Horror and Sci Fi: Expressing the Unknown and Fearful

Well it’s already the first week of the month and so that means it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Group (IWSG) post! IWSG is a monthly blog hop that occurs every first Wednesday of the month where we writers talk about the challenges in writing and how to resolve them. Each month the blog hop offers an optional question for us to answer, in which I have opted to answer this month’s. The question is “Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in and why?” My answer: horror and sci fi. As for the why: I’ve been a longtime lover of the unknown which science fiction and horror expresses.

Horror and sci fi appealed to me most ever since I was a kid, almost since I learned to walk! I guess you can say I got into those genres because several members of my family were sci fi and/or horror fans, especially on my mom’s side (though my mom herself wasn’t a fan) but my dad also watched a lot of the two genres. I got hooked to sci fi early with television series such as Lost In Space (the original) and the Japanese series Ultra-Man. A little later I got into Star Trek. And, growing up in the 70s, I experienced the new phenomenon of the very first Star Wars film, (now subtitled A New Hope) which enhanced my love for science fiction even more.

I got hooked on horror through TV horror hosted movies that haunted the television sets in my family. Starting when I was around five, my dad and my uncles on my mom’s side let me watch with them movies hosted by a television horror host local to our Sacramento region, the late Bob Wilkins. Hosts such as him, would screen a horror or science fiction film on television each Saturday night, like what the nationally-known Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) would do with her Movie Macabre in the 1980s. During the commercial break, they would discuss the movie as well as other movies of the horror and sci fi genres. Then in grammar school my teachers would every now and then read us scary stories of the supernatural written for young readers. That got me reading supernatural horror. And super hero and horror comics also got me started on my speculative literary journey of life.

My interest in horror and sci fi, in addition to other types of fantasy, has also been due to myself as someone who has always liked discovering things beyond the ordinary. I’ve always gotten easily bored with mundane, everyday lifestyles. The unknown and unusual--no matter how dark or mysterious, no matter how fearful--have always fascinated me. My Catholic boyhood also played a part in this when I would read or hear about mystical events of the Bible or claims of apparitions of the Virgin Mary and angels. And, because I’ve always had that inclination towards the mysterious and unexplained, I’ve been most interested in writing science fiction and supernatural horror--two genres that explore what often cannot be explained or that human beings know very little about.

Credit: Pixabay.com

Now how did I get into writing in these genres rather than just reading them? I guess my fantasising up my own worlds that I would act out with my brothers and friends in free form rpg for our time (before the term “rpg” was popularly coined), was not enough for momentary acting out. Ever since I was six, I loved drawing out scenes of horror and sci fi. But by 5^th grade, when I learned more about story construction in class, I started trying my hand at writing in those genres. Eventually, in high school, I wanted to write screenplays for science fiction films and so had a big desire to work for Hollywood. But when I learned how corrupt Tinsel Town is, I decided to stick with writing prose fiction. (That’s not too say I won’t use my writing skills in the indie film sector, though.) 

As a person who has grown up on entertainment that expresses the unknown and our fascination and fear of it, I can almost write in nothing but the genres of horror and sci fi. However, I have written in others such as non-fiction covering computer technology. That’s probably because so much computer technology started as science fiction which has also overlapped with horror.

IWSG was founded by author Alex Cavanaugh. This month’s IWSG co-hosts are Diane Burton, Kim Lajevardi, Sylvia Ney, Sarah Foster, Jennifer Hawes, and Madeline Mora-Summonte. Thanks to Alex and all the co-hosts for organising June’s IWSG!

Until next time . . .