# A List of "Horror" books that purports to be "Definitive"



## moderan (Feb 18, 2013)

The Top 30 scariest books ever written.


My comments:
Very subjective list, larded with critics' darlings and featuring only the "popular" choices. Like all such lists, highly questionable. Tropic of Cancer? The Exorcist? Seriously? This is from the shallow end of the book-reading pool.
People don't read much that is actually scary, and are scared by such small things. The comments list is even more evidence of that. The public are not well-read on any subject. And how Shirley Jackson didn't make that list is completely beyond me. One person did mention The Sheep Look Up, which is an outstanding choice. Personally I would champion any volume of Dennis Etchison short stories.
I am a literary snob, and do not apologize for it. You know what's really scary? The sheer multiplicity of ignorance, and the willingness of those possessing it to be voluble.


Yours are welcome.


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## Dave Watson (Feb 18, 2013)

Well the two scariest things I've ever read, Stephen King's short story _The Boogeyman_, and Alex Garland's _The Beach_ aren't on it. This alone makes the list hokum and bunkum of the highest order!
_
The Exorcist_ did freak me out a bit, right enough.


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## Bruno Spatola (Feb 18, 2013)

The world doesn't revolve around our own tastes, so it never surprises me when not a single one of my own choices makes a top ten list. I actually think that's a good thing; more often than not, it introduces me to new things. It'd be boring if the list was identical to mine.

On a side note, some of the comments on that page are shocking to me. I cannot get to grips with people who think opinion pieces can be "wrong". I blame the numbers more than the choices -- you'll _never_ please everyone when you limit yourself to top tens or twenties. It needs to be a hundred or more for me to take it seriously.


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## dolphinlee (Feb 18, 2013)

I looked at the list and was astonished to find that Daphne Du Maurier's "Rebecca" was on it. 

I always thought is was a romance. Maybe it's me but I have never seen any horror in it.


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## Leyline (Feb 18, 2013)

Some of those choices are just mind-boggling. _Slaughterhouse Five_? Hilarious and tragic by turns, never 'scary'. _The Silence Of The Lambs_? Seriously? That's a story about how competence (on routinely ignored levels) defeats evil. It's not scary.


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## Nee (Feb 18, 2013)

The Handmaiden’s Tail
Slaughterhouse 5
A Scanner Darkly
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
…Caroline…?

These are scary…? 

And here I was thinking they were merely a decent afternoon’s read.


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## bazz cargo (Feb 18, 2013)

Fredrick Forsyth- The Devils Alternative. Not a horror, but it did make me want to build a bunker in my garden. I now have a lot of sympathy with the doomsday preppers.

Grisly and sadistic fantasy doesn't get close to a scary 'what if...' that parallels reality.


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## Terry D (Feb 18, 2013)

Few books have scared me, but Eugene Burdick's _Fail-Safe_ gave me nightmares.  King's _'Salem's Lot_ is seriously creepy.  Right now I'm reading _Flashback_ by Dan Simmons, a novel about a very believable-- and unsettling-- near-future dystopia.


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## Nee (Feb 18, 2013)

Bruno Spatola said:


> On a side note, some of the comments on that page are shocking to me. I cannot get to grips with people who think opinion pieces can be "wrong".



Happens all the time. Why even here we have seen a number of "your opinion is wrong" rants just within the last few weeks.


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## Dave Watson (Feb 18, 2013)

Terry D said:


> Few books have scared me, but Eugene Burdick's _Fail-Safe_ gave me nightmares.  King's _'Salem's Lot_ is seriously creepy.  Right now I'm reading _Flashback_ by Dan Simmons, a novel about a very believable-- and unsettling-- near-future dystopia.



Some of Dan Simmons' stuff is really good. If you've not read it, check out _The Terror_. That was pretty damn scary. This is the synopsis from Amazon...

