Danse Macabre   ::   Кинг Стивен

This is not to suggest that writing must be justified on the basis of its usefulness; to simply delight the reader is enough, isn't it?

This is a world I've lived in of my own choosing since I was a kid, since long before the Stratford Theater and Sputnik I. I am certainly not trying to tell you that the Russians traumatized me into an interest in horror fiction, but am simply pointing out that instant when I began to sense a useful connection between the world of fantasy and that of what My Weekly Reader used to call Current Events. This book is only my ramble through that world, through all the worlds of fantasy and horror that have delighted and terrified me. It comes with very little plan or order, and if you are sometimes reminded of a hunting dog with a substandard nose casting back and forth and following any trace of interesting scent it happens to come across, that is fine with me.

But it's not a hunt. It's a dance. And sometimes they turn off the lights in this ballroom.

But we'll dance anyway, you and I. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

May I have the pleasure?



CHAPTER II

Tales of the Hook

THE FIRST ISSUE of Forrest Ackerman's gruesomely jovial magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland that I ever bought contained a long, almost scholarly article by Robert Bloch on the difference between science fiction films and horror films. It was an interesting piece of work, and while I do not recall all of it after eighteen years, I do remember Bloch saying that the Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby collaboration on The Thing (based on John W. Campbell's classic science fiction novella "Who Goes There?") was science fiction to the core in spite of its scary elements, and that the later film Them! , about giant ants spawned in the New Mexico desert (as the result of A-bomb tests, naturally), was a pure horror film in spite of its science fiction trappings.

This dividing line between fantasy and science fiction (for properly speaking, fantasy is what it is; the horror genre is only a subset of the larger genre) is a subject that comes up at some point at almost every fantasy or science fiction convention held (and for those of you unaware of the subculture, there are literally hundreds each year). If I had a nickel for every letter printed on the fantasy/sf dichotomy in the columns of the amateur magazines and the prozines of both fields, I could buy the island of Bermuda.

It's a trap, this matter of definition, and I can't think of a more boring academic subject. Like endless discussions of breath units in modern poetry or the possible intrusiveness of some punctuation in the short story, it is really a discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and not really interesting unless those involved in the discussion are drunk or graduate students-two states of roughly similar incompetence. I'll content myself with stating the obvious inarguables: both are works of the imagination, and both try to create worlds which do not exist, cannot exist, or do not exist yet. There is a difference, of course, but you can draw your own borderline, if you want-and if you try, you may find that it's a very squiggly border indeed. Alien , for instance, is a horror movie even though it is more firmly grounded in scientific projection than Star Wars. Star Wars is a science fiction film, although we must recognize the fact that it's sf of the E. E. "Doc" Smith/Murray Leinster whack-and-slash school: an outer space western just overflowing with PIONEER SPIRIT.

Somewhere in between these two, in a buffer zone that has been little used by the movies, are works that seem to combine science fiction and fantasy in a nonthreatening way- Close Encounters of the Third Kind , for instance.

With such a number of divisions (and any dedicated science fiction or fantasy fan could offer a dozen more, ranging from Utopian Fiction, Negative Utopian Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, Heroic Fantasy, Future History, and on into the sunset), you can see why I don't want to open this particular door any wider than I have to.

Let me, instead of defining, offer a couple of examples, and then we'll move along-and what better example than Donovan's Brain?

Horror fiction doesn't necessarily have to be nonscientific. Curt Siodmak's novel Donovan's Brain moves from a scientific basis to outright horror (as did Alien ). It was adapted twice for the screen, and both versions enjoyed fair popular success. Both the novel and the films focus on a scientist who, if not quite mad, is certainly operating at the far borders of rationality. Thus we can place him in a direct line of descent from the original Mad Labs proprietor, Victor Frankenstein.* This scientist has been experimenting with a technique designed to keep the brain alive after the body has died-specifically, in a tank filled with an electrically charged saline solution.

*And on back to Faust? Daedalus? Prometheus? Pandora? A genealogy leading straight back into the mouth of hell if ever there was one!

In the course of the novel, the private plane of W. D. Donovan, a rich and domineering millionaire, crashes near the scientist's desert lab. Recognizing the knock of opportunity, the scientist removes the dying millionaire's skull and pops Donovan's brain into his tank.

So far, so good. This story has elements of both horror and science fiction; at this point it could go either way, depending on Siodmak's handling of the subject. The earlier version of the film tips its hand almost at once: the removal operation takes place in a howling thunderstorm and the scientist's Arizona laboratory looks more like Baskerville Hall. And neither film version is up to the tale of mounting terror Siodmak tells in his careful, rational prose. The operation is a success. The brain is alive and possibly even thinking in its tank of cloudy liquid. The problem now becomes one of communication. The scientists begins trying to contact the brain by means of telepathy . . . and finally succeeds. In a half-trance, he writes the name W. D. Donovan three or four times on a scrap of paper, and comparison shows that his signature is interchangeable with that of the millionaire.

In its tank, Donovan's brain begins to change and mutate. It grows stronger, more able to dominate our young hero. He begins to do Donovan's bidding, said bidding all revolving around Donovan's psychopathic determination to make sure the right person inherits his fortune. The scientist begins to experience the frailties of Donovan's physical body (now moldering in an unmarked grave): low back pain, a decided limp.