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Body Horror/Literature: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]''. In ''A Rage for Revenge'', the leader of a cult that worships the alien invaders removes his clothes to reveal that his body is covered in 'worm fur', the neural symbionts that act as sense organs for the Chtorran worms. And in ''A Season for Slaughter'', {{spoiler|an expedition discovers that Chtorran cities are somehow capable of transforming the lifeforms within them-- including captive humans.}}
* "Metamorphosis" by [[Franz Kafka]]. Average Guy {{spoiler|wakes up as an unknown human-sized insect, unable to perform many of the actions, natural for human.}} It gets even worse when {{spoiler|his father throws some apples at him in anger and second one penetrates his body armor and stuck, rotting and eventually causing his death}}.
** Not only. Many of his short stories are fond of that.
* Another famous Czech writer, [[Jaroslav Hasek]] did this frequently in his satirical short stories. For example, in "The Austrian Customs" a man is composed from scratch after the train wreck, using animal parts and artificial prosthetics. The story's premise is very similar to ''[[RoboCop]]'', including a scene where a person visits his own grave (a scene planned for but left out of the movie). The reason for its title? Austrian Customs at the time (1910's) forbade importation of pig meat and the man had an implanted pig liver.
* ''[[Thinner]]'' by [[Stephen King]] had this as its general theme.
** ''[[The Tommyknockers]]'' had some teeth-losing, skin transparent...ing, ''genital morphing'' hideousness. It was inspired by ''The Colour Out Of Space'' (see below), as King is a huge Lovecraft fan.
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* In ''[[Discworld]]'', Angua's [[Our Werewolves Are Different|breed of werewolf]] can look like either a normal human or a normal wolf, but the few seconds of transition between the two is so horrific that she never lets anyone see it if she can help it. (This being a novel series, we have to [[Take Our Word for It|Take Their Word For It]], and we're glad to do so.)
** There's also the thankfully brief description of {{spoiler|Cosmo Lavish's hand, which has become rotten and gangrenous from wearing a too-small signet ring}} near the end of ''[[Discworld/Making Money|Making Money]]''.
* The ''[[Mistborn]]'' series by Brandon Sanderson includes some of this; the process of Hemalurgy, specifically, {{spoiler|involves killing a person in order to transfer his or her powers (and/or soul) to another person by piercing them with a piece of metal, usually a large spike.}} This results in {{spoiler|Steel Inquisitors, whose creation involves having gigantic metal spikes ''[[Eye Scream|shoved into their eyes]],'' among other places, and who are easily controlled by a [[Cosmic Horror|dark god]]}} and {{spoiler|Koloss, who the Hemalurgy mutates into monstrous, inhuman war machines whose skin is replaced by that of a different Koloss and which never grows larger (thus a newly-created Koloss will have baggy skin that would fall off if it weren't fastened on with spikes, and the oldest and largest Koloss have skin that has stretched so far that it's torn off of them).}}
* Scott Smith's novel ''[[The Ruins]]'': When a character thinks that the man-eating vines are ''growing underneath his skin'' and begins obsessively cutting himself open to try and get rid of the tendrils. The worst part? {{spoiler|HE'S NOT HALLUCINATING.}}
** {{spoiler|No, the WORST part is that they did that scene in the movie too, only with a weeping, frantic young woman as the victim. And it's clear that she's torturing herself ''for nothing'', because the vines are visibly creeping all over her body, guaranteeing she'll die even if she flays herself completely.}}
* ''Discord in Scarlet'', a short story by [[A. E. van Vogt]] that was incorporated into the novel ''Voyage of the Space Beagle'', which was the inspiration for ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]''.
* In the later books of ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', there is body horror all over the place when the Dark One's prison weakens and he can begin to "touch the world". [[It Got Worse|What's worse]] is that it always strikes out of NOWHERE. One man is feverish and then suddenly bursts into flame and slowly burns to death. Some people are found as charred corpses in their beds. Another guy explodes into a swarm of bugs. There are several more as well.
* In one ''[[Animorphs]]'' book, when the Animorphs start demorphing just as the two hour time-limit is reached, there's a very real possibility of them [[Shapeshifter Mode Lock|being trapped halfway through]] and being human/animal hybrids forever.
** The fact that they occasionally [[Did Not Do the Research]] (notably, characters' knees reverse themselves when transforming into dogs, which isn't how a dog's leg works ''at all'') just makes it worse.
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* Dean Koontz's novel ''The Bad Place'' features a main character who {{spoiler|initially}} teleports involuntarily. However, the more he jumps, the more he loses focus, with parts of his clothes being patchworked and actually ending up in his skin. It's when he finds {{spoiler|half a cockroach has been melded into his shoe that the horror goes into overdrive, ruminating on whether parts of the roach have ended up in his brain or organs}}. And the big finale cranks it up a little more with {{spoiler|the hero grabbing the villain and forcing as many teleports as possible, purposefully meshing the two with garbage, roaches and detritus until they're just a huge mutant blob. With roaches sticking out of them}}. ''Augh''.
