How do you like my darkness now?
Apr. 7th, 2009 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filthgoblinI've become increasingly consumed of late with the degree to which I seek the dark side of life. The more I come into contact with new people in my real life, the more I feel like a deviant for understanding, knowing or even liking most of the stuff that I do. And I have no interest whatsoever in reading cheery tales of romantic love and happy ever after. It sickens me. I would watch darkness and death a million times over before sitting through a rom-com. I want to know how it is that people hurt. And that's probably why all of my favourite actors inspire me more with their ability to convey insufferable grief and misery than when they are on top of the world. All the writers and authors I most admire are those that deal in darkness and depravity. Don't get me wrong. I'm a devout follower of comedy, a worshiper at the church of humour, but whilst I love a good laugh of late when I settle down to watch a film or read a book or a piece of fiction I'm more likely to seek out something bleak and sinister than something with a happy ending.
I read this article a few months ago when it was posted by a friend, and revisited it recently to remind myself that I'm not alone in seeking out the dark side.
Taken from Christopher Fowler’s collection of short stories – “Old Devil Moon”
Foreword: the sinister life.
This is my first new collection of dark fiction in nearly five years. Every story has a backdrop to its writing, and real events have a way of filtering down to inform even the most whimsical pieces. Over the course of creating these tales, all sorts of disturbing and unbelievable things were happening in the news. These are just a few I noted.
* In Stockton-On-Tees, a poverty–stricken family succumbed to heroin use, and as her son died, the distraught mother went to bingo to try and win the money for his gravestone. Ironically, George Bush chose her neighbourhood for a visit, and his security operation cost the British government a million pounds.
* Pat Robertson, the US Christian evangelist, appeared on the National television suggesting it would be a good idea for American hit squads to murder the president of Venezuela for his oil.
*In London, a Big Brother house member simulated masturbation with a beer bottle on a channel subsidised for its contribution to quality television, and garnered more column inches in the national press than the US Government’s final refusal to cut CO2 emissions.
* In Japan, internet suicide groups were infiltrated by bogus suicides planning to kill their fellow members for cash, which has the effect of making teenagers think twice about killing themselves in groups.
* In Britain, an eleven-year-old girl was rushed to hospital suffering from a heroin overdose, while on the same day another announced she was pregnant and looking forward to being a pre-teen mum. It was revealed that half a million UK children belonged to street gangs.
* In Plymouth, four mothers filmed themselves goading their toddlers into fighting each other. They did it, they said, to make their children hard.
* In America, where an estimated 37 million citizens live below the property line, one Christian Right group decided to improve the world by financing trips to locate the remains of Noah’s Ark, while another threatened to kill cinema owners for agreeing to book Brokeback Mountain into Theatres.
* The suicide business returned to normal in Japan, and the New Year’s death toll tripled. Endemol, the makers of Big Brother, produced a season casting mentally ill contestants in the hopes that they would humiliate themselves and hurt each other on live television. With racism shown to be endemic on the programme, public opinion finally started mobilising against them, but the producers felt that its export marker had been “fantastically improved” by the sight of the burning effigies in India. It emerged the show was most popular with school children.
* Hollywood turned the World Trade Center attacks into an upbeat action movie, and the director toured with the firemen pulled from the wreckage, thus rendering the film impervious to criticism.
* US presidential advisors announced that they would solve global warming by “inventing something”, even though they wouldn’t directly acknowledge it was happening. Belize pressed the United Nations World Heritage Sites Committee to acknowledge that climate change was destroying its famous reef, but the US decided to reject the petition because it would “damage harmonious relations with the committee”. Meanwhile the Northern hemisphere posted the highest average temperatures in over 2,000 years.
* Taxpayer-subsidised Channel 4 announced its latest adventure into the amelioration of the human spirit: “Wank Week”.
* Our language continued to change. “Creationism” became “Intelligent Design” and “Liberalism” became “Godlessness”. “Post - 9/11” has become shorthand for anything we should be wary of. “Democracy” was re-branded as “Free Market” and came to mean “Something You Choose To Have Or We Will Bomb You.” Labour turned Tory, Tory turned Green, and caring was something you did before and after your career.
* Surveys were published with some interesting data tucked inside them. Only 60 percent of woman in the UK were now sexually active. Over a million British school children were experiencing mental health problems. Over a million elderly people went an entire month without seeing someone they knew. London’s most rapidly growing demographic group was deemed to be single people living in apartments full of gadgets.
