Posts in the "Monsters" Category

• Our Kind of Zombie

  Monsters

  As you know if you’ve been reading The Night Bazaar recently, this is the week that my novel The Panama Laugh comes out (and if you comment on any post this week, you’ll get a chance to win a free copy).

  In keeping with the book’s themes of viral media, there are many other ways you can get involved. You can follow me on Twitter or add me on Facebook, “Like” The Panama Laugh on Facebook, and of course, if you’ve read it (in which case THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!), I encourage you to review it on Amazon.com and GoodReads.com, where you can also add me. (Even if you hated it!)

  Last but not least, at PanamaLaugh.com, ZombiLeaks.com, Toxicography.com and Thomasroche.com, you can also check out the series of news stories and posts related to the events of the book, which take the book’s apocalyptic events hand them it off to the Crowdsource Commandos for misinterpretation through the filters of “democratic” information sharing and corporate and governmental disinformation…just like today’s “real” news events.

  So what makes a scary monster?

  You might expect me to say “laughing zombies,” or zombies in general, and you’d be right. I tweaked the genre myself, so of course I love films and books that re-invent the genre, but only up to a point. My opinion is that if something talks to you about how it’s going to eat your soul, or narrates a Less than Zero spinoff, it might be amusing, clever, or scary, but it’s not actually a zombie. Or, to put it more properly, it’s not my kind of zombie.

  As to whether they’re fast or slow, I couldn’t really give a damn; they’re dead, as in, dead. That’s what makes a zombie, to me.

  Zombies are scary to me not so much because of what they’ll do to us but because of what they represent, which can change with the intention of the author or filmmaker. George Romero, who certainly did not invent the zombie but escalated its portrayal to a new and stunning level of artistry, had a clear and obvious political intention, or several complementary ones. They are perhaps most obvious in two films: Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead, where humans are trapped by zombies in a shopping mall (gee, what could that mean?) and in Land of the Dead, where rich people living in the idyllic high-rise Pittsburgh apartment complex “Fiddler’s Green” (after a European folk paradise of the afterlife) pay poor people living in the skyscraper’s shadow to go out into the zombified landscape to forage for gourmet foodstuffs so the rich can continue living their awesome lives of privilege. Especially in the latter film, zombies themselves are actually little more than a catalyst, for most of the film; Romero’s most important comments have to do with privilege and class, not death. (more…)

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• Little Monsters

  Monsters
  

  Look at little bastard! He's HIDEOUS!

  Huge congrats to Thomas on the release of The Panama Laugh. We’re running a contest at The Night Bazaar – same deal as usual. You comment, you’re registered to win – this time, a copy of The Panama Laugh.

  I am especially excited for Mr. Roche and will be tracking his progress very closely, since my zombie novel, This Dark Earth, comes out from Simon & Schuster next summer. And they said the zombie wave has crested. Babies, them shamblers are here to stay. You best get your headknockers ready. Anyway, head on over to Amazon or your bookseller of choice and pick up a copy of The Panama Laugh. You won’t regret it.

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  You know what’s scary? Children. Seriously. Little monsters.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my children. But I’ll be honest with you as long as you don’t tell anyone: I wouldn’t love my children if they weren’t my children. I definitely don’t love YOUR children. Matter of fact, your children creep me out. (more…)

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• Bump in the Night

  Monsters

  What a great topic for Thomas’s debut week. Congratulations to Thomas for The Panama Laugh, which debuts this week. Remember, Thomas is hosting a giveaway here on the Night Bazaar. Just comment on any of the posts this week Sunday-Friday with the name of a monster or creature you find scary. And you can comment on multiple posts (one entry per post) for multiple chances.

  Ok, on to the subject at hand. Monsters. I have to say, I’m with Mr. Lawrence on this one. If you didn’t catch Mark’s excellent guest post, head on over and give it a read. Like Mark, I’m largely of the belief that people make the scariest monsters. Well, let me rephrase that. People, or things that were once people, make the scariest monsters. Take zombies, for instance. Why are they scary? Certainly not because they shamble around, moaning. Sure, they eat brains and all, but that’s not the scary part either. The scary part is that they were once human and they are no longer. We see the before and after in one fell swoop. We often see what they were, because there are usually vestiges of their old life still visible on them, like their clothes, tattoos, hair, etc., and we also see what could happen to us were we to be bitten. It’s terribly tragic and let’s face it, extremely economical. Unlike more monsters, we don’t need exposition for zombies. We don’t need to know their origins. We just know the shit’s hit the fan and it’s time for survival mode.

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• The Monster Squad

  Monsters

  Happy book debut to Thomas Roche, whose novel The Panama Laugh is out! Don’t forget to comment on this post with a monster you like (or find scary!) for your chance at a free copy!

