HorrorAddictsCon: Steven Rose Jr. – Illusions – Free Fiction

Illusions – Free Fiction

by Steven Rose, Jr.

This excerpt is from the title story for a collection of my short fiction that I’m putting together. The main theme of the book is going to be illusions, but not so much in the sense of magic (even though that’s what this story is about) than in the sense of delusions. So yes, do mind the pun on “illusions”. I’m not necessarily talking about abnormal psychology, but delusions that we all have when our expectations about something are too high.

One example is when a person wants that dream car. That person gets the car thinking they will be happier than they ever had been only to find out that, because it is a more expensive and higher quality vehicle, the required maintenance turns out to be more trouble than it was worth buying the car for. If the disillusionment is really extreme, the car may even turn out to be Steven King’s Christine (from the novel of that same name) or maybe even the Car itself (from the ‘70s low budget horror movie of that same name). Although both instances are highly unlikely. So while many of the stories will be about supernatural or magically generated illusions, the core or universal meaning will be about our misconceptions of life. This is what many myths do, which all forms of story telling are—they tell a truth or fact about life through imaginary means. Therefore all stories, in a way, are illusions.

Just to play a little game, see if you can guess what the magician’s trick in this portion of my story really is. Is it really a trick or is the occurrence real and therefore not an illusion at all? If it is real, can the audience’s preconceptions have been illusions themselves and therefore is the trick actually a disillusion? If so, would such an act be a paradox and therefore both an illusion and a disillusion simultaneously? You won’t find out the answer until I publish the book which I hope to do by Spring 2012. Depending on your approach to reading, you may not find an answer even when you do read the complete story and therefore may conclude that the act on a literary level is an illusion that can never be disillusioned.

Of course, please feel free to leave your answers here on this blog in the comments section but I ask that you do not make continuation scenes based on them for publication since this story is copyrighted.

Thanks.
~Steven

THE FOOL’S ILLUSION

By Steven Rose, Jr.

Freddy had seen the notice on the gray brick pillar of the wrought iron gate of Max Manus’s Magic Mansion which forewarned that the shows were not for the faint hearted. It was not until he saw what happened to Mr. Manus’s young assistant, Maggie Rosen, that he realized the notice was no mere advertisement gimmick.

It was opening night for both the show and the theatre itself. The building used to be an old Victorian mansion, hence the theatre’s name. Mr. Manus was performing the traditional thin model sawing trick. It was traditional with one exception. The box that Manus had Maggie step into was in the likeness of a black, oblong coffin. But that was not the exception.

Freddy had not realised how attracted he really was to Maggie until after that final act. He had noticed both her childishly stubby nose that was gracefully curved at the bridge and her wide, bright blue eyes. He had also noticed that, although her mouth was small, her licorice red lips were fully rounded and her skin a rosy white. Her flashing-white teeth looked like those of a baby’s whenever she smiled which was almost always. Her neck, which her chestnut brown curls dropped to the middle of, was maturely long and slender. And there had been no way he could miss her costume which consisted of a shiny leotard, a black silky pair of hot pants and black tights.

No, Maggie was not the exception either. But she was directly involved with the exception, and that is what attracted Freddy to her.

After Manus closed the coffin lid on Maggie, he sliced a blade sheet through the coffin’s center and another blade through the top third portion of the box. Then the magician separated the box segments setting each one upright on top of the black satin draped bier and opened each. Blood flowed from each segment of Maggie’s body. Her head was slightly tilted downward but her face empty of expression. About half of the audience screamed while the other half gasped in a mix of awe and terror. Freddy’s body froze . . .

Steven Rose, Jr. is a journalist and writer of fiction. His non-fiction includes book, television, and movie reviews. His fiction consists of horror and science fiction short stories, although he plans to write novels in the near future. Besides writing, Steven serves as a public relations rep for the Sacramento based network, Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society. For more information about Steven, go to: http://faroutfantastic.blogspot.com/

HorrorAddictsCon: Steven Rose Jr. – Horror and Dark Fantasy III

Horror and Dark Fantasy: One and the Same?

by Steven Rose, Jr.

Part III

The dark fantasy tends to contain literary elements from both the epic fantasy and, as stated at Beyond, a horror story. The dark fantasy plot often involves a quest on the main character’s part, but it is often a quest into darker, more forbidden settings. The hero may or may not have friends or companions on that quest with him/her. The obstacles he/she faces are menacing creatures that you find in many horror stories, creatures such as zombies or evil spirits ready to devour the hero either physically or spiritually. There often tends to be more fairy or folk tale elements in this type of story than in the epic fantasy or horror story. Therefore there may be magical creatures, such as fairies or talking animals that help the hero, and the hero may come from humble beginnings like the hero in the fairy tale often does. Also, the story’s ending is more like that in the fairy tale—a joyful ending where everything turns out good for the hero(es) and they either go on living life as normal as before or better.

