What makes great horror fiction?

As a critic and reviewer, I have been called upon

regularly to pass judgment on the writing of horror

fiction s leading talents. I ve probed the phenomenal

success of Stephen King in a book-length study, and

I ve also published a history of contemporary horror,

as told through the lives of its brightest and bestselling

writers. As a compulsive reader and filmgoer, I ve

experienced nearly everything the field of horror has

to offer. My own fiction returns w~th regularity to

themes of violence and fear.

Nevertheless, I m tempted to answer this question

with the unblinking certainty of Supreme Court Justice

Potter Stewart, who once offered as his definition of

obscenity that he knew it when he saw it.

Many readers see the horror story as something that

is packaged only in repetitive paperback editions, replete

with potboiler prose, lurid covers, and corny titles that

seem always to begin with the word "The." And most

of the time, they are right. Today s tales of terror rarely

offer anything new. Few plots bearing the "horror"

label are fresh and exciting; indeed, most editors lament

how easily these stories can be pigeonholed into recog-

nizable types. (T.E.D. Klein, the original editor of

Twilight Zone Magazine, once told me that he could fit

over ninety percent of the submissions to his magazine

into ten clich6 categories). The writing itself is, on

average, slick and superficial; at worst, the stuff of pulp

adventure, written to the lowest common denominator.