Books

On the storytelling family tree, suspense and horror are shoots of the same literary branch, attached to a common trunk and rooted in our primitive collective reptilian brain. That sense of disquieting tension one feels when watching Clarice Starling wade through the murky pitch darkness of Buffalo Bill’s death house plucks a chord deep within our psyche, reminding us of a time when our distant, primal ancestors braved untamed wilds on a daily basis.

Let’s begin with some unusual facts about human anatomy:

- Some women can lactate through the skin of their armpit after giving birth.

- A condition called hyperdontia causes people to be born with an excessive amount of teeth.

- Body odor originates from bacteria eating sweat on the skin’s surface.

- Approximately one in one-thousand people are born with extra digits on their hands or feet.

- The average person produces enough saliva during their lifetime to fill two swimming pools.

Ah, the Wild West. The mere mention of the term arouses near-mythic associations profoundly embedded in the American national psyche. That period of Manifest Destiny, of expansive vistas and painted horizons. Cowboys and Indians, desperadoes, cattle rustlers, long nights on the open range, showdowns at high noon. Jesse James and Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Even while it was happening, the era of westward expansion was being romanticized in dime novels and newspaper articles fed to a public fascinated with the lawless frontier, and the advent of Hollywood only cemented that legendary legacy in the cultural consciousness.

In 1968, a minor television commercial director helmed a low-budget black-and-white production in the pastoral American barrens outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and irrevocably altered the course of entertainment history. George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead--with its stark survivalist plot, graphic gore and uncompromising ending--was unlike anything seen on the silver screen and became the forbearer of a wave of socially relevant horror untethered from the old-world monsters of previous generations. The undead gut-munchers assailing that backwoods farmhouse weren’t suave vampiric counts from some far-off land or melancholy noblemen afflicted by a loathsome lycanthrope curse--they were us, humanity reduced to its ravenous primordial impulses, a mindless mass, capable of crushing our fragile civilization with the sheer weight of their ghastly numbers.

Dreams, their content, meaning, interpretation and influence upon our waking lives, have fascinated humankind for thousands of years. Our ancient ancestors in Sumer, Egypt and Babylon believed Divine agents routinely communicated with us during those nightly journeys through slumberland, yet over a century's worth of data collection by Oneirologists (dream studiers) has failed to uncover precisely where dreams originate, if a single or multiple regions of the brain are involved, or what evolutionary purpose dreaming serves for either mind or body.

The British medievalist scholar and author Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) is best remembered for his volumes redefining supernatural fiction. First published at the dawn of the twentieth century, his perfected narrative devices set a gold standard, pulling ghost stories from the cliché of formal Gothic backdrops in favor of realistic contemporary settings and everyday protagonists. Highly regarded even today, the classic Jamesian tale (as his technique was dubbed) often featured quiet, quaint English villages, seaside towns or country estates imperiled by vengeful wraths intruding upon our world from beyond the grave, and echoes of James' craft linger in the works of such subsequent literary icons as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, T.E.D. Klein, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King.

True to the old saying, family is the tie that binds. No matter how much we grow and change as individuals, from womb to tomb we are inescapably a part of that unchosen genetic lineage whether we like it or not. Often that blood bond is a beneficial boon--ideal families love us, raise us, teach us, but sometimes, for an endless variety of reasons, families don't get along, and over time disagreements, arguments and long-lingering animosities cause rifts that can be difficult, if not impossible to bridge. In any other social situation resolution could be achieved through a mutual (or forced) parting of ways, but if a relative becomes toxic to your life, then what? Is it ever possible to completely sever those hereditary links?

In the August, 1928 issue of seminal pulp fiction publication Weird Tales (the same magazine responsible for first popularizing the material of cosmic horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft), a story by legendary Conan creator Robert E. Howard appeared featuring a somber and gloomy 17th century Puritan wanderer whose sole motivation was the destruction of evil in all its unearthly forms. Solomon Kane's inaugurate adventure, 'Red Shadows', set the tone for much of the character's later excursions--deeply religious, Kane sported all-black attire and boldly confronted his infernal enemies with rapier, dirk and a brace of flintlock pistols. Readers of the era lapped it up, and multiple stories in the series were released before Howard's tragic and untimely death.

From Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses to Salinger's Holden Caulfield to the fantastical coming-of-age adventures of a certain Hogwarts wizard, the trials and tribulations of youth are a cornerstone of literary endeavors both fictional and autobiographical. Those awkward, exhilarating, often painful days where one learns who they are and seeks to blaze their own trail through life's uncertain jungle can yield the most compelling of dramas and retains a timeless allure for both authors and audiences alike. And why not? Who among us hasn't experienced the teenage travails of academia, that heady rush of first romance, the pleasure and pitfalls of newfound independence?

According to the A.I. Index, since the year 2000, the annual investment from venture capital firms into U.S. startups utilizing artificial intelligence systems has increased as much as six times, and statistics show that overall global investments in A.I. research and applications is set to reach $500 billion by 2024. A CBC Radio interview with Dr. David Levy even quoted the A.I. expert as predicting, "...in a few generations, we won't just be having sex with robots, we'll be marrying them."

