Art by Chris Weston of God as depicted in Canon Fodder by Mark Millar for 2000 AD – one of my favorite depictions of God in popular culture with all the layers (and Dali-esque elephants) Weston added (image cropped for fair use)
I am the serpent of my Eden and the beast of my apocalypse –
I rise writhing from my own resurrection
(Mr Mojo Risin’)
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I am horned god and hanged man –
hell-harrowed hero and sweet-tongued trickster,
satyr, savior, sorrower and stranger
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One of the variant promotional art used for the film (on the DVD cover)
(6) 28 DAYS LATER (2002 – PRESENT)
Yes, I’m counting the franchise through 28 Weeks Later through to 28 Years Later (as there was no 28 Months Later) but the first film remains the best, arguably the most definitive modern zombie horror film after Romero and Russo – certainly bringing new life (heh) to the fast zombie trope.
It helped to bring the fast zombie trope up to speed (heh) that the zombies aren’t actually dead but virally infected, reduced to mindlessness but for the titular rage of the virus – with no purpose but to attack uninfected people. The virus is the true terror, terrifyingly contagious both in its speed and ease of infection through bodily fluids.
Of course, this undermines the apocalyptic premise if you think about it, like zombie apocalypse films in general but perhaps even more so given that the infected are still alive but without any cognitive ability to preserve their life. Forget the starvation that is proposed as the “cure” – I’m pretty sure dehydration would get them before that, particularly given the copious amounts of blood they tend to vomit up when infected, not to mention a few other things that I anticipate would get them as well.
For that matter, the spread of the virus would be limited in that it is transmitted only by infected bodily fluids – typically on contact from an infected attacking you – and has an almost instantaneous transmission period. Yes – that makes it more terrifying if you get an infected pop up in a population center but essentially it spreads like a human relay race, passing the bloody baton (if the person receiving it survives the attack). It’s not airborne and has no gestation period that would allow it to spread by anything less obvious than an infected person attacking you or over any distance (since infected people seem to be dormant or hibernate if no one is in their sensory range).
Also, like other zombie apocalypse films, the real enemy is not so much the zombies as one’s fellow humans – here it’s animal rights activists (and children in the sequel film 28 Weeks Later). Okay, fine – it’s also mad horny soldiers (and sheer military ineptitude on the same level of having a button marked push for zombies in the sequel 28 Weeks Later).
But seriously, animal rights activists are to blame for the release of the virus in the first place. In fairness, I also blame the scientist for obtusely telling them the laboratory chimpanzees are infected with “rage” rather than a lethally contagious disease that can spread in seconds. It practically begs the skeptical response – “Yeah, I’d be pretty angry too!”
Nitpicking aside, there’s no denying the sheer impact of the first film, including the fast zombie action that might be described as frenetic or kinetic – indeed one reviewer described the film as “kinetically directed”.
The second film – not directed by Danny Boyle but by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo – maintained this impact in its fantastic opening scene (which also introduces children as the real villains of the film) but fell off after that, preferring to make some sort of point about US military ineptitude (I think) but fumbling even that as it only does so through contriving that same ineptitude to stupidity beyond suspension of disbelief.
The third film returns to the form (and visual direction) of the first film, not surprisingly as Danny Boyle returned as director, at least in its first act or so. After that, your mileage may vary.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover Penguin classics edition published in 2003 – the edition I own
(5) MARY SHELLEY –
FRANKENSTEIN (1818)
“It’s alive!”
Wikipedia proposes that “Frankenstein is one of the best-known works of English literature”. I don’t know – in my opinion, it is, and it isn’t.
It isn’t because much of Frankenstein in popular culture or imagination comes not from the novel but from its cinematic adaptations, particularly the 1931 film directed by James Whale, such as my opening quote and indeed the whole mechanics – or dare I say it, the ‘electrics’ – of the creation of the monster.
That creation isn’t really the primary source of horror in the novel, so the novel is somewhat vague about it and indeed mostly skips over it to get to the main point, the conflict between the monster and its creator – or rather, the horror of the creator at his creation (or creature).