These distinguishing elements between horror and dark fantasy can best be seen if we compare a horror novel such as Dracula with a dark fantasy novel such as Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. In Dracula, a young man who can be considered the hero goes on a journey to the evil count’s estate in Transylvania on business. He is imprisoned by the count, and faces many obstacles in his attempt to escape and in doing so is in utmost fear for his life. He finally does escape, but the count follows him home to his native England . It is there where Dracula causes the terror and havoc on not just the hero’s, Jonathan Harker’s, friends and beloved, Mina, but even on the society at large. The horror of this creature is that he can take control of a person’s life and soul in that he can make them into one of the living dead like himself making them have to feed off of innocent people’s blood. He is immortal and undefeatable. He can appear anywhere at anytime, and, unlike in most of the movie adaptations, can even walk about by day under certain circumstances. He can make people come to him over remote distances by merely thinking about it, like he does with Mina. He can change into a bat, wolf or mist. He can even change the appearance of his age from old to young. Jonathan Harker, Mina, and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, along with others form a kind of expedition to go after Dracula and kill him after the evil count has fled back to his native Transylvania . In this way the basic mythic motifs of the quest and battle against an enemy comes up in this novel. But even though Dracula has become a threat to an entire society, the climaxing battle here is more for an individual’s soul, Mina’s.

Gaiman’s Neverwhere is a story that is actually developed from the basic plot of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The story mostly takes place at night in the underground ofLondon . Because it’s based on Alice in Wonderland, it’s got a fairy tale quality to it and this kind of otherworld atmosphere, yet it takes place in the subterranean structures of an actual geographical based city. However, this underground world in the novel is a fantastical one in that it is seldom seen by Londoners and is occupied by magical beings and so is an environment of mystery. One of the magical beings is an enchantress who sucks the life source out of people, an element of horror since it is so close to the idea of sucking the soul out of a person and is a more personal threat like what we see in Dracula than a societal one. But the very fact that this hidden society comes out both underground and above at night while the rest of Londoners are sleeping gives the setting a more imaginary, dream-like quality seen in much of high fantasy. The majority of the characters the hero comes in contact with are of magic and mystery, as opposed to the more rational based human characters in Dracula (save for the vampires themselves, of course). One of these characters is a talking rat, a rodent character type often seen in a lot of fairy tales and fables such as The Nutcracker. So the quest inNeverwhere, unlike in Dracula, involves more fantastical characters who help the hero on his journey, and the purpose of the quest is more societal than it is personal.

Another high fantasy element in this novel is a giant boar that the heroes must battle in the sewers, a creature used as a dragon type in this story. Likewise, Dracula himself on a more implicit and symbolic level is a dragon figure. In fact, his very name derives from a word associated with dragon. As a dragon figure he is a threat to society. But more importantly he is a hoarder of not only blood but gold like the typical Western dragon is. And, of course, he is a devourer of human blood just as a dragon is the devourer or destroyer of human flesh and lives.

So in comparing these too popular novels, we can see that the distinction between the genres of horror and dark fantasy is that one is more emphasized on the threat of the individual as opposed to a whole society, more specifically the threat to a person’s soul, although dark fantasy can contain that same kind of element. However, there is a more fairy tale quality to the dark fantasy than there is to the horror story since more impossible characters occur, characters like talking and humanized animals such as the talking rat in Gaiman’s novel. In the horror story, the characters are more rational and realistic and the plot, although fantastical in its involving supernatural creatures, consists of more realistic and so more believable events.

Another factor that we shouldn’t overlook is that the distinction between these two genres is also due to the commercial industry’s categorization and marketing of fiction. The majority of book retailers sell their literary merchandise according to popular interests and therefore according to what the majority of customers are going to be looking for in story type. But in order for retailers to do that, and in order for them to consider readers’ preferences, the literary conventions of these story types have to be considered.

So the distinction between the genres of horror and dark fantasy seem to be based on two factors: literary convention and marketing. Yet when looking at the conventions closely between stories of these two subgenres, the distinction seems very blurred because many of these conventions are used to a more or lesser degree in both. What are your thoughts on the differences in these two subgenres? Would you say the two are based more on conventions or more on marketing methods? Are such categorizations more up to the reader than the forces of literary convention and marketing? Are horror and dark fantasy interchangeable terms, or can dark fantasy be considered a mixed genre of horror, high fantasy and even fairy tale elements? Should both just be considered dark fiction and not have any further classifications? Let’s extend this discussion, and so please feel free to leave any answers or other comments!