_The men on board Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had  every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's  1845 expedition - as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever  set forth - and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in  search of the fabled North-West Passage. 
_
_ But the ships have now been trapped  in the Arctic ice for nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running  low. Yet the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of  white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling supplies or the  vessels being slowly crushed by the unyielding grip of the frozen ocean.  _
_ No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something  out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the ships,  snatching one man at a time - mutilating, devouring. A nameless thing,  at once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition's nemesis. _
_ When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain Francis Crozier of HMS Terror  to take command and lead the remaining crew on a last, desperate  attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Eskimo woman  who cannot speak. She may be the key to survival - or the harbinger of  their deaths. And as scurvy, starvation and madness take their toll, as  the Terror on the ice become evermore bold, Crozier and his men begin to  fear there is no escape..._


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## dale (Feb 18, 2013)

i see my personal favorite isn't on there. stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". i personally thought "The Red Dragon" was more disturbing
of a book than "The Silence of the Lambs", although the movie silence of the lambs is FAR better than the movie the red dragon. a lot of these
i haven't read, but have seen the movies, so i can't really comment on the books. i suppose i should read a gaiman book sometime. i hear
people talk of him quite a bit and i've seen interviews with him on the subject of lovecraft.


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## moderan (Feb 18, 2013)

My only real issue with that list is that it purports to be definitive, as if that's possible. Like Tyler Florence's Ultimate foods trip, it's wrong immediately...because, well, it's subjective. It's about opinion, and it's masquerading as fact. And again, that's just wrong on the face of it.
There's not a single book on that list that would make mine. I've been thinking about it on and off most of the day, while waiting for the fridge repairman, which has put a big effin' hole in my day.
The Trial and Lord of the Flies might stand a chance. There's nothing really scary about Dracula, but at least it maintains a sort of low-level menace. Stoker doesn't really explore the concept. 
The Exorcist and others of that ilk only work if you're a believer. Otherwise they're nonsense.
I'll submit a few from my list-
Arthur Machen- The White People
John Brunner- The Sheep Look Up
Clive Barker-The Great and Secret Show
John Farris-All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By
HP Lovecraft-The Colour Out of Space
Robert McCammon-They Thirst
Dan Simmons-Carrion Comfort
Shirley Jackson-The Haunting of Hill House
William Hope Hodgson-The House on the Borderlands
Dennis Etchison-The Dark Country
John Shirley-Heatseeker
Oscar Wilde-The Picture of Dorian Grey
Stephen King-Rage


Some of those are books of short stories. I have a hard time winnowing those down sometimes. Thomas Ligotti should be there, but which? Likewise Ellison and Bradbury. Some are only horrible later, when you've thought about them, because they're possible.
Individual short stories would be even harder.


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## Terry D (Feb 18, 2013)

Dave Watson said:


> Some of Dan Simmons' stuff is really good. If you've not read it, check out _The Terror_. That was pretty damn scary. This is the synopsis from Amazon...
> 
> _The men on board Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had  every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's  1845 expedition - as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever  set forth - and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in  search of the fabled North-West Passage.
> _
> ...



I've been a Simmons fan for a long time.  My favorite is _Summer of Night_.  The historic detail in _The Terror_ is exquisite.  I still want to read_ Drood_ also.


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## Dave Watson (Feb 18, 2013)

Terry D said:


> I've been a Simmons fan for a long time.  My favorite is _Summer of Night_.  The historic detail in _The Terror_ is exquisite.  I still want to read_ Drood_ also.



Oh yeah! _Summer of Night'_s a good 'un, but I thought _Carrion Comfort_ was better. That scene with the human chessboard, holy crap! The detail in _The Terror_ as you say is tremendous. Not one to skimp on the research is Mr Simmons. A good mate of mine started _Drood _but said it wasn't very good. I started reading _Illium_, but just couldn't get into it at all. One of the very few books I've failed to finish.


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## Kevin (Feb 18, 2013)

I can only imagine that _Slaughter house 5 _was chosen because of the title.  Funny. I remember once reading an article about the _'Goth' _fashion. The author started off with a small history of the Visigoths sacking Rome. I couldn't help but laugh. He/she had no idea what their own story was about. It got published in _Time_.


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

Hmmm Shirley Jackson?  I wasn't scared by "The Lottery," maybe I should read more of her work.


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## moderan (Feb 18, 2013)

Really? The implications of that don't give you a little shiver?


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

moderan said:


> Really? The implications of that don't give you a little shiver?





The idea of randomly being chosen to be killed?  In our society today, we deal with that every time we walk out our front door.


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## Nee (Feb 18, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> The idea of randomly being chosen to be killed?  In our society today, we deal with that every time we walk out our front door.




It just seems that way. But, just the fact that the earths population is still sky-rocketing proves that it is far safer in nearly every way to be alive today than even 100 years ago.


