Splatterpunk is a neologism coined to describe a subgenre of horror fiction distinguished by its graphic depiction of violence. Clive Barker is often cited as the best known writer of the style (particularly his six volumes of short story collections, Clive Barker's Books of Blood). The term was coined in the mid-1980s by author and pop-culture critic David J. Schow, referencing the concurrent science fiction sub-genre cyberpunk; Schow is considered an innovator and exemplary within the Splatterpunk school of horror writing. Other prominent figures are the bestselling team of John Skipp and Craig Spector, whose modern vampire classic The Light At The End (1986) is considered a seminal work. Even earlier was John Shirley's Dracula in Love, In Darkness Waiting and Cellars, all proto-splatterpunk works. Also a punk rock singer, Shirley is also known for his cyberpunk science fiction writing. A neologism is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. ... Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. ... Clive Barker (born October 5, 1952, Liverpool, England) is a British author, director and visual artist. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... Books of Blood are a series of horror fiction collections written by the British author Clive Barker. ... David J. Schow is an American fiction writer. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-01-11, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Craig Spector is a bestselling author and screenwriter whose eleven books have sold millions of copies and are reprinted in nine languages. ... John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an author of novels, short stories, and television & film scripts. ... Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. ...

Splatterpunk short stories and novels are almost always intense and intentionally disturbing, grotesque, and even disgusting, marked by a lack of adherence to what the writers saw as clichéd conventions of best-selling works by Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Saul. Rather than the usual suburban setting of bestselling horror, splatterpunk is usually located in the grim, gaudy environs of New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago, or even rundown trailer parks. Antiheroes are more prevalent than crucifix-bearing Abraham Van Helsing of early horror fiction, or the "everyday folks" of King's works. Splatterpunk characters are often marginalized, alienated, drug-prone and generally anti-social. When commonly used, grotesque means strange, fantastic, ugly or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks or gargoyles on churches. ... Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for his enormously popular horror novels. ... Dean Ray Koontz (was born July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania) is a prolific and best-selling fiction author known primarily for his popular suspense novels. ... For the Canadian philosopher, see John Ralston Saul. ... Housing subdivision near Union, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. ... Flag Seal Nickname: The Big Apple, The Capital of the World[1], Gotham Location Location in the state of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area    - City 1,214. ... Nickname City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Government Country State County United States California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area  - City    - Land    - Water  - Urban 1,290. ... Flag Seal Nickname: The Windy City Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location Location in Chicagoland Government Country State Counties United States Illinois Cook, DuPage Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Geographical characteristics Area    - City 606. ... A trailer park is a neighborhood consisting of an area of land where trailers rest. ... In literature and film, an anti-hero is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws and ultimate fortune traditionally assigned to villains but nonetheless also have enough heroic qualities or intentions to gain the sympathy of readers or viewers. ... A crucifix amidst the cornfields near Mureck in rural Styria, Austria A handheld crucifix A crucifix in front of the Holy Spirit Church in KoÅ¡ice, Slovakia A crucifix is a cross with a representation of Jesuss body, or corpus. ... Peter Cushing as Abraham Van Helsing Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character in the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. ... Recreational drug use is the use of psychoactive drugs for recreational purposes rather than for work, medical or spiritual purposes, although the distinction is not always clear. ... The term anti stems from a Canadian TKer who goes by the alias /|r51-AnTi. ...

The supernatural, so often prevalent in horror, is sometimes jettisoned altogether in favor of a more realistic, ambiguous, and prosaic (yet always vividly portrayed) evil, often in the form of serial killers or other sociopathic characters. And when traditional monsters do make an appearance, they are usually subverted or exaggerated for an extremely upsetting effect on the reader. Rock and roll culture also plays a large part in splatterpunk, usually from an insider's viewpoint. The supernatural (Latin: super- exceeding + nature) refers to forces and phenomena which are beyond ordinary scientific measurement. ... Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ... Antisocial personality disorder (APD or ASPD) is a psychiatric diagnosis that interprets antisocial and impulsive behaviours as symptoms of a personality disorder. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ...