** Another Koontz novel ''Midnight'' features (among other horrors) people who alter their own bodies to merge with their computers - and try to assimilate others into their networks. At one point one of them is shot in the head. His body dies, but immediately the computer screen starts printing out "Where is the rest of me? [[And I Must Scream|Nonononono!]]
** Yet another two Koontz novels - ''Fear Nothing'' and ''Seize the Night'' - are on the premise that people can randomly start transforming into things, sometimes multiple things.
* Ray Bradbury's "Fever Dream" is the story of a little boy who discovers that {{spoiler|every cell in his body is slowly being replaced by... ''something''}}, but [[Cassandra Truth|nobody believes him]] because they think he's just delirious with sickness. {{spoiler|The story ends with the boy having been [[Grand Theft Me|completely replaced by the virus]], with the parents none the wiser, and he's now a vector for the disease}}.
** Another Ray Bradbury short story, "Skeleton", features a protagonist who develops a strange phobic disgust of his own ''bones''-- and whose bones may be objecting to it...
* Although not neccessarily horror, Ray Bradbury's "The Naming of Names" features humans who travel to Mars. They find that there once was a Martian civilization but it has long since died. Slowly but surely (but not necessarily painfully) the humans start becoming the Martians, physically, and mentally they start becoming the Martians as well. At the end a group of soldiers arrive from Earth and find that there is an abandoned human settlement but Martians are living in the nearby monastery. Its implied that the martians in question aren't aware that they were ever anything else, and one of the soldiers comments on how nice a place to live it looks...
* Several instances in [[A Song of Ice and Fire]]:
** The disease greyscale. It causes the flesh to calcify and crack, then insanity then eventually death.
** The punishment for a whore caught infecting Tarly men is to have her privates washed in lye (potassium hydroxide). For the record, this is what lye does to a ''[[wikipedia:File:Sodium hydroxide burn.png|hand]].''
** The way Vargo Hoat dies in ''A Feast for Crows.''
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* It's found in spades in the works of [[Sheri S. Tepper]]. In ''Shadow's End'', in exchange for humans being permitted to live on the planet Dinadh, {{spoiler|when a woman experiences her first pregnancy she is then gang-raped by a native race called the Kachis. Several Kachis grow in her womb, eating the human foetus for sustenance. When the woman goes into labour, if there isn?t a special container to restrain the Kachis when they are born, they will proceed to attack the woman.}} In ''Sideshow'' a conjoined-twin brother/sister are attacked by the main villains and {{spoiler|are converted in dinka-jins, artificially enhanced bodies (imagine a human body converted in mechanical parts that can detach themselves from the main core and move about independently).}} In ''Gibbon's Decline and Fall'' the main villain {{spoiler|envisions a world where women exist in mindless suspended animation, the only part of their body utilised is the womb in order to create more men for his "perfect reality".}}
* In ''[[Harry Potter]] and the Deathly Hallows'', the [[Orifice Evacuation|fate]] [[Face Stealer|of Bathilda Bagshot]] is pretty darned creepy and [[Body Horror]]-esque.
** And then there's the professor with Voldemort's face protruding from the back of his head!
** The Polyjuice Potion. (shudders)...
** "Splinching" is what happens when a person attempts to apparate and accidentally leaves part of themselves behind. It's [[Played for Laughs]] at first...until Deathly Hallows, when Ron leaves behind a good-sized chunk of his arm, and nearly bleeds to death.
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** Not all. {{spoiler|Other Father was turned into a grotesquely misshapen and blind creature, left to crawl around the basement}}, while {{spoiler|Other Spink and Forcible's fates were similar, only they were trapped inside a cocoon}}. And let's not talk about what happens to them in the movie...
* ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' {{spoiler|Kiyomi's Mitochondria eventually control her, while her mind is still active. Yes, her MITOCHONDRIA. Her husband has the brilliant idea to keep her mitochondria alive (to be fair, he didn't know they were evil) and they end up possesing people, setting people on fire, and turning into what is basically described as Kiyomi, sans skin and with the ability to reform herself. And to top it all off, Eve rapes Toshiaki and impregnantes a young girl with the "baby" and the young girl goes through nine months of Pregnancy in what can't be more then a half an hour}} (Shuddder) made worse by the novel taking time to explain concepts behind the science and Mitochondria really do have their own DNA.
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' features this briefly when {{spoiler|O'Brien criticizes Winston after several weeks of intense torture. To do this, he shows Winston his reflection in a mirror, revealing him to look barely alive and profoundly dehumanized. To demonstrate the extent of his physical decay, O'Brien rips out some of his hair and removes a tooth with uncomfortable ease.}}
* Jonathan Shriek in Jeff VanderMeer's ''[[Ambergris|Shriek: An Afterword]]'' allows himself to be infected by a fungus to infiltrate the secret tunnels of the Graycaps. What starts out as bit of mould under his fingernails ends up in a state where he looks like an overweight middle-aged man as long as he concentrates, but if he allows the fungus to emerge, tendrils are involved. And occasionally he'll mention a bodypart like his ear, and comments that he actually lost it ages ago; it's just fungus mimicing the original form.
