Libertarian Horror II

My favorite short story is "Usher I" by Ray Bradbury. It originally appeared in one of the pulps under the title, "Carnival of Madness"—but Bradbury updated and rewrote it (changing the setting to Mars) for inclusion in his masterpiece, The Martian Chronicles. The hero of the story is one Mr. Stendahl. He's a rich eccentric living in a bleak world of burned books and broken dreams, very much a product of the Fahrenheit 451 milieu. (Fahrenheit 451 was a Prometheus Hall of Fame winner in 1984.)

The difference between the censors in this story and the aforementioned novel is that the statists are more particular in "Usher I." They have outlawed all works of the excited imagination, with a special emphasis on works of fantasy and horror. Bradbury wrote this story at a time when comic books were coming under fire as cause of juvenile delinquency (especially horror and crime comics and logically extended the argument to include other kinds of "questionable" literature.

Stendahl hires a genius in robotics and spends whatever it takes to construct a replica of Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher. Then he invites a number of prominent censors and fellow travelers to a party in this fabulous house on the planet Mars… a party that will mean their horrible deaths in torture devices based on the very Poe stories they consigned to the flames. As Mr. Stendahl tells the primary villain before walling him in, "Ignorance is fatal."

At this point, I can hear the voice of Samuel Edward Konkin II announcing that "Usher II" has a happy ending, and is therefore not a horror story. To be perfectly frank(enstein) about it, I must admit there is a certain appeal to the Konkin argument. But most libertarian/fan critics of the horror story will not be so easily mollified.

Is "Usher II" a horror story? It certainly has the trappings. It is also science fiction. It is also satire. What it doesn't have is a hulking moron in a hockey mask slicing up teenage girls. Now this is not to say that there isn't a place for well wrought tale about hulking morons in hockey masks who slice up nubile young women. I would never dream of putting restrictions on art. But when the anti-horror crowd invariably drags out the same old clichés to make horror look bad, I think it is valid to respond in kind.

Genres are defined by their trappings. Otherwise we are simply speaking of fiction, good or bad. Science fiction sets a context. You can then tell any kind of story within that context. If you use scary stuff, then you're writing a scary story. As for happy endings vs. sad endings, a genre cannot be distinguished on that basis. In good Bradbury style, I have a book burning baddie get it at the climax of my story, "Clutter," (available in Robert Bloch's Psycho Paths from Tor Books—ed.) The hero wins. But this story would be the same exploration of a psychotic mind, the same study of terror, whatever the ending might be. Sure, my ending reflects a Romantic temperament; but it is still a horror story, as defined by today's market. And think it is somewhat perverse to suggest, as too many do, that horror stories must be anti-life.

The Randian catchphrase leads inevitably to my confession that I've been through this debate before. Long, long ago I sent a letter to a magazine published in a galaxy far, far away (in Canada). Does anyone remember Option? I loved the magazine and thought it was better than Reason. With the indulgence of editor Ritch, I will now reproduce the letter from September-October 1975, confident that it sets its own context:

I hope the following paragraphs will be enough to take Dwight Decker to task for his shallow dismissal of horror stories in "A Libertarian Guide to the Comics" (Option, May-June 1975).

I like the horror genre. Dwight Decker doesn't, saying that horror stories are "antithetical to the sense of life." I think that horror stories at their best are high Romanticism. Dwight Decker doesn't. But we do have a similarity—we've both read Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto and admire it. How then our different conclusions? Well, Rand makes a casual reference to "Draculas and Frankenstein monsters" in Chapter Five, the chapter from which Decker plucked his anti-horror quote. Rand says, "In its basic motivation, this school (horror) belongs to psychopathology more than to esthetics." I suggest that Rand and Decker join us as we take a look at these two traditional horror characters.

Dracula is death personified. Therefore it becomes possible to track him down and drive a stake through his heart. It becomes possible to kill death! Ray Bradbury puts the case well in "Death Warmed Over" (from the January 1968 issue of Playboy): "Death lies before you ... Now, here in the tomb, before the nightshades rouse up death disguised as Dracula, strike! ... seize the cedar stake, place it against the dread heart of Dracula and ... Bang! The echoes flee! Bang! The echoes run. Bang! The echoes die.... Through the transmutation of materials, through light and power, through film and imagination, you are larger, stronger, more powerful, more beautiful than death." Dracula dies at dawn; good conquers evil. Decker would probably have us label this scenario "anti-life." Why? Could it be because Ayn Rand isn't passionately in love with vampire stories?

Now I offer Dr. Frankenstein, alias John Galt! Blasphemy? Remember the scene in the 1931 film, Frankenstein, when Colin Clive exults over his power to translate thought into action. He is a bona fide genius. But he commits one grave sin (no pun intended). He finally accepts collectivist/mystic propaganda half-way through his great experiment, and turns against his own creation, rather than see the project through to a happy end. He gets what he deserves, via the monster, as Robert Stadler gets what he deserves in Atlas Shrugged. The innovator, Frankenstein, is what the innovator, Galt, would never allow himself to become—the fallen genius.

