Galaxies and Goddesses: A Sci-Fi & Fantasy Bookcast

What Makes a Monster?
Andrea: I’m Andrea.
Elizabeth: And I'm Elizabeth.
Andrea: Join us as we chat about sci-fi and fantasy books and beyond.
Elizabeth: Looking for a little escape from reality. So are we.
Andrea: Welcome to Galaxies and Goddesses.
Elizabeth: On this week's episode, we're exploring what makes a monster and what makes a book fit in the genre of horror.
Andrea: We’ll be chatting about everything from fantasy creatures to the unsettling things humans are capable of.
Elizabeth: Along with where horror, fantasy, and literary fiction start to blur together.
Andrea: Let's get started.
Andrea: So Elizabeth, have you read anything recently that you would consider horror or that left you feeling unsettled?
Elizabeth: Definitely.
Elizabeth: The book called The Vegetarian by Han Kang.
Andrea: I've seen the cover to that around. It's like a red cover with the woman in silhouette.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Elizabeth: And so maybe I just saw it on like, BookTok, so it was sort of on my radar. And then she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so then that always piques my interest. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024, actually, so very recently. And she's South Korean.
Elizabeth: I have not been to South Korea, but I recently went to Asia for the first time, to Thailand and Japan. And when I was in Bangkok, I found this super cute little cafe that was also a bookstore. And so then I saw it again there.
Elizabeth: And then I was in Powell's bookstore in Portland a couple weeks ago and saw a used copy as I was just browsing the stacks. And the cover makes it look weird, and it was right before my sister's birthday, and my sister is really into weird little books these days.
Elizabeth: And so for all these reasons, I thought to myself, "You know what? I'm gonna buy this used copy, and I'm going to read it next, in time to give it to my sister for her birthday." I think I read it in like 24 hours.
Elizabeth: It's just fascinating.
Elizabeth: The internet calls it horror. But then you're reading the synopsis on the cover, and I just couldn't help thinking to myself like "How is this horror?"
Elizabeth: Basically the premise is that the main character has a dream and decides to stop eating meat. Even more extreme than that. She decides to all of a sudden become basically vegan.
Elizabeth: The story is written in three parts, and each part is from the perspective of a different character, and none of them are the main character. So it's basically everyone else's reaction to her decision to become vegetarian.
Andrea: Interesting.
Elizabeth: But then it also has to do with, like, body autonomy and who gets to decide what you do with your own body.
Elizabeth: And so then, as I was then reading it, I then did kinda have to ask myself "Is this horror?"
Elizabeth: ‘Cuz there's no monster.
Elizabeth: But it is more, this sense of dread throughout the whole thing. It's almost like a slow-moving train crash.
Andrea: See that to me sounds really interesting, and that's the type of book that, bizarrely weird and scary I'm very interested in. I think I would enjoy that. But the genre of horror when I hear that title really puts me off, you know? 'Cause when I think of horror, I associate it with like, scary movies and bloody knives, and that's not something I'm interested, but…
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: That’s why horror is so hard to define as a genre is because it's kind of subjective. With fantasy books, there's a dragon you can say it's fantasy.
Elizabeth: And swords.
Andrea: Right. Like historical fiction, it takes place in a different time period.
Andrea: Science fiction, there's some type of technology that's being highlighted. And with horror, it's really about what the author intends the reader to experience, and not everything is scary to the same degree or to everybody.
Andrea: So a definition of horror being speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare the audience, and is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror.
Andrea: Okay, so maybe vampires would be considered supernatural horror.
Elizabeth: Sure, yeah.
Andrea: But psychological horror is more of this Vegetarian.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: What you're talking about. The psychological impact of something happening.
Elizabeth: And sort of like body horror. Just now as, as we're talking about this I'm right now thinking to myself does what happens in this book... ' Cause I don't wanna spoil anything.
Andrea: Thank you. Please don't spoil it.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: I wanna read this at this point.
Andrea: Like I said, I'm not big into horror, but this sounds interesting.
Elizabeth: And I still pause to call it horror. Obviously people do call it horror. But it is so different from anything else. It's not vampires. It's not Pennywise the Clown. It's not gore and blood, and ghosts or things jumping out at you, or you know what we think of as spooky scary.
Elizabeth: It's not that.
Elizabeth: It's mostly, in the end, a very bizarre, strange description of mental illness.
Andrea: Do you think she feels like she is the monster? But you never hear her perspective, right?
Elizabeth: No, it’s never from her perspective.
