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.

Magic.

Considering most of the people I know, this is probably preaching to the converted, but hey, it’s been a slow month. You don’t need to look to faith, neither do you need to look to Penn, nor Teller for magic. Not real magic, anyway – that’s merely clever chicanery. Just pop to a book shop, or a library, and it’s everywhere. The way you can get hooked on the right words, the way Katie will explode with delighted laughter at the insults Willy Wonka and Grandma Georgina trade during Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the way an author can leave your head spinning by merely stringing words together.

Thanks to one of our local libraries, I’ve recently had the good fortune to read the following:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, all three bona-fide classics of American fiction. Vonnegut’s writing style curiously echoes that of J. G. Ballard, in that it is largely descriptive and unemotional, but occasionally you get suckered by a passage of such breathtaking beauty or haunting pain, you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut; particularly in Slaughterhouse 5 which recounts much of Vonnegut’s experience in World War 2, during which he was present at the bombing of the German city of Dresden.

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which recently won book of the year, for obvious reasons. There are some books you read that just hit that sweetest of spots and transport you to that moment in childhood when you are finally able to read for your own pleasure and you discover such wonders that you never suspected your imagination could hold. It’s like that, and every page holds such joy that the spell it holds you in doesn’t break, even after the final page is finished. With the exception of Good Omens, which was written with Terry Pratchett, I’m quite late to Gaiman, but boy am I glad I caught up. American Gods, Stardust and Anansi Boys are all marvellous, if not quite as transformative as The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Jasper Fforde’s The Song of the Quarkbeast, which is set in one of Fforde’s wonderful alternate versions of the UK. Aimed at younger readers, it is not quite as engaging as his other work, particularly the Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey, but is still great. Fforde is one of those writers that have such an astonishing grasp of the English language that genius wordplay and clever puns abound in his novels. The Thursday Next books are, if you can believe this, as good as Pratchett’s Discworld series. They are out there, no doubt, but if you’re not put off by all the weirdness then Fforde’s writing is hugely enjoyable.

Do yourself a favour and read some of them for yourself.