So that whole process of the monster “as a composite of whole body parts grafted together from cadavers and reanimated by the use of electricity” is not so much in the novel. I seem to recall hints of electricity or ‘galvanism’ (albeit perhaps more as influences on the novel than in the novel itself) but the novel is understandably coy about the details of the monster’s animation or reanimation other than it being part of the discovery of a previously unknown scientific “elemental principle of life”. For that matter, there are definitely explicit references to alchemy and magic, but these are also explicitly dismissed as possible mechanics for the creation of the monster.
Not only does much of Frankenstein in popular culture or imagination originate from elsewhere than the novel, but there’s substantial parts of the novel that tend not to find their way into adaptations, let alone popular culture or imagination. There’s the whole focus on Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which is also implausibly what the monster uses to learn to read – although that’s simply one part of the implausibly contrived way the monster learns language at all.
Speaking of allusions or references, most adaptations – and even contemporary editions of the book – tend to drop the Shelley’s subtitle and subtext, the modern Prometheus.
Or that the whole novel itself is epistolary, with the framing device that it is written as a letter by the captain of an Arctic discovery ship to his sister – who firstly recounts the surprisingly detailed tale told to him firstly by the Victor Frankenstein dying from exposure to the Arctic ice after being found by him or his crew, and secondly by the monster when the latter pops in for an epilogue. For that matter, this whole ending by icy showdown in the Arctic between the monster and his creator tends to be replaced in popular culture or imagination by the fiery end at the hands of the village mob from the 1931 film.
And yet on the other hand it is “one of the best-known works of English literature” because of that very influence within popular culture and imagination that has seen plot details from the novel displaced by its adaptations. After all, the details may differ but the core concept or premise, basic plot, and themes remain the same – “infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays”.
Its influence is such that it is often argued to be the first work (or trope maker) of science fiction – such as by Brian Aldiss in his history of SF, Billion Year Spree.
Not bad for the first novel of a teenaged girl who wrote it in a private competition with the two leading poets of the day, her future husband (and then partner) Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, to see who could write the best ghost or horror story – and who clearly won, given the novel’s influence and adaptations. Interestingly, the runner-up was neither Percy Shelley nor Lord Byron, but fellow guest Jonn Polidori with the first published modern vampire story in English, “The Vampyre” (albeit working from a fragment of a story from Byron).
You probably know that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster but of his creator, Victor Frankenstein – the archetype of scientific hubris, or more proverbially, the mad scientist – although the two tend to be conflated in name.
You also probably know the basic premise and plot. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl – no, wait, I mean, boy makes monster, boy rejects monster, and it doesn’t end well from there. Actually, there’s also the traditional boy meets girl plot in there but that doesn’t end well either, thanks to the crossover with the boy makes monster plot – as well as the boy makes girl for monster and boy rejects making girl for monster plot.
One of the ambiguities of the novel is making the monster may not be so bad of itself, it’s that Victor is the archetypal deadbeat dad who skips out to the store for some cigarettes and never comes back, because he is so horrified by the monster’s appearance. Hey pal, you made it! Funny that its appearance never bothered you throughout the lengthy process of making it until after you brought it to life. Perhaps all the subsequent pain could have all been avoided if he had made his monster less, well, monstrous, and more, you know, attractive? You know, in the style of Rocky from Rocky Horror Picture Show – or for that matter, how the Bride of Frankenstein tends to be depicted in adaptations.
Anyway, after he is so superficially abandoned, the monster rises to his own villainy with a murderous rampage. Okay, so murderous rampage is something of an overstatement, since he kills one person, Victor’s brother, William (and an innocent servant girl is hanged for the crime). He approaches Victor in truce, seeking Victor create a female companion for him. Victor initially does so, then destroys her as he fears a race of monsters. (Really, Victor? Come on – show a little imagination, man. You could always create her without ovaries. Or make the monster a male companion). The monster renews his rampage with a vengeance, or more vengeance anyway – killing Victor’s close friend and then Victor’s bride Elizabeth. In her bed on their wedding night – admittedly a nice villainous touch. Victor’s father dies of grief, as was the fashion at that time. Victor then pursues the monster to the Arctic for his own vengeance but fails miserably and freezes instead. The monster then mourns his creator, perhaps because he realizes he will now have nothing to do, and vows to destroy himself.
