i've eventually come around to this way of thinking: it's a good thing that editors choose the best available stories even if it stretches the boundaries of their genre. i forget who first said it. the most recent pseudopod and 1. podcastle probably would have been more at home on the other podcast but we got both so it seems to all work out.
of course, it can be fun to compare & debate your personal definition of a genre with others. you could probably follow the arc of several users as they go through the phase of explaining why individual episodes don't qualify, eventually giving a general definition of the genre, and then gradually stop commenting about it.
my personal definition is broader than most. i'm willing to classify most stories that concentrate on a negative aspect of human existence as a type of horror. in ways, Dostoevsky has disturbed me more than any genre writer.
this episode focuses on the loss of those closest to you and the general truth that you can't really know anybody completely. it could have been darker but it's enough for me.
While I can see your point, I guess I just don't agree in the particular. I'll skip the stuff about the fun of comparing and debating - I've been reading this type of stuff for 40 years, have worked in an editorial position scouting same for a bit and pretty much know my own mind.
The short version I gave (which I consider fairly broad myself) is the one I use - it all comes back to overall intent. Moments in Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Gogol's DEAD SOULS or Balzac's ILLUSIONS PERDUES may be
horrifying but the overall intent, the goal of the work, is outside of horror. If I remember correctly, this approach to defining the genre is just cribbed from Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror In Literature", so I'm not claiming any personal breakthrough here. I guess I find “negative aspects
of human existence” perhaps a little too wide, casting the net into areas like police procedural. Something like DRAGNET or LAW & ORDER may have “negative aspects of human existence” in the story because they deal with crime but, in the end, their overall intent and tone is designed to be reassuring - the law works, criminals get punished. A conte cruel on the other hand, which also usually has no elements of the fantastic - just crime or violence, still falls into horror because its overall intent is to disturb you with how the mind works and what humans are capable of.
I mean, no one's claiming the story is horror because it involves the risen dead, I assume (obviously, because then the Bible is horror - and no, that wasn't a straight line. I ain't Bud Abbott)? I guess for me it's just that the ending is either so subtle that I'm missing it, or obtuse to the detriment of it's overall effect. The story seems to be asking, then , “if you could talk to the dead that you missed,
wouldn’t you be really angry and sad if you couldn’t?” Which can really only be answered with a “well... yeah” because that’s the situation every single person in the world (barring your religious convictions or belief in channelers) finds themselves in.
So the genre element, oddly, is introduced merely to put the protagonist in exactly everyone’s normal situation. I guess you could argue that the purpose then is to use that contrast to throw light on what we all, as human beings, have to deal with when we deal with death - except not much is made of that at all, it seems to me. The protagonist gets upset and angry, like everyone does when they lose a loved one, just moreso because she had the possibility of an option that we don’t have. So how would you feel if you had the option she is supposed to have (but doesn’t get to use)? According to the story, pretty much exactly how you’d feel in real life (where you didn’t have the option in the first place).
Pretty much, I think you could put almost any story that has a “unreal” element in it into Podcastle and it would be fine - because the mere existence of that element makes the story “fantasy” and Fantasy is the broadest genre ( I won’t get into science fiction here because I’m not that big of a sci-fi fan to begin with, my tastes tend to stray towards the humanistic sci-fi of Bradbury or the outre practitioners like
Ballard or W.S. Burroughs). I could see a story with horror elements but an undefined focus as going into Podcastle, and I could see a “miraculous technology” sf story going there as well. In essence, Podcastle seems like it should be your default for excursions in the vaguer terrains of genre. And that’s great, really.
But I don’t think it’s merely subjective or over-defining to expect that a story in a venue labeled as horror (“the web’s premiere audio horror”) should, in its overall focus, intend to disturb the reader/listener (I excuse the horror-comedies because I understand why it ends up here). And I didn’t feel those parameters were met by, or even the intent of, HOMECOMING (which, I repeat, I thought had some good things going for it, even with the muddled ending) or A PLACE OF SNOW ANGELS (or whatever that one was called).
I gave it one last listen just to make sure and here's the only thing I can come up with - he's not coming back because of HER, not anything else. She fears his not returning immediately, as the story opens, and then comes up with excuses as the story progresses. If that's the case, well, that could be pretty good (I like my horror subtle, more of a fan of Robert Aickman than splatterpunk) and I don't need it spelled out, but I gotta say it again, either that's
really subtle or just too obtuse.
I appreciate all the time you guys must spend on all the pods and there has been a marked improvement in story quality over the last 9 months or so on Pseudopod (and, of course, it would be stupid to assume I'd like everything - even I'm not that dumb). But, if nothing else, the use of genre as a marketing tag maybe should be considered - people with no previous experience will come here looking for a scary story and they may not always get it, that's fine and I'm right there with you about there being many varieties of horror, but too many weeks in a row with stories that seem like perfectly adequate fantasy and you may lose the casual listener.
Thanks for listening
“Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?”
E.T.A. Hoffmann, “Aurelia” (1819-1820)