References

• Beyond . . . a Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy
• http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/beyond/subjects/fantasysubgenres/index.html

Suggested Reading

• http://www.horror.org/horror-is.htm
• http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/47758-fall-2011-announcements-fiction-science-fiction-fantasy–horror-shaking-up-the-status-quo.html

Steven Rose, Jr. is a journalist and writer of fiction. His non-fiction includes book, television, and movie reviews. His fiction consists of horror and science fiction short stories, although he plans to write novels in the near future. Besides writing, Steven serves as a public relations rep for the Sacramento based network, Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society. For more information about Steven, go to: http://faroutfantastic.blogspot.com/

HorrorAddictsCon: Steven Rose Jr. – Horror and Dark Fantasy II

Horror and Dark Fantasy: One and the Same?

by Steven Rose, Jr.

Part II

Like the epic or high fantasy, the horror story also involves the unknown and mysterious, but these two elements are much more threatening to the individual. They are usually threatening to a character’s life either spiritually or physically. Therefore, the threatening force is some sort of unfamiliar being such as a ghost, demon, or vampire and often associated with the underworld like the enemy characters are in epic fantasy. But the emphasis is on the threat to the individual than it is on the one to a whole society. Although the term horror primarily has referred to a sense of fear for a person’s own soul and therefore spiritual life (as is the case with Dracula) it has also come to be associated with an extreme fear for one’s physical life.

If the threatening being is not of the supernatural realm, then it is often associated with it through superstition. This is the case with The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom is not really a supernatural being himself but, because he hides in obscure parts of the opera house and kills people, he is thought to be a ghostly presence. Throughout the horror narrative, there are many unexpected attacks or pursuits from the monster, often in dark settings, resulting in shock on the audience’s part. Needless to say, such evoking of fear plays a crucial role in the horror story.

Often at the end of a horror story, the reader or viewer is left hanging, but not in the sense of a lack of a satisfying conclusion. The audience is left hanging in the sense that they wonder what will happen to the characters’ lives after the characters have faced the traumatic situation brought on by the threatening figure or monster. Therefore the conclusion to a horror story tends not to be as joyful or promising as that of the epic fantasy, and because the story has been focused on the menacing being itself and the terror it has caused, the other characters’ lives are not elaborated on in the conclusion making it much shorter than that of the typical epic fantasy. The monster may have been destroyed by this time or somehow banished from the setting, but what happens to the characters next is anybody’s guess. The monster may return, as is the case with many Hollywood horror films (and so why sequels are so popular with them) or the main characters may have post trauma to deal with that may drive them to insanity. Because of these possibilities, the conclusion to the horror story is more realistic than the more fairy tale happy ending of the high fantasy.

References

• Beyond . . . a Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy
• http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/beyond/subjects/fantasysubgenres/index.html

Suggested Reading

• http://www.horror.org/horror-is.htm
• http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/47758-fall-2011-announcements-fiction-science-fiction-fantasy–horror-shaking-up-the-status-quo.html

Steven Rose, Jr. is a journalist and writer of fiction. His non-fiction includes book, television, and movie reviews. His fiction consists of horror and science fiction short stories, although he plans to write novels in the near future. Besides writing, Steven serves as a public relations rep for the Sacramento based network, Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society. For more information about Steven, go to: http://faroutfantastic.blogspot.com/

HorrorAddictsCon: Steven Rose Jr. – Horror and Dark Fantasy I

Horror and Dark Fantasy: One and the Same?

by Steven Rose, Jr.

Part I

In the last ten years at least, the dark fantasy subgenre has become just about as popular as the horror subgenre. The two have many similar elements even to the point where they may seem interchangeable or synonymous with each other. Dark fantasy has been permeating just about all media, including video games and books. Neil Gaiman is one of the most popular dark fantasy writers of today, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels and the TV series Supernatural can also be considered to fall under this fantasy subcategory. Authors more associated with strict horror have also written some dark fantasy–Steven King with his DarkTower series, for instance.

Two other authors, who write much science fiction and horror but also write a lot of dark fantasy are Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Ray Bradbury’s most famous dark fantasy is his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, while Ellison has famous stories of the subgenre such as “The Basilisk” and “Chatting with Anubis”.

Directors such as M. Night Shyamalan and Guillermo Del Toro who typically make horror movies, like Devil and The Orphanage, also make films that can be classified as dark fantasy: Shyamalan Lady in the Water, Del Toro Pan’s Labyrinth. It shouldn’t be too surprising that such authors and movie directors of horror also produce dark fantasy works since the two subgenres are both imaginative, dark forms of story telling, but what literary elements and conventions really distinguish the two?

