For those who blend SF and horror,

[lwflouisa]

What was your initial inspiration behind your choice to write stories that blended Science Fiction and Horror?

In my case, until very recently I used to have a lot more night terrors. It had been more common for me to watch movies like The Ring and other Asian horror movies. Although my first dip into watching science fiction was stuff like Battle Angel Alita, Elfen Lied ( kind of an edge case there ), and Saikano. I still need to finish reading chobitz.

But at times I feel like I haven't completely shaken off my early writing period, where my short fiction had a lot more of a True Crime / Crime Drama kind of element to it. With advanced detectives aided by technology, in a crises that loomed out of control: the government behind the murders.

Of course now I write more Artificial General Intelligence these days.

What say you?

[sarahmassey998]

My novel is based of the works of HP Lovecraft and Frankenstein both of which are dripping with science fiction and horror elements. Both deal with the idea that human innovation to understand the universe around us but that doesn't mean we should. Science fiction is about the limitless protentional of science, the best tool humans have to manipulating their environment. Horror is about the unknown reminding people just how out of their control the world is. It's easy to mix the two, to add horror as a limit to the reach of the human mind, to remind us that that we're barely a drop in the cosmic ocean. I've tried to incorporate both ideals into my novel by having both the horror of science gone wrong but balanced with the wonder and hope of science gone right.

[lwflouisa]

Yea to me science fiction is really at its best when it blends elements of horror in my own view.

My specific variations I like: traditionalism vs. futurism, the known vs. the unknown. To me unknown traditionalism and unknown futurism is where it gets interesting to me.

I mean Cyberpunk kind of does that I guess...

What seems to be tough as nails at the moment, how to handle some of the elements I'm going to be adapting next, with tropes atypical of fiction like cyberpunk ( with the possible exception being maybe LitRPG / GameLit ).

[sarahmassey998]

I love a good space horror movie. Space travel is supposed to be our greatest achievement and its morbidly fun to see how many ways it can go wrong. Some of my favorite are Even Horizon and the Alien franchise.
Cyberpunk is also interesting because it asks just how far we can go before we can no longer consider ourselves human and just what is humanity. Could we become something unrecognizable; deathless or void of flesh. Will we better, worse, or do those terms even apply to the new form of life we've become. The tv show Altered Carbon does a good job at showing this and the movie Upgrade.

[lwflouisa]

The direction I ended up going with was a full blown inversion of the typical Cyberpunk themes: when people are decapitation by guillotine gun, while it's true that some high technology is used to regrow lost bodies, and other aspects like neck fixing, and everyone is a cyborg to at least some extent if they had ever been executed for a crime, it's closer to meat robots than terminator types.

It isn't until much much much later in the future ( around 2500 a.d. ) where the line between man and android and man and vampire is so blurry as to be effectively meaningless.

( Which means, sometimes Vampire Cyborgs as well. )

Or even that certain things in the future are simply untranslatable when played back in a modern context. "The little boy who stuck his thumb in a wall" would be essentially unrecognizable, and have wildly different sub tropes.

[sarahmassey998]

Vampire cyborgs-I love it! its so Dracula 3000. Can science solve the need to feed or are there somethings that is beyond science?
I play with the idea of science fiction as my story is a historical novel so I create what would be science fiction in that time: like reanimating corpses, distilling fairies to create a cloaking device, and mythical advances in psychology. The flip side is that a lot of our modern sci fy tropes don't apply such as computers achieving intelligence or world ending zombie pandemics. but there are robots, weird steampunk brought to life through eldritch science robots though.

[lwflouisa]

And video game character that come to life, literally, They're an invasive environmental species.

[spadedigsbutts]

Ahh yes...San Francisco and horror...the two go hand in hand

[ThunderAngel]

There's a bit of Earthbound and off world mixed reality/artificial intelligence in my horror books. I'm not quite sure how I got the inspiration to incorporate science fiction into my Gothic horror series, but it looks to have worked, as quite a few people seemed to like the pairing.

[lwflouisa]

Yea that sounds right up my alley!

Artificial Intelligence would have to be anthropomorphized a bit: while reward / cost functions innovate the Machine Learning community, it can be also boring to read for those who don't implement.

I ended up going mainly with Cyborg fairies and cyborg vampires in my case. Skull-Fairies are kind of ... a hybrid creature in their own right.

[ThunderAngel]

The main AI character in my stories is called Grace: meaning graphically represented artificially cognitive entity. She's a very interesting character and will also feature in some of her own Memoirs of Asylum stories.

[lwflouisa]

Ah asylum chapters you say? That got my interest.

[ThunderAngel]

Oh yes, I'm writing both novellas and web comics based on the Memoirs of Asylum stories.

[lwflouisa]

Good stuff. Oh there is a chance I might actually have that condition myself referenced. Although it works to my benefit as as it turns out I'm transgendered. So it works.

But one fear I have, as over the course of writing these side stories, it seems like I' moved further and further away from science fiction ( when I had moved away from horror ), and now my work is in this weird place, because while there are vampires ( clinical vampirism in this case ) it doesn't really effect the plot in the same way it does in say ... Underworld or Blade Of The Immortal.

It basically is just used to mean a genetic predisposition to because state executioners, who are paradoxically an underclass and a form of nobility.

But a lot of them end up becoming homeless rejecting that lifestyle, and instead being skilled with social engineering as an aid to computer hacker friends.

[ThunderAngel]

So, you're finding yourself exploring other genres?

[lwflouisa]

Yea Cyberpunk, Magical Realism, Gothic Romance, a smidgen of Japanese style horror. In a way, I feel like I'm going back to the old science fiction style I wrote prior to getting an interest in 80s style Cyberpunk in a way, which relied a lot more on the traditional ghost story as a launching point. With some exceptions, like the tie on short story I just wrote.

The kind of SF you might find in say Ringu, Elfen Lied, Saikano, that sort of thing.

[ThunderAngel]

Ah, I think I see what you mean. Do you enjoy writing the old school style? I know that it feels a little strange to me to go back to traditional drawing since I've been doing digital art for so long, but i find myself getting back into the groove and really enjoying it again.

[lwflouisa]

Absolutely, although the main reason I do traditional is because I can't afford a tablet, and I find that when I was using a stylus in a drawing program, I couldn't get the same effect with marking. It's basically drawing in the most literal sense of the word.

So someone who holds their pencil sideways with their finger tips, gets the same effect as someone who holds their pencil as if they were writing a book report.

But I'm willing to draw a tablet at least once, for images that don't rely on a lot of negative and positive space type of shading.

I'm not sure if the charcoal and paint brushed ink style will give the desired dark SF feeling I'm looking for. Plus I ended up with an accident: a paint brush that's to thick can easily turn a pair of Birkenstock sandals into Birkenstock Amsterdam.

[ThunderAngel]

Traditional drawing feels much more natural than digital, I suppose that's why it feels so good to go back to it for me. Digital drawing has never felt natural to me, I suppose that's why I work with 3D graphics and vector graphics instead.

[lwflouisa]

I've actually considered traditional character art with 3D backgrounds myself. And then finish them up by re shading with charcoal again.