Alexandros Papadiamantis and "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells

 

By Vangelis Hatzivasiliou, 
Editor of Eleftherotypia, 4/3/2010

The first translation of H. G. Wells' famous novel "The Invisible Man" in Greece was made, anonymously, by Alexandros Papadiamantis.

What does Alexandros Papadiamantis have to do with science fiction and horror literature? And how can he be connected to an author like H. G. Wells and his famous novel "The Invisible Man", which nurtured generations upon generations of readers and translators, as well as writers and artists?

Papadiamantis was, in an unsuspecting time, the anonymous first translator of "The Invisible Man" in Greece. A translator with imagination, resourcefulness, humor and, most importantly, a strongly sarcastic disposition. This, at least, is shown by today's edition of his text by "Kichli", edited by N. D. Triantafyllopoulos and Lambrini Triantafyllopoulos, who spoke about their find four years ago (with an article in the magazine "Nea Estia"), while the case had already been identified in 1987 by Eleni I. Damvounelli (with her announcement in the magazine "Diavazo").

G.K. Chesterton's Defense of Scary Stories from a Christian Perspective

G.K. Chesterton was a mystery writer, literary critic, and revered Catholic theologian. On October 16th 1909, he wrote an article for The Daily News titled "The Nightmare", which is a work of literary criticism regarding why scary stories are so delightful, but also their potential dangers. Unlike later reactionary Christians, Chesterton is fully on board with the telling and enjoying of scary stories, so long as we remember that they are nothing more than "toys".

Many Christians believe scary stories are evil in themselves, because they associate anything scary with what they interpret as bad feelings as opposed to what they interpret is good, but there is no such thing as an evil story, unless the person hearing the story is evil and when hearing it abandons any sense of Christian hope that lies in his heart. A story changes perspective depending on one's beliefs and disposition, and when a true Christian hears a scary story it will always be with a Christian perspective, and as long as the temptation to judge it as merely evil or demonic is avoided, it can be beneficial if the story contains even a kernel of benefit, and usually scary stories do (for example, in scary stories evil is usually viewed as bad and the audience is usually encouraged to root for the good). It is the same as reading the Bible, where one's interpretation of it first and foremost depends on their personal beliefs and disposition - to some it can inspire piety and holiness while to others it could inspire unimaginable horrors, rebellion and even murder.

You can read "The Nightmare" here, though he does touch more on this subject in other writings of his as well. Below is an excerpt:

"The Vroucolacas: A Tale" by James K. Paulding (full text)

James Kirke Paulding (August 22, 1778 – April 6, 1860) was an American writer and, for a time, the United States Secretary of the Navy. He was born in Pleasant Valley, New York and largely self-educated. He became a close friend of Washington Irving, with whom he began a periodical. The result was Salmagundi; a short-lived satirical periodical, from which the word 'Gotham' was first ascribed as a name for New York City. After writing many other things, in June 1846 he published "The Vroucolacas: A Tale" in Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art out of Philadelphia. This is among the earliest American tales influenced directly from true accounts of Greek vampire tales, half a century before the publishing of Bram Stoker's Dracula. He died at his farm near Hyde Park, New York. He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Towards a Theology of Gore

By Daniel Otto Jack Petersen

Fake blood dripping from mouths and fake blades protruding from faux wounds on Halloween. It's as much a part of the ludic pageantry as monsters and webs and gravestones and the rest. What do we make of the gory, bloody element of this holiday?

Right when I started trying to write my own take on a zombie tale, I was immediately confronted with the need for a theology of gore. I wondered for a moment what the Bible could possibly have to say on grotesque and gruesome material like this. It was only for a moment. Immediately my mind was flooded with the copious amounts of gore that splatter the pages of Scripture: Jael and her famous tent peg assassination, Ehud and his famous surprise disembowelment of an obese king, that messed up Levite that dismembered his raped and murdered concubine and sent the pieces of her body all round the country, dogs eating up the body of wicked Queen Jezebel except for the feet and hands and skull, people in a besieged city fighting over whose baby to eat next, and just generally the beheadings and hangings and spears and swords and arrows thrusting people through, blood and guts a spilling.

"Night of the Living Dead": Horror Movie as Social Commentary

By Greg Salvatore

First, we see a car making its way up a road. Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother, Johnny (uncredited, played by Russell Streiner) are driving to a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania in order to lay a memorial and flowers at the headstone of their grandfather. As they get out of the car, the radio mysteriously turns on, then turns off. In the distance, Johnny sees a man approaching them. He seems to be moving strangely.

And so begins George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which came out the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey. While it was not the first zombie movie ever made, it defined the genre for years to come, and it did so by injecting social commentary into the horror movie format.

