There is nothing unprecedented about the peak of popularity which is currently being enjoyed by horrific stories and films depicting violent situations. Given the fact that there is a tradition of this type of fiction, however, there are a number of significant changes in just what is today taken to constitute the horrific and shocking, as well as in the manners in which this subject is handled. In this essay I propose to place the phenomenon of contemporary horrific fiction within the context of a wider cultural debate. This will involve the alignment of some of this fiction's underlying assumptions and concerns with some of the theories, beliefs and anxieties which have dominated our century's attempts to understand itself, and with some of the images which contemporary society has found fit to express its conception of itself and of its habitat. The arguments developed here, therefore, build on the understanding that our perceptions of the environment both determine and are expressed in the myths of our times.peer-reviewe
