Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Terror   [John J. Miller]

So I was waiting at the hockey rink yesterday morning for one of my kids to finish in the locker room, reading the last pages of The Terror, a long novel by Dan Simmons. A guy I'd never seen before came up to me, pointed at the book, and said, "In 50 years, people will talk about that book like Frankenstein—a real classic of horror."

I don't entirely agree—Frankenstein is truly iconic, like Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's also a heck of a lot shorter; The Terror is one long book. But golly, The Terror is good. The story is based on the doomed Franklin Expedition, which set out from England in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage and wasn't heard from again. Simmons sticks as close to the known facts as possible and then fills the big voids his powerful imagination. The story includes hubris, heroism, scurvy, cannibalism, mutiny, Esqimaux (Simmons' spelling), and a polar bear with superpowers. It turns out that reading the book in a chilly hockey rink helps convey the atmosphere. If you're a fan of horror lit, think of it this way: one part "The Wendigo," by Algernon Blackwood, one part At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft, one part Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Maybe two parts "The Wendigo." Anyway, the result is wholly original, gripping despite its length, and, in the end, uplifting in a way that I didn't quite see coming.

10/12 06:05 AM