when college professors write horror

I remember reading Stephen King's"The Stand" when it first came out and thinking, "This is a great plot. If only there were some characters this would be a great book."

Now Justin Cronin has written that great book. And its the first of a trilogy! With characters, dialogue, a vibrant imagined society, very scary monsters - everything you could want in a good novel. An entire vividly imagined world. This is wonderful.

It doesn't look like Kim Paffenroth is going to make millions of dollars with "Valley of the Dead" but it is a strange and lovely zombie tail. He re-imagines Dante as a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, journeying through circles of zombie hells. The result is moving and elegant.

Now that I think of it, real writers and academics have everything they need to produce superior horror. Anyone versed in the Bible, Herman Melville, The Illiad and the Odyssey, and Shakespeare already has all the horror tropes. And the skills to make them come alive.

This is a wonderful trend and I hope to see a lot more of it.

Incubus

I lost track of TCM underground for a while. In Alaska it appeared at a reasonable hour, while here in the good old eastern time zone it really is the middle of the night. But I have mastered the DVR and just watched this really strange movie.

Leslie Stevens directed this in 1965 right after Twilight Zone was cancelled. A very young William Shatner has the same trouble with evil young blonds that Captain Kirk would have later.

And this is the only movie ever made in Esperanto. Now that is a strange idea. It does give the whole muddled mess an other-worldly quality.

A great genre book - but which genre?

Sleepless straddles hard-boiled, noir, sci fi, and horror effortlessly. A prion disease that resembles fatal familial insomnia has spread around the world. There are parallel stories of a Hank Reacher like character and an all-too-human young cop trying to make some progress against the inevitable.

A great book, and once again the epidemiology is flawless.

I already know Huston as a great novelist with an amazing range - all of it dark. I was least impressed with his vampire novels, although "Half the Blood in Brooklyn" is a great title. This book was thrilling and I can't wait to read what comes next.