Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?

As horror for adults gasped its last breaths, the genre found new life in a younger generation. Horror fiction for kids had been around for decades, whether it was Joan Aiken’s ersatz gothics like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962, a forerunner of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events) or thrillers like Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin. Duncan, the queen of young-adult suspense, had started turning out teen thrillers in 1966, including I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973), Stranger with My Face (1981), and the cult classic Daughters of Eve (1979). But after the murder of her daughter in 1989, she seemed to lose her taste for fictional horror and devoted the rest of her life to chronicling the search for the girl’s killer.

Horror hit its stride with a hungry teenage audience in the ’80s, first with slasher films and then with books. Dell launched its teen occult horror series, Twilight, in 1982, complete with gruesome corpse exhumations and relatively graphic and goopy gore. Bantam countered with its less gory but more timely Dark Forces series in 1983, which was like the Satanic Panic for teens; its books were full of video games that unleashed Satan as an end-level boss, unholy heavy metal bands, and role-playing games that summoned the Prince of Darkness.

The late ’80s were a growing nightmare for adult horror writers. Author after author failed to earn out advances, and agents unleashed tornadoes of bad advice that ripped through the trailer park of publishing, leaving destruction in its wake: “Write big fat novels because that’s what sold last week.” “Write like Michael Crichton.” “Write like Stephen King.” But the market was glutted and returns were often at 60 percent. The industry was trying everything to stop the bleeding, but the patient wouldn’t leave the table alive.

As the ’90s approached, the seemingly insatiable kid’s market emerged as horror’s last hope. R. L. Stine launched his teen horror series Fear Street in 1989, which included seasonal offerings like Silent Night. Around the same time Christopher Pike began turning out Lois Duncan–esque teen thrillers, proving to publishers that kids had a ravenous hunger for horror. Adult readers were left in the dust, while Stine and Pike went on to found the best-selling series Goosebumps in 1992 and Spooksville in 1995, respectively. At long last, Whitney Houston’s words rang true: the children were the future.

Horror titles aimed at kids tended to feature young people’s interests on the covers: hangin’ at the beach, rock and roll, computer games, peering into creepy mirrors, and gazing over the edge of a cliff. Credit 172

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