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

Thomas Harris books are more gore than horror.  What kind of mind comes up with the idea of giving a guy psychedelic drugs and talking him into cutting off his face with broken mirror pieces and feeding it to his dog?  Seriously.  One thing you might not have noticed when it came to Lecter, he killed very few people that weren't bad and didn't deserve it.  One was a guard when he escaped from the plastic room, the other was the detective in "Hannibal."


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## Nee (Feb 18, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> Thomas Harris books are more gore than horror.  What kind of mind comes up with the idea of giving a guy psychedelic drugs and talking him into cutting off his face with broken mirror pieces and feeding it to his dog?  Seriously.  One thing you might not have noticed when it came to Lecter, he killed very few people that weren't bad and didn't deserve it.  One was a guard when he escaped from the plastic room, the other was the detective in "Hannibal."



You are forgetting the prequel Red Dragon--and all the one's he killed before Silence of the Lambs.


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

Nee said:


> You are forgetting the prequel Red Dragon--and all the one's he killed before Silence of the Lambs.



I read Red Dragon, and it didn't mention really who he killed in it.  Most of the murders were committed by Francis Dolarhyde.  Even towards the end when Will Graham saw the book with the diagram of the man in Lecter's office, Lecter didn't kill Graham, he just wounded him bad enough to incapacitate him.  Think about the guy at the psychiatric ward that threw semen on Starling, and how Lecter drove him mad to the point the guy swallowed his own tongue.  Lecter was a horrific creation that did one of man's most taboo things in cannibalism, yet you had to feel some sort of relationship with him in order for the books to work.  Harris did this with who Lecter killed.  Mason Verger was a rich pedophile and you see what he did to him.  The only Thomas Harris book I haven't read is "Hannibal Rising."


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

Lecter did kill someone because he thought they were horrible at playing music and screwing up the rest of the orchestra...:highly_amused:


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## dale (Feb 18, 2013)

Nee said:


> You are forgetting the prequel Red Dragon--and all the one's he killed before Silence of the Lambs.



which is why that book disturbed me more than silence of the lambs. lecter's kind of likable in the books, even though he's a psychopath.
to me, the red dragon killer was the worst kind of killer. he CHOSE people to kill based on their family wholesomeness and happiness.


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

"Red Dragon" was more of a psychological thriller than the rest of the books.  There wasn't really any suspense in the rest of the books.


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## moderan (Feb 18, 2013)

Black Sunday was the best of his books anyway. None of them are horror. They're thrillers, mystery/suspense pulse-quickeners, compulsive page-turners. Michael Slade has a good line in those too. But they're no more horror books than Bugliosi's Helter Skelter is. They're "true crime", except that they're not true, and they appeal to the same demographic. It's a huge audience-look at how much of that crap is on the tube.


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## Lewdog (Feb 18, 2013)

It's been a long time since I read Black Sunday and watched the movie.


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## moderan (Feb 18, 2013)

I read it last year. Have the movie on my hard drive.


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## Terry D (Feb 19, 2013)

moderan said:


> It's a huge audience-look at how much of that crap is on the tube.



Ouch!  That's the genre of my current WIP.  I was glad to see you mentioned Rober R. McCammon's _They Thirst_.  With the glut of vampire novels on the market for the past 20 years, many readers don't realize that the genre was almost extinct before _'Salem's Lo_t and _They Thirst_.  I love vampires that don't sparkle.

I think Harris is the victim of his own success.  _Red Dragon_ is a very good book, as are _Silence of the Lambs_ and _Black Sunday_, but when _Silence_ became a mega-hit and everyone fell in love with Lechter, Harris started trying to make him a heroic figure.  _Hannibal_ is, in my opinion, rather lame and contrived.  I've not read _Hannibal Rising_, but from what I've read about it, it tries to justify the acts of a sociopathic cannibal.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned any of the works of Ramsey Campbell yet.  _The Doll Who Ate His Mother,_ and _The Face that Must Die_ are very well written, very atmospheric books.

