Interview: Scott Kenemore on Space Horror and More

Scott Kenemore is a horror writer from the Midwest who has lived in the Chicago area since 2004. Best known for his zombie trilogy Zombie Ohio, Zombie, Illinois, and Zombie, Indiana—“which are portraits of zombie attacks in places where I've lived for at least four years,” he indicates—and for the horror novel The Grand Hotel. “That had a ‘longer tail’ than I think my publisher ever expected!" Kenemore published his first short story in The Kenyon Review in 2002, a horror-ish tale about a boy turning into a lizard. His latest is a novel, Edge of the Wire, a sci-fi/space horror story just published in June. We chatted about his current and past work, why outer space is scary, and more.

Author Scott Kenemore

What brought you to the horror genre originally and why do you still find it a cozy place to hang out?

I've said many times before that I came to horror through getting into HP Lovecraft as a 'tween, but I always liked spooky tales.  When I was a kid growing up in Indianapolis, my family would go to Halloween storytelling events featuring amazing spooky storytellers like Bob Sander. It was hard to be around that environment and not eventually feel like, "Okay, I got one. . ."  Much in the way kids go through phases of learning to tell jokes, I entered a phase of learning to tell scary stories that I never really left. I stick with horror (and sci-fi/horror) because it seems to be the place where the most interesting questions are being asked, and the most extreme and unusual things can happen inside a narrative. I continue to be interested in stories that make me feel like the ground underneath my feet is shifting, and that I may be fundamentally mistaken about something I was really certain about. I think horror conjures those feelings better than any other genre.

Your new book Edge of the Wire is described as space horror. What inspired it and what are your thoughts on that milieu? Your previous work like Lake of Darkness and Zombie, Ohio are more earth-bound, as it were.

Ha!  Well, Edge of the Wire was inspired by movies like Alien and Event Horizon, and by novels like Philip K. Dick's A Maze of Death and Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Both of those great novelists, I should note, were born in Chicagoland. I like "space horror" for a lot of reasons. One is that outer space is where you can reliably encounter Lovecraftian, Phildickian monsters from utterly strange realities and worlds.  Another is that there is a wonderful (horrible) claustrophobia to space, because you're often trapped inside a ship or stranded on an unexplored planet. Finally, I like space horror because it challenges the typical answers to the question: "What can be haunted?" Most people can easily conceive of an old house or an ancient relic being haunted, but what about an ultra-modern, hi-tech spaceship? I think there is actually a strong tradition in horror writing of trying to haunt not just ancient things, but stuff on the leading-edge of technology. There's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story “The Horror of the Heights” about propeller planes that can fly above cloud cover—which were new in his day—revealing terrifying monsters haunting the tops of clouds.  Stephen King, when he was in college, wrote a column in the student paper called “King's Garbage Truck”—many of these columns are now collected and published by the University of Maine Press — and if you go back and read his musings on, say, the upcoming Apollo 11 mission, they're all about how the astronauts are going to bring back invisible malevolent aliens…at least maybe.    

What's on the horizon for you?

I'm working on a haunted house novel in the vein of The Grand Hotel, and a nonfiction book about curses. We'll see where they take me!

Any closing thoughts or things you wish I'd asked?

I'd just close by encouraging anyone interested in horror writing to check out the Chicagoland Chapter of the HWA. We have regular Zooms and meet ups.  It's a great group to talk shop with, or just hang out. You'll find folks at all different levels in their careers, and we're always looking for new members!

Edge of the Wire is available at bookstores and through the Talos Press website.

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Dan Kelly

Dan Kelly has been a writer and editor for 30 years, contributing work to Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader, Chicago Journal, The Baffler, Harvard Magazine, The University of Chicago Magazine, and others.