Horror Stories of the Postmodern Age

This past summer, I worked on a research project here at Stevens. I worked from 9 to 4 every weekday, and with the lack of homework or other obligations, I ended up with a lot of free time. What did I do with this free time? For the most part, I read. I tried out a couple of genres, but always found myself drawn back to 19th century horror stories.

There's something special about monster stories in that time period. The 19th century seemed to have the self-imposed isolation of today's society, but without the technological advances. There always seemed to be a sense of "community" in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it isn't really until the 19th century that one starts imagining people wanting to be left alone. Even though I'm sure there were, it's hard to imagine bums living on the street before then. Everyone seemed to have their own nice little cottage in the 1700s.

This is what I find so appealing about the horror stories of that time period - it was no longer uncommon for people to wander the streets alone at night, seemingly asking for a werewolf or a vampire to attack them. Soon, the newspapers would be printing, "Mysterious Attacker Drains Victim's Blood," and you've got the makings of a solid horror/detective story right there.

"But Dan," you may be asking, "this is a computers and society blog!"

That it is, and that's my problem with today's horror stories. Computers. Technology. In the 1800s, if you were attacked and were being chased, you were lucky if a bum heard your screams through his drunken haze. Nowadays, everyone has cell phones, ready to call for help at a moment's notice. You can't imagine how much I long for a story where the victim helplessly cries out in their final moments, and no one even knows they're gone, at least for a while. With today's technology, there'd be amber alerts and missing person searches as soon as someone doesn't answer their texts for a couple of hours.

But that isn't my only problem with today's horror stories - there are so few new ideas. Everything's some rehash of a vampire, or a werewolf, or, most often, a zombie. I just finished reading Aileen Erin's Becoming Alpha, and while it's a great book, it essentially embodies today's horror stories: everyone's trying to be postmodern, and almost satirical about it.

Back when the first stories were being written, nobody had any idea what a werewolf or a vampire was. When a character started turning into a werewolf, all they knew was that they were losing control and becoming increasingly furry. In Becoming Alpha, when the main character is turned into a werewolf, she turns to her fellow werewolves and asks how much of their abilities are shared with those of movie werewolves.

Granted, I realize there's not much more space to be covered, but I really feel like we need a new kind of monster. Everything's been done so much that even the writers seem like they're getting tired of it. We need a new Jekyll and Hyde, or Frankenstein, or Dracula, or even something like Dorian Grey. The closest we've come to a new kind of monster is a sentient computer turning evil, and even that's getting old, with the Terminator and HAL 9000 effectively dominating that territory.

Who knows, maybe a monster that emits electromagnetic waves that disable your cell phone so you can't call for help? Or is that maybe a little too scary?