I read “The Dreamers” the other day, having bounced around a bit among the stories in Stephen King’s You Like It Darker. (I also listened to some including the cool and excellent “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” via audiobook.)
“The Dreamers” is genuinely chilling and instantly classic horror. I loved it.
I looked up the Wikipedia article after finishing to see what origin details might be included. Instead, in reactions, the Wiki article noted one reviewer had asked essentially: “Since when do we mix mad scientist with cosmic horror?”
I thought, well, forever. King’s Revival certainly does it, mixing Frankenstein and cosmic horror. But looking further back, Nöel Carroll had some thoughts in The Philosophy of Horror as he identified the overreacher plot i.e. the Frankenstein or mad scientist structure.
Someone decides to reach into the realm of God with an experiment, lets a genie out of a bottle and the results ultimately turn on the meddler.
Carroll suggests in his dissection that the scientific experiment can be substituted with a magic ritual. He turns to H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” for example. It’s sort of a discovery story, a tale where a monster invades the everyday world and others gradually realize that, as Carroll defines it. At midpoint, it becomes an overreacher, with the product of the Wilbur Whateley magic experiment rampaging across the countryside, sometimes wiping out whole families.
“The Dreamers” clearly travels similar territory to “Dunwich.”
Going further
The question taps also a bit into the ongoing conversation about “what is horror?” Or at least I’m going to use it as a segue.
I got a note from an editor the other day, praising a story I wrote with science fiction elements—and ultimately an overreacher plot—but deciding in spite of splatterpunk or extreme elements it “wasn’t horror.”
That’s an ongoing debate about what constitutes horror. Years ago I was on a panel moderated by Tim Powers that explored the question of whether the supernatural was necessary for horror. Back then I argued it was not while there were some absolutists on the panel.
It’s a debate that’s touched on in another book also titled The Philosophy of Horror from The University Press of Kentucky and edited by Thomas Fahy. It’s an entry in the Philosophy of Popular Culture series.
In an article exploring Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in part, Fahy points out Carroll argues “monsters elicit the emotional effect that the genre seeks—horror—because they literally embody the abnormal.”
He goes on to observe: “A number of scholars have criticized this narrow definition, arguing that serial killers and more realistic monsters must be accounted for as well. David Russell, for example, offers a broader taxonomy for the horror genre, arguing that `some types of monsters may be explained as “real”…’” [The Russell observation is from “Monster Roundup: Reintegrating the Horror Genre,” in Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory.]
Does all of that tie together? Well, what I’m thinking is that much can happen in a story that remains under the horror umbrella. Monsters grow up. Fairy abductors become aliens. Vampires and werewolves become serial killers, and dabbling in the realm of God can readily stretch into cosmic horror.
So What Am I Going to Do About It?
I say all that to say I’m going to play with a Frankenstein-esque novella I’ve been thinking about for a while. Maybe I’ll make it a free item that you get for signing up for this newsletter. Maybe I’ll share some of it here. Or maybe it’ll land somewhere else. Or maybe I won’t finish it. Announcing your writing plans, as I’ve said elsewhere, is working without a net. We’ll see how that goes.
Reminders
Symptom of the Universe with my story “Dark Sky Park” drops Sept. 18. I’m really pleased with how my story for that collection came out. I felt like a little hint of my Ray Bradbury love comes into it.
We’ll shine the spotlight on Fool’s Run this go-around too. Tell your friends Si Reardon is out there. My plan’s to write more about Si, but you just saw what I said about plans. We’ll see how that goes.
Artwork is from Pexels.