Since horror has been the more popular familiar genre for a longer period of time, we’ll look at the literary conventions that make it up before we do the ones of dark fantasy. But before doing that, because dark fantasy descends from the more typical epic or high fantasy, we’ll look at the conventions of epic fantasy before looking at the ones of dark fantasy. But as far as supernatural horror goes, horror itself is also a subgenre of fantasy since it involves imaginary events such as hauntings and black magic.

Horror stories involving more realistic menacing characters, such as serial killers, would not be considered supernatural horror and so would hardly fall under the umbrella of the fantasy genre. So in general, fantasy story telling, regardless of the medium it is told through, involves any type of plot that is centered around magical or impossible events. In a wider perspective, this includes science fiction. The scientific events in a science fiction story, although much more plausible than events in high or epic fantasy, have not occurred in the present time the story is produced and so at that time of production these events are impossible, yet they are visionary since they are possible for a future time. But since we are looking at the distinctions between two subgenres of fantasy that do not primarily deal with science, we’ll disregard science fiction for purposes of this discussion. Because the fantasy genre is the umbrella that the subgenres supernatural horror and dark fantasy fall under, we’ll look at the conventions of epic/high fantasy which is the oldest form of story telling that falls under that genre.

Most epic fantasy involves either a hero’s quest or a battle to save a society–often a kingdom, maybe even the world. Magic, the supernatural, or both play a major role in the story. The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) involves wizardry and underworld creatures such as demons and spirits–the Orcs and Ringwraiths, for example–in the war that occurs throughout Tolkien’s trilogy. The main hero’s, Frodo Baggins’, quest is to take a magic ring to its rightful place and destroy it before it leads to the world domination of evil. The hero or heroes in stories such as this must face several obstacles to completing a task, these obstacles often involving the supernatural. However, they often receive help from a supernatural force such as a deity or elf, or a magic object they obtain. This is the case in the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit, when Bilbo finds the ring (before its evil power is discovered in LOTR) because he can turn invisible in times of danger by slipping it on his finger.

The hero in epic fantasy often makes it back to his/her homeland after completing the quest/battle bringing some sort of redemption to the society. Such fantasy is often also referred to as high fantasy. Northern Virginia Community College’s literary Website, Beyond . . . , indicates that a slight difference between the two terms is that high fantasy often takes place in imaginary worlds (as is the case with LOTR) whereas epic fantasy is based more in reality and so more directly based on myths rooted in our world’s history (for example, The Odyssey). A good example of epic fantasy would be Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon since it is based on Arthurian and therefore British/Celtic myth. But in nearly all circumstances both kinds of fantasy involve the unknown and mysterious. Because of this we’ll use these terms interchangeably for reasons of simplicity since this discussion’s aim is to distinguish horror and dark fantasy, not epic and high fantasy, from each other.

References

• Beyond . . . a Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy
• http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/beyond/subjects/fantasysubgenres/index.html

Suggested Reading

• http://www.horror.org/horror-is.htm
• http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/47758-fall-2011-announcements-fiction-science-fiction-fantasy–horror-shaking-up-the-status-quo.html

Steven Rose, Jr. is a journalist and writer of fiction. His non-fiction includes book, television, and movie reviews. His fiction consists of horror and science fiction short stories, although he plans to write novels in the near future. Besides writing, Steven serves as a public relations rep for the Sacramento based network, Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society. For more information about Steven, go to: http://faroutfantastic.blogspot.com/

Guest Blog: Horror Inspired Kids’ Shows – Steven Rose “From the Grave” Jr.

Horror Inspired Kids’ Shows and Tomb ‘Toons

Steven Rose “From the Grave” Jr.

 

Some of you may be wondering what place do kids’ shows have here on a Website that specializes in the genre of horror, traditionally a teen/adult genre.  Actually, horror films have inspired children’s television for decades.

Are some of you old enough to remember those cartoons and live action kids’ shows that were inspired by horror movies?  Do you remember the Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the 1980s?  If you’re old enough to remember back even further, the middle ‘70s, you may know that those weren’t really the real Ghostbusters as the cartoon series’ title indicates.  In 1975 the real, and therefore original, Ghostbusters was a live action kids’ show that, instead of involving four men and a slime pouring ghost, actually involved only two vaudeville-like men and a gorilla that assisted them on their paranormal missions.  Some of you may be saying, that was a cartoon in the 1980s.  Well you’re right, because when the “Real” Ghostbusters (my quotation marks) tried taking the Saturday morning spotlight (and they succeeded, sadly for the original Ghostbusters) the original series was revived as a cartoon in competition only it was bumped to after school-hours syndicated television.