Thus, the monster wastes his potential as a Romantic Age Hulk. His character is somewhat different from his iconic film appearance, not least because he is sensitive and emotional – like an emo Hulk without the smashing. He is also highly articulate and literate, indeed having read Paradise Lost – clearly no good could come of that. Even so, he is as iconic as his creator – an enduring influence in theme, when not directly adapted in name or image. In his personal study of horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King considered Frankenstein’s monster (along with Dracula and the Werewolf) to be an archetype of numerous horror figures in fiction, in a role he referred to as “The Thing Without a Name”.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Apparently, not one but two films were adapted from Leiber’s short story – one in 1967 and one in 1995, with this as the poster for the latter. I’ve never seen it so I don’t know if it’s any good or lives up to its blurb as the best horror film of the year. I suspect not.
(4) FRITZ LEIBER –
“THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES” (1949)
Fritz Leiber rocked my fantasy world, as he did the world of literary fantasy in general, even if he is sadly overlooked in the genre now. I guess that’s the fate of most fantasy writers that aren’t the current thing or aren’t named Tolkien. There’s also Leiber’s love of cats, chess, and theater – which are all fun to see pop up in his stories like playing the fantasy nerd equivalent of a drinking game.
Anyway, there simply is too much Leiber to choose from for its influence on me or the genre. There’s his novels, of which the standout is The Big Time – an SF novel of time war, as in two sides fighting a mysterious cosmic war against each other across time and space by changing history on each other (or the Change War as they call it). It’s even more intriguing as much of the vast cosmic backstory is only dropped in hints or remains mysterious (even when Leiber set a few other stories in the same universe). Indeed, the entire novel is set in a kind of cosmic waystation (in the titular Big Time, outside Little Time or the space time of our universe constantly being changed by the war), once again evoking Leiber’s love of theater both in the story (as the waystation is for rest and relaxation) and for the story itself as it is easy to imagine it as a stageplay. It is strikingly multi-layered, as the story extends through time and space as a cosmic backdrop yet effectively takes place entirely within the one “room”, albeit a room somewhat like the Tardis.
However, it’s his stories that effectively made his reputation as well as his influence for me or the genre – stories that largely created or inspired at least two sub-genres of fantasy. There’s his most famous creations, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, an adventuring duo of unlikely heroes in the world of Newhon (or “no when” backwards) and the city of Lankhmar – defining many of the tropes of the so-called sword-and-sorcery or heroic fantasy subgenre. However, it is his short stories that largely created or inspired the genre of contemporary fantasy – that is, adapting fantary or horror tropes to the setting of our contemporary or modern world.
It was a close call for this entry with my runner-up story – “The Man Who Never Grew Young”. This story is not so much contemporary fantasy but a parable all of its own, although not unlike the time changing science fiction of The Big Time – the narrator lives in a world recognizably our own, but one in which history and time are now running in reverse, such that people do indeed grow younger, “born” into existence from the grave and ultimately going back to the womb before disappearing into time. Although as the title suggests, the narrator himself is mysteriously unaffected by this part of the time reversal – never growing younger although history is still going backwards all around him. I particularly like the hints, at least in my perception, that this has come about from some terrible weapon deployed in a war in the future – which has of course become the distant past to the narrator – such that time itself was broken and reversed.
However, I have to give this special mention entry to the story that has remained and resonated with me ever since I read it – which definitely is one of his stories of contemporary fantasy – and that is his modern vampire story with a twist, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”.
“She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl”.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Theatrical release poster art
(7) THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2012)
“On another level, it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies.”
