"What happened to horror?"
I’ve been asked this question in various forms innumerable times over the last decade or so and I’m not sure that there is one decisive answer. But as a former bookstore manager, published author, and longtime book reviewer, I do have some thoughts on the subject.
Horror has, like many other genre fiction categories, been undergoing a subtle evolution over the past few decades. Back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when I managed bookstores, horror was in the midst of a revival, at least commercially – and this was due in large part to Stephen King. Pretty much every single book that King released during that time went to #1 on national bestselling lists and stayed there for a long time: It (1986), The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987), Misery (1987), The Tommyknockers (1987), The Dark Half (1989), etc. Because of King’s phenomenal popularity – as well as other comparable authors like Dean Koontz and Peter Straub – I was told by my regional manager to create a new Horror section right next to mainstream Fiction, in hopes of exposing the masses of King fans to other releases in the genre, possibly enticing horror newbies to come over to the dark side, and to increase sales, of course!
It was a dismal failure. King, Koontz, and Straub continued to sell well but the increased exposure did nothing for the other releases. After a few months, I ended up merging Horror back in with Fiction. My conclusion? Readers who are fanatically into bestselling authors like King and Koontz aren’t necessarily into horror, per se. There was an undeniable stigma associated with reading horror back in those days. The perception at the time was that horror was largely literary bloodbaths, excessively gruesome works fixated on humankind’s most visceral elements. So much so that over the years, I began to see new horror releases losing the “horror” tag on their spines – publishers and publicists began promoting new releases as dark fantasy or horror fiction or just plain fiction. Anything but horror!
Fast forward almost 30 years – most bookstores still don’t have specific sections for horror releases. But the reasons, I think, are much different than they were back in the ‘80s. Although conventional horror is still going strong with a laundry list of extraordinary writers (Laird Barron, Weston Ochse, Brian Keene, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, etc.) a growing number of (what I classify as) horror releases today have transcended genre categorization: they can no longer be pigeonholed – and stigmatized – as horror. Just check out some of my favorite horror reads of the last few years: Mira Grant’s Feed and Deadline are unquestionably horror but the first two novels in Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy have been described as science fiction, zombie fiction, and apocalyptic fiction. David Nickle’s stellar debut novel Eutopia has been called historical fiction as well as science fiction, David Bell’s Cemetery Girl has been marketed as a suspense thriller, and Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night – which I described as “a dark masterpiece that virtually burns the pages with a bloody incandescence”– is essentially vampire fiction. I could go on and on…
The truth of the matter is that while there may be no horror section in your bookstore, horror is everywhere – its essence can be found in fantasy, science fiction, romance, mystery, paranormal fantasy, fiction, etc. – and it is arguably stronger and more popular than it has ever been. Whether we chose to admit it or not, we enjoy the thrill of being scared witless and experiencing that delightful sense of fear that can only come from immersing oneself into a well-written, horror-inducing story.
What happened to horror? It evolved – and is continuing to evolve – and the crème de la crème has become genre transcendent. Horror, for me at least, isn’t so much a category anymore as it is a narrative attitude. For those of you who think horror is dead or that it has lost its creepy, bladder-loosening edge, you're just not not looking in the right spots!
(FYI: Mark June 5, 2012, on your calendars – that is the day that Laird Barron's first novel, The Croning, comes out. After reading his first two short story collections The Imago Sequence and Other Stories and Occultation and Other Stories, I called him "Horror’s New Messiah." The guy is that good and I'm guessing that in 2012, he is going to become a household name...)
But that's next year. Here are my favorite look-under-the-bed-before-I-go-to-sleep releases of 2011…
1. Eutopia by David Nickle
2. Picking the Bones by Brian Hodge
3. The Basement by Stephen Leather
4. Enter, Night by Michael Rowe
5. The Great Lover by Michael Cisco
6. Sweetheart's Lullaby by Stephen Card
7. Deadline by Mira Grant
8. The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
9. Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters
10. Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist
11. I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells
12. Dead of Night by Jonathan Maberry
13. The Book of Cthulhu edited by Ross E. Lockhart
HONORABLE MENTION
• David Bell’s Cemetery Girl• Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
• Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli
• The Pumpkin Man by John Everson
• The White Devil by Justin Evans
• 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
• Smite The Damned by Zack Kullis
• The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper
• Belieber! by Cathleen Falsani
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Keep up with all of my blogs – as well as all of Barnes & Noble’s exclusive reviews, authors interviews, videos, promotions, and more – by following @BNBuzz on Twitter!
I really enjoyed reading this post, Paul. I have never been what I would consider a horror fan, but I do enjoy the horror element added into various genres. To me, UF is definitely a cross-pollination and merging of horror and fantasy, even though single titles may lean more toward one aspect than the other. I like to be scared, and love suspense, but am not keen on being grossed out. 
In any case, thanks for the list and the thoughtful commentary.
Carol
