Splatterpunk

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Splatterpunk describes a subgenre of horror fiction distinguished by its graphic depiction of violence.^{[citation needed]}

Clive Barker is often cited as the best known writer of the style (particularly his six volumes of short story collections, Clive Barker's Books of Blood).^{[citation needed]} The term was coined in the mid-1980s by author and pop-culture critic David J. Schow,^{[citation needed]} referencing the concurrent science fiction sub-genre cyberpunk; Schow is considered an innovator and exemplary within the splatterpunk school of horror writing. Other prominent figures are the bestselling team of John Skipp and Craig Spector, whose modern vampire classic The Light At The End (1986) is considered a seminal work.^{[citation needed]}

Splatterpunk short stories and novels are almost always intense and intentionally disturbing, grotesque, and even disgusting, marked by a lack of adherence to what the writers saw as clichéd conventions of best-selling works by Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Saul.^{[citation needed]} Antiheroes are more prevalent than more conventional heroes, such as crucifix-bearing Abraham Van Helsing, found in traditional horror fiction, or the "everyday folks" of King's works. Splatterpunk characters are often marginalized, alienated, drug-prone and generally anti-social.

The tone of splatterpunk is realistic, gritty, downbeat, sometimes nihilistic, graphic, and vicious, as well as gleefully shocking, a cry of "Épater le bourgeois" ("to shock the bourgeois") at the complacency and safety of bestselling horror fiction. Splatterpunk authors were influenced more by anti-establishment writers such as William S. Burroughs and Harlan Ellison,^{[citation needed]} and movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead.^{[citation needed]}

Important splatterpunk works include the novels The Kill Riff, by David Schow;^{[citation needed]} Slob, by Rex Miller;^{[citation needed]} The Cipher, by Kathe Koja;^{[citation needed]} Off Season, by Jack Ketchum;^{[citation needed]} The Scream, by Skipp and Spector;^{[citation needed]} Cellars, by John Shirley;^{[citation needed]} Dr. Identity, by D. Harlan Wilson;^{[citation needed]} and the short story collections Splatterpunk: Extreme Horror and Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge, edited by Paul Sammon and published in 1990 and 1995, respectively. Other authors sometimes considered exponents of the splatterpunk genre include Nancy Collins, Roberta Lannes, Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, and Michael Boatman.^{[citation needed]}

In short stories, Edward Bryant's "A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned", which takes place in the world akin to George A. Romero's zombie universe, is often cited as a classic of the genre in addition to the book that first contained it, the zombie-themed Book of the Dead anthology edited by splatterpunk legends Skipp and Spector.^{[citation needed]}

As a commercial force in horror fiction, splatterpunk never achieved more than a cult following, particularly in the work of Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho).

[edit] Critical bibliography

• "Inside the New Horror" — Philip Nutman, The Twilight Zone, October 1988
• "The Splatterpunks: The Young Turks at Horror's Cutting Edge" — Lawrence Person, Nova Express, Summer 1988
• Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror — Paul M. Sammon, St. Martins, 1990 ISBN 0-312-04581-6
• Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge — Paul M. Sammon, Tor Books, 1995 ISBN 0-312-85786-1
• Splatterpunk Sampler