Frankenstein And The Vampyre - A Dark and Stormy Night (Documentary)

A fascinating exploration of one of the most significant moments in Gothic history: the night when Mary and Percy Shelley in the company of Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori gathered together at Lake Geneva to tell ghost stories. The night when Frankenstein was born.

Drawing on British Library manuscripts and archives, the one hour documentary will bring together a stellar cast of Gothic, horror, science-fiction writers and historians to discuss why one single night had such a significant impact on our culture.

Christians and Horror: Three Views

In 2011 the website Zombie Theology (no longer in existence) did a series on the three different views Christians generally have in regard to the horror genre. They were written by three different Christian authors who stated their case for each, providing an interesting and helpful exchange of opinions regarding this divisive topic. Below are the links to the original sources:

The Critique of Pure Horror

Jason Zinoman

July 16, 2011

The New York Times

WITH gruesome television series about vampires, werewolves, serial killers and zombies earning huge ratings, and a new cinematic bloodbath opening seemingly every week, the cultural appetite for horror raises a curious question: why do so many of us enjoy being disgusted and terrified?

The question has long puzzled parents and mystified spouses, but it has also increasingly engaged the attention of academics. Scholarship on the horror genre has grown so much over the last three decades that a peer-reviewed journal devoted to it, Horror Studies, was started last year. While much of the field’s research is sociological or cultural, focusing on what scary movies reveal about the time or place in which they were made, a small library of books and essays has also tried to explain the visceral appeal of shivers down your spine.

G.K. Chesterton's Defense of the Sensational Novel

By G.K. Chesterton

My own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But we all lose a little of that fine edge of austerity and idealism which sharpened our spiritual standard in our youth. I have come to compromise with the tea-table and to be less insistent about the sofa. As long as a corpse or two turns up in the second, the third, nay even the fourth or fifth chapter, I make allowance for human weakness, and I ask no more. But a novel without any death in it is still to me a novel without any life in it. I admit that the very best of the tea-table novels are great art--for instance, Emma or Northanger Abbey. Sheer elemental genius can make a work of art out of anything. Michelangelo might make a statue out of mud, and Jane Austen could make a novel out of tea--that much more contemptible substance. But on the whole I think that a tale about one man killing another man is more likely to have something in it than a tale in which, all the characters are talking trivialities without any of that instant and silent presence of death which is one of the strong spiritual bonds of all mankind. I still prefer the novel in which one person does another person to death to the novel in which all the persons are feebly (and vainly) trying to get the others to come to life.

Shining Light Into the Darkness of Horror Tales

Sacramental Horror Stories: 

Shining Light Into the Darkness of the Human Heart

Rev. Jonathan Weyer (Author, 'The Faithful')

March 3, 2011

The Huffington Post

As a kid growing up in Southern Indiana, I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies, like Friday the 13th or Halloween. Having kids myself, I now completely understand why I wasn't allowed. The last thing I want to deal with in the middle of the night is a screaming 7-year-old scared by something he saw on TV.

Still, I loved to be scared so I snuck in real ghost stories while staying at my grandma's house during the summer. I shivered into the night as I read story after story about ghosts. I loved it. The love of being scared has followed me into my adulthood. Many Christians find it it odd that I have an interest in scary things. They are completely weirded out when they find out I have written and just published a horror novel.

Cosmic Horror vs. Sacred Terror: Finding Meaning in Modern Horror

H.P. Lovecraft (left) and Arthur Machen

By Jonathan Ryan

Why is there so much hopeless despair in modern horror? Part of the answer can be found in H.P. Lovecraft's writings and his concept of "cosmic horror." He explains his view of the end of the world: "The human race will disappear. Other races of beings will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions.' Only egotism exists."

Lovecraft injected this worldview into all of his stories. Lovecraft fans discuss the "Cthulhu mythos," based on one of his short stories, The Call of Cthulhu. A malevolent entity, Cthulhu becomes a stand-in for all the monsters or aliens of the Lovecraft universe. He drives home his committed atheist worldview through his "old ones"—alien "gods" from other worlds who either do not care about ours or actively seek our destruction. Cosmic horror is what happens when the characters in Lovecraft's stories face this reality and react in utter despair at the futility of doing anything about it.

What Christopher Lee Said About the Occult

It was sadly announced today that Sir Christopher Lee, perhaps my favorite actor of all time, died on June 7th shortly after his 93rd birthday.

To dispel a popular rumor, Lee did not have a vast library of occult books. When giving a speech at the University College Dublin on 8 November 2011, he said: "Somebody wrote I have 20,000 books. I'd have to live in a bath! I have maybe four or five [occult books]." He further admonished the students against baneful occult practices, warning them that he had met "people who claimed to be Satanists. Who claimed to be involved with black magic. Who claimed that they not only knew a lot about it," however he himself had certainly never been involved: "I warn all of you: never, never, never. You will not only lose your mind, you'll lose your soul."