When Worlds Collide: SciFi and Horror Themes

The core of a metafictional universe is the laws that universe lives by and those laws derive as a reflection of how we see the real universe around is and interpret it fictionally. Is it a cold place, governed by "Cold Equations" that have no mercy for human limitations? Is it a mysterious unknown realm where horrors that would immediately destroy the human mind abide around every corner? Is it a wonderful grab bag of knowledge, wonder and mind expanding experiences? Answering those kinds defines the nature of the metafictional universe we inhabit.

There is a good deal of overlap between Horror and Science Fiction. Horror has accepted within it elements of technology, telling new stories involving nightmares made in laboratories with genetics and space aliens, since the days of Frankenstein. Science Fiction has often incorporated sizable doses of horror, as the intrepid explorers of the unknown discover there are more terrible things than they perhaps ever dreamed of.

The real gap comes about not in the use of technology, but in the overall approach to the unknown, fear or wonder? A good demonstration of this gap can be found in Greg Bear's "Blood Music." Initially and on the surface, "Blood Music" seems like the ultimate horror novel. In it Vergil Ulam, who possesses a fear of germs passed down from his mother who worked as a cleaning lady, injects radically altered noocytes into his body which become self-aware and take over his body and dissolve the entire human race. But rather than being a horrific event, it is a transformative one that takes the human race to a new state of existence.

In horror, radical change and particularly contact with life's mysteries and higher planes of existence, is almost always a horrific event. A grievous error which is repaid in blood and suffering. A sign of human egotism that in overreaching itself damns an eternally curious species. By contrast in Science Fiction exploration may be painful sometimes but it leads to opening up new frontiers of discovery. Both Horror and Science Fiction focus on the contact between people and the unknown. The difference is in attitude.

Horror evolved from cautionary tales and superstitions. Its root is in the fears we have of what might lie in the closet, behind a closed door, in the woods, over the next hill or in another dimension. At its core, horror exploits the tension between our existence and what might be lurking out of our sight. It dives into our fear of our own mortality threatening us with physical or mental agony, followed by annihilation from the things that might be lurking out there.

For most of human history life has been hard and brutal. Stories of horror might arguably be a way to prepare ourselves for what we encounter. Or horror serves as a diversion, giving us scenes of unreal nightmares to represent the all too real nightmares we must deal with. Substitute The Blob or an Alien bursting out of our insides for the very real diseases that can eat us apart from the inside. Substitute Michael Meyers or Jason or the usual parade of slasher monsters for the very real human monsters we might be prey to on the streets. Substituting unreal fears for real threats, allows us to cope with the terrors of life by boxing them in as unreal. We might be terrified of monsters, but we know (at least once we've grown up) that there aren't any in our closet.

Horror becomes a means of looking into the unknown to escape the known. In other words, escapism. Science Fiction is also arguably a blatant form of escapism, taking us away from the dreary world of today, to a fanciful one of the future filled with mile long spaceships, thousands of alien races and a kaleidoscope of options from telepathy to immortality empowering us to become anything we want to be. In Horror is a way of looking into our nightmares, Science Fiction is a way of looking into our dreams, offering us the chance for fulfillment.

Horror speaks to the child in us and tells us that exploration is terrifying and dangerous and that we would be better off staying in our cradle. Science Fiction also speaks to the child in us, but benevolently, promising us the freedom to explore and the chance to discover wonderful and magical things beyond where we stand now. If Horror belongs to the night, Science Fiction belongs to the day. Contrast dreams and nightmares and you have the Science Fiction vs Horror dichotomy.

The "Twilight Zone" used to describe itself, in Rod Serling's grave voice, as lying "between "the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge". This in essence is the gap between Horror and Science Fiction. "The Twilight Zone", much like "The Outer Limits" more often than not chose the pit rather than the summit, its characters finding themselves in forsaken landscapes coping with problems on an inhumanly oppressive scale which they were little able to address or resolve. "The Twilight Zone" had no faith in human progress. "Forbidden Planet" too came with the essentially message that progress could not ward off the demons inside the human psyche. When facing the vastness of the universe, a good deal of Science Fiction reverts to horror, unable to comprehend how humanity can cope with something so beyond the human microscopic scale of Terra and its huddled cities and puddles of oceans.

Optimistic Science Fiction that reaches back to the Golden Age, whether it's "Star Trek" or "Skylark of Space" insists that humanity can and will conquer the stars. Measuring humanity against an inhuman scale, numerous authors and creators from E.E. Smith to Robert. A. Heinlein to Gene Roddenberry have argued back that humanity can stand on its own even on a galactic scale. The dream of Science Fiction is the dream of transcendence.

Real life technology has failed to yield flying cars or shining cities floating through the air or immortality. Instead it has drearily given us dribs and drabs of comfort and convenience and life extension in exchange for pollution, a more frantic pace of lifestyle and Future Shock in Alvin Toffler's formulation of the human reaction to a constantly accelerating pace of change. Science Fiction transforms unmanageable technological change into a dreamland and cushions us against the social shock of MySpace, IPod's and cloned babies. Science Fiction does not provide us with a real portrait of the future, any more than Horror provides us with a real picture of the threats we're likely to face, what they do is transform our reality into storybook form.

Stories are at the root of humanity. Whether they are stories that tells us there is no hope or stories that tells us there is hope. Stories are not reality, but they form a human reality, the reality of our fears and aspirations, our dark and light sides. Both Science Fiction and Horror frequently focus on the concept of a split man and evil twins, of dopplegangers, whether they are Frankensteins or androids, ghosts or computer simulations. At the heart of it both dive deep into the human psyche coming up with glittering wonders and shivering terrors, that ultimately define who we are.