A Dummy’s Guide to Horror Fiction
Samiul Bashar Samin
Before you read this article, you should be well advised that horror fiction is not everyone’s cup of tea. There will be times when specific scenes will make you want to throw up your lunch and others will give you the urge to just turn on all the lights in the house and curl up under the blanket in a ball of nerves.
The advent of horror fiction was a huge turning point for the literary world. The genre started during the Spanish Inquisitions when the sailors who travelled to distant and strange lands came back with news of horrifying vampires and monstrous sea dwellers. Horror fiction has remained a dominant part of human history.
For any beginner, a must read is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s impossible to even think about horror fiction without the contribution that this horrifyingly beautiful classic has had. Dracula, by Bram Stoker is also a must-read for any horror enthusiast. Stoker is just one of those writers who takes his sweet time to get into the story, but once he does, he WILL scare the living bejeesus out of you. And of course, the two names that have ruled supreme over the literary horror for centuries, HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Yours truly advises you read everything, AND I MEAN EVERYTHING you can find written by these two prolific writers. A good place to start would be “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories” by HP Lovecraft.
Now that we’re done with the oldies, we might as well move on to the pioneers of modern horror fiction. A prevalent name that comes to the mind of every horror enthusiast is Stephen King. Dubbed the King of horror fiction, he brought along a new age of gut wrenching horror with him. His versatility in the genre has been a constant inspiration for yours truly and you just need to read a few of his books in order to become a lifelong fan. Many of his books have had successful movie adaptations such as the Shining, The Green Mile, Misery and of course, The Shawshank Redemption. You may want to start with The Shining and then branch out to nerve-wreckers like IT,
Books like An interview with a vampire (Anne Rice), Ghost Story (Peter Straub) , The Red Dragon (Thomas Harris), Coraline (Peter Straub) and Books of Blood (Clive Barker) would be good places to start as well. At the end of the day, there are so many subgenres in horror fiction that one could spend an eternity reading them on dark, chilly nights and still not be done with them.
So, get your reading glasses on, grab a book and get ready for sleepless nights.