Elizabeth: It's in three parts. The first is from the perspective of her husband, and he's just patronizing toxic masculinity. Within even the first couple of pages, it mentions how he hates that she never wears a bra, and he wants her to wear a bra.
Andrea: Are the monsters the other people potentially?
Elizabeth: Maybe society at large. Korean culture. Yeah, her family. 'Cause then at some point it even mentions that she will wear a bra just to please him, but then she unhooks it, so she's still not really wearing it.
Andrea: Yeah.
Elizabeth: And then the second part of the book is from the perspective of her brother-in-law, oddly.
Elizabeth: And then the last part of the book is from the perspective of her sister it's just kinda everyone else's reaction to what's happening with her.
Andrea: But what about it makes it unsettling? Would that give it away?
Elizabeth: I guess all I can say is her spiral into mental illness. From everyone else's perspective you're watching this happen.
Elizabeth: You get to the end and you don't necessarily really know what happens, even though I can kinda guess.
Andrea: Like an open-ended ending?
Elizabeth: Yeah. But yeah it's, this sort of descent into madness. If you like weird little books, it's a great weird little book.
Elizabeth: If you're interested in Asian culture or literary fiction. If you want to read books from Nobel Prize winners.
Elizabeth: Books in translation, I think that's something too that I kinda wanna try to read more books in translation.
Elizabeth: Oh, we talked about The Factory. That was in translation from Japanese. And then there was another one that was in translation from Spanish. So, you know, I feel like sometimes the sort of weirdness of other cultures that then gets displayed through literature.
Elizabeth: So it's not necessarily a classic spooky season, 'cause it's not spooky, but it is kind of horror.
Elizabeth: Yeah, so going back to the same question of, yeah, what makes a book fit into the genre of horror?
Elizabeth: What is horror? I'm still not entirely sure…
Andrea: I feel like it’s a hard thing to define, and I feel like it's more subjective than some of the other genres.
Elizabeth: Sort of like you know it when you see it.
Andrea: Maybe.
Andrea: The thriller movie with the slasher, you know, that's not my thing. But I did really enjoy Frieda McFadden's The Housemaid, which was a thriller. So I like thrillers where it's more of a mystery. But I just, I don't associate that necessarily with horror.
Andrea: Like every thriller to me is not a horror, but if you were to search online and say, "what genre is this book?" It might label it as horror.
Elizabeth: I'm struggling to think of a book that I found scary. I think it's hard to make a book scary. I think it's a lot easier to make movies and TV, like visual media scary, 'cause you can have music, and the music can be very evocative. And you can have the right kind of lighting and the right camera angle, and then somebody jumps out at you.
Elizabeth: Whereas you don't get music to a book. You don't have somebody jumping out at you. You don't have different angles and costumes of sharp teeth or blood dripping or, something that's, that is grotesque.
Andrea: The audiobook for Dracula that came out on Audible. It has Jonathan Bailey playing Dracula, and it sounds like to you’re listening to a movie.
Elizabeth: Ohh.
Andrea: It's a full cast, and they do sound effects.
Elizabeth: Almost like an audio play.
Andrea: Right.
Elizabeth: You know, another classic monster book is Frankenstein. I read that, what was that February? And then I gave the copy to you. And that is not scary. It's very gothic and I guess maybe atmospheric or something, but I wouldn't necessarily think of that as horror. It's more, classic literature and sci-fi.
Elizabeth: Like, you know, I've heard it described as the original sci-fi book and has more to do with the themes of the hubris of man than any sort of scary element.
Andrea: In terms of spooky season books, I picked up Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher at WorldCon when we went. She was the master of ceremonies there. She hosted the Hugo Awards, and she gave facts throughout the night, and it was hilarious. And Nine Goblins, I was like, it's short, and it looks really cute and quirky and fun.
Andrea: It's about goblins, but they're not actually that scary, and it's more about how people’s perceptions kind of based on outward appearances. I really enjoyed it.
Andrea: It turns out that was her first book written for adults. She self-published it and then this was recently republished, with Tor as a novella. I didn't know that was, like, the beginning of her adult body of work. Before that, she had written children's stories. So I read it thinking like, " Oh, goblins, that's perfect for spooky season," but the monsters in it are not really monsters.
Andrea: They're not scary.
Elizabeth: They're good.
Andrea: Yes, they're good goblins. I mean, they're war goblins. They're participating in a war, but then they get transported through a hole, and they have to figure out their surroundings, and they end up meeting up with some unexpected help. It's about how things can snowball in a way, and how outward appearances can be deceiving I really enjoyed it. It was cute and funny, but with some meaning as well, like underneath it all.
