The Worlds of Hurt is a collection of stories revolving around Brian Hodge's own mythos, the Misbegotten. They are a group of tragic immortals who must feed on something, that "something" being different for each of them and often creating a visceral narrative in the story itself, in order to survive or at least endure. Every story stands on it's own, but in reading it from beginning to end the reader receives insights into the mythos and cosmology of the Misbegotten that adds extra horrific depth through the first three stories in a cumulative manner that reaches an apex in the final story "World of Hurt", a short novel that reveals the great horror associated with the Misbegotten. Hodge's writing style is engrossing and complex without being confusing. The utterly disturbing motives that drive not just the Misbegotten but also the "regular" people in the stories are laid to bare at a pace that creates a tension while reading that is enjoyable in a way that few works of horror that I've come across are able to match. This has been one of my favorite reads of the year, definitely worth five stars.
I contacted Brian and he was gracious enough to take part in a short interview regarding Worlds of Hurt and his writing in general:
AB: Music has a central focus in
"The Alchemy of the Throat" and is used in describing cosmic horror
elements of "World of Hurt". I've also had the pleasure of reading
your story "Cures For A Sickened World" which delves strongly into
Black Metal aesthetics. What place does music hold for you in horror?
BH: A
pretty foundational place, really. But it has a pretty foundational place in
life overall. I nearly always work to music, and it’s often dark or moody
stuff. Plus, as a player, I sometimes like to make music that’s a sonic
expression coming from the same place as the prose. That got so out of hand
with Whom the Gods Would Destroy that
it triggered its own soundtrack.
Then
there are times I’m interested in exploring creators as characters, and the
process of creation, and so on. Although I feel oddly repelled by writing about
writers. There’s something about that that feels narcissistic to me. I’m much
more drawn to narratively exploring music and visual art … maybe because, as
languages, they’re much more universal. They engage the senses directly.
AB: What did you want to do
different, if anything, in Worlds of Hurt
in contrast to previous works?
BH: It’s
an omnibus edition, and that’s something I’d never done. It brings together the
first four installments in an ongoing mythos that I keep coming back to every
so often: “The Alchemy of the Throat,” “The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins,”
“When the Bough Doesn’t Break,” and World
of Hurt. That’s three novellas and a short novel. They were all written years
apart, so in a way, while still telling an unfolding episodic narrative, they
all reflect different interests and concerns and states of mind.
I was
needing to get World of Hurt ported
over into e-book form, and thought, well, why not package everything together
at this point. Instead of just converting over the one book, why not give the
reader everything that preceded it, too? As I go forward with new works in that
universe, consolidating the previous stuff into a single volume will make it a
lot easier for readers to have it all, rather than telling them, in essence,
“You have to get this novel and these three story collections.”
AB: Despite the monstrosity factor
of the supernatural entities in the stories in Worlds of Hurt, the horror inflicted by humanity seems to be a
predominant reoccurring theme. Any thoughts on that?
BH: I
think that would be how such entities would operate most effectively in our
world. That they’d get things done either through us, or by hiding behind our
skins. It’s not only stealth mode … just consider what they would have to work
with. Way too many of our species don’t need that much of a nudge.
AB: Do you see any major
vital trends in Horror literature occurring that weren't there when you started
writing?
BH: It
would take someone more conscious of a long-term overview than I am to track
something like that. It’s not anything that registers with me. I just do what I
do, and try to always get better at it, and to keep challenging myself instead
of digging a rut to live in. To me, being concerned with trends leads to the sort
of silly conversations that a friend once related. He was talking to his agent,
who was telling him, “Why don’t you write a book about a devil dog? Devil dogs
are hot right now!” That was our go-to punchline for a while.
AB: What are your opinions on
Horror as social commentary?
BH: It’s
certainly well suited to the task. It can get away with being as rude as it
needs to be, and you have the option of couching whatever you have to say in
some potent metaphors, if you don’t feel like being blunt about it. That’s
definitely informed a share of my work. Even the story you mentioned earlier,
“Cures For A Sickened World,” which I wrote for the upcoming first Spectral Book of Horror Stories … in
part that’s an allergic reaction to the rancid thing that journalism has become
in the age of click-bait. “Let’s throw up any old hasty piece of incendiary
bullshit, because it’ll piss people off and they’ll show it to everybody else
so they can be pissed off too.” And so the signal-to-noise ratio gets ever more
lopsided.
AB: What would you personally
like to see happen with the Horror genre, either through your own writing or
the writing of others?
BH: I
don’t remember who or where it was, but I once saw someone make an interesting
distinction between horror and science fiction: that science fiction is a
literature of ideas and horror is a literature of emotion. That’s an
oversimplification, of course. Sweeping generalizations usually are. Switching
to film for a moment, you can’t look at David Cronenberg’s body of work in the
genre and find it light on ideas. I got the point, though. I understood where
that was coming from. But there’s no reason that the two should be mutually
exclusive. So I’d like to see horror be unwilling to cede that ground. To
continue to strive to put forth the best ideas about the world and human
existence that it can, and develop them as far as possible.
AB: What would your opinion be if Worlds of Hurt inspired others to write
stories revolving around the Misbegotten?
BH: I’m sure
I’d be fine with that, and find it very flattering, although I’d rather do more
work on the mythology before turning it open source.
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