To show how illogical book taxonomy is, horror is often considered part of speculative fiction. Most of it isn’t sci-fi, which I think Ms. Atwood equates to speculative fiction in her mind, so there is a question of how to classify it. And it often has a lot in common with fantasy, but even non-fiction can contain a lot of horror. We often think of Stephen King as the horror-master, but Misery is a fairly standard thriller, albeit containing a lot of horror…especially for authors! And is it always speculative? Does that word just mean “imaginative”? If it does, “speculative” isn’t needed in “speculative fiction” because all fiction is a product of an author’s imagination…and therefore imaginative!

But I digress. The question today is whether horror should be a subcategory of speculative fiction. Let’s dig deeper. First, let’s analyze this question: Is horror horrible? My theory is that we’ve become blasé about horror. Real life is often more horrible than anything Stephen King can imagine or write. And what authors sometimes do in the horror genre now, looking to horrify readers more than the other authors, often seems campy and laughable. King’s Misery is a good thriller story; it’s not in the horror genre, but it portrays how life can become horrible. His It is just a bad story unless we take is as YA, in which case It becomes a parody of child abuse and kids’ fear of clowns.

Perhaps the problem is to distinguish between horrifying and terrifying. Books in the horror genre are perhaps best when they’re also terrifying. That’s what distinguishes Misery from It; the former is terrifying because it seems real—as Clancy said, fiction must seem real to be of value; the latter is just clownish horror, pardon the pun. This happens a lot, and King isn’t the only guilty author. Monsters, vampires, werewolves? I don’t find them terrifying, but they’re the clownish staples of many horror books and movies.

Maybe I’m inured to horror and more terrified by what occurs in real life, even if it’s described in fiction. For a long time, the most terrifying movie I’d ever seen was Alien. It has a monster more monstrous than the one in It, a much better monster because it didn’t make me laugh at the campiness. King’s monster is just a humorous parody. Most of his stories are laughable fantasies in that sense, completely out of touch with reality. They’re well written, I suppose, and much better than stories about vampires and werewolves, which I can’t even begin to consider real creatures.

Horror shouldn’t even be a genre. Most books claiming to be in that genre represent fantasy offshoots. King’s best one is Carrie, which is pure fantasy, albeit paranormal fantasy. He sometimes calls himself a sci-fi writer, but that’s wrong. Misery is a standard thriller, and Carrie and It are fantasy stories. I suppose Margaret Atwood would throw all of them into the speculative fiction category. I’ve never had a demented fan like the one in Misery; I hope I never do. But that book isn’t speculative fiction, or, if Atwood insists, it’s no more speculative than any Baldacci thriller.

However, labeling most of King’s books fantasy stories does help me as a reader: That categorization tells me to stay away from them because I don’t like fantasy! “Fantasy” is a key word that stops me in my tracks when book browsing.

It should b clear now why I don’t write stories like King writes. I don’t even write stories like Dean Koontz, whom I’ve read a lot more than King. (I read his first Frankenstein redux. It was terrible. I haven’t read a Koontz novel since.) I can call them old masters and still mostly avoid them in my browsing. (They’re all overpriced anyway.)

After another long digression like this, let’s return to the main point: Genres are at best key words. If one person’s horror or sci-fi is another person’s fantasy, it would be better to do away with genres completely and just use key words. In particular, speculative fiction is just so large a descriptor that it’s practically useless. The bottom line: the story is all important. Readers need words that describe what it is about, and today’s plethora of genres have become essentially meaningless in conveying that information.

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Comments are always welcome.

The creation of ITUIP. The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” my celebration of and homage to Asimov’s Foundation series, tracks how the Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP…pronounced “eye-tweep”) came into existence, and a lot more. In Survivors of the Chaos, you’ll travel from a dystopian Earth dominated by multinational corporations and policed by their mercenaries, to a starship’s arrival at the distant planet New Haven in the 82 Eridani star system. In Sing a Zamba Galactica, you’ll begin with first encounter at New Haven and end with humanity saving Swarm, a strange collective intelligence. In Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, you’ll meet a psychotic human industrialist who wants to control all of Near-Earth space—he’s my version of Asimov’s Mule…and a lot scarier!

I’m proud of The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection and its extrapolation from current to futuristic science. Here’s what Pulitzer-nominated author David W. Menefee said about the first novel: “Readers steeped in current literature will appreciate the brevity of scenes that burst in front of you with a blinding flash of startling detail and then exit as quickly as a comet streaking through the night sky…ensnares you aboard a mental roller coaster catapulting over the hills and valleys of a world gone mad…a disquieted galaxy peppered with a roster of characters that would make a casting director envious, highly detailed space scenes, and an inspiring plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.”

Many centuries of the galaxy’s future history await you in this ebook bundle of all three novels. Only $5.99 at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.), this bargain bundle will give you many hours of reading entertainment.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

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