Week Four: The New Weird

      

      After roughly 200 years after the rise of the Gothic genre, new stories have become strained. “Classic” horror has been done hundreds of times and it takes a lot more elements are needed to keep audience attention. There needs to be another layer of cleverness to capture an audience or make them feel scared. This has lead to some truly unique piece of literature because to stand out from the body of existing work, there must be a hook.

            This week, I looked at some of Three Moments of an Explosion’s short stories. Personally, I did not find them to be particularly terrifying, but rather just fascinating to read. Most the the stories have interesting concepts and open endings that let he reader infer whatever they please from the stories. Sometimes that can be even more terrifying than clearly explained stories.

            In “The Condition of New Death”, the story embodies the fear of the unknown and change. It involves a concept that people find unpleasant that is hard to understand, such as death, and adds a new supernatural element to it. This acts as a sort of exploration into how people react to change and ends on a dark hint of how humans must overcome it. This leaves the reader on a threatened note that may cause the reader to remember the story long after they read it, and carry it with them through their day which is the goal of most horror literature.

            In another story, The 9^th Technique, where the main character messes with magic that goes wrong. This story’s theme explores the idea of magic that should not be touched or magic that is misused. It is written is a confusing manor that is hard to understand, but it ends with the magic chrysalis growing endlessly and never hatching. I kind of think of this as embodying the fear of how ignoring one’s problems can lead them to consume you.