Why do science fiction and horror go so well together? There are lots of places where the two genres can successfully mesh. Horror is the literature of fear, and for all the good work scientists have done chasing shadows of ignorance from the world, in some people’s minds, science has only put a harder edge on the shadows that remain: fears of the future, of disease, of death, and perhaps most of all, fear of the unknown. The highest of high technology might as well be sorcery to someone who doesn’t understand how it all works, and that’s more than a little frightening. For some with deeply held religious beliefs, science and rationality seemingly represent threats to their faiths, and to have the foundations of one’s faith shattered is a terrifying thing.
But some of the fears that science can invoke are far more visceral, as any high school student who has had to dissect a fetal pig in biology class can attest. The dark side of humankind’s quest for knowledge is full of real-life stories of grave robbery, vivisections, monstrosities in jars, flesh-devouring beetles, chemical accidents, and experiments gone wrong. I’ve been writing horror for a long time now, and I haven’t fully mined the more grotesque things I saw in biology labs when I was a college student (I’m saving the aforementioned carnivorous coffin beetles for a special tale).
But in some horror stories and movies, science and science fictional themes are not used to amplify the terror but to ground the reader. In these works, the creators use elements of real science and technology to build a richer, more convincing story world against which intrusive horrors have a greater impact.
Science fiction acknowledges its own dark side, and that genre regularly explores horrific themes in many of its dystopian sub-genres. Most every motif in science fiction can—and has—been viewed through a dark lens. In science fiction adventures like Star Trek, technology is cool and alluring; in science fictional horror like The Terminator and the game Portal, high-tech robots and computers run amok and wreak havoc. And the landmark movie 2001: A Space Odyssey portrays both shiny and sinister technology.
In the real world, scientists working for the SETI project search for extraterrestrial life with the expectation that any discovery of other civilizations will benefit humankind. But in the literature of H.P. Lovecraft, which has been at least as influential as Frankenstein, mankind encounters nothing but abject horrors from outer space. Since then, a plethora of terrifying extraterrestrials have been portrayed in narratives from John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Who Goes There? to the Dead Space game series. The average science fiction fan is more likely to conjure up the image of a toothy, acid-bleeding xenomorph than he or she is to visualize a benevolent Grey when someone asks him or her to think of an alien.
Apocalyptic fiction has been a prime sub-genre for crossing science fiction and horror. Once again, Mary Shelley helped root this branch of horrific SF with her 1826 novel The Last Man, which portrays a future Earth ravaged by a plague. (Earthly germs ultimately come to the rescue in H.G. Wells’ apocalyptic alien invasion novel War of the Worlds). After World War II, writers and readers were understandably obsessed with nuclear holocaust and World War III. Today, nuclear war seems distant and less threatening, but our appetite for apocalyptic tales is undiminished. The main difference is that writers and filmmakers have set the Bomb aside in favor of ravening hordes of zombies. (We can all thank Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fictional horror novel I Am Legend for inspiring our modern fascination with the walking undead).
Whether centered on brain-devouring shamblers or plagues or nuclear war, the message of apocalyptic fiction is this: the future is scary, and the world could go bad at any time. The same kind of caution underlies most other science fiction horror stories. Space is all around our planet . . . and it will kill you in seconds. (See the movies Gravity and Sunshine for recent examples of terrifying space sans the threat of space aliens.) Computers are amazing, but wait until the machines rise up and take over. Science is powerful, but there are some things mankind shouldn’t tamper with. (This particular morality tale has played out in hundreds of works since Frankenstein; the movie Splice provides a memorable, if flawed, recent example).
At their worst, the cautionary messages driving the horror elements in these narratives lend them a superstitious, Luddite tone. At their best, the horror elements pump an excitement into narratives that might otherwise come off as overly cerebral and emotionally remote. And, when the caution is directed not at technology but at human nature, there’s always room for pointed sociopolitical observations (see George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four).
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[Readers seeking recent examples of science fictional horror might take a look at the October 2010 issue of our sister magazine Lightspeed, which features four dark SF stories: “Hindsight” by Sarah Langan, “Tight Little Stitches on a Dead Man’s Back” by Joe R. Lansdale, “The Taste of Starlight” by John R. Fultz, and “Beachworld” by Stephen King. Nightmare has featured SF horror as well: “Chop Shop” by J.B. Park (Dec. 2012); “Spores” by Seanan McGuire (June 2014); “In the Temple of Celestial Pleasures” by Adam-Troy Castro (May 2014). —eds.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. She will have two new books out in 2014: Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Guide will be released by Post Mortem Press, and her story collection Soft Apocalypses will be released by Raw Dog Screaming Press. Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, and Japanese editions, and has appeared in publications such as What Fates Impose, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Dark Faith, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5. She has degrees in journalism and biology. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com.
Artist Gallery
Reiko Murakami
Reiko Murakami is an illustrator and concept artist specialized in creature design and surreal horror illustrations. She is also known as raqmo, working for companies such as Hobby Japan, Square Enix, Capcom, INEI, and Harmonix. Her work has been published in Exposé 11 and 2DArtist Magazine, also she has been featured in the Japanese Digital Art Masters Gallery on the 3DTotal Japan website. More of her work can be seen at reikomurakami.com and facebook.com/raqmoful.