Elizabeth: I recently bought a used like sort of classic mass market, which I'm kinda stoked about, copy of It by Stephen King which I have not read. And that obviously has Pennywise the Clown. As I was buying it, 'cause it was just in the last couple weeks I was thinking to myself, like, "Oh, I might try to read this in October."
Elizabeth: This is, like a classic Spooky Season type of book with a monster clown, and I think it's gonna be scary. And as far as horror goes, I think Stephen King is a classic horror author.
Elizabeth: Not to say that every book that he has written is horror, but many books that he has written are horror. We'll see if I do actually get a chance to read it in the next few weeks. It is like over 1,100 pages.
Andrea: Oh my gosh.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: You've talked a lot about Stephen King, is there anyone besides Stephen King?
Elizabeth: I've mentioned before Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve read two books of his.
Elizabeth: So The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is vampires, so I would suspect that would be considered horror, but I didn't think it was scary.
Elizabeth: The other Stephen Graham Jones book that I've read is called The Only Good Indians. And that one is definitely horror. And it's like this sort of like elk spirit. But also didn't really think of it as scary. So I don't know, maybe I just don't get scared by books. I kinda don't really get scared by movies either…
Andrea: That's why I say it's subjective.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: You also read, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. They went to the underworld. They were fighting with skeleton animals. I think that would be considered horror, but I didn't personally find that scary, right?
Elizabeth: Google calls it dark academia contemporary fantasy. but yeah, I mean, they go to, the underworld.
Andrea: I think some other books that have favorites of mine that I don't really think of as horror in my mind, but could be considered horror Alix E. Harrow wrote Starling House. The thing that I really like about Alix E Harrow is her writing style. It feels very immersive, and in particular for Starling House, that character has a gritty character feel, and feels very authentic as a person. It's listed as Fantasy, Horror, Gothic, Fiction, and it's basically about a mansion in the South that's appears to be haunted, monsters, and you're trying to find out what the story or source of that is the entire time.
Andrea: And then Leigh Bardugo, she wrote Ninth House, and that is part of a trilogy, and Deadbeat was the third book in the trilogy. It just came out in September. I listened to the first two on audiobook, and they were really good, but that's listed as Fantasy, Dark academia, Mystery, Fiction, Horror. I think if you like Starling House, you'll like Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Yeah, I think if you like one, you'll like the other, and I liked both of them.
Andrea: So, maybe it's horror. It's so subjective. how do you know? Are there monsters? Yes, but just because it's a monster I don't think means the book has to be considered horror personally.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and just because there are monsters doesn't mean it's scary.
Elizabeth: Also like, it doesn't have to be scary to be horror.
Andrea: There's also TV shows that could probably be described as horror.
Andrea: Like have you seen Black Mirror, on Netflix?
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: They’re really unsettling.
Elizabeth: Unsettling. Yeah. And this, like, sense of dread and anticipation of bad things.
Andrea: I think a lot of them deal with, advances in technology.
Elizabeth: Super speculative, yeah, of how this can go wrong or how it can get perverted in actual use.
Andrea: Right.
Elizabeth: And very dystopian in that sense. So could you say that some dystopian novels are horror because there is this sense of dread?
Elizabeth:  The other one I was just thinking, um, I don't know that you would call it horror But I felt the entire time there was this sense of dread and this anticipation of really bad things that were going to happen, and that was The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.
Elizabeth: The two main characters are these young black boys at a like boys' school in Florida in, I wanna say like the '50s or ‘60s, or maybe earlier than that. Anyway a reform school and kind of the way it, starts to unfold where like the main character gets essentially like racially profiled and is the victim of racial injustice.
Elizabeth: I think he was like trying to walk somewhere, and then he ends up getting a ride from somebody. He like hitchhikes, and the person who picks him up committed some sort of crime. And so then they get pulled over by the cops, and even though this kid had nothing to do with it whatsoever, he just was getting a ride, because he's in the car with the person who did the crime, then he gets pulled into all of it, and then gets sent to this reform school.
Elizabeth: And it's, like Jim Crow era, and so you just know that it's not gonna go well. This poor kid was smart and had educational aspirations and clearly like could have gone somewhere with his life if he had been given the right kind of a chance.
Elizabeth: But because he just gets like wrong place, wrong time, this like sense of anticipation and dread of bad things to come. You just know bad things are gonna happen. And so, yeah, is that horror? But similar to The Vegetarian where the entire time you're just so unsettled.
Elizabeth: It's so unsettling the entire time you're reading it. Would I call that horror? Like racial injustice horror, the horror of racial injustice.
