Fantasy, SF or Horror?

[Fried Egg]

Ok, I know this is a bit silly but I'm a bit bored at the mement.

Which genres do you read? You may select more than one option.

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Personally, I like all three although I don't tend to go for straight horror. I like my horror to have supernatural, cosmic or SF elements to it.

[Rosemary]

I went through a short stage of reading Horror, some Science Fiction but really and truly Fantasy is by far the best read for me!

[Talysia]

Primarily fantasy for me, too, although I've been known to read SF from time to time. I hardly ever read horror, though.

[Rodders]

No, for me it's Science Fiction first then Horror. For some reason, i've never been able to get into fantasy. That said, i haven't read any horror for a while either.

[Urien]

Of course there can be strong elements of horror in both Science Fiction and Fantasy. Tim Lebbon's Dusk is a very horror influenced fantasy... Science Fiction has its Aliens and buggles that'll suck your eyes right out of your head as soon as look at you. Perdido Street Station had steam punk SF, Fantasy and horror layered like a lasagne of speculative fiction, and jolly tasty it is too. (I claim the prize for p*ss poor simile of the month.)

[thepaladin]

Horror is of course a sub-genre of fantasy. My wife was big into it and I have read a lot of it to share books she liked. There are some that seem to cross over, she liked Koontz for example (as do I in some cases) and liked the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child Pendergast books (also books I can read without much trouble). She also liked some of King's work, Barkers, James Herbert and a few others I just don't care for (though I got through some of the books to share with her)

(I will just put this here as a word of explaination. I must now use the past tense. I was off the sight for some months recently. My wife has been bed-bound for almost 2 years and I have been her primary care giver. Due to a series of strokes she was hospitalized about 3 months ago, spending the last month in ICU. She passed away the first of August this year. Thus my absence and why I haven't been spending as much time on the sight as I was. As time pases I hope to be able to handle more.)

There is some good horror out there and some fantasy that verges on horror but doesn't quite get the title. For myself I like Lovecraft.

[The Ace]

I never got much satisfaction from horror. Love the others, though.

[chongjasmine]

I like fantasy. I am mainly reading on fantasy.

[Connavar]

I prefer SF first then horror, fantasy as my third.

I might have read more fantasy than horror but a good horror is better than a good fantasy to my taste.

Horror wise i read alot of older works, i have a trouble getting to know modern horror.

[Tansy]

Sorry to hear of your loss Paladin

I read mainly fantasy and horror with a bit of sci fi thrown into the mix occasionally

[j. d. worthington]

My condolences, Paladin -- and I will say that that sort of sharing was a wonderful way to be supportive of someone you love.

Well, I suppose if I had to choose between them, I'd probably come down on the "horror" side -- but only just. And even then, I'd have to qualify it strongly, as I'm not much of a fan of what Lovecraft called "the mundanely gruesome". I like my terror tales to have a hint, at least, of the incursion of something otherworldly, something which expands rather than contracts, the emotional reaction to the world and the imaginative possibilties out there.

More and more, I've come to agree with several recent scholars of the field that "the weird tale" is a better description than either "horror" or "terror", as many of the same emotions are aroused by very disparate types of tales, often from the same writer. Machen, for instance, with his "straight" horror of "The Great God Pan", the mingling of terror and awe, mystery, and wonder of "The White People", and the decidedly non-frightening but nonetheless weird tale of the numinous, "A Fragment of Life". (Or Blackwood, with "The Wendigo", "The Willows", and "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf".)

Of course, this is where "Fantasy" and "Horror" meet, and it is this sort of writer whose work I mostly enjoy -- the ones who can truly give that feeling of a violation of the laws of nature as we understand them, whether to stir emotions of fear, wonder, or awe.....

But, to be honest, I'm an afficionado of all three, and my choice might change from day to day....

[Fried Egg]

Actually, now I think about it, it is where the genres meet that I find most interesting these days. When exploring and probing these bounderies, authors probably feel most liberated. As the reader, you least know what to expect. And let's face it, that's what we read this sort of thing for isn't it? We want to be suprised, awe struck and confounded.

[thepaladin]

Back in the early '80s I read a nonfiction book by Stephen King called Danse Macabre. It's probably the book by him I enjoyed most. Anyway one part of the book discusses what he refers to as the three levels of horror story.

First there is terror. he uses the example of the mysterious door at the top of the stair. before the door is opened there is terror. This is what he said he strives for. To never have to open the door. Once the door is open no matter what is beyond it, no matter what it is, no matter how awful...it might always have been worse. What's in your mind is always worse.


Next there is horror. That's when the door is opened and you get to see the "horror" beyond.


Last is revulsion, or as he also calls it, the gross out.

He says he tries for Terror.....will also use horror...but isn't too proud to go for the gross out if all else fails.


Personally I think he goes for the gross out far too often.

[Tansy]

he always goes for the gross out?? but often he falls short lol

[j. d. worthington]

There have always been discussions of these differences, and my personal favorites would have to be Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Anna Laetitia Barbauld's "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror", Ann Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry", and Devendra P. Varma's The Gothic Flame, from which I take the following excerpts:

The chords of terror which had tremulously shuddered beneath Mrs. Radcliffe's gentle fingers were now smitten with a new vehemence. The intense school of the Schauer- Romantiks improvised furious and violent themes in the orchestra of horror.... The contrast between the work and personalities of Mrs. Radcliffe and ' Monk' Lewis serves to illustrate the two distinct streams of the Gothic novel: the former representing the Craft of Terror, the latter and his followers comprising the chambers of Horror....

The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse. Professor McKillop, quoting from Mrs. Radcliffe, said that " obscurity [in Terror] . . . leaves the imagination to act on a few hints that truth reveals to it, . . . obscurity leaves something for the imagination to exaggerate". Burke held that "To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary", and added that, ". . . darkness, being originally an idea of terror, was chosen as a fit scene for such terrible representations ". Burke did not distinguish between the subtle gradations of Terror and Horror; he related only Terror to Beauty, and probably did not conceive of the beauty of the Horrid, the grotesque power of something ghastly, too vividly imprinted on the mind and sense.
Terror thus creates an intangible atmosphere of spiritual psychic dread, a certain superstitious shudder at the other world. Horror resorts to a cruder presentation of the macabre: by an exact portrayal of the physically horrible and revolting, against a far more terrible background of spiritual gloom and despair. Horror appeals to sheer dread and repulsion, by brooding upon the gloomy and the sinister, and lacerates the nerves by establishing actual cutaneous contact with the supernatural...

(The above was taken from this site: Terror and Horror )

Of course, one of my favorite short quotes on the subject is from Mrs. Radcliffe: "'They must be men of very cold imaginations [...] with whom certainty is more terrible than surmise. Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them'."

What I look for in a weird tale (and frequently find also in the best fantasy -- at least, of a serious rather than humorous, nature), is something alone those lines. Which is why I tend to enjoy more of the older writers than the new (though there are some of the more recent writers who do indeed walk that tightrope very, very well, including such as Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell, T. E. D. Klein, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and the like)....