SMBC Comics Forum

Does anyone else enjoy reading books like ''Frankestein'' ?

What other books like Frankenstein are there? I'm sure a plethora of penny dreadfuls focused on reanimating corpses through electrical stimulation exist, but I consider Frankenstein to be rather unique in its content.

If you are talking of Frankenstein in generic genre terms, then I do, yes. I wouldn't consider it horror as such, as it's more of a fable of human foible. Gothic fiction is a genre I have, and will continue to, read. From the Castle of Otranto to House of Leaves, there's quite the hefty span of Gothic literature to enjoy.

I'm currently reading Frankenstein so there's that. I don't read a lot of horror, but I don't mind it, I just find it's not usually done well.

I also have Lovecraft sitting on my bookshelf that I'm sure I'll get to one of these days.

You only need to read one or two Lovecraft stories to get the gist of all of them.

The gist is: black people are scary.

Yeah, I've been warned about the racism. That might kill the scary a bit.

Liriodendron_fagotti wrote:You only need to read one or two Lovecraft stories to get the gist of all of them.

The gist is: black people are scary.

I dunno, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath was wildly different from most of his other stuff while at the same time having a shitload of references to other stories he had written. Of course, the racism present in some of his stories does suck, but I found it worth it to read a large selection of his stories. He had one hell of an imagination.

smiley_cow wrote:Yeah, I've been warned about the racism. That might kill the scary a bit.

Talk about white privilege, am I right??

I enjoyed Frankenstein, but like Fellstaff, I wouldn't consider it horror. I read most of what Lovecraft wrote when I was a teenager. I liked most of it then, but found most of tedious when I was older. I think the only thing I'd probably be interested in re-reading would be At the Mountains of Madness. Because even though it wasn't all that scary while reading it,* it gave me crazy nightmares, so I assume it was making an impression.

*I didn't really find any of Lovecraft's stuff to be scary and I'm a big wimp when it comes to horror, which is why I don't read generally read horror.

I'd probably put Frankenstein in my top 10 books.

But I also wouldn't consider it horror. Plus I don't like horror. Neither in literature (the last time I read anything horror would probably be in grade school when I mowed through a lot of RL Stine) nor in cinema. Though in cinema it really depends how rigid or loose your definition is. I like zombie films (which might count, I'd say) and all manor of suspense thrillers (which rarely cross into horror, to my taste). But if it is a deliberately scary movie, I'll pass for the most part. It doesn't help that I think the only time that I've been 'scared' in any film is when something jumps out. And that's just being startled, not scared.

Lethal Interjection wrote:It doesn't help that I think the only time that I've been 'scared' in any film is when something jumps out. And that's just being startled, not scared.

On the head.

Films that rely solely on sudden, loud, startling moments in order to scare you are the worst. I should post this in the pet peeves thread.

Even though it can be an effective device (the scene with the dead fisherman's face floating in front of the hole of the boat in Jaws springs to mind, as does a coupla scenes from Alien), it has to be used sparingly, as part of a broader spectrum of scariness devices.

For books (as we are indeed in the book subforum), for a book to truly scare me, it has to infer horror, rather than describe it. Having a door close on a potentially gruesome scene is far more scary than being told everything that happens in that scene. Being withheld information, and being forced to imagine what could be happening, is far more terrifying than any descriptive prose.

The filmic equivalent would be the camera moving away from Mr. Blonde holding a blade to Nash's ear in Reservoir Dogs.

I love it when people agree with me.

I think the first time I recall being legitimately 'scared' (or more accurately startled) in a movie was in Independence Day when Brent Spiner's face slammed against the plexiglass.

Putting my thoughts about 'scary' movies aside, there have been a couple of films I found somewhat creepy. Really only 2 movies fit that bill. The Shining and The Ring. I wouldn't say that they had a lasting creepiness, just that I will concede that they are a little bit unsettling.

The only movie I can think of off the top of my head that I found really creepy was 'Princess Mononoke'. Especially that scene where the humans were using the bore skin as cover.

The only stories I can think of that I've found legitimately creepy/scary are ghost stories. Though maybe that's just me and I'm afraid of ghosts (I don't personally believe in ghosts), and I don't find they particularly scare me per se, but tend to have an underlying creepy quality throughout that I really like.

I think Margaret Atwood scares me. Some of her books have terrifyingly brutal characters that give pretty immediate fear but they also portray frighteningly believable near-future societies that give a much more lingering fear. For example, the worlds in 1984 and Brave New World are pretty shitty, but they seem hugely unrealistic to come to fruition anywhere near like the authors wrote them. Atwood's Oryx & Crake trilogy, however, follows from the current trends of corporatism, lack of action over climate change, animal extinctions, depletion of non-renewable resources, genetic engineering*, private military contractors**, jaded attitudes towards violence, and even internet culture and I could honestly believe living in that world within the 21st century.

*which I think is a great technology as-is

**I don't know how big news the Blackwater (now Academi) shootings were outside the US, but it's a scary organization