may live on even after his body has failed. The illu-
sions are, in effect, a family blessing, not a curse.
Shortly after the story was published the author
Joseph Conrad charged that the story had been
plagiarized from Rudyard Kipling, causing a brief
and unjustified controversy.
Farris, John (1936– )
John Farris had been writing suspense novels,
sometimes with fantastic twists, and general fiction
ever since the middle of the 1950s, but it was with
The Fury(1976) that he made his initial impact on
the horror genre, a story for which a case could
also be made that it is science fiction. Two young
siblings have extraordinary powers that can be in-
terpreted as supernatural or magical but that Farris
rationalizes as untapped abilities of the human
mind. An unscrupulous man hopes to exploit their
talents for his own advantage, and what follows
owes more to the spy novel than horror, with
chases, captures, and escapes before the villain is
finally defeated and suitably punished and the two
protagonists seem free to pursue their own lives.
Firestarter(1980) by Stephen KINGuses a very sim-
ilar plot, and King may well have been influenced
by Farris’s earlier novel.
Although The Furyis the author’s most widely
recognized genre title, his best horror novel is actu-
ally All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By(1977,
also published as Bad Blood). This story involves an
old southern family whose history of involvement
with slavery has mixed African folklore and black
magic into the family traditions. Farris, who had
previously written the steamy Harrison High
(1959), was one of the first modern horror writers
to inject explicit sexual scenes into his work and
emphasize the linkage between horror and erotica.
His next title, Catacombs(1981), also exploited
African legends, this time on the scene as an ar-
chaeological expedition uncovers more than it bar-
gained for while excavating a newly discovered
site.
The Uninvited(1982) has less overt horrors,
but they are just as chilling. The protagonist is a
young woman devastated by the recent death of
her fiancé. She is startled when the dead man
shows up, apparently suffering from amnesia and
possible brain damage, disoriented and disturbed
but still drawn to her. Her reaction is obviously in-
consistent and uncertain, but she attempts to
nurse him back to health and understand what has
happened to him. That revelation becomes in-
creasingly more chilling, however, as she discovers
that his continued existence and mental improve-
ment is contingent upon stealing those qualities
from other friends and acquaintances. The story
draws upon the legends of both the zombie and the
vampire and builds something new and terrifying.
Son of the Endless Night(1985), although effec-
tively told, is less original than most of his other
work. A serial killer has been caught, and his de-
fense is that he was compelled to commit the
crimes by the intercession of a demon. The prose-
cution suspects that this is a ploy to set the stage
for an insanity plea, but as the investigation pro-
ceeds there are rising suspicions that this time the
defendant may actually be telling the truth. Wild-
wood(1986) is more original but builds its suspense
rather slowly. The protagonist in this case is inter-
ested in an estate where a friend of his may have
gone insane, believing the surrounding forest to be
the home of inhuman creatures known only in Na-
tive American mythology. The reader will probably
be far ahead of the characters in this one, but Far-
ris does an excellent job of setting the atmosphere
and shaping the psychological component of the
suspense.
Whereas the female protagonist of The Unin-
vitedis menaced by the consequences of her deep
love, The Axman Cometh(1989) takes the opposite
approach. A vicious killer murdered all the mem-
bers of a family except one female child, who has
now grown to adulthood, although she is still trou-
bled by memories of the past and experiences deep
anxiety and troubled dreams. Her fear is so in-
tense, in fact, that it somehow re-creates a super-
natural version of the boogey man in her dreams, a
shadowy insubstantial figure that eventually takes
physical form and menaces her life. Fiends(1990)
is another very impressive novel, a variation of the
vampire story. The colony of supernatural crea-
tures in this case is a separate species that was cre-
ated at the same time as humans but that was
confined to eternal interment because they dis-
pleased God. Unfortunately, someone allows them114 Farris, John