Andrea: Right.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: And that’s where people can be monsters, that's sort of where, like, dark academia, the dark, I think, is the kind of horror aspect hiding something dark, right?
Andrea: So there's this pristine elite institution of some sort, but it's built on a foundation of abuse of power in some form which can be horrifying.
Elizabeth: Yeah, like the horror of the system marginalizing people and, injustice you know, when you're like what can I do?" 'Cause like, this would never, ever be classified as horror, but just in the last couple weeks I read The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, it takes place in 1789 in Maine, it's interesting 'cause it goes into the justice system of very early era Maine and there wasn't the system of courts that we have today. It was a very different system.
Elizabeth: And like abuse of power and what happens when someone who is seen as an authority figure is the one who actually committed the crime, and what happens if the person that the crime was perpetrated against tries to bring it to the system's attention, but they have to bring it to the attention of the person who is the authority figure, is the one that actually did it.
Elizabeth: And then how that person can manipulate the system to discredit the person who is blaming him and can try to take control but is still this person of power. It would never be considered horror, but But the sort of, like, sense of dread.
Andrea: Like societal horror.
Elizabeth: Yeah. It's just like rage inducing and just makes you wanna like flip the table over and say, "This is unfair. You can't let this happen."
Elizabeth: Anyway, horror… Can't really define it. It's up to you? What's horror for you. But then there are those books that are generally accepted as horror, Sometimes you go into bookstores, and there is like, a horror section.
Andrea: There's a book that comes to mind which I have not read, but the title just sticks out. It's called The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monica Kim. Have you seen that cover?
Elizabeth: Mm-mm. No.
Andrea: It has a pair of chopsticks holding an eyeball, and I'm like, "Yeah, no thank you." That is immediately off-putting to me.
Andrea: It was nominated for Reader's Favorite Horror also Reader's Favorite Debut Novel. Like apparently it was well received, but the cover is so graphic it kinda makes my stomach churn. I don’t want to read that.
Elizabeth: Mmm. Eyes are creepy. Some of the creepiest things I've ever seen without it being intentionally creepy are if you Google diseases of the eye, 'cause then you get a bunch of photos of really disordered, weird-looking eyes, but really up close, and sometimes you're just like, "Ugh."
Andrea: And so The Eyes Are the Best Part, according to Goodreads, it's described as Crying in H Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective. And so there's parts of that sound interesting, but I am so put off by an eyeball with blood dripping off of it.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: And you're eating it.
Andrea: Ugh.
Andrea: No, thank you. That does not appeal to me. So, that's where I go like, "Okay, I don't like horror," but I do like other aspects, just not eating people potentially, serial killers. Monsters I'm fine with. Monsters can be my friend.
Andrea: For my TBR, if I were to have a horror TBR, I'm not a huge horror fan, but if you can count vampires as horror, I have at least three vampire books that I want to read. The first being V.E. Schwab's Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. It's talked about as being, toxic lesbian vampires, also kind of a historical bend to that which I'm interested in.
Elizabeth: I feel like vampire stories often do have this historical bent to it, 'cause they're supposed to be these immortal beings.
Andrea: Yes.
Elizabeth: And so they live forever or they live a very long time. And so then that means that if they have lived for a long time, then they've lived through history.
Elizabeth: So there is always that historical aspect to it.
Elizabeth: Is another vampire book that you've got, is it Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris?
Andrea: Yeah, the Charlaine Harris.
Elizabeth: Yeah
Andrea: Because I picked that up and I was like, I wanna try reading the Sookie Stackhouse True Blood books.
Elizabeth: “Sookie”
Elizabeth: You should absolutely read that book. You'll read it in like 48 hours. Is it romantasy before there was romantasy? Before romantasy was, like, a known genre?
Andrea: Right, that’s what I’m hoping for, I want it to be addicting. But I have to wait, I have to try reading it after our next Robin Hobb book. I can't let anything distract me.
Elizabeth: I don't know. I would allow you to get distracted by Sookie Stackhouse…
Andrea: Ok!
Elizabeth:…and Vampire Bill!
Andrea: Yeah. That'll be good.
Elizabeth: I was thinking to myself like, "I'm pretty sure I've read 13 of those."
Andrea: Oh wow.
Elizabeth: Which is a lot. Yeah. And then I was thinking to myself like, "Is that all there is?"
Elizabeth: And I'm Googling it now, and yes, there are 13 of them. Dead Ever After was published in 2013, so I think I've actually read them all. I don't know that I'd ever read them again, but they're very entertaining. Yeah.
Elizabeth: Having not read Dungeon Crawler Carl yet, I don't know that they're quite to that level of like addictive but like very fast-paced, very romantasy.