I’m ranking The Cabin in the Woods in top tier, because it is virtually an encyclopedia of horror film genre tropes and references, the latter so congested at times you have to pause or watch frame by frame to get them all (and probably not even then).
It is a horror film that is also meta-horror – a love letter to the genre, or more precisely a love-hate letter to the genre.
“I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification / identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful. The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture p0rn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances.”
That is of course from Joss Whedon as producer and co-writer of the screenplay, the latter with director Drew Goddard as the other co-writer” – and the film is definitely Whedonesque in its troperiffic and reference-heavy quality (rather than the more, ah, negative qualities that might be associated with that term from developments since that film). Indeed, it has distinct similarities with the creation that still is definitive of Whedon – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4 and the Initiative in particular.
“Five friends go to an isolated cabin in the woods for a weekend vacation.”
And that’s pretty much all you’re getting of the plot here, because any more detail spoils the premise of the film. Let’s just say the premise of the film explains why the plots of horror films often seem so contrived in a deconstruction of both the “cabin in the woods” setting and the horror genre.
Film critic Ann Hornaday summed it up nicely:
“A fiendishly clever brand of meta-level genius propels The Cabin in the Woods, a pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps. [It] comes not only to praise the slasher-, zombie- and gore-fests of yore but to critique them, elaborating on their grammatical elements and archetypal figures even while searching for ways to put them to novel use. The danger in such a loftily ironic approach is that everything in the film appears with ready-made quotation marks around it… But by then, the audience will have picked up on the infectiously goofy vibe of an enterprise that, from its first sprightly moments, clearly has no intention of taking itself too seriously”.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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The map of Fantasyland in the book and also part of the satirical deconstruction of fantasy tropes. It may also look oddly familiar
(3) DIANA WYNNE JONES –
THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND (1996)
Following on from Dungeons & Dragons and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, this is the third of my top three or god-tier entries that are all effectively encyclopedic reference works for the genre of fantasy, whether informally as for the rulebooks of Dungeons & Dragons or formally as for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland leans more to the formal reference work of the latter arranged in alphabetical order, but with a twist – its meta-fictional premise that it is a tour guide to “Fantasyland” as the generic setting of pretty much all fantasy. The creators of fantasy stories are the “Management” of Fantasyland and their stories are “tours” for their audiences, so the book is in the style of a tourist guidebook, albeit a fictional parodic one – hence the title, adapted from the popular Rough Guide series of tourist guidebooks at the time.
The end result is a Devil’s Dictionary deconstructing the tropes or cliches of the fantasy genre – such as entry on elves, which has lodged itself deep in my psyche ever since such that I have never quite been able to look at the elves in The Lord of the Rings the same way again.
“Elves appear to have deteriorated generally since the coming of humans. If you meet Elves, expect to have to listen for hours while they tell you about this – many Elves are great bores on the subject – and about what glories there were in ancient days. They will intersperse their account with nostalgic ditties (songs of aching beauty) and conclude by telling you how great numbers of Elves have become so wearied with the thinning of the old golden wonders that they have all departed, departed into the West. This is correct, provided you take it with the understanding that Elves do not say anything quite straight. Many Elves have indeed gone west, to Minnesota and thence to California, and finally to Arizona, where they have great fun wearing punk clothes and riding motorbikes”.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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SInners film poster
(10) SINNERS (2025)
Yeah, I know, hyped but I liked it.
My favorite horror film of 2025, matching my usual criterion for wildcard tenth place as best of the current or previous year.
Sinners is a vampire horror film that essentially pulls a From Dusk till Dawn switcheroo halfway through the film, but in a 1930s Mississippi blues speakeasy rather than a 1990s Mexico strip club. Quite frankly, the vampires seem to be doing almost everyone involved in the former a favor, given life in this Mississippi Delta sharecropping town – and given that the speakeasy, run by the Smokestack gangster duo, was doomed in three different ways before the vampires showed up. The vampires just got there first – and not by much.
The Smokestack duo are Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack”, both played by Michael B. Joran – identical twins and First World War veterans who worked for Chicago Mob before making off with Mob money and Mob beer to go into business for themselves.