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Artist Spotlight: Reiko Murakami
Marina J. Lostetter
First off I’d like to ask you a question in the spirit of Nightmare: What scares you the most?
I’m scared of corpses. It’s funny to say that since I’ve been painting a lot of zombies lately, but the idea something that I’m feeling so special and close to isn’t actually permanent scares me.
A lot of your personal horror work seems to center around merging humans and beasts. What is it about these hybrid forms that appeals to you, or alternately, scares you?
I’m interested in capturing a character’s internal struggle. Over the course of the years I found it feels more appropriate to let my characters free from regular human bodies. I don’t necessarily try to make their bodies look scary. The design is a result of my attempt to capture their emotions.
What is your favorite medium to work with?
I paint digitally, but I like sketching with pencils first. Pencil is the first medium I ever used for making art, and drawing is still very important for me. In fact, my paintings are basically a collection of contour lines with colors.
Who has influenced you artistically?
For creature design, Japanese manga artist Kazuhiro Fujita is my original source of inspiration. His horror adventure comic Ushio to Tora was my bible when I was in elementary school. I was an animation major at college and I didn’t take any illustration nor painting classes, so I’m still a little behind finding good influences for my painting from the masters in art history. I have been taking Illustration Master Class an
d the teachers there have been a great influence in recent years.
What inspired the image appearing on the cover of this month’s Nightmare, entitled “Our Void”?
I made the piece when I was working at the concept art studio INEI in Tokyo. One day we had free time, so we decided to paint for practice. I just painted whatever felt appropriate . . . I was making random brush strokes, copying and pasting the composition to find an interesting shape. All the sudden I got an idea that this is a creature, a demon, that comes at you to remind you how empty you are. I made its torso empty, so that it’s missing its heart. I like playing with the idea of my creatures recognizing the audience and staring at them without making physical eye contact, so I made the eyes empty also. The gaze, however, had to be more prominent so I gave it huge eyes flaming behind its shoulders. This demon knows you are nothing underneath your skin. You see it and you recognize its empty eyes, but there is the other set of eyes that capture you with the screaming gaze that you can’t escape from.
What kind of world do you envision the creature in “Our Void” comes from?
I think it lives in the dark room in your heart, where all the other dark emotions reside. I believe everyone has their own personal hell inside their mind.
You have worked as a concept artist and illustrator for several games, including the recent zombie-themed app, Deadman’s Cross, from Square Enix. Illustrating for the card-battle RPG required you to create a lot of zombies. What techniques did you use in order to make sure each card had a unique look but fit seamlessly alongside the others?
I can’t tell too many details about the project due to the NDA, but one thing I try is to recognize their personalities. Zombies were once human, therefore they had unique personalities . . . at least once. I try to find the story about them, and sympathize for their loss. That’s probably why a lot of them have a somewhat melancholy feel. Keeping the sense of humor is another thing. I guess my zombies turn out to be sad, gross, and kind of funny.
Is there a horror movie, short story, novel, or television series that has inspired or intrigued you? What do you like about it?
Again, Ushio to Tora by Kazuhiro Fujita is the biggest influence in my horror art. His creature designs are very unique. His monsters usually have a simple shape, almost like humans, but there is always something odd about them. Probably the scariest creature I’ve ever seen in my is life from a manga called Fusuma. [You can see the creature in the following illustrations: http://bit.ly/fusuma-1 and http://bit.ly/fusuma-2. —eds.]
His comic made me realize that the scariest form is actually something close to a familiar shape with slightly unusual features added.
When you illustrate, do you have any little rituals? For example, is there a certain kind of music you like to listen to, or certain type of beverage or food you like to have on hand?
When I do character art, I try to imagine how the character is feeling. It’s a similar technique actors and animators use, putting oneself into the mind of the character and trying to understand it. On the other hand, when I do illustrations that require a lot of pure rendering labor, I listen to TV shows. I need something to fill the silence for these kinds of work.
Do you have any special hobbies you’d like to share with us?
Learning how to paint has become my hobby in these past several years. I love finding good tutorials and tools to share with people. My recent hobby is gathering useful information in English and distributing it to my fellow Japanese artists and students on twitter. I think it’s frustrating that a lot of non English speakers are missing these great resources available for free. I mainly tweet in Japanese, but you are welcome to visit me at twitter.com/raqmo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marina J. Lostetter’s short fiction has appeared in venues such as InterGalactic Medicine Show, Galaxy’s Edge, and Writers of the Future. Her most recent publications include a tie-in novelette for the Star Citizen game universe, which was serialized over the first four months of 2014. Originally from Oregon, Marina now lives in Arkansas with her husband, Alex. She tweets as @MarinaLostetter. Please visit her homepage at lostetter.net.