@Dave Watson,  I made it through _Illium_, but couldn't get into _Olympos_.  I also couldn't finish Simmons' _Hyperion_ series either.  I guess my tolerance for SF isn't what it used to be.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Not to mention Ancient Images, which to me is Campbell's finest novel-length work. I just forgot-I've been involved in this discussion in four different realms, four very different threads. I agree about Harris, and about Hyperion/Endymion, which was marred by the tacked-on love story and imo Simmon's own ambition to create the most sweeping space-epic EVER, instead of just letting the story be what it wanted to be, which was more than big enough. I'm about sixty pages from the end of the fourth book and shall probably remain there forever. Stuff like that drives me into the arms of Joe Lansdale or Trent Zelazny, where I can reside with the less-lofty ambitions of common murderers. Or Maybe Donald Westlake, who makes me laugh like a loon.
Got into this with a bunch of horror writers yesterday. McCammon scored much higher than King. I'd agree-in both cases where they treat with the same subject matter (They Thirst vs 'salem's Lot;Swan Song vs. The Stand) , Bob McC comes out ahead on originality of theme, character treatment, and avoidance of extraneous material. The edge is smaller with the first two-the Lot is an entirely laudable effort in the traditional fashion, They Thirst wants to break new ground. King's preoccupation with the Christian ruins his work for me. It's too easy to just use that ethos as a backdrop and paint in black and white. It's lazy storytelling.
The Lovecraft writers (Bloch, Smith, Bradbury, Campbell, Lumley, never Derleth) graded out high, were mentioned often by people in the business. Poe, RL Stevenson, Blackwood, Machen, they were mentioned often...many had forgotten poor old John Farris, whose Harrison High series was the original RL Stine, until I mentioned him. Shirley Jackson came up big. Nobody mentioned Henry James, but Wilde's Dorian Grey was in there. That was really interesting.
Nobody mentioned King as a stylistic influence. His foray into so-called ladeez-lit in recent years has cost him his rep among the practitioners of his art. That stuff is viable in the marketplace, but compared to what Joe Pulver or Tom Piccirilli do, it's feeding your housecat.
SF writers had much the same responses. The lists of influences coincided, though there was more mention of Brunners dystopian trilogy, and things in the cosy catastrophe realm (John Wyndham, John Christopher). Many people mentioned the Handmaid's Tale. Lots of pro and con there-I'm in the con camp and comp it to the DeLillo/McCarthy "borrowers" group, along with Doris Lessing.
The prime thing I got from both of those exchanges was that the pros are WELL-READ. In all fields, but especially in their area of specialty. No surprise...but when Sam Delany speaks of Guy de Maupassant, it gives one pause. Y'know?


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

It was odd that there wasn't any Anne Rice books on the list.  Not all her books are Vampire romance novels.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Why is it odd? Her books really aren't very good. They don't break any new ground, the prose is at best workmanlike, and she's engendered a lot of hate by being a royal pita on Amazon. She isn't likely to influence anyone and doesn't get much love in the horror community.
I'm pleasantly surprised by her absence. Likewise people like Poppy Z Brite and Laurell Hamilton, and splatterpunkers like Skipp and Spector or Laymon. More of an emphasis on story and less on shock.
George RR Martin's Fevre Dream was mentioned on a lot of lists. That outRices Rice. The sf people especially mentioned it. And he may well have been reading. Several people involved in that discussion don't have any degrees of separation from him.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

moderan said:


> Why is it odd? Her books really aren't very good. They don't break any new ground, the prose is at best workmanlike, and she's engendered a lot of hate by being a royal pita on Amazon. She isn't likely to influence anyone and doesn't get much love in the horror community.
> I'm pleasantly surprised by her absence. Likewise people like Poppy Z Brite and Laurell Hamilton, and splatterpunkers like Skipp and Spector or Laymon. More of an emphasis on story and less on shock.
> George RR Martin's Fevre Dream was mentioned on a lot of lists. That outRices Rice. The sf people especially mentioned it. And he may well have been reading. Several people involved in that discussion don't have any degrees of separation from him.



I disagree, if you read some of her novels that aren't part of the Vampire Chronicles she can bring out a Stephen King type story.


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## Terry D (Feb 19, 2013)

I think it's fashionable to diss King because of his massive success.  In my opinion his ability to create a believable world is unmatched.  While I very much liked _Swan Song_, I never bought into the world like I did King's post Capt'n Tripps America.  He's heavily influenced my own style (along with Poe, Bradbury, and Clarke).  But that may be because I view reading, and by extension, writing, as I do a trip to a carnival.  I'm not looking to get my deeper brain cells stimulated (I've got cosmology, and astronomy for that), I want a book, or story to take me for a ride.  I guess I'm a product of my 'glass teat' generation--growing up, as I did, with The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and all those Hammer horror movies.  I'm a simpleton, I know, but I do love a book filled with short stories by Poe, Lovecraft, Jack Finney, Bloch, Campbell, et.al.