  Monsters fascinate me and have done so ever since I can remember. One of the first subjects I ever researched was monsters. (Mummies, specifically. Mummies walked on Johnny Quest. I’d even seen one standing upright as if waiting to attack patrons in a museum.) Monsters represent the things humans most fear within ourselves. It’s hard to face the fact that so much evil is possible from beings who are also capable of so much beauty, but that’s the truth. So, we draw things in bold black and white lines. We avoid the looking glass. We gather up the nightmares and self-loathing and weave them into “Other” and with a heaping helping of self-righteousness, pretend that the enemy ain’t us. Blow that shit up. Stomp it. Kill it. Now we’re all safe and happy and perfect.

  Riiiight.

  And that’s why it disturbs me a bit when Horror monsters are overly romanticised. It’s a twisted game of self-justification, in a way. That bad boyfriend that sleeps all day, can’t hold a job, and sucks your entire life out of you? He’s not so bad, really. He actually loves you, honey. See? He can be fixed!

  Anyway, I love Horror because Horror is, at its root, about psychology. Horror, at its best, is complicated too. That’s why the best, scariest monsters are rarely seen and when they are seen, they aren’t seen in the bright light. The most profound fear is inside our own heads. Hitchcock knew it. Stephen King seems to have been born knowing it with every fiber of his being. Shirley Jackson? Oh, hells yes, she knew — even Ridley Scott knows it. “Alien” is one of my favorite horror films by the way. It’s a haunted house story set in space, after all. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is about McCarthyism. (My favorite film version is the 1978 one.) Zombies? I strongly suspect that the popularity of zombies these days is based on Americans’ fear of internal political opposition, and thus, a new variety of McCarthyism. Werewolves, well, werewolves are particularly fun. They can be about our inhumanity to other humans, the ravages of PMS (“Ginger Snaps“, anyone?), uncontrolled rage, insanity… even terrorism. (You knew I had to go there. ) Vampires? Classism. (The rich literally eating the poor.) Addiction. Or, if you’re Bram Stoker, vampires are about the scary, scary power of female sexuality.

  My advice? If you want to create a really effective monster, the best place to start is to look in the mirror.

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• Never Mind the Spiders, Don’t Go Swimming in the Lake

  Monsters

  Huge congratulations to Thomas Roche, whose novel The Panama Laugh is out in the world at last! After reading Thomas’s excellent posts here at the Night Bazaar for so long, I’m really looking forward to reading his book – the story sounds like a weird and wonderful ride. Don’t forget to comment on this post with a monster you like (or find scary!) for your chance at a free copy!

  Well, I’m right with Mark Lawrence in his guest post yesterday – spiders freak me the hell out. Though in my case, I can trace my unease to a specific childhood incident. As a very young girl I was playing in my grandmother’s garden in Atlanta – the sort of garden with narrow flagstone paths winding through overgrown bushes and drooping tree limbs – and I blundered face-first into this entire NEST of spiders. I don’t know if they were newly hatched or what, but I ended up with about a zillion little spiders all through my hair and crawling over my face and in my clothes and oh God, it took AGES for my mom to get them all off me. (more…)

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• Mark Lawrence: People Make The Scariest Monsters

  Guest Post

  Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled. His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say ’this isn’t rocket science … oh wait, it actually is’. His debut fantasy novel Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire #1) released in the U.S. on August 2.

  Spiders have too many legs, but it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. Millipedes have way more legs and they’re not the stuff of nightmare. Spiders have long articulated legs and they sit in the middle of them waiting to scurry. The horror lies in the way that they move, and the way in which they are still. Possibly, to someone lacking the gene for the primal fear we arachnophobes possess, it’s as hard to understand a fear of spiders as it is to understand a fear of table legs . . . but you guys are just wrong in the head. Every decent human is afraid of spiders. It’s in the bible somewhere. I expect.

  In any event, although spiders are rightly held by honest folk to be scary, they are not particularly scary in fiction. Moreover, even with my bone-deep revulsion of the beasts I have been far more scared and more scarred by people, even the unremarkable common-or-garden school bullies of my childhood left a greater impression on me. Which brings me to my perhaps disappointing conclusion that the most chilling monsters in fiction aren’t giant arachnids, kraken from the depths, daleks, or aliens of the face-hugging kind, they’re just people. It takes imagination and understanding to be a real monster. Nasties with too many legs or too few may butcher us efficiently, or in slow bizarre fashion, each according to their kind, but what scares me most is the man next door, ordinary in all respects save that one small piece of his mind is broken. That man (or woman, or curious child) shares so much of your experience, knows how we humans work, where our horrors lie, what hurts, what humbles, what deconstructs. He comes bringing his own fears to project across the canvas of your skin. The greatest cowards can be the cruellest of creatures. And they know about the spiders. (more…)

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