Enter At Your Own Peril!

Despite my gentle appearance, I am quite a horror afficienado. There is a tragedy in liking this general so much and that is things that used to frighten you aren't so frightening after you've encountered them once or twice or three things... so my taste in horror fiction has gotten progressively more and more intense.

I was introduced to the 'splatterpunk' genre about a year ago and was a little enthralled at the copious amounts of horror and depravity within.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the genre, ' splatterpunk ' is best defined as a movement within horror fiction distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence and "hyperintensive horror with no limits." Most of you are probably already familiar with one of the founding fathers of 'splatterpunk' Mr. Clive Barker, famous for the short stories collections Books of Blood, the Hellraiser movies, and many other 80s horror flicks.

Some of them ( for example, Edward Lee's The Black Train ) are completely awful and full of gratuitous sex, sex, sex, sex, sex - and I don't mind sex; sex is all well and good, but if I wanted to read about sex, I'd pick up erotica. When I pick up a horror novel, I want to read about blood, violence, and monsters.... but not all splatterpunk is trashy. I was pleasantly surprised at three particular novels.... Ghoul by Brian Keene, The Resort by Bentley Little (although it is debatable whether or not he is truly splatterpunk; I'd say 'the Resort' definitely is), and The Jigsaw Man by Gord Rollo ....

But after my last Richard Laymon novel, the completely pointless The Woods Are Dark, I'm finding a lot of the splatterpunk genre lacking. It doesn't scare or disgust me. It's just like 'really? you're going to talk about the main character's erection AGAIN?' .... so sinking even deeper into the depths of complete insanity, I have been introduced to the genre of  ' bizarro fiction '

For those unfamiliar with the genre (myself included) , ' bizarro fiction ' is best defined as a contemporary literary genre, which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive works that are as weird and entertaining as possible.

Things like ...

McHumans by Kevin Strange

... which I one day hope to get my hands on because the synopsis is just too cool. I mean, check this out --

" After Cthulhu awakens and destroys civilization as we know it, humans are used as slaves and food by their new slimy, submerged masters. One such young man, Ricky, works at an undersea fast food joint where he's forced to kill and cook other humans for the Deep Ones to eat. But he has a plan. His restaurant caters to the Big Man himself, and if Ricky's plan works, he could pull off the unthinkable: He could actually Kill Cthulhu "

Awesome, am I right?

Of course, I am a huge Lovecraft fan and a sucker for anything with Deep Dark Lord Cthulhu in it.

Read Brian Strange's author bio : funny as hell!

Sadly, this is one of the most tame bizarro fiction synopsiseseses (?) I have run across. That means bizarro fiction really lives up to its' name. It is really bizarre.

Granted, I've never read anything from this genre so it is hard to say whether it is truly awesome or not. The library however has no bizarro fiction books to speak off which in most cases is a clear sign that I will think it is really fucking awesome.

Unless it's by Edward Lee or Richard Laymon. Guys, just stop. Please.