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I first visited Haw Par Villa as a kid. Weirdly, I was most afraid of the exhibit that shows the “good souls” standing on the silver and gold bridges to cross into paradise. For some reason I interpreted that exhibit to mean that the good souls would be standing on that bridge forever.
There is no working, thinking creature that does not have their thoughts, their life, their whole essence, alienated from them. Whether you work as a labourer, a gardener, a chef, a cleaner, a brickie, a middle-manager, an assistant, you have your very life purchased from you (if you’re lucky enough to be paid). When I worked in grounds maintenance for the council, I certainly sold my inability to feel what is now a continual ache in my hips
I can’t explain or even begin to fathom the tangled mess of -isms afflicting my nation and my planet. I am a writer and editor of speculative fiction and what I know, what I deeply and profoundly know, is that none of this had to happen this way. That there can and ought to be other worlds than this.
I think both the inspector and Gemma are characters who find solace in each other because they are trying to mediate these brutal social forces that they didn’t choose, but were born into, which is something I relate to. How are you supposed to make decisions for yourself, or even just survive, when you inherit a world other people made for you?
Adam-Troy Castro examines a thriller (What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan) whose ending puts it squarely in the realm of horror. He also discusses A Scout Is Brave, a new novella by Will Ludwigsen and a zombie movie you might want to check out.
I live near the Greenwich Peninsula, which is an area of London crammed full of new-build blocks of luxury apartments, some of which (particularly during the COVID lockdowns) seemed almost entirely empty. I would often notice a single light in the stairwell.
I’ve been told that nautical horror is having a moment. What that means, or what any of us should do about that fact, is a little bit oblique, mainly because oceanic terror has been the quiet backbone of the horror genre for almost as long as it has existed.
The night hag or “sleep paralysis demon” is such a common experience it gave birth to the term “nightmare.” Every society generates its own terrors, but the shadowy figure is universal.
I don’t think going to Mars will save us. Nor will building some godlike artificial intelligence. No—if there is to be a worthwhile, dignified future for human life on Earth, we have to break free of this malevolent cosmology, this planet-devouring maw.
J. Nicole Jones received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University. She has held editorial positions at VICE magazine and VanityFair.com. Her essays and writing have appeared in VICE, VanityFair.com, the Harper’s Magazine website, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers, and others. She is the author of Low Country: A Memoir and The Witches of Bellinas.
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