Horrifying Marion Zimmer Bradley
I’m irritated with Marion Zimmer Bradley.
I’m reading a collection of essays about writing called How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction (edited by J.N. Williamson), and I just finished MZB’s essay, “World Building in Horror, Occult, and Fantasy Writing.” I had been looking forward to it. The first eleven essays had been light on the fantasy side, and I was sure that MZB would balance the scales a bit with some great insights into world building. After all, she wrote scores of fantasy novels.
Yeah, not so much with the advice. Halfway through the essay she gets around to saying that you need rules and limits for your supernatural stuff and then stick to those rules and limits (oh, and she throws in an example from Dracula). That’s about it.* No insights into approaches, no discussion of how she does it, no examination of rules that do or don’t work, or consideration of the whys and wherefores. Have rules and limits and stick to them. That’s like being commissioned to write an essay about developing characters and saying, “Make them like real people.”
But that’s not why I’m irritated. I would have liked to learn from her perspective, but honestly I know a thing or two about world building myself, so I’m not in dire straits without her pearls of wisdom. No, she irritated me with the rest of what she did with her essay.
She starts the essay by going on at length about all the real horrors in the world such as Nazis, foot-binding, mass murders and so forth and says that books about these are “one well-established field of horror.”
No, these books fall under “history” or “true crime.” Horror is fiction. And what does any of this have to do with world building?
But she’s not done. She goes on to say, “With all of these mundane horrors, demons, ghosts or the supernatural would seem almost superfluous.” But, if you actually want to use some supernatural element, you should avoid having technology in the story because “a scientific background destroys the credibility of such beings.” If you have both, then either the supernatural “has” to be proven a fraud or the scientist “must” be convinced of its existence.
So, no gray areas for her then. Check.
She goes further. She slams The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby because “there is no question here of moral choices; the unknown represents absolute evil.” [emphasis hers] She considers this approach “simplistic” and “unsatisfying” (and spends paragraphs deriding it).
That was it for me. I don’t read much horror – proportionately I read much more fantasy and science fiction. But I appreciate a good horror novel, and the Blatty and Levin novels are classics, both of which were turned into films that viewers still watch and enjoy.
Bradley had a chance to offer useful information to less experienced writers, and she chose instead to get on her soapbox. What a waste.
Personally, I like supernatural horror. I like thinking about the world beyond the senses and the everyday. And while I’m not Christian, I can appreciate stories like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby as the marvelous tales that they are.
What about you? Do you like horror stories? If so, what kind? If not, what don’t you like about them?
*Technically she also said that if you set your story in a real time or place, you have to deal with its inherent limits. Did she really think it necessary to tell us that 1910 had no televisions or commuter planes?
