Everyone I know is getting gift cards this year. Nobody gave me a Christmas list this year so in lieu of all those missing, here’s mine:
Christmas List
I want less remakes. At this point, it all seems like pandering to an older audience that can’t be impressed or attracting a newer audience that isn’t there.
I want more rediscoveries. Everybody talkin’ ’bout Lovecraft. It’s great that everyone talks about Cthulhu but Lovecraft’s body of work is limited. I want a greater promotion of other ‘forgotten’ weird fiction writers. Idiots like me don’t know who Clarke Ashton Smith are. We need a movement to push Algernon Blackwood into our consciousness as well. How many long-forgotten novels can be brought back into discussion (and then back into print) for us all to celebrate?
I want less Misfits covers. No more Misfits covers. No more Misfits covers bands. Even the Misfits RIGHT NOW are a Misfits cover band, with Jerry Only singing. No more. Find another band to emulate. Forbidden Dimension. The Flesh Eaters. 45 Grave. Whatever.
I want more weirdness. Yeah, it doesn’t always work. Nazis on the moon? Sounds great but it turned out meh. Nazi zombies in the snow? That’s bizarre. THAT’S GREAT. Frankenstein’s technology making armies during the second world war. Okay, you got my attention. Weirdness is going to promote the genre because there is no progress without deviation. Try not to harp on the old and just make some weird, different projects. Instead of zombies, go alien parasites that turn one of your eyeballs into a laser cannon. Or something. And no more Hunger Games knock-offs. That ship has sailed.
That’s all I want, more or less. That and a machine gun, so I can scare all the kids on the street.
