Or, The Pale Blue Dot and Existential Dread

Last month I posted why I don’t write gore. You can read it here.

Four excellent comments were posted and I decided that rather than reply to each one individually, I’d reply to the thoughts that were expressed in a follow-up post. So here we go!

It’s very apparent, at least to these eyes, that the first world, and even large portions of the second, is plagued consciously or unconsciously with the feeling that we have no meaning. No existential meaning, that is. We are, in fact, useless eaters. We consume the planet’s resources, and return to it our excrement.

We see on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, and every other social media outlet people essentially saying, “Look at me! I don’t want to be alone. Please, talk to me!”

And Will’s point in his comment was exactly that: if real life is my horror story, why do I want to watch, or read, what I am already living? Which may explain why happy ever after (HEA) romance novels blow away all of the competition.

Or I can go the opposite route, and bathe in the blood and gore in an attempt to shock feeling into my numb senses.

Of course, on a technical level, if it serves the story, a little bit of viscera shredding can be a good thing. It gives the main character, and us, a chance to exclaim, “Man, I’m glad that wasn’t my die roll. Then again, I might be next. No guarantees here.” Then he or she blasts a monster that was just about to eat his or her head.

So, I’m not categorically opposed to gore in a story, but it must serve a purpose. Too often it does not. And then I’m skimming pages, or I just might put the book down.

An advantage I see in writing cosmic horror is that it can present a solution to our meaninglessness. A solution obviously deriving from the author’s worldview. 

Writers take note: this is your chance to spread your own gospel. Show the reader he or she has no existential meaning, and then show them how they can find meaning for themselves.

I think this notion of using cosmic horror to drive home our essential and existential meaninglessness, but also the corrective to that meaninglessness, is too often missed. 

Lovecraft’s followers for the most part missed it. They got hung up on the gods and missed why Lovecraft created them. Lovecraft created cosmic horror, IMO, to first of all drive home the pale blue dot and existential dread; secondly, to present his solution to said dread.

To my mind, presenting the antidote to cosmic existential dread is a writer’s golden opportunity to contribute not just entertainment, but a solution to a massive problem that is eating the soul of the first world. The focus on blood and guts just doesn’t do it, to my way of thinking.

As writers, we present our worldviews to our readers; consciously or unconsciously. We are telling them, as it were, through story, how things are and how we should act in response. We may do so with a heavy or light hand, but however we do it we are evangelists of our own world views.

I think cosmic horror addresses where we are at, and, if written well, tells us what we can do about that existential dread we all feel.

Comments are welcome, and until next time happy reading!