Changing Perceptions of Horror – a great article by Simon Marshall-Jones, he of the awesome Spectral Press.
There are two reasons why I am where I am now: first, I have a very deep love of genre literature, in particular horror. What got me reading in the first place was that, along with sci-fi and fantasy; whilst my reading now ranges across a broad swath of styles and idioms, I always return at some point to where I started, the literature of imagination. And, let’s be honest, this is where we as a species began too, with mythmakers attempting to explain away the phenomena they saw happening around them, as well as helping the bard to bring the tribe together, to help them cohere as a social unit, just by creating a shared history and ancestry. Without that, I would venture to say, society, or at least the beginnings of it, would never have happened in the way it has.
The rest is here.