Tracing the development of horror entertainment since the late 18th century, this study argues that scientific discovery, technological progress, and knowledge in general have played an unparalleled role in influencing the evolution of horror. Throughout its many subgenres (biological horror, cosmic horror and others) and formats (film, literature, comics), horror records humanity's uneasy relationship with its own ability to reason, understand, and learn. The text first outlines a loose framework defining several distinct periods in horror development, then explores each period sequentially by looking at the scientific and cultural background of the period, its expression in horror literature, and its expression in horror visual and performing arts.

Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre

Literature & Fiction

Colavito, Jason

History & Criticism

McFarland Company

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is one of the most famous in Greek myth, and its development from the oldest layers of Greek mythology down to the modern age encapsulates the dramatic changes in faith, power and culture that Western civilization has seen over the past three millennia. From the Bronze Age to the Classical Age, from the medieval world to today, the Jason story has been told and retold with new stories, details and meanings. This book explores the epic history of a colorful myth and probes the most ancient origins of the quest for the Golden Fleece--a quest that takes us to the very dawn of Greek religion and its close relationship with Near Eastern peoples and cultures.

Jason and the Argonauts through the Ages

Say you found that a few dozen people, operating at the highest levels of society, conspired to create a false ancient history of the American continent to promote a religious, white-supremacist agenda in the service of supposedly patriotic ideals. Would you call it fake news? In nineteenth-century America, this was in fact a powerful truth that shaped Manifest Destiny. The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans. Thomas Jefferson’s pioneering archaeology concluded that the earthen mounds were the work of Native Americans. In the 1894 report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cyrus Thomas concurred, drawing on two decades of research. But in the century in between, the lie took hold, with Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln adding their approval and the Mormon Church among those benefiting. Jason Colavito traces this monumental deception from the farthest reaches of the frontier to the halls of Congress, mapping a century-long conspiracy to fabricate and promote a false ancient history—and enumerating its devastating consequences for contemporary Native people. Built upon primary sources and first-person accounts, the story that The Mound Builder Myth tells is a forgotten chapter of American history—but one that reads like the Da Vinci Code as it plays out at the upper reaches of government, religion, and science. And as far-fetched as it now might seem that a lost white race once ruled prehistoric America, the damage done by this “ancient” myth has clear echoes in today’s arguments over white nationalism, multiculturalism, “alternative facts,” and the role of science and the control of knowledge in public life.

The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a "Lost White Race"

History

Americas

University of Oklahoma Press

Cthulhu in World Mythology*OP

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Atomic Overmind Press

The Orphic Argonautica was once believed to be among the oldest Greek poems. When its real age (c. 500 CE) became know, scholars condemned the work and consigned it to centuries of obscurity. Now, read the mysterious poem long-closed to English-speaking readers. This edition contains a full English translation of the epic poem along with selections from Hyginus, Dares Phrygius, Lactantius, and the First and Second Vatican Mythographers to give a compelling picture of the Argonaut myth in the age when Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. This edition also includes a full introduction tracing the history of and the controvesy over the epic poem, extensive annotations to explain and clarify the poem, and several appendixes reproducing nineteenth-century scholarship on the Orphic Argonautica.

The Orphic Argonautica

Lulu Press, Inc.

The Faust Book

This volume collects a range of early tales from Greco-Roman Antiquity down to the dawn of the Victorian Age that imagine encounters with creatures on or from the moon. These stories span the centuries and come from cultures as far afield as ancient Greece, medieval Japan, early modern Britain, and nineteenth-century America. Each tells an interesting tale of not just of the adventure inherent in encountering moon creatures but also of the cares and concerns of the people who projected their hopes and fears onto the lunar orb.Just as real space exploration had to take small steps to our closest neighbor, the moon, before venturing outward into the vastness of space, so too did science fiction need to start close to home before venturing across the cosmos into the depths of the unknown.Read on, and start retracing that journey across the sands of time and through the depths of space.With tales from Lucian, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Adams Locke, and more...

Moon Men!

Science Fiction

lulu.com

It is often unacknowledged how deep a debt modern ancient astronaut theorists owe to the nineteenth-century Theosophical movement, a Victorian-era amalgam of Spiritualism, Eastern religions, and good old-fashioned hokum. The Theosophists proposed that beings from Venus and other planets visited earth in the deep past and were responsible for ancient ruins and the foundations of religion. This book presents early texts from noted Theosophists and those who encountered Theosophy, covering the beings from other worlds that came to the ancient earth to "civilize our planet." These texts provide an interesting window into the origins of the modern ancient astronaut theory and demonstrate just how much the talking heads of cable TV and the modern authors of alternative history owe to the pioneering work of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultists. This volume features W. Scott-Elliot's complete The Lost Lemuria and H. P. Blavatsky's Stanzas of Dzyan among other selections.

Theosophy on Ancient Astronauts

Of all the ancient structures scattered across the globe, Egypt's Great Pyramid, built by the Pharaoh Khufu (also known as Cheops) around 2580-2560 BCE on the desert plateau of Giza, has attracted the most attention from ancient astronaut theorists and alternative historians. By some estimates, more has been written about the Great Pyramid than any other topic in ancient history, excepting only the Bible. The sheer number of odd theories about the pyramid has led archaeologists to label fringe investigators "pyramidiots."There is hardly any modern fringe theory about the Great Pyramid that is not derivative of one in place by 1877, the year James Bonwick wrote the overview of the 47 most popular theories about the pyramid that you are about to read.Thus, the following book is essential reading for understanding the history of pyramid theories and how ancient astronaut theorists and alternative archaeologists employ them.

Pyramidiots

Middle East

In "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926), H. P. Lovecraft described a global cult that worshiped the octopus-headed extra-terrestrial god Cthulhu, his minions, and the megalithic undersea city in the Pacific where they rested dead but dreaming until the day of Cthulhu's glorious resurrection. While Lovecraft's undersea monster drew on a number of mythic sources, surprisingly and unbeknownst to Lovecraft, there was a real religion in the Pacific that reproduced with uncanny accuracy the major details of the Cthulhu myth as given in the story. In Samoa the war god took the form of an octopus, lived in a great stone palace called the House of the Octopus, and was periodically reborn in a glorious resurrection. His followers prayed to him for blinding red rage. This book collects five essays on the octopus god of the Pacific and his cult, including the startling details of the real-life Cthulhu cult of the Pacific.

The House of the Octopus

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Books by Colavito, Jason