Is the ghost story the oldest literary type? Every culture possesses myths
about interactions between the living and the dead, often in the form of a journey
to the underworld or a visitation from “hungry ghosts” (a literal translation of èguǐ,
a term from the ancient Chinese tradition). I might even claim the spread
of spiritual belief systems is impossible without such tales. The most essential skill
of the shaman, a spiritual figure that appears in every region of the world as far back
as we can probe, is the ability to communicate with beings from beyond, whether
ancestors or tutelary spirits. The accompanying shamanic myths almost always
include some element of the ghost story.
And when we arrive at the age of written
texts, these tales appear in very close to
their modern form—Pliny the Younger
relates a haunted house tale in a two-
thousand-year-old letter that already follows
the familiar formula, complete with ghostly
apparitions late at night, rattling chains and
strange sounds at the door…all leading to
the excavation of a corpse on the property
grounds.
But something new arrived in the 20th century:
the scientific ghost story. In these narratives,
researchers come to the house equipped for
study. The ghost and haunted residence are
presented as objects of analysis. The goal
isn’t exorcism, but the testing of hypotheses.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
(1959) presents this new type of ghost story in
its purest form, and readers can detect its
influence on many later works, such as Richard
Matheson’s Hell House and Mark Z.
Danielewski’s House of Leaves.
Jackson didn’t invent this kind of story. A quarter of a century before The Haunting
of Hill House, H.P. Lovecraft explored various formulas for blending horror and
science fiction. His stories typically suggest some quasi-scientific explanation for
the ghastly incidents related, although he usually only provides the briefest glimpse
behind the veil at the underlying causes. But he was found of inserting researchers
into his narratives. In stories such as “The Shunned House” and “The Dreams in
the Witch House” he places his scientific protagonists in the midst of a haunted
house, and lets analytic objectivity do battle with the dark unknown. But even
earlier, we find this concept of the professional investigator of haunted houses in
Algernon Blackwood’s stories about John Silence, a kind of Sherlock Holmes for
ghostly mysteries. Rather than fearing that an attitude of hardheaded
rationality would destroy the horror of the ghost story, these authors acutely
realized that bringing the haunted house tale into the scientific age allowed
them freedom to invent new ways of scaremongering.
Shirley Jackson took this concept to the next stage, moving beyond the vignettes
and novellas of her predecessors, and delivering a full-scale account of a team of
researchers determined to unlock the secrets of a famous haunted house. The
work quickly gained acclaim as a classic. “It was Shirley Jackson’s achievement to
write the great modern novel of supernatural horror,” declares critic and novelist
Lisa Tuttle. The Haunting of Hill House “is now widely regarded as the greatest
haunted-house story ever written, asserts critic John J. Miller. In his study of
horror fiction, Danse Macabre, Stephen King singles the novel out for praise, and
cites its opening as one of the finest passages in the English language. The story’s
popularity has been assisted by two film adaptations, both under the title The
Haunting, in 1963 and 1999. The first of these films, directed by Robert Wise, has a
cult following in its own right, and has frightened many a moviegoer unaware of the
Shirley Jackson novel.
Yet for all this acclaim, The Haunting of Hill House is a very peculiar novel, and
violates many of the expectations readers bring to ghost stories. First and foremost,
we never even get a glimpse of a ghost. We occasionally encounter evidence—
noises, writing on the wall, chilling breezes with no apparent source, and doors that
open and close on their own volition. These harbingers of malicious spirits seem to
promise some grand confrontation between the living and the dead at a later stage
of the novel. But it never happens. Instead, readers are forced to deal with that
same uncomfortable ambiguity that Henry James serves up in The Turn of the
Screw. If H.P. Lovecraft were writing this story, we would get at least a peek at a
dark and deadly demon. If Jack Ketchum were the author, a whole army of ghosts
would arrive, probably swinging machetes and leaving a pile of corpse in their wake.
But Shirley Jackson isn’t that kind of author. She will keep you guessing. And even
if I were a spoilsport and told you exactly what happens at this novel’s conclusion,
you would still need to guess at what it all means.