* Experimental drugs tested on six English volunteers placed them at death’s door and inflated their heads “like the Elephant Man”.
* Chinese cockle pickers returned to Morecambe despite the fact that nineteen employees had drowned one afternoon whilst digging for shellfish.
* In County Durham, a giant inflatable sculpture designed to create a sense of harmonious calm took off with thirty people inside it, killing two and injuring a dozen others.
* A Russian spy died after being poisoned by a radioactive spray applied to his sushi and the dead journalist Alistair Cooke had his legs sawn off and replaced with drainpipes by New Jersey based Biomedical Tissue Services, a modern day Burke & Hare company prosecuted for trafficking in body parts.
* With CCTVs adopting face-recognition strategies and electronic tracers of every kind invading British society, Orwell’s concept of a Big Brother state truly became a reality when a contestant on Big Brother admitted she had no idea what the title of the show meant.
At this point I thought about abandoning the book altogether. How could I compete with real life, which was more fascinating and relevant than weird fiction?
You might legitimately ask why I haven’t mentioned all the good things that happened, but the fact is that I’m drawn to the left side, a prevalent darkness. Dark fiction is still something I produce in my spare time, like building galleons out of balsa wood or repairing clocks. Friends are happier thinking of it as a hobby, my other job, an alternative to watching television.
When you write for yourself, you don’t think so hard about accumulating readers. That’s the peculiar part of authorship – books are imaginary units sold like tins of biscuits, and the sweeter you make the biscuit taste, the more popular it becomes. But sometimes you need to invoke the bitter, because you’d get sick on a diet of chocolate.
The establishment pays scant attention to authors who write from the sinister side of life, but I think the fantastical can often hold the key to reality. I try to do my part in upholding a fine, if somewhat peculiar, literary tradition, one that paradoxically frees me to do whatever I want. Let the world change. Let the news make our jaws drop in disbelief. Let it inform our writing, even just a little, even though we just tell stories. The day we stop being amazed by everything that goes on around us, that’s when life really becomes sinister.
Christopher Fowler - King’s Cross, London, 2007
And to follow that, it seems fitting to do a little pimpage of one of the most gloriously dark, unrelenting pieces of fic I've read recently.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
terraswrath, after reading Red Riding by David Peace, re-envisioned Sam Tyler's experiences in 1973 in a gritty, dark style not unlike that used by Peace in his novel. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, as it references character death and non-canon concepts, but I think it's beautifully sinister. Click here to read 'Out of Time'
I read this article a few months ago when it was posted by a friend, and revisited it recently to remind myself that I'm not alone in seeking out the dark side.
Taken from Christopher Fowler’s collection of short stories – “Old Devil Moon”
Foreword: the sinister life.
This is my first new collection of dark fiction in nearly five years. Every story has a backdrop to its writing, and real events have a way of filtering down to inform even the most whimsical pieces. Over the course of creating these tales, all sorts of disturbing and unbelievable things were happening in the news. These are just a few I noted.
* In Stockton-On-Tees, a poverty–stricken family succumbed to heroin use, and as her son died, the distraught mother went to bingo to try and win the money for his gravestone. Ironically, George Bush chose her neighbourhood for a visit, and his security operation cost the British government a million pounds.
* Pat Robertson, the US Christian evangelist, appeared on the National television suggesting it would be a good idea for American hit squads to murder the president of Venezuela for his oil.
*In London, a Big Brother house member simulated masturbation with a beer bottle on a channel subsidised for its contribution to quality television, and garnered more column inches in the national press than the US Government’s final refusal to cut CO2 emissions.
* In Japan, internet suicide groups were infiltrated by bogus suicides planning to kill their fellow members for cash, which has the effect of making teenagers think twice about killing themselves in groups.
* In Britain, an eleven-year-old girl was rushed to hospital suffering from a heroin overdose, while on the same day another announced she was pregnant and looking forward to being a pre-teen mum. It was revealed that half a million UK children belonged to street gangs.
* In Plymouth, four mothers filmed themselves goading their toddlers into fighting each other. They did it, they said, to make their children hard.
* In America, where an estimated 37 million citizens live below the property line, one Christian Right group decided to improve the world by financing trips to locate the remains of Noah’s Ark, while another threatened to kill cinema owners for agreeing to book Brokeback Mountain into Theatres.
