characters obsessed by some object or activity, usu-
ally with unpleasant consequences. This character
trait carried over into her first novel, The Cipher
(1991), in which two friends, neither of whom has
prospered either financially or spiritually, discover
a mysterious black hole in a storage room. Items
dropped into the hole and later retrieved are trans-
formed, often in very grotesque ways. They even-
tually experiment by lowering a video camera into
the hole, but the resulting pictures differ depend-
ing upon who is looking at them. Exploration of
the hole becomes an obsession, reflecting the
twisted images in their own minds. The Cipherwon
the Bram Stoker Award.
Bad Brains(1992) involves a somewhat similar
situation. The artist protagonist in this case suffers
an injury to his head, after which he experiences a
variety of visions, or perhaps hallucinations, that
might be dismissed as entirely illusory except that
somehow what he experiences has a physical effect
on objects around him, chiefly his paintings. Skin
(1993) strays even further toward pure psychologi-
cal horror. This time the protagonists are a sculptor
and a dancer whose obsession with dark imagery
leads to compulsive body piercing and other un-
pleasantries. Koja’s next novel, Strange Angels
(1994), explored the same themes once again in an
even more surreal manner, but this and several
subsequent novels avoid any fantastic content.
Her most recent book, The Blue Mirror
(2004), edges back toward the fantastic. An un-
happy young woman becomes obsessed with her
new boyfriend, who may not be entirely human.
Several of Koja’s short stories have been collected
as Extremities(1998), although only some of them
involve the fantastic. She has continued to write
short fiction, including such memorable pieces as
“The Timbrel Sound of Darkness” (1993), “In the
Greenhouse” (1994), “Waking the Prince” (1995),
and “At Eventide” (2000).
Koontz, Dean R.(1945– )
Dean R. Koontz started his career as a science fic-
tion writer during the 1960s, quickly shedding the
awkwardness of a new author and growing steadily
more self-confident and skilled as he produced a
rather astonishing volume of work under a variety
of names, including nonfiction, thrillers, fantasy,
and horror. His breakthrough came during the late
1970s, after which his novels were almost always
marketed as horror, although more often the hor-
rors were rationalized rather than supernatural.
Most of his “horror” novels are, in fact, technically
science fiction rather than supernatural or fantasy,
but his name has become so identified with the
horror field that they are included here.
Koontz did produce some conventional fan-
tasy early in his career, although even then it was
obvious that he preferred scientific rationales. The
Crimson Witch(1971) transports a man from our
reality to an alternate history in which a devastat-
ing nuclear war destroyed technological civiliza-
tion, which has been replaced by resurgent magic.
A much more interesting fantasy is The Haunted
Earth(1973), which also mixes genres. Aliens ar-
rive from another world with the power to open
gateways between realities. Creatures of legend
and even racial stereotypes exist in some of these
alternate worlds and are now free to cross over
into ours. Koontz uses this device for some light
humor and satire. Two more recent works are also
fantasy. In Oddkins(1988) toys come to life, com-
plicating matters for the child protagonist, and in
Santa’s Twin(1996) the title character imperson-
ates the original and sets out to destroy Christmas.
Night Chills(1976) was the first of Koontz’s
novels to be marketed as horror fiction. An experi-
mental gas has properties that could potentially un-
lock an unexpected power in the human mind, but
the downside is that exposure also turns most peo-
ple into maniacal killers. A flurry of similarly sus-
penseful books followed, and his career took a new
and much more successful direction. The Vision
(1977) makes use of an overly familiar though still
effective theme, the clairvoyant psychically linked
to a serial killer who must be identified before he
tracks down the protagonist. The Face of Fear
(1977), which appeared in the United States as
written by Brian Coffey and in the United Kingdom
as written by K. R. Dwyer, uses a similar theme but
is closer to being a police procedural. Watchers
(1977) was his first major novel and has generated
three film versions. Two creatures escape from a
government project involving genetic enhance-
ment, one a dog with nearly human intelligence,Koontz, Dean R. 195