Decker may say, in his defense, that he was only lambasting E.C.-style horror—the sick joke story —but Rand was speaking of horror stories in general when she made the "psychopathology" crack. Besides, sick jokes can be fun.

Please note that Rand gives horror and villainy their due in her manifesto. She is fascinated by the colorful rogue so dominant throughout Romantic literature: "It is as if, under the dead crust of the altruist code … an illicit, subterranean fire were boiling chaotically and erupting once in a while; forbidden to the hero, the fire of self-assertiveness bursts forth from the apologetic ashes of a 'villain'." (Vincent Price films come readily to mind.)

Look at some of the artists she chooses to compliment: Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby), Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), and the marvelous fantasist, Fredric Brown. About the horror story, she says: "The modern ancestor of this phenomenon is Edgar Allan Poe; its archetype of purest aesthetic expression is Boris Karloff movies." We all know that Rand doesn't use sarcasm, so we can take this last comment of hers as a compliment to the best of the Karloff films. Of a novelist she admires very much, she says: "Dostoevsky gives me the feeling of entering a chamber of horrors, but with a powerful guide." And who can forget a famous novel by her favorite author, Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre-Dame?

I will grant that Ayn Rand is not a horror fiction fan, but the evidence speaks for itself—horror fans need not flee from The Romantic Manifesto, a book that prefers palaces to dungeons, without denying that one can often find the latter hidden away beneath the former; a book that defines horror stories as a purging of the emotions for the individual who enjoys them, thus firmly opposing the behaviorist notion that macabre entertainment incites crime. I wonder if Mr. Decker noticed all this stuff when he read The Romantic Manifesto. It's all there, in the book. All you have to do is look. To paraphrase Ray Bradbury, the depiction of monsters can help us make do with some rather dreadful realities.

If I were writing this letter today, I'd have toned down the Objectivist special pleading a bit, but not much. I was never an Objectivist, but I thought that Rand was worth taking seriously then; as I still do today. I'd have included Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs for the same reasons I mentioned the story of the hunchback. Both are Romantic and heroic tales, but they make use of sinister trappings! (I recommend reading all the Hugo you can lay your hands on.)

There was a strong emphasis on film in my letter. Some of the most Romantic images associated with the horror genre are to be found in the movies. For example, I've never found a more Randian moment than in the second of the Hammer film series about Baron Frankenstein, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958). Our hero (played by delightful Peter Cushing) is on the run from the authorities and sets up a medical practice in a town where he is unknown. Working tirelessly under an assumed name, his competence soon makes him the most popular doctor. A committee of fellow surgeons (sort of an embryonic AMA) attempts to force him to join the organization… or else. The Baron makes a speech that is pure Howard Roark. He points out that he has achieved what he has without any help from them, and that he prefers working alone. This inspires a predictable orgy of envy.

As for the monster he creates this time around, he has promised his crippled assistant that he will transplant the man's perfectly good brain into a new body, a handsome young body that he has constructed from limbs and parts that have come his way at the charity clinic where he performs medical services without a cash charge (TANSTAAFL). Meanwhile, his regular practice is such as to bring him the wealthiest patients in town, and he is easily able to outfit his lab with the latest state-of-the-art 19th century equipment (which means, after a few alterations, that he has equipment worthy of the late 21st century). Anyway, the operation is a success. It is only later, when a stupid accident occurs, thanks to a do-gooder, that his patient becomes a monster. The Baron has been defeated by bad luck, or 1n his own words, by "interfering women!"

So The Revenge of Frankenstein is a wee bit misogynist. So it's not going to win a feminist award. Nothing in life is perfect. Besides, it's a reversal on the feminist fantasy of rendering biologically superfluous. In the Hammer series, women seem to unconsciously sense that if the Baron is a success, they won't be needed; and so they throw a monkey wrench in the works. This sort of thing ignores all the emotional and psychological reasons why the two sexes benefit from each other, whatever science may bring into the world.

The Revenge of Frankenstein is worth discussing at such length because it demonstrates that the Gothic horror situation can be used to tell a wide variety of stories. If the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award went to old movies, I would nominate Revenge. (Did I mention that the woman who fouls up the Baron's plans is only there because of interference by the State? 'Tis true, so help me. There are a lot of films I would nominate. And there's a flood of short stories I would nominate, both current and classic, if the Prometheus Award honored shorter fiction. There are many comic book stories that would make the grade, too—such as those E.C. horror comics I discussed in Option as sick-joke stories. What I failed to mention was that 90% of those stories were about justice, the kind of justice that is all too rarely meted out to those who initiate force.

But I have a problem. The Prometheus Award and the Hall of Fame Award are for novels. And the hell of it is that there aren't as many novels fitting the designation of libertarian horror as I would like. In the final installment, I will provide a short list of novels that I think should be considered for the Hall of Fame. As for current novels, the task is even more difficult. But I'll give it a stab. If you know what I mean.