The article linked below is probably NOT SAFE FOR WORK, as it contains a nude photo. In addition, the short story Adaptation by Tabico as discussed in the article begins with the statement “Author Note: Warning! Extreme squick! Bugs! Blood! Cruelty! Yucky & mean stuff!” and considering that this was written for people actually seeking out erotica, you should probably heed its warning.

Noah Berlatsky has been sending me links to his studies for awhile now, but his most recent project is easily his best yet. Gay Utopia is a finite forum dedicated to examining the notion of a society predicated on fluid sexuality. While not every article was to my liking, Noah’s take on what he calls “Fecund Horror” really struck a chord, and it’s obvious that it is something that he’s had brewing for quite some time. As I’ve mentioned previously, this kind of horror is one of my favourite takes on the genre, and Noah delivers. The essay tackles John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, Cronenberg’s Shivers (a favourite here at The Horror Blog) and a short story of erotic mind control by Tabico, with stops along the way for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien, Frankenstein and many more. It’s a wild ride, and while I’m not sure I agree with everything Noah presents, it’s certainly a great place to start.

“For Firestone, the end result of this belief is positive — transforming pregnancy and repealing taboo results in a fluid and sunlit Eden. For the horror genre, on the other hand, transforming pregnancy and repealing taboo results in a slimy and tenebrous abyss. But the underlying economy of both is the same. Pregnancy is a central truth of our selves. It is the basis for the regulation of sexuality, of boundaries, of affection, and of love. If it is altered, identity collapses, and with it the world as we know it. The new birth is the apocalypse.”

As I said, it’s obvious Noah has been working this out for a long time now, to the point that he even provides a list of source material if you feel like pursuing this fascinating sub-genre further. I know I will.

And really, how can you resist an essay with the line “The men in the 1982 The Thing aren’t gay enough to live”?

Our first guest is David Wellington, author of the acclaimed zombie trilogy Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet. David got his start online and continues to move effortlessly between print, such as his latest, the vampire action novel 13 Bullets, and the internet, with the post-apocalyptic zombie saga Plague Zone and the frozen werewolf terror of Frostbite. All of his horror tales are still available for free online at the links above, and if you like what you see please consider purchasing the print editions.

David’s encounter with terror is near and dear to my heart, as I had an almost identical experience. I don’t doubt a few of you will feel the same.

A lot of things scared me when I was a kid. The first I can remember was a special news report in 1981 by Walter Cronkite called “The Defense of the United States”, a documentary about what we could expect following a global thermonuclear war. I was nine years old at the time, and in love with special effects movies and had heard there were going to be some state of the art “recreations” included in the show. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to watch, sitting through endless talking head interviews I couldn’t understand, wondering if this dud was ever going to pay off. Boy, did it. About halfway through the program Cronkite warned that what we were about to see was a simulation based on the best available data, and that sensitive viewers might want to look away. You got to see what would happen to downtown Omaha Nebraska when the bomb hit. Exploding buildings, people with melting faces… for years afterward I ran and hid under my bed every time an airplane passed over the house, convinced it could be a Russian bomber.

Then there was the time my parents stayed out till two in the morning, and at midnight they started playing The Shining on HBO. I don’t think I need to go into details. When the front door opened and my Dad stepped inside, a little drunk and pissed that I was still awake… well. We’ve all been there, I suppose.

Trash connoisseurs are well aware that foreign rip-offs of popular American films are not only highly treasured, they sometimes surpass the originals. My personal favourites are the barbarian knock-offs that littered Italian cinema in the wake of Conan’s success, but on the other end of the historical scale are the post-apocalyptic epics that were churned out in the early 80’s. David Z. of Tomb It May Concern takes a long, hard look at our doomed future as seen through the eyes of the Italians in his three-part Pastapocalypse series.

Written and directed by some of the best talents in Italy still working at the time, populated by a cast of classic faces and new stars and ruled by totally berserk scenarios… it was a great time in Italian exploitation cinema. One that is worthy of it’s own look, because these films are not simple science fiction, but so full of ACTION they became epics that capitalized on a popular scenario and spun off into something special and unique. The PastaPocalypse!

David’s obsessive enthusiam for these films is infectious. He covers everything from The Bronx Warriors through to The Bronx Executioners, with stops for Rats, Yor, and everything in-between, so put on your leather vest and let’s ride!

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West is one of the most brutal things I have ever read. The lyricism of the prose is offset by wholesale slaughter and unrepentant murder. It’s so soaked in blood that I’m not surprised that McCarthy has decided to pen a post-apocalyptic novel. The following is an excerpt from the just-released The Road.

“The mummied dead everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires. Shriveled and drawn like latterday bogfolk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth. They were discarded to a man like pilgrims of some common order for all their shoes were long stolen.”

What’s with all the apocalyptic fiction all of a sudden? Is a brand-new doomsday zeitgeist upon us?

Apparently you can now view a webisode entitled 2 gangsters + A DIVA for the post-apocalyptic television show Jericho over at CBS. I say apparently because it’s only accessible to Americans, and I’m not eligible. I don’t know whether this nationalistic ban is a blessing or a curse considering the reaction to the webisode, which probably explains why this isn’t getting the kind of exposure these things usually receive. How hard could it be to create a gripping apocalyptic short?

A small town in Kansas is thrown into turmoil by the appearance of a mushroom cloud on the horizon.

Bill over at DisContent gets it right when he says that Jericho is “a bit soft in the belly”. Jericho is a show that has a number of great moments, many of which tap into those Cold War memories people of a certain age share, that unfortunately lacks the overall level of suspense that this kind of program requires to succeed.

I remember watching a stand-up comedian performing a routine about the original Kansas-based nuclear apocalypse thriller, The Day After. He pointed out a scene in which people are rioting at a grocery store and you can see cashiers working hard keeping everything in order. His question was, what kind of overtime do you get during the apocalypse? A similar sense of ignorant calm pervades Jericho. You actually see waitresses working at the local tavern mere hours after a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon. Only a few townspeople seem to have any idea of the gravity of their situation.

One of the fallacies of the many dark suspense serials that came out on the heels of Lost was in taking things at a snail’s pace and only slowly giving out answers to the questions being posed. The reality is that most successful serials actually answer those questions both early and regularly. What they do is replace said mysteries with new ones. They keep the pump primed. It may be too early to say, but the first episode of Jericho seems more like that of the disasterous Invasion than of the show which it no doubt wants to emulate.

Whatever little sense of panic created in the premiere is quelled quite easily by the good folk of Jericho, meant perhaps to emphasize the level-headed rationality of some fantasy version of small-town America. Practically the only reason to watch a show like this is to place familiar characters into an unfamiliar situation and see how they react under the pressure, something which Jericho so far hasn’t come close to establishing. The only way that I can see Jericho succeeding in the long run is if it became something of an anti-Lost, in which characters familiar to one another slowly become strangers and where old secrets aren’t necessarily revealed but created and acted upon. In short, the decline of civilization. I’m intrigued enough to keep watching, but not for long.

Of all the shows premiering this Fall, my most anticipated is Jericho. I’m a sucker for apocalyptic fiction, and an entire season of it is right up my alley. Show writer Jon Steinberg nailed the appeal for me with this quote from an article on the show.

“[We wanted] to tell a very big story in a very small place. There’s a tradition of it in features and not that much in TV. Sort of the ‘28 Days Later’ and ‘Signs’ and those kind of movies, taking that and building on a world like that.”

The first episode has been making its way around the internet for weeks now, so CBS has decided to give in an post an official release. Enjoy.