Call me a slithering, creeping, shambling romantic.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

dale said:


> to me, the red dragon killer was the worst kind of killer. he CHOSE people to kill based on their family wholesomeness and happiness.



Not entirely. Or I should say, that was his pretense to murder. He was a sexual sadist: he killed for sexual satisfaction. He killed the kids first--swiftly and coldly--then the father, then arranged them around the room as a audience for the main event--whatever he did with the mother. She was his primary goal.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> Not entirely. Or I should say, that was his pretense to murder. He was a sexual sadist: he killed for sexual satisfaction. He killed the kids first--swiftly and coldly--then the father, then arranged them around the room as a audience for the main event--whatever he did with the mother. She was his primary goal.





That was because of his abusive mother that made him think that sex and women were evil.  He also put pieces of mirror in the of the victims to make it seem as if they were still alive and watching his dominance.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> I disagree, if you read some of her novels that aren't part of the Vampire Chronicles she can bring out a Stephen King type story.


I have. She's at best Rose Madder...which is substandard King fare.



Terry D said:


> I think it's fashionable to diss King because of his massive success.  In my opinion his ability to create a believable world is unmatched.  While I very much liked _Swan Song_, I never bought into the world like I did King's post Capt'n Tripps America.  He's heavily influenced my own style (along with Poe, Bradbury, and Clarke).  But that may be because I view reading, and by extension, writing, as I do a trip to a carnival.  I'm not looking to get my deeper brain cells stimulated (I've got cosmology, and astronomy for that), I want a book, or story to take me for a ride.  I guess I'm a product of my 'glass teat' generation--growing up, as I did, with The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and all those Hammer horror movies.  I'm a simpleton, I know, but I do love a book filled with short stories by Poe, Lovecraft, Jack Finney, Bloch, Campbell, et.al.
> 
> Call me a slithering, creeping, shambling romantic.


Okay. You're a slithering, creeping, shambling romantic. So there.
I dunno, Terry. We're the of the same era. I'm guessing about the same age, early 50s, maybe late 40s. I grew up with those things too. They are delightful now as they were then. 
King's the literary descendant of Bradbury, in my eyes. His ability to depict smalltown America and the focus on the general pastoral as "ultimate", his gentle subversions of those tropes...and his surpassing excellence at the shorter forms all echo Ray. I find that his novels often fail. He doesn't dig really deep for the scary. The final reel, the unveil, leaves some people breathless. Most of his leave me laughing. I do not ever diss his talent. But I think his well ran dry eons ago, and only on rare occasions does he summon forth a frisson of terror.
My style is more influenced by sf people...Bester, Ellison, and by the journalist-as-literary-bon-vivant crowd (Kornbluth, Beaumont, Brown). It's still a carnival, but it's a deeper and darker one. 
Huh. I have all of those books...the Hitchcock collections, Bloch's Best of and most of his novels, Most of Finney's work. I love them too...and I'm pretty sure you know about Fred Mustard Stewart and Tom Tryon and John Farris and Robert Marasco and Steven Gilbert and Jeff Rice and Rita Lakin and others of that early 70s horror boomlet that led to King and to the big Lovecraft revival. Those are parallel paths. You're on the Kingpath, and that's cool. Fast reads, easy to understand characters, not really after shattering the archetypes, just enjoying them.
Shhhh...it's such a secret *rolls eyes* I'm a Lovecraftian.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Terry D said:


> I think Harris is the victim of his own success.  _Red Dragon_ is a very good book, as are _Silence of the Lambs_ and _Black Sunday_, but when _Silence_ became a mega-hit and everyone fell in love with Lechter, Harris started trying to make him a heroic figure.  _Hannibal_ is, in my opinion, rather lame and contrived.  I've not read _Hannibal Rising_, but from what I've read about it, it tries to justify the acts of a sociopathic cannibal.



Agreed. The problem with making homicidal psychopaths the charismatic hero is one of their main defining characteristics is that they have a dull affect. They are all on the surface--sure they can play the part but, only in a here and there kind of way: Gacy appeared to be gregarious and involved in his community, but it was an act he needed for supplying his victims. So, he only did the minimum he needed to keep the illusion going. So killers like Dexter for instance, couldn't keep-up the act while working so intimately with that many crime investigates. One of them would notice. And it's the little things that get someone in that situation caught.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> Agreed. The problem with making homicidal psychopaths the charismatic hero is one of their main defining characteristics is that they have a dull affect. They are all on the surface--sure they can play the part but, only in a here and there kind of way: Gacy appeared to be gregarious and involved in his community, but it was an act he needed for supplying his victims. So, he only did the minimum he needed to keep the illusion going. So killers like Dexter for instance, couldn't keep-up the act while working so intimately with that many crime investigates. One of them would notice. And it's the little things that get someone in that situation caught.