Our novel starts with a brief description of the four people who have agreed to stay
in Hill House, an abandoned residence with a long history of dark events. The
leader of the group is Dr. John Montague, who plans to write a book about his
research into paranormal incidents, drawing on what he learns during his sojourn
on the property. He is joined by two women, the spinster Eleanor Vance and
bohemian Theodora, both invited to participate because they have had some
previous experience with the supernatural. A fourth member of the team, Luke
Sanderson, is a young man whose family owns Hill House, and is the likely future
heir of the estate. A few days after their arrival, two more researchers join the party:
Montague's wife, a trained spiritualist who believes she can communicate with the
dead, and Arthur Parker, a school headmaster with a longstanding interest in the
occult.
At this juncture, Jackson begins to break the rules of the haunted house. Perhaps
the first peculiarity noticed by readers is the cheery mood of the visitors.
Occasionally something happens to give them a brief scare, but they are actually
enjoying their time at Hill House. They play games. They plan a picnic. They savor
their meals and camaraderie. For the first few pages of this “eat, drink and be
merry” conviviality, you are assuming that Jackson is merely lulling us—both
readers and characters—into a false sense of security, and that everyone will soon
get the scare of their lives. But not so! Dr. Montague’s biggest problem proves to be
his bossy wife. Mrs. Montague, for her part, is excited by her talks with the spirits of
Hill House. Arthur acts as if he is on an adventure. Luke flirts with the ladies.
Theodora flirts back. And Eleanor is so thrilled with Hill House that she wants to
stay forever.
What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they realize that they are characters in a
horror novel, and they aren’t likely to get out of these pages alive? Haven’t they
read their Poe and Lovecraft? But the reader soon starts to grasp what Shirley
Jackson is doing. The real strange occurrences at this haunted house take place in
the characters' heads. All those noises late at night and strange messages on the
wall are secondary to the real focal point of the conflict, which is ultimately
psychological and emotional.
In time, the disjunction between characters and setting grows so pronounced that
we no longer know how to distinguish cause from effect. We are unsure who to
trust, or our own ability to separate empirical reality from mere delusion. Are the
residents of Hill House haunted or doing the haunting themselves? Are they
victims or perpetrators? As you proceed toward the conclusion of this novel, you
will find yourself forced to revisit and reinterpret the incidents from earlier
chapters, even question their legitimacy as parts of the story, to a degree that is rare
in genre novels, where unreliable narration and postmodern experimentation with
verisimilitude rarely hold sway.
Is there even a ghost in this novel? Perhaps not. But I’m not sure it really matters.
Shirley Jackson shows here that purely psychological threats can be just as
frightening as goblins and demons, and a lot more plausible to boot. In the final
analysis her sense of horror is acutely clinical, and not just because she enlists
researchers as characters, but because even the scientists here are part of the
pathology. That makes The Haunting of Hill House a surprisingly prescient novel,
and perhaps the first truly modern ghost tale—it deals with the bad spirits that
exorcists can’t remove and technologists are powerless against. Maybe they even
create them. Does that sound modern enough for you?
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His most recent book, Love Songs:
The Hidden History, is published by Oxford University Press.
about interactions between the living and the dead, often in the form of a journey
to the underworld or a visitation from “hungry ghosts” (a literal translation of èguǐ,
a term from the ancient Chinese tradition). I might even claim the spread
of spiritual belief systems is impossible without such tales. The most essential skill
of the shaman, a spiritual figure that appears in every region of the world as far back
as we can probe, is the ability to communicate with beings from beyond, whether
ancestors or tutelary spirits. The accompanying shamanic myths almost always
include some element of the ghost story.
And when we arrive at the age of written
texts, these tales appear in very close to
their modern form—Pliny the Younger
relates a haunted house tale in a two-
thousand-year-old letter that already follows
the familiar formula, complete with ghostly
apparitions late at night, rattling chains and
strange sounds at the door…all leading to
the excavation of a corpse on the property
grounds.
