Tag: bureaucracy in fiction

Why Your Hometown Is a Horror Novel

Somewhere in your town there's a meeting happening right now. Seven people sitting around a folding table in a room that smells like industrial carpet and old coffee. They're talking about a culvert. Or a setback variance. Or the renewal of a conditional-use permit for a property on the edge of the commercial district.Nobody's watching…

Institutions Are Scarier Than Monsters

A monster can be killed. A bureaucracy cannot.This is the unfair advantage of institutional horror, and it is the reason I keep coming back to it. The monster in the woods is a problem with a solution. You find the right weapon, you learn the right rule, you survive until dawn. The institution is a…