Rob Bedford has been writing book reviews at SFFWorld since the early 2000s. In 2016, he and the SFFWorld crew kicked off their annual Countdown to Halloween, featuring reviews of horror both past and current. Rob’s reviews have also appeared in the San Francisco Book review, Reactor (f/k/a Tor.com), and was a contributor at the sadly closed Hugo Award-winning Fanzine, SFSignal. Rob lives in NJ with his wife (they met at Rutgers University) and their derpy dog. He considers himself a connoisseur of “craft beer” and bourbon. A relaxing Friday night for Rob features a full glass, his dog and his wife at his side, while watching a horror movie. He can be found on threads as @robhbed and Bluesky as robhb and occasionally blogs at robbedford.blogspot.com.
- NYCC 2026 – Embracing the Horror: Modern Masters (Jones, LaRocca, Martell, Singer, Spratford, & Triana): write up of our panel (photo below) via Rob from SFFWorld.
Monsters. That’s the easy answer, monsters are cool. Growing up, I always had an affinity for monsters and Horror. I loved Godzilla and Gamera movies, Scooby Doo, The Twilight Zone, and my favorite of the Abbott and Costello movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I was also an avid reader, one of the earliest sets of books I read were The Three Investigators which, of course were mystery, but Jupiter Jones, Peter Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews often found themselves in places like Terror Castle, up against spooky figures like a Whispering Mummy or a Green Ghost. The stories were gateway drugs to Horror, flirting with Horror, even if all of it was based in reality, much like the “monsters” Mystery Incorporated unmasked.
Perhaps the final “nail in my coffin:” My parents were Constant Readers of Stephen King. I think it was middle school when I read either Firestarter or Cujo as my first Stephen King novel. Growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s, gems from Robert R. McCammon (Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour, Stinger) and even some of Dean Koontz’s novels (Strangers and Twilight Eyes) helped to fuel my love of Horror and stories that stuck with me for years. I haven’t turned back, since.
But there was maybe a little bit of a pause, or sidestep.
For a lot of years Epic Fantasy was the main genre I read and still a big part of what I read to this day. The monsters brought me to Fantasy, too. As a kid of the 80s, of course I played Dungeons and Dragons, my gateway to fantasy. I was always most intrigued by the conflict between the human characters and whatever non-human/monstrous threat they were facing. As I got older, one of the first things I read for “fun” after years of assigned reading in college was the Epic Fantasy trilogy, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams. No less than George R.R. Martin (whose Fevre Dream is an incredible vampire novel) points to this series as a landmark of Epic Fantasy and a personal inspiration for his own work. It is a personal favorite I’ve read multiple times. The series features some very creepy scenes that would appeal to Horror readers: the dark, seemingly haunted castle in which we meet our protagonist, Simon. The harrowing and horrific scenes with our characters going into some dark places, hunted by frightening creatures. Some of the scariest scenes I’ve read in any “genre” quite frankly.
But Horror was always there, King was always writing, keeping me tethered to Horror.
On a related note, I love roller coasters and have since I was maybe ten years old when my father “encouraged” me to go on the SooperDooperLooper in Hersheypark. I think what really epitomizes my love of being scared was when I rode the Batman & Robin: The Chiller roller coaster at Six Flags, Great Adventure in NJ. The ride shoots the train out at 65 MPH to go do roller coaster things. When I got off the ride, I remember initially being terrified, but then saying to my friends something like “I’ve never been that scared on a coaster before, I need to ride it again!” That sums up why I love Horror, that thrill of being scared.
With all the thrills, chills, and fears, there is a certain safety in Horror, too. We can put ourselves in the shoes of Nancy Thompson (Nightmare on Elm Street) or be afraid of the boogeyman in our closets. We can also close the book and turn off the movie. Certainly, it is a conflicting dichotomy. Drawn by the fear, stay for the comfort of having control over it.
That visceral reaction that only Horror (and comedy) can illicit is another reason why I love Horror. It is one thing for a film to send the chills down the spine with seemingly inanimate objects being in different places from scene to scene like those terrifying clown figures in Hell House, LLC, but I’ll never forget the nightmare Dan Simmon’s Summer of Night gave me decades ago. One of the characters was sleeping with his window open, with the screen separating his room from outside. One of the nasties scratched on the kid’s screen beckoning him. A couple of nights after I read that scene, I woke from a noise I thought I heard at my screened window because of course I was reading the novel in the summer with the windows. That’s the visceral sense. But the thought-provoking fear, something like Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts makes you question your perspective, question the reality you just experienced, question your senses, question your trust in characters and people. Few do that specific thing better than Tremblay, honestly.
The diversity, too. Look at modern Horror… from the storytellers to the stories themselves. In other words, a lot more than straight white dudes are writing Horror and Horror ranges in the kinds of stories being told: ghost stories, haunted people stories, folk Horror, slasher, monster Horror, kids fighting monsters, etc., and a big part of those two lines of diversity is small press and the respect that self-publishing now has.
I’ve rambled quite a bit, so back to the impetus for this essay: Why I Love Horror.
Monsters are fun, monsters are cool. It is even more entertaining to experience people overcoming those monsters, inspiring us to overcome our own adversaries and obstacles even if they aren’t quite monsters.
The oft-used G.K. Chesterton quote very much applies to Horror “fairy tales do not introduce children to fear or evil… it instead provides the first clear idea that these terrors can be defeated…”
But, in really, it is the monsters. Am I right?
That’s why I love Horror.