In culinary terms, certain flavors compliment one another, and the more palatable combinations become iconic, even a part of our collective culture: hamburgers and fries, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti and meatballs, pizza and beer, salted caramel. In entertainment, too, the mixing of distinctly separate genres can oftentimes yield potent new hybrid strains of literary or cinematic enjoyment. Vampire fiction, for instance, though undeniably a foundational cornerstone of horror, lends itself easily to the overwrought melodrama of gothic literature and the bodice-ripping eroticism of romance novels. The shadowy essence of hard-boiled pulp detective stories paired with sleek science fiction tropes eventually birthed the cyberpunk movement. Even the banal romantic comedy is a cross-pollination of two seemingly incompatible narrative types that merged to form the silver screen equivalent of apple pie and ice cream.

It may sound like the title of the latest romance manga, but Nat Gertler's Wife Gets Smart, Makes Husband Happy is a time capsule of comic strips that gives insight to an era in the United States where food rationing was enforced and families were encouraged to grow their own food so that more processed food was available for American soldiers.

Settled in the 9th century by seafaring Scandinavian explorers, Iceland sits alone just below the Arctic Circle amid the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, its imposing, glaciated, volcanic shores having evolved from one of the poorest areas in Europe into one of the most technologically advanced, peaceable and ecologically friendly nations on Earth. Yet in spite of its modern reputation as a marvel of renewable energy and beloved tourist destination, Iceland retains a crucial mystique. The average American's knowledge of the island has less to do with its Viking-era sagas and eddas than with its quirky cultural oddities--Björk, the Icelandic Phallological Museum, Keeping Up With The Kattarshians, svið (Google it at the risk of losing your appetite)--but to simply accept Iceland as a place of cute eccentricities is to ignore its shadowy legacy.

"My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring." --Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

During the 1980’s a wave of hyper-explicit genre fiction emerged, dubbed ‘splatterpunk’ by the horror press, that focused less on classical story spookiness than visceral expressions of extreme violence. Led by a vanguard of young, hip writers like Clive Barker, David J. Schow, Craig Spector and John Skipp, Richard Laymon and, later, Poppy. Z Brite, the loosely-defined movement instigated a polarizing split among the practitioners of literary terror. Some critical authors, most vocally notable being the late Charles Grant, lambasted the new gory aesthetic and advocated a return to more traditional forms of written fear in the vein of Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, with their focus on atmosphere, mood, setting and character rather than imitative cinema slasher-style butchery.

Anyone out there has the potential to write a children’s book and with a little bit of advice and guidance, it can be a good one that is enjoyed by thousands of children. The steps involved in ensuring a children’s book is a success are listed below.

Find the best idea

Most writers of children’s books start off with an idea already in mind, although it often needs refining in order to make it a success. Do this by doing some research online and reading other children’s books that cover similar themes. However, it is important to make sure that it is different enough that it will attract people to pick it up and read it. One way of doing this is by including a plot twist or something that the reader would not necessarily expect to happen.

Develop the main characters

In ancient times, the concept of what we call a vacation--those rejuvenating get-away-from-it-all excursions to exotic locales--existed solely for the upper echelons of society. The equivalent of upper-middle-class Roman elites popularized the notion of visiting far-flung areas of their Mediterranean empire for relaxation, and during the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance the nobility retreated to faraway countryside estates for extended leisure stays. Only in the nineteenth century, however, with the ascendancy of the true, widespread middle class and fostered by new and easier modes of transportation--railroads, steamboats, stagecoaches, the horseless carriage--did vacationing become available to the masses. In America, Florida, then California, established the first resorts to attract mass-tourism, and by the 1890’s, company-abetted vacations became the norm, allowing those early Clark Griswolds to indulge their adventurous spirits.

Ahhhh, a vacation. To get away from the crushing rat race of the workaday world, to trade the million-and-one soul-corroding frustrations of modern life for exotic shores, white sandy beaches, blue skies, surf, sun, good food and plenty of umbrella-accented cocktails. To bask on your lounge chair, relax, and let your troubles slip away, steadfast in the knowledge that the ravenous horde of brain-hungry undead devouring the other beach combers will never get to you.

Wait, what? A zombie apocalypse on this beautiful tropical isle wasn't highlighted in the brochure at the travel agency. Is it too late to consider a refund?

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

                                        --H.P. Lovecraft

Horror stories, it has been contended, were likely the first types of tales created and told by humans. For primitive, cave-dwelling bands isolated in an unknowable, hostile world not of their making, surrounded daily by pain and terror and death, recounting ghastly events--both real and elaborately imagined--served to process their harsh surroundings in a way that not only entertained, but educated.

Do not venture into the valley over the next ridge, one aged Neanderthal says to the disbelieving youths of his tribe. If you do, you shall never return.

This may come as something of a shock to readers who have entered the world of DC Comics within the past 20 years, but there are actually more characters in that universe than just the ones appearing in the BATMAN comics. So many, in fact, that at one point in the mid-1980s, DC saw fit to publish a monthly index of each character in alphabetical order. Who's Who in the DC Universe ran for twenty-four issues to run through the DC pantheon from A to Z... and even then, it wasn't complete, because new characters were continually added, origins were being tweaked, universes were collapsing, and -- you get the idea. So update volumes were published, including an innovative production method of printing the pages on 3-hole looseleaf for collecting in two different 3-ring binders (with covers by George Perez and Brian Bolland, and I'm glad to actually possess both of them). 

Yeah, there was a lot to keep up with.