Literature of Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy

Whether I was playing World of Warcraft , watching Lord of the Rings , or reading The Hobbit , I was always immersed fantasy. What can I say, I was (and still am) a nerd. But there was something about these stories and the characters in them that kept me coming back. I think part of it was because it was something outside of my day to day. It was something fantastical, something exhilarating, something more. It was, in this sense, an escape from the drawl of my everyday life, filled with possibilities and new lands to explore. Nonetheless, while the world itself was enough for me, I think the characters are what made these stories stick. Recently, during my rereading of The Hobbit , I paid particular attention to the arch of the main character, Bilbo Baggins. In most fantasy and mythological works, the main character or the “hero” is young, strong, and courageous. Yet, Bilbo is not your typical heroic character. He is middle-aged, lays around his house too much, and is far to...

Cower in fear for the witches are here! Throughout mankind’s history, this was the predominate image of witches: evil, impure, nasty creatures. Anyone anywhere could get accused of being one and, with lethal tests being the only way to prove your innocence, it was often a death sentence. Even today, people continue to be executed for witchcraft and sorcery in countries like Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, the accused tend to be less of the magical sort, and more of just an inconvenience to the accuser. Whether it be the confident, outspoken woman, or the hard-working domestic charging their employer with sexual assault, witchcraft was and still is frequently used as an excuse to silence women. The archetype of the witch thus stems from the victimization of women, representing all that men fear they could become. At the same time, however, they represent women empowerment, their actions showing strength independent from men. It’s no wonder, then, that societies came to fear witches, as...

Flying bears, biotech, giant amoeba-like creatures that can speak. What did I just get myself into? It’s known as the “new weird,” a subgenre of horror that my recent read, Borne by Jeff Vandermeer, perfectly encapsulates. From horror to sci-fi to fantasy, the new weird incorporates elements from various different genres. In the case of Borne , it does all three. The novel opens with the image of a giant, flying bear, called Mord, who rules the dystopian city the protagonist lives in. Through this, we immediately get a glimpse of the scale at which this novel works in. The very existence of such a fantastical creature, in addition to the Mord “proxies” we see later on in the novel, invokes a sense of fantasy in the reader while the dystopic future and massive amounts of biotechnology lay out the foundation for science-fiction. On the other hand, the blood and gore present throughout the novel, coupled with the actions of the creature Borne, suggest it is horror. You would thi...

A Wild Sheep Chase: perhaps the weirdest book I’ve ever read. Following the life of one unnamed narrator, the book covers his travel as he tracks down a magical sheep capable of possession. A magical sheep you say? What nonsense! But is it really all that strange? A Wild Sheep Chase was written by Haruki Murakami is 1982. Having grown up in Japan, he was immersed in their culture. As a result, regardless of how much his novels tend to appeal to western readers, they are, in essence, deeply rooted in Japanese culture - a culture which thrives in a framework where everything is alive, be it the people or the rocks. They are, from my western point of view, more spiritual in this sense. Conversely, as westerners, we have a habit of separating everything into either the natural or the supernatural. There is no in-between. In this sense, we are more materialistic. What we might view as the “supernatural” may be viewed as a continuum of the natural in Japan. When taking A Wild ...