The film has its highlights, foremost among them its Irish vampire antagonist Remmick but also its music, which essentially becomes its own character in the film.
By the way, that comparison to From Dusk till Dawn is not out of the blue – it was a comparison made by several critics (some of whom preferred the “more grounded first half” to its “supernaturally driven” second half but those critics don’t know that everything’s better with vampires) but also by writer and director Ryan Coogler himself, who cited it as inspiration.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
St Martin’s Press, hardcover 1997 edition – the edition I own
(2) JOHN CLUTE & JOHN GRANT –
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY
The best single reference work concerning fantasy fiction in all media – even better now that it is online, although sadly, not updated like its companion and predecessor The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
However, that it is not updated does not detract from its greatest strength as a reference work and influence on me personally, which is not so much its entries for individual authors or works, but its compilation of fantasy themes and tropes, including its classification of fantasy subgenres. Many of these are compiled as entries under an evocative or striking phrase, many of which in turn were invented by the editors – one notable example being ‘thinning’, for the gradual loss of magic or vitality from the world.
Others include the descriptive term for one of my favorite subgenres of fantasy – posthumous fantasy, a fantasy set in the afterlife. The latter is more usually styled as Bangsian fantasy, named for John Kendricks Bangs who arguably codified or pioneered it as a modern fantasy subgenre – but often leads to confusion with its more conventional use for fiction or in this case fantasy published after an author’s death when I casually use the term posthumous fantasy elsewhere.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Yes – it’s the ur-text of (Advanced) Dungeons and Dragons, the iconic cover of the Player’s Handbook for the first edition of the game, featuring its classic art stealing the stones from the eyes of a demonic idol (by artist D.A. Trampier), as featured in the book profile in the Forgotten Realms Wiki
(1) DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Although I do have a special mention entry for an actual Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons remains the best de facto encyclopedic treatment of fantasy themes and tropes- which is not surprising for something that strives to systematically codify the genre of fantasy for obsessive-compulsive rules-lawyering geeks to play as a game.
Of course, the standout is its holy trinity – the three enduring core rulebooks of The Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual and The Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Dungeons and Dragons essentially kills two birds with one stone – a twenty-sided stone. As the fantasy game, it set out to codify both fantasy and games – fantasy tropes or themes for use in play, and the mechanics of role playing games to play them. And its achievement is unparalleled in both.
Firstly, it is THE tabletop role-playing game – “While Dungeons & Dragons may not have created tabletop roleplaying games, it codified many of the mechanics and tropes associated with them, is what most people picture when they think of a tabletop RPG (even if they’ve never played one), and is by far the most popular tabletop RPG of all time”.
My interest in it, however, is more for its codification of fantasy tropes or themes, reflecting my use of it more as comprehensive reference work rather than game – “Dungeons & Dragons is one of the trope codifiers of the modern era, having single-handedly mashed swords and sorcery and epic high fantasy into the fantasy genre as we know it today”
And even more so than entries from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, I (and probably most contemporary readers of fantasy) tend to default to descriptive terms or codified tropes used by Dungeons and Dragons when I think of fantasy – its distinctive character classes, alignments, schools of magic and so on.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
(S-TIER: GOD TIER)
Cover – Conan the Barbarian #1 comic (October 1970), by Barry Smith and John Verpoorten, also used as the cover of the original comics omnibus Volume 1 published by Titan Books in February 2025 (fair use). Note once again the classic Conan pose
TOP 10 FANTASY BOOKS
(SPECIAL MENTION: CULT & PULP)
I’ve ranked my Top 10 Fantasy Books but fantasy is too prolific – and phantasmagorical – a genre to be confined to a mere top ten books or even my usual list of special mentions.
Instead, I have two lists of special mentions – one classic and the other cult and pulp.
This is obviously the latter – for those fantasy books or works that don’t quite that iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination of my classic special mentions but I like them anyway!
That or they’re an enduring influence on me despite (or perhaps because of) their “cult & pulp” status.