SEA Quest: Southeast Asian Horror Fiction
Southeast Asia is a hot-bed of horror. The region is saturated with dark histories and even darker mythologies. From the krasue from Thailand to hantu tetek from Malaysia and Singapore, legends and stories are rife with things that not only go bump in the night, but are more blood-thirsty than your average Northern Hemisphere ghosts. Centuries of years of trade, migration and settlement brought in more scary spirits and monsters. The Southern Chinese diaspora celebrate Hungry Ghosts Festival for an entire month. Don’t go out at night. Don’t swim in the sea. Don’t kick offerings on the floor. People often breathe a sigh of relief once the month is over. Similarly, the bloodshed and trauma of many wars have left the imprint of haunted memories and hauntings by restless spirits displaced by massacre, starvation and pain. Southeast Asians love horror. Horror movies are extremely popular. Horror and ghost stories are consumed avidly by fans of this genre. In Singapore, a series of ghost stories is still on-going, fueled by the popularity of ghost stories and our obsession with the paranormal. The stories are ghost-written (pun intended, as claimed by the author who collects personal accounts from fans of the series) and range from poignantly sweet to downright horrific. Some remind me of the composition writing I received when I was teaching. Some are real and make me shiver at the sheer terror they evoke in me. We all grow up listening to stories about the pontianak, the penanggalan and the manananggal. The region shares similar stories about female ghosts who would detach their heads from their bodies. Their heads fly in the night, organs and entrails dangling beneath. the organs apparently glisten or shimmer. My relatives would talk about planting cactii around the house as protection. In the morning, so they say, they would find the penanggalan with her entrails snared and tangled by the cactii. For this SEA horror special, I will focus on two Southeast Asian horror writers.
Horror review: Penny Reeve on A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge
Although she’s been a name within the young adult horror/fantasy scene for a while now, Frances Hardinge was recently projected into the mainstream public gaze when her novel The Lie Tree won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year Prize. After such a bar was set with her last novel, Hardinge’s fans waited with bated breath for her newest, A Skinful of Shadows. Luckily it is an intricate and masterfully told coming-of-age tale, full of intrigue and more than a little creepy, which lives up to expectations. Plus, it was nominated for the Waterstones Book of the Year Award 2017. Take that, Costa. A Skinful of Shadows is a dark fantasy novel, set during the English Civil War. We meet our protagonist, Makepeace, as a young girl who lives in the attic of her Puritan uncle’s house, along with her mother. She is haunted by very realistic dreams of ghosts and other terrifying things, and to help her deal with her strange affliction, her mother often forces her to stay in a church overnight to deal with the demons in her head.
Horror Review: Penny Reeve's Top Picks from the Mayhem Film Festival
October is my favorite month of the year. From the first of the month I put on my favorite knits — regardless of the weather outside — and draw up reading and movie lists full of horror, creepiness and witchcraft. This October I spent time watching a ton of films — a lot of which were screened at the incredibly good Mayhem Film Festival held in Nottingham, UK, each year — and I wanted to share with you my top picks, from the classic to the hilarious to the ritualistic. Have you seen anything great over the past month and a bit? Let me know in the comments.
339. Maximum Overdrive (1986) — A Torture Cinema Halloween Special "Adventure"
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode339HalloweenTortureCinemaMeetsMaximumOverdrive/Sandf-Episode339-HalloweenTortureCinemaMeetsMaximumOverdrive.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSCocaine, man eating machines, and AC-DC, oh my! In this special Halloween Horror edition of Torture Cinema, Shaun, David, and Alex are joined by Zena, the Real Queen of Horror, to review the 1986 Stephen King written and directed “horror” film, Maximum Overdrive. Apparently, even Stephen King couldn’t get Stephen King right. The crew discusses how stupid the premise is, eviscerate the despicable characters, muse on where one might find a goblin semi-truck, and share a story that makes the reality of this coked out travesty even more horrifying than the movie. But at least Zena liked the movie, and that means our work here is done.
Signal Boost #24: Ian Muneshwar and Zin E. Rocklyn
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost24IanMuneshwarAndZinE.Rocklyn/Sandf–SignalBoost24–IanMuneshwarAndZinE.Rocklyn.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSThis is the final episode of our month of focusing on horror writers, and it has been so much fun that we’ll be sure to do it again next year! Each of our guests had different reasons for why they write horror and how they use the conventions of horror to explore themes that are important and interesting to them, so make sure you listen to all of them! In today’s episode of Signal Boost, Jen talks to Ian Muneshwar, a queer writer of Indo-Guyanese descent, about how he uses his work to explore his cultural history of forced diaspora, how he works with language in his stories, and how his queer identity influences his writing. Then Zin E. Rocklyn, a writer of Trinidadian descent, talks to Jen about the childhood stories (CW: Gore) that inspired her love of horror, how she juxtaposes the sacred and the profane, and how important it was to her to be included alongside other black women in the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below):
Signal Boost #23: Eden Royce and Karolina Fedyk
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost23EdenRoyceAndKarolinaFedyk/Sandf–SignalBoost23–EdenRoyceAndKarolinaFedyk.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Jen talks to Eden Royce, a southern black woman transplanted to jolly old England, about the differences between horror and the Southern Gothic, the influences of her rootwork and hoodoo cultural background, the challenges of getting published in horror given the kinds of stories she writes, and so much more. Then Karolina Fedyk, a non-binary Polish writer, talks to Jen about why they write horror, the importance of representing marginalized people in stories about Polish history, the challenges to writing in two different languages, and how their stories are different depending on which language they write in. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below):