Elizabeth: It's like book candy. Yeah. Might give you a couple cavities.
Andrea: Well and I’d would actually Dungeon Crawler Carl could count as horror.
Elizabeth: Oh?
Andrea: Characters get murdered in it. There is very violent, know, kinda horrific things that happen. But is that horror? I don't think of it as horror. I don't know.
Elizabeth: What’s your third vampire book?
Andrea: It's the next in a series, and I have the book, so that's why it's on the list, but it's not high up on the list because there's so many other books to get to. It's called Empire of the Damned by Jay Kristoff. So Empire of the Vampire was the first one, and kind of like you were saying about The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, book is written sort of like Interview with the Vampire for the first book of the series.
Andrea: And the vampire is recounting his story. And so it gets to the end of the first book, and he hasn't caught up in the story to where he is in his current timeframe, you're interested in finding out what happens next.
Elizabeth: Oh yeah, sure.
Andrea: I've heard from friends that it's a worthwhile read and I should keep reading, but it was on the darker side of what I'm comfortable reading, so yeah, some very graphic descriptions in there.
Elizabeth: Why is it that vampire books are like that? Like the vampire recounting his story. You know, it's sort of a version of like in medias res, the like literary device in the middle of things, you know where it starts out in the middle of things, and then it goes back in time, and then it kinda catches you back up to then where you are when the book first started.
Elizabeth: But speaking of Interview with the Vampire I do have that book. I think I got that, that was like a mass market that I pulled off that free table at Worldcon.
Andrea: Oh nice.
Elizabeth: I was like, "Oh, I haven't read that." So anyway, I do have that book. I forgot about that book.
Elizabeth: The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. Interview with the Vampire is first, and then Vampire Lestat is second, and then Queen of the Damned.
Elizabeth: Geez!
Elizabeth: There are 13 books in that series too.
Andrea: That’s a lot.
Elizabeth: Man. That's a lot
Andrea: Maybe 13 is a special number.
Elizabeth: When it comes to vampires? Maybe.
Andrea: Has talking about the genre of horror changed your opinion of the horror genre?
Elizabeth: No, I still don't really know. Like once again, it's like you know it when you see it. And maybe this has made me think of a couple other books that, once again, like The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, that like I don't know that anyone would call that horror, but as far as like the sort of thematic elements that one finds in a horror book, I remember feeling that as I was reading it.
Elizabeth: So if it's all subjective, like maybe to me... I mean that book is horrific. So maybe you could say there you go, then it's horror," ' cause it was horrific to read this story that you know is just gonna end badly. So maybe it's kind of expanded in my mind, what I could consider horror.
Elizabeth: What about you?
Andrea: For me too. Looking at the definitions of more books to see, okay, what is actually considered horror? And it's like, “Well, I liked that book.” Maybe I do like some elements of horror, and just not being so opposed to it as a genre. And instead of labeling things like, "Oh, I just don't like horror," it's maybe I just don't like certain aspects of horror, but I'm not as bothered by a lot of potential trigger warning type things, but I also don't think that just because it has monsters means it's horror. You know.
Elizabeth: No.
Elizabeth: And you like vampire books.
Andrea: Right.
Elizabeth: And those can be considered horror. And, after me describing The Vegetarian, you wanna read it, and that is considered horror. So maybe you just don't like gore and blood and violence.
Andrea: Right.
Andrea: The thing is I can handle violence. It's really the gore, so maybe I'm more open to reading horror, but realizing that is a pretty big genre, and I think I pigeonholed it for a long time into being like, "Oh, I don't like any horror." And it's oh, I actually do like some horror. I just don't like gory horror.
Andrea: I can do monsters. I can do vampires. I can do psychological thriller. I enjoy that. Widening my definition of what the horror genre is.
Elizabeth: And like acceptance of the books that you will try.
Andrea: Yes.
Elizabeth: Just because it's labeled horror doesn't mean that you should completely discount it.
Andrea: Yes.
Elizabeth: Unfortunately, that concludes this week's episode. We've reached the end of another cosmic journey on Galaxies and Goddesses.
Andrea: Don't worry, the adventure never really ends. There are always more stories to explore, and more bookish tangents for us to go on.
Elizabeth: But hey, that's part of the fun. If you loved today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the magic.
Andrea: Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll be returning to the Realm of the Elderlings with the third book in the Farseer Trilogy, Assassin's Quest, by Robin Hobb.
Elizabeth: And in the meantime, keep your mind fueled by the magic of stories.
Andrea: And never stop chasing the worlds waiting for you between the pages. Thanks everyone.