Welcome to Horrorhead , a fortnightly tower about the dark , twisted part of science fiction – the part that edge on revulsion . If you ’re looking forward to I Am Legend next week , you have intercourse it ’s essentially a vampire horror story translated into a microbial scifi nightmare . But what make I Am Legend shuddery is n’t the spectre of virus - deformed Charles William Post - man . It ’s something more fundamental .
The true repulsion in I Am Legend , and other stories like it , is get to watch what happens to people when they ’re pluck of society . It ’s no accident that Mary Shelley , generator of repugnance - scifi classical Frankenstein , afterwards write a post - apocalyptic book called The Last Man . Like many teller in the genre , she be intimate that no teras is scarier than a human being without companions .
Often the aloneness demon can its head in post - apocalyptic scifi : New Zealand indie Quiet Earth torture us with fright when our protagonist break he ’s the last guy on the planet ; and the virtuoso 28 sidereal day afterward amps up the fear aright aside when the hero awakens to regain himself alone in the middle of an vacate London . Possibly the most bleak portrait of this aloneness comes in Vernor Vinge ’s novel Marooned in Realtime , where a handful characters who can move onwards in time find that they ’ve “ jump ” to a future where humans are cryptically gone . The time - traveler head to the future in longer and farseeing spring , trying to pass a world where apes or spider have evolved into intelligent lifespan that can keep them company . But it does n’t encounter . The sun just grows old and dimmer , and the recede human race never cure their metal money - loneliness .
Of course , there ’s being completely alone and then there ’s being “ the only one . ” Being all alone can sometimes be peaceful , as Ripley demonstrates in Alien when she crawls into her cod after ejecting the unknown into quad . But being the only human left hand in a world of mutants , super - evolved ape , or alien invaders – that ’s more typical in scifi revulsion . It forms the base of often - retold news report like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and uncounted Alien ripoffs ( often little more than slasher movies in space ) .
Still , no matter what horrify creature threat that army of one , the genuine affright lurking beneath the surface is the expiration of protective community . This is n’t a veneration that man hold for themselves , by they style . The shuddery parts of E.T. ( and yes , there are some ) have to do with E.T. being a castaway who is vulnerable on a earth overlook by homo sapiens . And those who record Frankenstein screw that what makes the recreate humanity into a teras is his realization that he ’s alone among creatures who want him demolish .
Image from Marooned in Realtime book incubate byStephen Martiniere .
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