* The suicide business returned to normal in Japan, and the New Year’s death toll tripled. Endemol, the makers of Big Brother, produced a season casting mentally ill contestants in the hopes that they would humiliate themselves and hurt each other on live television. With racism shown to be endemic on the programme, public opinion finally started mobilising against them, but the producers felt that its export marker had been “fantastically improved” by the sight of the burning effigies in India. It emerged the show was most popular with school children.
* Hollywood turned the World Trade Center attacks into an upbeat action movie, and the director toured with the firemen pulled from the wreckage, thus rendering the film impervious to criticism.
* US presidential advisors announced that they would solve global warming by “inventing something”, even though they wouldn’t directly acknowledge it was happening. Belize pressed the United Nations World Heritage Sites Committee to acknowledge that climate change was destroying its famous reef, but the US decided to reject the petition because it would “damage harmonious relations with the committee”. Meanwhile the Northern hemisphere posted the highest average temperatures in over 2,000 years.
* Taxpayer-subsidised Channel 4 announced its latest adventure into the amelioration of the human spirit: “Wank Week”.
* Our language continued to change. “Creationism” became “Intelligent Design” and “Liberalism” became “Godlessness”. “Post - 9/11” has become shorthand for anything we should be wary of. “Democracy” was re-branded as “Free Market” and came to mean “Something You Choose To Have Or We Will Bomb You.” Labour turned Tory, Tory turned Green, and caring was something you did before and after your career.
* Surveys were published with some interesting data tucked inside them. Only 60 percent of woman in the UK were now sexually active. Over a million British school children were experiencing mental health problems. Over a million elderly people went an entire month without seeing someone they knew. London’s most rapidly growing demographic group was deemed to be single people living in apartments full of gadgets.
* Experimental drugs tested on six English volunteers placed them at death’s door and inflated their heads “like the Elephant Man”.
* Chinese cockle pickers returned to Morecambe despite the fact that nineteen employees had drowned one afternoon whilst digging for shellfish.
* In County Durham, a giant inflatable sculpture designed to create a sense of harmonious calm took off with thirty people inside it, killing two and injuring a dozen others.
* A Russian spy died after being poisoned by a radioactive spray applied to his sushi and the dead journalist Alistair Cooke had his legs sawn off and replaced with drainpipes by New Jersey based Biomedical Tissue Services, a modern day Burke & Hare company prosecuted for trafficking in body parts.
* With CCTVs adopting face-recognition strategies and electronic tracers of every kind invading British society, Orwell’s concept of a Big Brother state truly became a reality when a contestant on Big Brother admitted she had no idea what the title of the show meant.
At this point I thought about abandoning the book altogether. How could I compete with real life, which was more fascinating and relevant than weird fiction?
You might legitimately ask why I haven’t mentioned all the good things that happened, but the fact is that I’m drawn to the left side, a prevalent darkness. Dark fiction is still something I produce in my spare time, like building galleons out of balsa wood or repairing clocks. Friends are happier thinking of it as a hobby, my other job, an alternative to watching television.
When you write for yourself, you don’t think so hard about accumulating readers. That’s the peculiar part of authorship – books are imaginary units sold like tins of biscuits, and the sweeter you make the biscuit taste, the more popular it becomes. But sometimes you need to invoke the bitter, because you’d get sick on a diet of chocolate.
The establishment pays scant attention to authors who write from the sinister side of life, but I think the fantastical can often hold the key to reality. I try to do my part in upholding a fine, if somewhat peculiar, literary tradition, one that paradoxically frees me to do whatever I want. Let the world change. Let the news make our jaws drop in disbelief. Let it inform our writing, even just a little, even though we just tell stories. The day we stop being amazed by everything that goes on around us, that’s when life really becomes sinister.
Christopher Fowler - King’s Cross, London, 2007
And to follow that, it seems fitting to do a little pimpage of one of the most gloriously dark, unrelenting pieces of fic I've read recently.
terraswrath, after reading Red Riding by David Peace, re-envisioned Sam Tyler's experiences in 1973 in a gritty, dark style not unlike that used by Peace in his novel. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, as it references character death and non-canon concepts, but I think it's beautifully sinister. Click here to read 'Out of Time'
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-07 11:42 pm (UTC)And lastly, thankyou for your wonderful comments towards my fic, you have no idea know how much they mean to me, especially since I haven't really written anything that dark before *hug* You always give me the confidence I need to keep picking up that pen.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 11:30 am (UTC)