Interview: Daniel Knauf
Lisa Morton
Back in 2003, when HBO was flush with the success of The Sopranos, they premiered one of the most unusual and intriguing television series ever: For two seasons, Carnivàle followed a Depression-era carnival across a bleak American landscape, but was really about the eternal battle between light and darkness, as represented respectively by Ben, a farm boy with healing powers (played by Nick Stahl) and a preacher, Brother Justin (Clancy Brown), who is accessing far more sinister abilities. As unusual as Carnivàle was, the story behind the story was equally rare in Hollywood: the series was created and produced by a first-timer in his forties. Daniel Knauf had written a few low-budget films before he was thrust into the television grinder, and he went on after Carnivàle to write for NBC’s Dracula; he’s currently a writer and executive producer on the hit show The Black List. He’s also developing a series about the Wolf Man, and is working on a horror novel entitled Sleepers. Knauf in person is affable, articulate, and down-to-Earth, with a genuine affection for all things horror.
You’re an L.A. native, right? And your family was in the health insurance business . . . so how did you wind up as a screenwriter?
I was a big reader, but I was a visual artist the whole time I was growing up. I was that kid in the class who was an artist. It was always, “Dan draws dinosaurs really good!” I started college as an Art major, and I tried to get into Art Center [an exclusive design school in Pasadena], but I wasn’t good enough. So then I went to Pasadena City College for a while, and I was just drifting. It was the late 1970s—I graduated high school in ‘76—and went to PCC (“the thirteenth grade”). I really wasn’t into school anyway—I was more into just hanging out with my friends. I took a creative writing class . . . and I was good at it! I was writing short stories—I think the first one was sort of like a Twilight Zone-y thing. I really was a big fan of Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury and Stanislaus Lem and William Kotzwinkle. I liked the fantasists—not the hard science fiction, but the speculative stuff. Richard Matheson was one of my gods.
How about Theodore Sturgeon? There are parts of Carnivàle that remind me a little of his novel The Dreaming Jewels.
I read so many books—they went into the hopper and came out sidewise. I wouldn’t be surprised—I read quite a few Sturgeon books. The one I really remember is Some of Your Blood. I certainly could have read that one, though, and not even remembered. I read three or four books a week, back when I was “programming.” The one who was really my favorite was Harlan Ellison. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” . . . I was that kind of a writer at first. Then I had people saying to me, “You ought to write a screenplay.” By that time my art classes were kind of being edged out. With my art, what I’d envisioned as I was painting or drawing just didn’t turn out to look like the finished product. I didn’t have full mastery over the medium. I’d get frustrated. Whereas right from the get-go with writing, I’d get a little closer to what I’d envisioned for the story in my head, when I finished it. I had more mastery with words. The process of writing is for me akin to sorcery, because what you’re doing is you’re putting down little symbols on paper, and these symbols represent phonetics, and these phonetics form words, and people are looking at it and as words are going into their heads, the inside of their skull is now your canvas. You, with their assistance, are painting a world inside their head. What they’re experiencing could be very different from what another reader is experiencing. The experience of a painting is, the painting is the painting. Now, people have different opinions of the painting, but there’s a concrete thing sitting there that says, “This is it.” One person can look at it and say, “That’s just a bunch of random splotches on a canvas,” and another person can say, “Oh, that’s a flock of birds,” and another can say, “Oh, that’s a representation of the artist’s anguish o
ver the loss of his wife” or whatever. People can have different interpretations, but the painting is still the fucking painting.
So anyway, people were saying, “Oh, you’re so good with dialogue,” and, “You’re so good with descriptive stuff,” because I was an artist. But the stuff was helplessly purple. But I grew up in L.A., so I thought, Screenwriting is for chumps, screenwriting is for tourists. By that time I kind of grew away from science fiction/fantasy, although I always stayed with horror. I remember buying my first Stephen King book at a car wash. It was Salem’s Lot. I’d also read “Children of the Corn” in a men’s magazine, so I was a Stephen King fan from way, way back. But mostly what I was reading was literary fiction. I was really into Charles Bukowski, all the Hemingway and Steinbeck stuff you read in college. Then I moved away from writing fiction and into poetry. I studied under a writer in Pasadena named Ron Koertge. He was jacked into the whole L.A. poetry scene, with Gerald Locklin and Bukowski, Exene Cervenka and John Doe from X. So I was really into poetry and doing a lot of readings. I was nineteen or twenty years old. The poetry turned out to be the world’s best training for screenwriting, because one of the things you learn in poetry is being economical and evocative with words. You have to choose the best word in poetry because you don’t have that much real estate, and the same thing’s true in screenwriting. One of the things I see in beginning writers’ scripts is what I call “aspirin bottle scene description”: “He walks into a room. There’s an expensive green rug on the floor, and the room is tastefully decorated with Victoriana. There’s a clock on the wall, and there’s this, and there’s that . . .” They describe the room to a tee, and take four or five paragraphs. I’d probably write, “This is the kind of room that Oxford professors dream about”—end of description. There’s a guy they’re gonna hire called a Production Designer; he’s forgotten more than I will ever know about designing a set. So poetry worked well for that.
Nightmare Magazine Issue 23 Page 9