Halloween highlights on the dark side of the rogue planet

Can you believe I nearly forgot all about Halloween? That should be my holiday of choice.

What's more horrific than being alone on a cold dark world light years from the warmth of any brilliant sun?

There's a reason Alien remains one of the best movies ever made.

Science fiction and horror have always had a close relationship. If you rewind through the history of both genres, you'll find a lot of overlap.

It's no surprise why.

Science at its best pulls the mask off the friendly cosmos we take for granted, revealing the snarling, writhing reality lurking right beneath the surface, snapping its teeth at you.

If you're following the more pessimistic minds out there, those fangs have made themselves at home in our throats over the last century or three. But even a more progressive temperament has to admit, if only on occasion, that things are a little wild these days.

Once of the more curious consequences of our modernized hyper-scientific culture is this near-complete convergence of cutting-edge science with pagan mysticism.

The human mind cannot easily or comfortably face up to the truths that science brings into the everyday world. And I'm not talking about that new study that gets dropped in your lap by the MSM.

I'm talking about the total construction of your way of life.
The total regimentation of life that you almost take for granted. Almost, if it weren't for those tiny cracks of doubt that open up, when your imagination takes flight and you wonder, "Does it really have to be like this?"

Puzzles like Fermi's Paradox and the Simulation Hypothesis terrify us with our own unreality. You couldn't even think these thoughts, much less fear them, without sophisticated science and technology.

Science fiction and horror are life-long friends. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein up to Stephen King's latest, from Nosferatu to the sf horrors of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.

H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith wrote stories to scare the socks off a statue, decades before any modern horror movie, by taking us along on journeys with explorers and unhinged scientists pushing the limits of knowledge.

You can't take a leap into the unknown without finding a monster there to destroy something you love dearly.

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