Don't forget the BTK killer was a huge part of his community and only got caught because he starved for attention.  He wrote letters to the police using his church's computers.


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## Terry D (Feb 19, 2013)

moderan said:


> Okay. You're a slithering, creeping, shambling romantic. So there.
> I dunno, Terry. We're the of the same era. I'm guessing about the same age, early 50s, maybe late 40s.


 
Forty-ninteen at my last birthday.



> I grew up with those things too. They are delightful now as they were then.
> King's the literary descendant of Bradbury, in my eyes. His ability to depict smalltown America and the focus on the general pastoral as "ultimate", his gentle subversions of those tropes...and his surpassing excellence at the shorter forms all echo Ray. I find that his novels often fail. He doesn't dig really deep for the scary. The final reel, the unveil, leaves some people breathless. Most of his leave me laughing. I do not ever diss his talent. But I think his well ran dry eons ago, and only on rare occasions does he summon forth a frisson of terror.
> My style is more influenced by sf people...Bester, Ellison, and by the journalist-as-literary-bon-vivant crowd (Kornbluth, Beaumont, Brown). It's still a carnival, but it's a deeper and darker one.
> Huh. I have all of those books...the Hitchcock collections, Bloch's Best of and most of his novels, Most of Finney's work. I love them too...and I'm pretty sure you know about Fred Mustard Stewart and Tom Tryon and John Farris and Robert Marasco and Steven Gilbert and Jeff Rice and Rita Lakin and others of that early 70s horror boomlet that led to King and to the big Lovecraft revival. Those are parallel paths. You're on the Kingpath, and that's cool. Fast reads, easy to understand characters, not really after shattering the archetypes, just enjoying them.
> Shhhh...it's such a secret *rolls eyes* I'm a Lovecraftian.



I agree that King often has a hard time ending a book.  I don't think he wants to stop the story, so his ending are frequently contrived (even with his latest, 11/22/63, which is a great book).

Jack Finney has a special place in my heart.  He's from the same small Illinois town I grew up in, and he immortalized it in his short story collection, _I Love Galesburg in the Springtime_.

Now you've got me running through the fields of memory, touching the up-turned faces of the flowers of my youth: Fredrick Brown, Richard Matheson, Bradbury, Robert Howard, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, did I mention Bradbury?

I haven't gotten too attached to many of the current horror writers, but I do like Joe Hill; _The Heart Shaped Box_ is a book that cuts to the bone without being mean spirited. 

I prefer to think of it as King's on the Terry Dpath... his is just paved in gold.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Terry D said:


> I'm not looking to get my deeper brain cells stimulated (I've got cosmology, and astronomy for that), I want a book, or story to take me for a ride.



Most people need their reading material to help them turn off the clatter of their every day world for a little bit so they can regroup for the next round. And what is so bad about that. Why are so many writers opposed to providing readers a little distraction anyways? That is the primary reason for story telling. Fitting a bit of tangential information in while doing so is cool, but, the main focus is the story.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> That was because of his abusive mother that made him think that sex and women were evil.  He also put pieces of mirror in the of the victims to make it seem as if they were still alive and watching his dominance.



No. It was so that when he looked at them he'd see himself looking back at himself through all the horror that he created. Narcissism.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> No. It was so that when he looked at them he'd see himself looking back at himself through all the horror that he created. Narcissism.




No, because he broke every mirror in the houses because he thought his cleft palate made him look like a monster to people.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Galesburg, eh? Been there a coupla times. I have friends in Peoria and at WIU. I have 11/22/63, haven't read it yet. Just got it last night-someone kind bought me a buncha Kindle books.
Joe Hill's ok. I read a lot of modern horror out of necessity as I know the authors. It behooves me to say nice things so that they'll say nice things when I have product. Plus they make it easy...most of it's not traditional stuff though.
I can sell Mythos stuff. But it isn't really my beat anymore. I got off the path long ago and found my own gods out there in the wastelands. But you can easily see where I cribbed this from Alfred and this from Harlan and those from Silverberg. I live to one day have the impact on someone that say, "Dying Inside" had on me at twelve, or that discovering that there was such a thing as a "Haploid Heart" had.
Those are some fertile fields. I still sow them, it's just that the fruit grows strange on planet moderan.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> Don't forget the BTK killer was a huge part of his community and only got caught because he starved for attention.  He wrote letters to the police using his church's computers.



