Am I missing out?

It is well documented that I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to being scared. I don’t like horror generally, and sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on some great stuff. Well, let me rephrase. I know I’m missing out on some great stuff, but sometimes I wonder if I should care more about it.

There are some things I give not one shit about – the Saw franchise, for example. It can be as ingenious in its gory traps as it wants, but I’m someone it just isn’t going to be appealing to anytime soon. However, there are some things that perhaps I should make more of an effort to try, despite my fears.

I can get behind horror in a sci-fi setting a little more easily – I love Alien for example, and I might be one of only a few people that looks back on Event Horizon with fondness. I was scared watching those films, but still enjoyed them – in fact watching Alien for the first time all alone on ITV one Saturday night while my parents were out, eyes wide and heart hammering almost out of my chest as Ripley, Jones in hand, raced for the dubious safety of the Nostromo’s escape pod while lights flashed and smoke poured will always be one of my fondest film-related memories. But more standard horror is something I have tended to avoid, and continue to do so. Watching the Japanese language Ring trilogy left me feeling really quite traumatised (I swear I could see Sadako in every fucking shadow for months afterward) and while I can say they are decent films (the first one is genuinely excellent), I have no desire to watch them again anytime soon.

So I guess what it boils down to is that I need to find the good stuff and avoid the crap. Easier said than done when I’ve generally avoided the genre for so long. I think I’ve found two places I might be able to start, though. Being married to a librarian is a truly brilliant thing – I’ve found China Miéville and Anne Leckie, kept up with Brandon Sanderson’s latest releases and picked up classics from H. G. Wells, J. G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to Rach, I recently read Weaveworld, a fairly old novel written by Clive Barker – he of Hellraiser fame. Hellraiser and its sequels is probably a prime example of the kind of thing I tend to avoid. Weaveworld is one of those books that just boggles the mind – not only the imagination and the story, but the prose. Barely a page went by in that book that I didn’t find a passage, or a line, or a few words that made me take a breath and just admire the craft of an absolute master of words. The only other two authors I’ve found to be comparable in terms of that gobsmacking use of language are the aforementioned China Miéville and Stephen King. What is striking is that there are many moments of horror in Weaveworld and in Miéville’s work, and I’ve heard tell that King might dabble in horror from time to time as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure because the only books of his I’ve read so far is the Dark Tower series.

There’s got to be something in that, right? The three most gifted authors I’ve read have strong horror threads in much of their writing, with Barker and King famous for specialising in it? I’m clearly more comfortable when my horror is mixed with other genres – the sci-fi of Alien, Weaveworld is fantasy, The Dark Tower is also fantasy, with a large dose of western and Miéville is, frankly, beyond categorisation. Maybe I can use Barker and King to cross over into more straight horror?

Games are the same. I have tried to get through Bioshock a number of times – the premise is wonderful and the game is clearly quality – generally thought of as pretty much the best of the last generation. But when I play it before long I find myself a little too creeped out and I move on to something else. I want to play it. I want to finish it. I want to move on to Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, but I want to get through Bioshock first.

So maybe that’s where I’ll start. Pick up another Clive Barker or Stephen King book. Finish Bioshock. Maybe then I’ll find the guts to keep going and see what I’ve been missing out on. Maybe.

Read like nobody’s watching.

If fantasy books were music they would probably be jazz. Many of the people that like them often talk and act as if they know more about writing / playing that other mere mortals, and assume readers / listeners of other styles simply cannot grasp with their limited intellect what the converted know instinctively. At the same time they will not consider listening to / reading any other genre, knowing without doubt it won't be worth the effort. Everyone else knows it's mostly shit and a bit of an embarrassing genre, that maybe you have a fling with at one time in your life and hopefully move on from. Having said that, occasionally there is an example of the genre, a piece written / performed by a writer / player of such dazzling talent, that it deserves to transcend the genre and if those who write it off were to give it a chance the complexity, intricacy and scale of the piece would simply blow their minds.

My favourite book, even after all these years, is still probably To Kill a Mockingbird, even though I haven't read it in donkey's years, but beyond that it's more likely to be Lord of the Rings or Dune. I try to be as eclectic as possible, but like an old schoolfriend that never changes, I often find myself coming back to the genres of the geeks and social lepers. Why? Not sure. Maybe it's easier to get lost in a story if it's further removed from reality. Maybe the escapism is what's important. It's one thing to tackle themes, characterisation and organic plot developments within a real world that everybody knows intimately; it's quite another to conceive of, imagine, develop and design that world from scratch within the confines of your own head (or in the case of sci-fi sometimes many different worlds) and to describe events barely on the fringe of tangible understanding (hello, Peter F. Hamilton) while still being able to make the reader connect on an emotional level.

In this respect, I think writers of crime thrillers and romantic guff have it easier here. The world-building is already done. There's a fairly recently-arrived-in-the-UK writer, goes by the name Brandon Sanderson, who is open and honest about the difficulties involved in crafting a fully realised fantasy series like no other writer I know. He's the guy who's taken over finishing the Wheel of Time series following the death of creator Robert Jordan. It is Sanderson's own Mistborn trilogy, however, that really shows what's involved. It took something approaching nearly 30 drafts of the series before he considered it complete. Years of refining the plot, the characters, the magic system (something else the fantasy writer has to develop which is unique to the genre, and bastard hard to get right, if Sanderson's notes are anything to go by), the world, the politics and countless other elements. On his website there is a chapter by chapter commentary, and he'll share early drafts of the series with anyone who asks, as well as giving updates on current projects. The work paid off. While, admittedly, most efforts in the genre are, well, shite, Mistborn is remarkable, pulling together themes of religion and atheism, morality, redemption, corruption and a boatload of other stuff, with startling action, possible only with the help of a genius magic system. A series that deserves to be read even by people who have long since moved on from that fantasy bollocks.