The tone of splatterpunk is realistic, gritty, downbeat, sometimes nihilistic, graphic, and vicious, as well as gleefully shocking, a cry of "Épater le bourgeois" ("to shock the bourgeois") at the complacency and safety of bestselling horror fiction. They were influenced more by anti-establishment writers such as William S. Burroughs and Harlan Ellison, shock-rock meister Alice Cooper, punk rock group the Sex Pistols, and movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead than by Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, or Ann Radcliffe. Nihilism is a philosophical position which argues that the world, and especially human existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. ... William Seward Burroughs II (pronounced ) (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic and spoken word performer. ... Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, essays and criticism. ... Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948), is a hard rock singer and musician. ... The Sex Pistols were, despite their short existence, a very influential British punk band. ... The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a low-budget horror film classic made in 1973 (released in 1974) by director Tobe Hooper. ... George A. Romeros Dawn of the Dead (the sequel to Night of the Living Dead and followed by Day of the Dead and the recent Land of the Dead) is considered one of the greatest zombie horror films ever made. ... Abraham Bram Stoker (November 8, 1847–April 20, 1912) was an Irish writer, best remembered as the author of the influential horror novel Dracula. ... Mary Shelley Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. ... Ann Radcliffe (July 9, 1764 - February 7, 1823) was an English author, a pioneer of the gothic novel. ...

Important splatterpunk works include the novels The Kill Riff by David Schow, The Nightrunners by Joe R. Lansdale, Slob by Rex Miller, The Cipher by Kathe Koja, Off Season by Jack Ketchum, and The Scream by Skipp and Spector, and the short story collection Splatterpunk: Extreme Horror edited by Paul Sammon, published in 1990 and Cellars by John Shirley; other authors sometimes considered Splatterpunks include Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy Collins, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert Devereaux, Roberta Lannes, and Richard Laymon. Joe R. Lansdale is an author from Texas. ... Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for author Dallas Mayr. ... John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an author of novels, short stories, and television & film scripts. ... Photo of Poppy Z. Brite by J.K. Potter. ... Nancy A. Collins (born 1959) is a horror fiction writer that is best known for her series of vampire novels featuring her character Sonia Blue. ... Richard Christian Matheson is an American writer of horror fiction and screenplays. ... Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947 and died on February 14, 2001. ...

In the short story genre, Edward Bryant's "A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned", which takes place in the world of George A. Romero's zombies, is often cited as a classic of the genre. George A. Romero at the Weekend of Horrors 2005 in Münster, Germany George Andrew Romero (born 4 February 1940) is an American director, writer, editor and actor. ...

As a commercial force in horror fiction, splatterpunk never achieved more than a cult following, although its style has somewhat infiltrated contemporary literature, particularly in the work of Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club and Haunted) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting). A cult following is a group of fans devoted to a specific item, usually a film, television or radio program, though some comic books, musicians, writers or others also gain dedicated followings. ... Bret Easton Ellis Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964 in Los Angeles, California) is an American author. ... Charles Michael Chuck Palahniuk (IPA: ) (born February 21, 1962) is an American satirical novelist and freelance journalist living in Portland, Oregon. ... Irvine Welsh, reading one of his new short stories at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Irvine Welsh (born Leith, Edinburgh, September 27, 1958) is a Scottish novelist. ...

Critical bibliography

• "Inside the New Horror" — Philip Nutman, The Twilight Zone, October 1988
• "The Splatterpunks: The Young Turks at Horror's Cutting Edge" — Lawrence Person, Nova Express, Summer 1988
• Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror — Paul M. Sammon, St. Martins, 1990 ISBN 0312045816
• Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge — Paul M. Sammon, Tor Books, 1995 ISBN 0312857861