Let’s backtrack a few years from the original Ghostbusters Saturday morning series.  There was The Funky Phantom in 1971, a Scooby Doo-like mystery cartoon series involving a group of detective like-teens and their 18^th century ghost friend.  Then around the same time there was The Groovy Ghoulies, a cartoon series based on the three most famous monsters of film, Frankenstein’s Monster (Franky), Count Dracula (Drac) and the Wolf-Man (Wolfie) and their many like friends and relatives who all dwelled in a haunted castle called “Horrible Hall”.  This series was actually a spin-off from another dark supernatural lore inspired cartoon series—Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1969) (itself a spin-off from The Archies).  Another kids’ show inspired by the three famous movie monsters was actually a live action series called The Monster Squad (1976).  In this series a computer geek-law student who works in a wax museum brings the sculptures of Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula and the Wolfman to life and they fight crime together.  The Addams Family cartoon was also aired in the early ‘70s.  The same year that Monster Squad premiered, the producers of live action kids’ shows, Sid and Marty Kroft, came out with a series called Dr. Shrinker, which was about a mad scientist and his dwarvish assistant who shrink a group of island marooned young adventurers and is always after them to perform dangerous experiments on them.

Moving forward to 1978, the same producers of Dr. Shrinker came out with another live action series called Horror Hotel, which involved many of the strange characters from the Kroft brothers’ 1969 Puff ‘N Stuff (an Oz-/Wonderland-like fantasy series): a witch named Witchy Poo, a stupid bat named just that–Stupid Bat, a mad scientist owl by the name of Dr. Blinkey, a yellow spider-like monster, a vulture and a green faced magician (from another earlier Kroft series called Lidville).  They were the staff of a haunted hotel who had a different strange guest each week (“guest” as in both guest star and hotel guest).

The following year, 1979, the New Flinstones show came out with some characters who were neighbors to the neanderthal comic family, the Frankenstones.  The patriarchal head of this ghoulish family was a neanderthal Frankenstein’s monster.  That same year premiered a cartoon based on the Dracula character, Count Quackula, about a vampire duck who, unlike most of the cartoon monsters we’ve been talking about, was not a very nice guy—or, rather, ghoul.

As we moved into the ‘80s two more horror inspired cartoon series came out on Saturday mornings: Drac Pack and Ding Bat and Friends.  Drac Pack involved three teenage descendents of the Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and the Wolf-Man who, like the characters in Monster Squad, also fought crime, only in their case up against the same group of villains each week—Dr. Dread and his evil crew of monsters.  Ding Bat was a more slapstick kind of cartoon involving a vampire dog (Dingbat), a cranky jack-o-lantern and a skeleton who wore a toilet plunger for a hat.

I already mentioned some of the cartoon series of the latter half of the 1980s such as the two Ghostbusters cartoon series.  But also, in 1988, the comedian Martin Short came out with his own Saturday morning kids’ show that was partly live action and partly animated.  In one of the live action weekly skits a Dracula-like vampire told horror stories to his child audience, the stories themselves being animated.  As the decade came to a close, the Beatlejuice movie franchise produced a Saturday morning cartoon series based on the movie’s characters.

In the 1990s, when the cable television-based Tales from the Crypt became popular on syndicated television, a cartoon version came out on Saturday mornings.  A new Addams Family cartoon series also aired.  Then R.L. Stine’s kids’ horror novel series, Goosebumps, was adapted for a live action syndicated series.

In the 2001s Cartoon Network aired The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, a series about two kids who are friends with the Grim Reaper.  Will there be more horror genre inspired cartoons and kids’ shows?  The horror genre has become more popular than ever with young people’s series of novels such as Twilight and TV series such as True Blood, Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural, not to mention the many horror movies made for the big screen such as Paranormal Activity.  How can there not be any horror inspired cartoons and live action kids shows?  Let’s hope some will premiere soon enough.  Any animators out there in the blog audience?

The cartoons and kids’ shows throughout television history have been numerous, regardless of their genre.  If I missed any titles you think should have been mentioned, then, please, leave me a comment!  I’d like to know of more myself!

Take scare, every body!

Bio
Steven Rose, Jr. is a journalist and writer of fiction.  His non-fiction includes book, television and movie reviews.  His fiction consists of horror and science fiction short stories, although he plans to write novels in the near future.

Besides writing, Steven serves as a public relations rep for the Sacramento based network, Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society.  His most recent story will be published in the Society’s short fiction anthology, Leafkin, due for release in December 2010.