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I can't say I know exactly WHY we write horror, but I have a proposal as to one of its uses. Reading the horror literature of a culture is a deeply honest perspective into its fears, and by extension, its values. A horror anthology podcast I enjoy, The Magnus Archives, would be considered part of the cosmic horror subgenre. It uses the system of "terrifying otherworldly eldritch beings" to create a sort of examination of people operating under systems larger than themselves, and the kinds of questions about morality and free will that raises. It's a fairly direct link (especially given the content of the podcast) to capitalism / the current state of things.

Now that I type that, though, I realize there's an obvious potential answer to the first question. Horror can help us bring up questions that are otherwise difficult to think and talk about, or just ask those questions in a new way. E.g. - to take an example from aforementioned podcast - if you're born into a corrupt system, to what extent is are you responsible if you perpetuate that corruption?

I've never heard of "horror non-fiction", but it sounds interesting. Do you use the term to mean "nonfiction that is horrifying", or something else?

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~tatterdemalion wrote:

Thanks for your detailed reply! I've been out of town and unable to respond. I think you're right, at least in the case of the Magnus Archives (of which I've heard an episode or two, but not a lot).

I do think that speculative fiction, generally, is used to help think and talk about things that are uncomfortable to face in themselves. But this can be done with SF that is much more optimistic than horror --- consider Star Trek TOS dealing with Space Racism and Space Imperialism, the utopian society in ST TNG dealing with its dystopian past (TNG: Encounter at Farpoint, DS9:Past Tense) and questions about whether it is living up to its ideals more generally (DS9). But these all imply that the problem is solvable, by showing a society in which these problems are more-or-less solved, or at least where a solution is possible.

What about horror? Is horror the SF of hopelessness? Or am I projecting cosmic horror onto a wider genre that has room for hope (e.g., Dracula is staked in the end)?

So, for horror non-fiction, I'm including literary criticism of horror, philosophy of horror, horror of philosophy, and philosophical pessimism, mainly. But I'm also looking at fundamentally pessimistic non-fiction generally, the literature of climate change and collapse.