** The following book, ''[[Ambergris|Finch]]'', features Partials, kind of fungus-cyborgs that go through a similar process as Jonathan, but specifically allow a fungus eat out one of their eyes, and replace it with a spore-based camera.
* [[JG Ballard]], card carrying futurist that he is, has dabbled in this genre. [[David Cronenberg]]'s Crash (see above) is an adaption of one of his novels.
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* The [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] is fond of [[Body Horror]]:
** First, we have the Embrace of Pain. In fact, the Yuuzhan Vong in general are big on pain. It's not uncommon to see a Vong with dozens of piercings, some of them connected to other piercings by a too-short chain.
** High-ranking Vong are fond of surgically removing parts of their own bodies and attaching parts from other creatures in their place. This, coupled with the ritual scarrings and piercings mentioned above, are particularly common among the priest and warrior castes (since all of this [[Body Horror]] is an act of worship towards the Vong gods, and those two castes are known for excessive displays of devotion); members of the [[Mad Scientist|shaper]] caste prefer to avoid this in favor of more subtle alterations to their internal organs.
** Pretty much the entire second half of ''[[Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor]]'' is a mix of [[Body Horror]] (including one case of [[And I Must Scream]]), [[Mind Rape]], and [[Go Mad From the Revelation]]. All of this with the occasional joke for juxtaposition's sake.
** Sith "alchemy" can border on this at times. Luke's clones in ''[[Dark Empire]]'' are a lot taller and more muscular (and dumber) than him. Luke's soul is actually severed from his body in the [[Jedi Academy Trilogy]].
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* The "Stuff" that fills ''[[The Gone-Away World]]'' typically turns into whatever someone's thinking of. If it gets on someone, it can turn ''them'' into whatever they're thinking of. Unfortunately, their internal anatomy is also matched to whatever they're imagining, so if they don't have detailed knowledge of the organs of whatever they're thinking of, odds are they're [[Fridge Horror|not going to survive the experience]].
* ''Infected'' and ''Contagious'' by Scott Sigler each involves bio-machines from outer space that use humans as hosts to grow...until they are mature enough to tear their way out.
* During the first book in the ''[[Legacy of the Drow Series]]'', Dinin Do'Urden adamantly refuses his sister Vierna's order for him to be part of a mission to capture their brother, the [[Defector From Decadence]] [[
** To add to the horrific nature of normal Drow society, this transformation is not necessarily considered a punishment, and in some circumstances is seen as a great honor.
* At the end of ''Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth'', Escalla corners {{spoiler|her sister}} after she's revealed to have been behind a plot to {{spoiler|free an ancient and insane god from prison involving a ritual that requires mass human sacrifice, and incidentally have Escalla put to death}}. Escalla uses three medium-power spells to exact hideous vengeance: Flesh to Stone, Stone to Mud, and finally Dispel Magic. She's taken to prison in a BUCKET.
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* The main characters in ''[[Scorpion Shards]]'' are subject to some gross disfigurements by the [[Eldritch Abomination]] parasites that infect them. In particular, Tory develops an extreme case of painful and disgusting acne, and Lourdes gains so much weight that [[Up to Eleven|paper airplanes curve around her gravitational field]].
* ''[[Haunted 2005]]'': Saint Gut-Free's incident with the pool filter, Comrade Snarky's [[I'm a Humanitarian|mutilation]], and Baroness Frostbite losing her lips to ... [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|well, the obvious]].
* The [[Big Bad]] of ''[[Rivers of London]]'' takes [[Demonic Possession|possession]] of it's hosts, then turns their face into {{spoiler|a lookalike of [[Punch and Judy|Mister Punch]] with the giant hooked nose and chin}} shattering the jaw and shredding the skin. Then when it is finished with its host, their face literally falls off. Oh, and they are still alive at the time it happens.
** In the sequel ''[[Moon Over Soho]]'' the Black Magici...sorry, [[Insistent Terminology|Ethically Challenged Magician]] keeps a severed head alive, conscious and enslaved for over four decades, plus has a sideline in creating real [[Catgirl|CatGirls]] by fusing people and with actual cats. There is worse, but Nightingale tells viewpoint character Peter Grant that he [[You Do NOT Want to Know|doesn't want to know]] and Grant decides to accept this since the clean up crew has to involve people who excavate war graves in Rwanda and Kosovo.
* People who think Zenna Henderson was a gooey-sweet schoolmarm should read her non-[[The People]] stories. In "The Last Step", alien invaders are shooting people with dart guns. They seem to do no more than prick you, but wherever you are pricked swells to the size of an orange and hurts like hell. It can be relieved by cutting it open, but this has to be done with extreme caution, because what's inside are a lot of tiny aliens who jump out and scramble away, their feet pricking your skin in the process. And then ''those'' pricked places....
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