Science Fiction Fantasy Horror

Two-fers

Let's face it; many works of art simply defy easy classification. When Aliens was released, it was widely touted as a 'horror' flic. I'm sorry, but any movie in which the action takes place largely on a spaceship, fergoshsake, is, duh, science fiction. Yeah, there's monsters that pop out of nowhere and elicit screams from the audience and heart-pounding tension and chases through darkened corridors... oh wait.

Yes, Aliens is a two-fer, a genuine cross-genre classic of science fiction and horror.

The 'Fantasy Horror' two-fer is even easier to spot; most of the monster movies that have 'occult' type monsters (vampires, werewolves, zombies) are strictly speaking 'fantasy' as well as 'horror', while the man-made or outer space horrors such as Frankenstein's monster and the Martians of War of the Worlds make a film or book 'science-fiction horror'.

Horror is a Double-Dipper

Very few 'pure horror' works are made these days. They either have a fantasy component (supernatural terror) or a sci-fi component ('It came from outer spaaaace...') Exceptions are works in the 'crazed serial killer' genre. Silence of the Lambs is a work of 'pure horror', in more ways than one.

Dean Koontz, master of horror, typically falls squarely in the two-fer camp. Few, if any, of his 'horror' novels are free from either fantasy or science fiction elements; the eponymous Odd Thomas sees and speaks to the dead who are all around him, the genius dog in Watchers has been altered to more than human intelligence, and so on.

It usually matters not to readers of the genre 'horror' where their horror comes, as long as there's plenty of it.

A Three-fer?

If an author uses the supernatural as his engine of horror, that typically precludes the use of fictionally advanced science as well. There are, of course the stories in which a supernatural event proves to have a super-scientific rationale, but is there anything that we can clearly classify as belonging to not two, but three genres, 'science fiction fantasy horror'?

Well, yes. There is. And of course, it comes from Horrormeister Stephen King. I speak, of course, of his landmark novel, The Stand, which many consider his finest work.

The Stand begins in typical apocalyptic sci-fi horror fashion, with a run-away man-made plague threatening the survival of mankind. Then, as the survivors foregather to attempt to rebuild society, the supernatural elements creep in - the strange dreams, the call to both the good and bad of society from wise, kind Mother Abigail and strong, bad dude Randall Flagg, and the ultimate battle between the opposing forces of good and evil.

The Stand can legitimately be called science fiction fantasy horror. And I mean that in the best possible way.