No, he was a deacon in his church--and many churches are places for covering oneself with the blanket of sanctity--it was a means to an end.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> No, he was a deacon in his church--and many churches are places for covering oneself with the blanket of sanctity--it was a means to an end.




Yes, he was a deacon at the church be he also held a public job as the dog warden.  In fact many people in the community hated him because he used his position to push more authority on people than he was actually allowed by his position.  He was in no way trying to hide behind anything.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> No, because he broke every mirror in the houses because he thought his cleft palate made him look like a monster to people.



Narcissism is a very slippery concept. It is the simultaneous holding of two opposing beliefs at the same time. Total self hatred and total self admiration. That is why self esteem is replaced with grandiose behavior and the ego--which is there for the preservation of self turns against the self, thereby sabotaging one's efforts even while pursuing one's self-professed goals.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> Narcissism is a very slippery concept. It is the simultaneous holding of two opposing beliefs at the same time. Total self hatred and total self admiration. That is why self esteem is replaced with grandiose behavior and the ego--which is there for the preservation of self turns against the self, thereby sabotaging one's efforts even while pursuing one's self-professed goals.




I think you are misguided in your idea of narcissism.  Dolarhyde believed he looked like a monster because of his cleft palate and that is why he broke all the mirrors.  Its also why he dated the blind woman from work, because she couldn't see him for what he perceived himself to be.  Dolarhyde tried to overcompensate the looks of his face by transforming what he could, and that was the physique of his body through exercise and its appearance through the body modification of the Red Dragon tattoo on his back.  He didn't kill the woman from work initially because in fact she was blind, and didn't shrink away or treat him differently because the look of his face.  To further prove my point, that's why Dolarhyde chose to make the jagged false teeth, to make himself to look more like a monster, and the dragon he thought he was becoming.  If people were going to look at him like he was a monster, he wanted to be the strongest, most extreme monster he could be.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> Yes, he was a deacon at the church be he also held a public job as the dog warden.  In fact many people in the community hated him because he used his position to push more authority on people than he was actually allowed by his position.  He was in no way trying to hide behind anything.



There ya go...Narcissism mix with his need to assert control over others. He is a sadistic bastard with no feelings other than the excitement of getting away with whatever he could get away with. And he wasn't hiding from everything (do not read stuff into things people did not say) he was using the church as a way of legitimizing his status, and his job as away of locating his victims. The fact that he abused his power is par for the course. He did that in every way he could in every aspect of his life and is still doing it in prison.


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> There ya go...Narcissism mix with his need to assert control over others. He is a sadistic bastard with no feelings other than the excitement of getting away with whatever he could get away with. And he wasn't hiding from everything *(do not read stuff into things people did not say)* he was using the church as a way of legitimizing his status, and his job as away of locating his victims. The fact that he abused his power is par for the course. He did that in every way he could in every aspect of his life and is still doing it in prison.




You shouldn't be so preachy, arrogance is unbecoming of you.  You said yourself that he used the church as a cover of sanctity, which made no sense.  If he was using the church as a cover for sanctity he wouldn't have been writing letters to the police using the church's computers and printing them out using the church's printers.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Dog...the teeth were plaster casts of his grandmothers. 

*sigh*

Later...


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## Lewdog (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> Dog...the teeth were plaster casts of his grandmothers.
> 
> *sigh*
> 
> Later...



Yes they are BASED on a mold from his grandmothers but razor sharp.



> the other distorted and razor sharp for his killings, based on a mold of his grandmother's teeth



They are filed down to points like dragon's teeth.  It was nice having a good discussion until...well, yeah I can't say.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> You shouldn't be so preachy, arrogance is unbecoming of you.  You said yourself that he used the church as a cover of sanctity, which made no sense.  If he was using the church as a cover for sanctity he wouldn't have been writing letters to the police using the church's computers and printing them out using the church's printers.



Please...facts are what they are. I have been describing the nature of pattern killers. There are very odd creatures. They do not live in the world of reason: their motivations are not those of the rest of humanity.


