Authors Electric

Let me ask you something: who do you think is the most terrifying villain in literature? Mask of Him Who Must Not Be Named Plenty of candidates to choose from. Voldemort in Harry Potter , Sauron in The Lord of the Rings , the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , Flashman in Tom Brown’s Schooldays , Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories; or going back further in the canon, Macbeth, Iago, Edmund, Richard III (as depicted by Shakespeare, I hasten to add, before any Ricardians take me apart), Mephistopheles… These are all splendidly evil figures. But not, to my mind, the most terrifying, for one big reason: we know what they are. The reader is in no doubt, from the word go, that each one of these is a Bad Lot, and how the hero will or won’t overcome them becomes the central drama of the story. (In Macbeth’s case you could say it centres on whether the hero’s better self will overcome his dark side.)   No. Far more frightening, for m...

Last month it took me far too long to discuss metafiction , though I must admit that I'm now halfway wishing they'd reboot Moonlighting . They're doing it for The X-Files and Twin Peaks , why not Moonlighting ? I mean other than that David's womanizing might seem creepy now. On a side note, I could toitally get behind a reboot with this new casting . Anyway , let's start right in on the countdown , shall we? 2. Fables - Bill Willingham (author) various artists This title is a shoo-in for this list. It's very premise about metafiction: Characters from fairy tales, fables, children's literature, and other folklore are  literally aware that they are characters in stories. They have moved into our "mundane" world as refugees from a murderous tyrant, known only as the Adversary, who has conquered each of their worlds (each of which is part of a loose conglomeration of fictional universes called The Homelands). These refugees, who call ...