, who’s frequently defined as a science fiction writer, so it’s a great opportunity to market the horror genre to a new audience. You could do a great display bringing some of these to light!

Posted on January 23, 2013 by , Reply

Splatterpunk 101

Lately there have been a number of people who have been searching for splatterpunk here. I am not sure whether they’re looking for authors or just information about this genre, but I thought I’d provide a direct link here to an essay that appears here on its own page at MonsterLibrarian.com, “Splatterpunk 101“, courtesy of horror author (among his many other hats) John Skipp.

One thing that comes across is this: splatterpunk is a term used to describe a certain style of writing that appeared in the 1980s. Skipp describes it as “no-holds barred” and “hardcore.”  So not for the conventional or the faint of heart. However, it is not a term that the authors who wrote in that style really identify with, and writers today may be influenced by the authors and books identified with splatterpunk, but they aren’t considered splatterpunk writers themselves.

If you are interested in exploring this further, Skipp provides a list of authors and titles. It’s well worth it to see what he says!

Are you a splatterpunk reader, or a reader of today’s hardcore horror? Are you a writer whose writing is influenced by authors identified with splatterpunk, or any of those Skipp mentions in his essay? I’d love to be able to provide an organized list of titles and read-alikes, especially since there’s clearly interest in it, so if you have input, please leave a comment!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by , Reply

Help a Reader Out: Can Christians Write Horror?

 

Well, this is not really a question of identifying a book. But it is interesting, so I’m going to share it anyway.
A mystery keyword searcher asked:

Can Christians write about vampire or werewolf books?

I am not a Christian, so forgive me if I’m misinterpreting things, but the answer seems pretty simple. Of course they can. The traditional vampire, with his allergy to the cross, seems ready-made for the Christian horror writer. And werewolves, who often have a conflict between animal nature and human morality, seem like they’d work out just fine as well. Demons, witches, all kinds of supernatural creatures, and even the end of days appear in the Bible– it seems to me that it is simply the framework the writer uses that makes the difference.

Horror is traditionally conservative– evil is usually defeated, at least temporarily. That’s not to say that all horror has a moral, or that evil is defeated in all of horror fiction, because it’s certainly true that horror, especially today, can deal with impersonal evil, or can even be amoral– a good story, but not necessarily with a definite stance on right or wrong. But horror as a genre does give writers an opportunity to address faith, and questions of faith. I think this very thought-provoking blog post by horror author Maurice Broaddus, is worth reading if you are interested in this topic. There are people who think that it’s not possible (or at least extremely difficult) for Christians to write horror, and there’s an interesting discussion of that here. I’d say that whether what’s marketed as “Christian horror” really falls under the umbrella of the horror genre (which I would argue has some pretty broad boundaries, based on the kinds of books we are solicited to review here) is a different thing, than whether horror can be written by Christians (which is addressed in depth in this blog post over at TheoFantastique). Personally, I don’t care whether a book in any genre is written by a Christian, pagan, atheist, etcetera, so long as it does the job for me without hammering me over the head with a message.

At any rate, the question at hand is whether Christians can write about vampires and werewolves, not whether Christian horror is truly horror. I really think the answer to the original question is “yes.” As Mr. Broaddus says “If God could communicate through a burning bush and a donkey, surely He could communicate through a few scary stories.” Very aptly put.

Editor’s note:  A 2020 update! I’m adding another link here regarding this topic that I just learned of thanks to Mike Duke. 

Posted on December 27, 2012 by , 4 comments
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