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## Terry D (Feb 19, 2013)

moderan said:


> Galesburg, eh? Been there a coupla times. I have friends in Peoria and at WIU. I have 11/22/63, haven't read it yet. Just got it last night-someone kind bought me a buncha Kindle books.
> Joe Hill's ok. I read a lot of modern horror out of necessity as I know the authors. It behooves me to say nice things so that they'll say nice things when I have product. Plus they make it easy...most of it's not traditional stuff though.
> I can sell Mythos stuff. But it isn't really my beat anymore. I got off the path long ago and found my own gods out there in the wastelands. But you can easily see where I cribbed this from Alfred and this from Harlan and those from Silverberg. I live to one day have the impact on someone that say, "Dying Inside" had on me at twelve, or that discovering that there was such a thing as a "Haploid Heart" had.
> Those are some fertile fields. I still sow them, it's just that the fruit grows strange on planet moderan.



WIU is my alma mater (biology).  Simmons' _Summer of Night_ is set in a fictional town located between Galesburg and Peoria.  He used to live in the area.

Funny you should mention Harlan.  His story, _I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream_ is a favorite of mine.  I think it may be because of the image transmitted by that title.  Often, however, he gets pretty full of himself.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Terry D said:


> WIU is my alma mater (biology).  Simmons' _Summer of Night_ is set in a fictional town located between Galesburg and Peoria.  He used to live in the area.
> 
> Funny you should mention Harlan.  His story, _I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream_ is a favorite of mine.  I think it may be because of the image transmitted by that title.  Often, however, he gets pretty full of himself.


I know about Simmon's origins, and Summer of Night, but others might not. 
Often? Harlan was born that way. I've had the occasion to meet him, several times, at conventions. Might be the best short story writer ever. Has an ego that should be parked in orbit. Willingly participates in filk and in poking fun at himself. Is very short. So is Larry Niven, for that matter.


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## Kevin (Feb 19, 2013)

Nee said:


> Please...facts are what they are. I have been describing the nature of pattern killers. There are very odd creatures. They do not live in the world of reason: their motivations are not those of the rest of humanity.


 It's funny, reading your descriptions, I thought they were of a real person (until I read closely), who had perhaps gone to jail for fraud or tax evasion. I think, except for focusing on the killing part, their motivations aren't all that uncommon. Ego-maniacs, meglomaniacs can be found in positions of power in politics, religion, business, entertainment...


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## Kevin (Feb 19, 2013)

moderan said:


> I know about Simmon's origins, and Summer of Night, but others might not.
> Often? Harlan was born that way. I've had the occasion to meet him, several times, at conventions. Might be the best short story writer ever. Has an ego that should be parked in orbit. Willingly participates in filk and in poking fun at himself. Is very short. So is Larry Niven, for that matter.


 Never met him, but I saw the outside of his house. He has (had? been a long time) movie set acrylic gargoyles and other bizarro decorations outside. I only figured it out by his mailbox: "H.E." _Shattered like a Glass Goblin_ is one of my all time favorites.


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## moderan (Feb 19, 2013)

Good old Ellison Wonderland? Went past it once. My favorite is "Croatoan", but only by a nose. Granted, it's the nose of an albino alligator with a baby in its mouth, but a nose. It edges out his collaboration with Robert Sheckley-"I See a Man On a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg". Great title, better story.


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## Nee (Feb 19, 2013)

Kevin said:


> It's funny, reading your descriptions, I thought they were of a real person (until I read closely), who had perhaps gone to jail for fraud or tax evasion. I think, except for focusing on the killing part, their motivations aren't all that uncommon. Ego-maniacs, meglomaniacs can be found in positions of power in politics, religion, business, entertainment...



The Red Dragon is a character in a movie who was pieced together using a number of real life pattern killers; the BTK killer ( Dennis Rader) is a real killer who managed to evade the police for nearly 30 years.


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## Kevin (Feb 19, 2013)

Ah...I get it. I was just thinking of the people who exercise power with a sense of entitlement, to the detriment of others, and how it's all about them...


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## Rustgold (Feb 19, 2013)

The Witches, top 30 scariest stories?  It's a children story.


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## Nee (Feb 20, 2013)

Kevin said:


> Ah...I get it. I was just thinking of the people who exercise power with a sense of entitlement, to the detriment of others, and how it's all about them...



Yes  they may be psychopaths as well. Most Psychopaths are not serial (pattern) killers.


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## Lewdog (Feb 22, 2013)

For those interested, "Red Dragon" is on Spike right now.


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