But something new arrived in the 20th century:
the scientific ghost story. In these narratives,
researchers come to the house equipped for
study. The ghost and haunted residence are
presented as objects of analysis. The goal
isn’t exorcism, but the testing of hypotheses.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
(1959) presents this new type of ghost story in
its purest form, and readers can detect its
influence on many later works, such as Richard
Matheson’s Hell House and Mark Z.
Danielewski’s House of Leaves.
Jackson didn’t invent this kind of story. A quarter of a century before The Haunting
of Hill House, H.P. Lovecraft explored various formulas for blending horror and
science fiction. His stories typically suggest some quasi-scientific explanation for
the ghastly incidents related, although he usually only provides the briefest glimpse
behind the veil at the underlying causes. But he was found of inserting researchers
into his narratives. In stories such as “The Shunned House” and “The Dreams in
the Witch House” he places his scientific protagonists in the midst of a haunted
house, and lets analytic objectivity do battle with the dark unknown. But even
earlier, we find this concept of the professional investigator of haunted houses in
Algernon Blackwood’s stories about John Silence, a kind of Sherlock Holmes for
ghostly mysteries. Rather than fearing that an attitude of hardheaded
rationality would destroy the horror of the ghost story, these authors acutely
realized that bringing the haunted house tale into the scientific age allowed
them freedom to invent new ways of scaremongering.
Shirley Jackson took this concept to the next stage, moving beyond the vignettes
and novellas of her predecessors, and delivering a full-scale account of a team of
researchers determined to unlock the secrets of a famous haunted house. The
work quickly gained acclaim as a classic. “It was Shirley Jackson’s achievement to
write the great modern novel of supernatural horror,” declares critic and novelist
Lisa Tuttle. The Haunting of Hill House “is now widely regarded as the greatest
haunted-house story ever written, asserts critic John J. Miller. In his study of
horror fiction, Danse Macabre, Stephen King singles the novel out for praise, and
cites its opening as one of the finest passages in the English language. The story’s
popularity has been assisted by two film adaptations, both under the title The
Haunting, in 1963 and 1999. The first of these films, directed by Robert Wise, has a
cult following in its own right, and has frightened many a moviegoer unaware of the
Shirley Jackson novel.
Yet for all this acclaim, The Haunting of Hill House is a very peculiar novel, and
violates many of the expectations readers bring to ghost stories. First and foremost,
we never even get a glimpse of a ghost. We occasionally encounter evidence—
noises, writing on the wall, chilling breezes with no apparent source, and doors that
open and close on their own volition. These harbingers of malicious spirits seem to
promise some grand confrontation between the living and the dead at a later stage
of the novel. But it never happens. Instead, readers are forced to deal with that
same uncomfortable ambiguity that Henry James serves up in The Turn of the
Screw. If H.P. Lovecraft were writing this story, we would get at least a peek at a
dark and deadly demon. If Jack Ketchum were the author, a whole army of ghosts
would arrive, probably swinging machetes and leaving a pile of corpse in their wake.
But Shirley Jackson isn’t that kind of author. She will keep you guessing. And even
if I were a spoilsport and told you exactly what happens at this novel’s conclusion,
you would still need to guess at what it all means.
Our novel starts with a brief description of the four people who have agreed to stay
in Hill House, an abandoned residence with a long history of dark events. The
leader of the group is Dr. John Montague, who plans to write a book about his
research into paranormal incidents, drawing on what he learns during his sojourn
on the property. He is joined by two women, the spinster Eleanor Vance and
bohemian Theodora, both invited to participate because they have had some
previous experience with the supernatural. A fourth member of the team, Luke
Sanderson, is a young man whose family owns Hill House, and is the likely future
heir of the estate. A few days after their arrival, two more researchers join the party:
Montague's wife, a trained spiritualist who believes she can communicate with the
dead, and Arthur Parker, a school headmaster with a longstanding interest in the
occult.
At this juncture, Jackson begins to break the rules of the haunted house. Perhaps
the first peculiarity noticed by readers is the cheery mood of the visitors.
