Stephen King is ranked #13 on Insider's 15 of the best-selling authors of all time. As of 2018, he had sold 350 million copies of his books. Many of his novels and short stories have been adapted into successful movies and television series.He has had more thirty #1 bestsellers in all of the six decades he has been published. His latest, Billy Summers, debuted at #1 on the August 22, 2021 New York Times Bestseller list. He is now considered one of the mainstream writers of our times, receiving the National Medal of Arts in 2014.
To create horror, Stephen King has given some advice: "So terror on top, horror below it and lowest of all, the gag reflex of revulsion...I recognize terror as the finest emotion...and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify...,I will try to horrify, and if I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." (Jones, p.8)
Giger's Alien: Film Design, 20th Century Fox by
Stephen King, writer.
Used under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
These artists are all associated with the horror genre. Each in their own right has been an innovator and has left an important impact on the genre. Without them, the horror genre would not be what it is, one of the most popular genres in film and literature. They are listed by the time when they appeared:
Source: Spotify Playlist: Horror Composers.
F. W. Murnau, German director of Nosferatu (1922)
Used under Creative Commons public domain CC0 image.
Cardin, M. (2017). Horror literature through history an encyclopedia of the stories that speak to our deepest fears (Kindle) Greenwood.
Jones, D. (2021). Horror a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
King, S. (2010). Danse macabre. Gallery.
Luckhurst, R. (2018). The Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy & Horror. Flame Tree Publishing.
Landis, J. (2016). Monsters in the movies: 100 Years of Cinematic nightmares. DK.
Skal, D. J. (2020). Fright favourites: 31 movies to haunt your Halloween and beyond. Running Press.
Turitz, N. and Zimmerman, B. (2020). Horror: An illustrated history of vampires, zombies, monsters & more. Centennial Books, an imprint of Centennial Media, LLC.