Occasionally something happens to give them a brief scare, but they are actually
enjoying their time at Hill House. They play games. They plan a picnic. They savor
their meals and camaraderie. For the first few pages of this “eat, drink and be
merry” conviviality, you are assuming that Jackson is merely lulling us—both
readers and characters—into a false sense of security, and that everyone will soon
get the scare of their lives. But not so! Dr. Montague’s biggest problem proves to be
his bossy wife. Mrs. Montague, for her part, is excited by her talks with the spirits of
Hill House. Arthur acts as if he is on an adventure. Luke flirts with the ladies.
Theodora flirts back. And Eleanor is so thrilled with Hill House that she wants to
stay forever.
What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they realize that they are characters in a
horror novel, and they aren’t likely to get out of these pages alive? Haven’t they
read their Poe and Lovecraft? But the reader soon starts to grasp what Shirley
Jackson is doing. The real strange occurrences at this haunted house take place in
the characters' heads. All those noises late at night and strange messages on the
wall are secondary to the real focal point of the conflict, which is ultimately
psychological and emotional.
In time, the disjunction between characters and setting grows so pronounced that
we no longer know how to distinguish cause from effect. We are unsure who to
trust, or our own ability to separate empirical reality from mere delusion. Are the
residents of Hill House haunted or doing the haunting themselves? Are they
victims or perpetrators? As you proceed toward the conclusion of this novel, you
will find yourself forced to revisit and reinterpret the incidents from earlier
chapters, even question their legitimacy as parts of the story, to a degree that is rare
in genre novels, where unreliable narration and postmodern experimentation with
verisimilitude rarely hold sway.
Is there even a ghost in this novel? Perhaps not. But I’m not sure it really matters.
Shirley Jackson shows here that purely psychological threats can be just as
frightening as goblins and demons, and a lot more plausible to boot. In the final
analysis her sense of horror is acutely clinical, and not just because she enlists
researchers as characters, but because even the scientists here are part of the
pathology. That makes The Haunting of Hill House a surprisingly prescient novel,
and perhaps the first truly modern ghost tale—it deals with the bad spirits that
exorcists can’t remove and technologists are powerless against. Maybe they even
create them. Does that sound modern enough for you?
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His most recent book, Love Songs:
The Hidden History, is published by Oxford University Press.
| The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson |
My Year of Horrible Reading
Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Week 2:
The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson
Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Week 2:
The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fowles, John
A Maggot
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mandel, Emily St. John
Station Eleven
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
The Most Secretive Sci-Fi Author
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
_____
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review copies and
promotional materials from publishers, authors,
publicists or other parties.
All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fowles, John
A Maggot
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
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Winter's Tale
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Dune
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Practical Magic
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Brave New World
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Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
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Flowers for Algernon
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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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Gods Without Men
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Dangerous Laughter
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Beloved
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1Q84
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Ada, or Ardor
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Love in the Ruins
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Dimension of Miracles
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Mindswap
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Store of the Worlds
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Frankenstein
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Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
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The World Inside
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City
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The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
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Snow Crash
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Bug Jack Barron
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Glasshouse
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More Than Human
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Some of Your Blood
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Gulliver's Travels
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The White Hotel
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Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
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Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
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Slan
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Emphyrio
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Around the Moon
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Cat's Cradle
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Hieroglyphic Tales
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The Illuminatus! Trilogy
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Cloudstreet
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Orlando
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The Bear Comes Home
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Lord of Light
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This Immortal
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This is my year of horrible reading. I am
reading the classics of horror fiction during the
course of 2016, and each week will write about
a significant work in the genre. You are invited
to join me in my annus horribilis. During the
course of the year—if we survive—we will
have tackled zombies, serial killers, ghosts,
demons, vampires, and monsters of all
denominations. Check back each week for a
new title...but remember to bring along garlic,
silver bullets and a protective amulet. T.G.
reading the classics of horror fiction during the
course of 2016, and each week will write about
a significant work in the genre. You are invited
to join me in my annus horribilis. During the
course of the year—if we survive—we will
have tackled zombies, serial killers, ghosts,
demons, vampires, and monsters of all
denominations. Check back each week for a
new title...but remember to bring along garlic,
silver bullets and a protective amulet. T.G.
Essay by Ted Gioia
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