Shh. Are you ready? We don’t have much time.
In the spirit of the season, Disturb Ink has published, live now, six – count ’em, six – new collections about horror and the everyday technology we use in our daily lives. Each collection delves into the common technology of a specific decade and reveals the dread lurking behind such seemingly benign devices.
ESCAPE looks at film in the 1920s. Back when it was still new, cutting-edge technology, film provided a relatively cheap way for people to entertain themselves, and to beat the heat in the height of summer. But what shadows lurked in the corners of theatres? What terrors might crawl across the screen?
Fireside chats. Baseball games. News as it happens. LISTEN looks at the 1940s, when radio was king, and asks the burning question: what are you hearing, when you turn the dial and finally land on a station that’s broadcasting? Who – or what – might be talking on the other end? For those playing along at home, “Red Rover, Red Rover” is a bit of World War II horror I have in this one.
Once, you had to go to the screen to see what wonders and horrors it might have to show you. Now, in the 1960s, the screen has come to you. WATCH spins tales of what else you might be letting into your home when you turn on the small screen. When you stare into the television, the television also stares back into you. Features “Sorry Girls, He’s Married” by your faithful scribe.
Ah, the 1980s. Has there ever been a decade so reviled and loved in equal measure? I guess it depends on whether you were there or not. By the Eighties, the public was no longer just watching movies – they were given the tools to make their own. Camcorders and home video were the rage, but just what were people recording? Even the most innocent of home movies can take a sinister turn in CAPTURE.
Craig Finn once said, in the midst of a positive jam, that ‘we were wired and well-connected, put it all down on technology and lost everything that we invested.’ He was talking about the Dot Com bust but HOST looks at the 2000s and wonders what else we invested…and what else we might have lost. With the internet, we were all suddenly in much closer contact with each other: chat rooms, message forums, early social media like Friendster. As your parents warned you, though, how do you know what’s lurking on the other end of that chat window?
Finally, the modern day, the 2020s – no better decade to ponder on the essential terror of being alive. Or, more precisely, the daily horror of interacting with beings who might not actually be. LURK examines that most disturbing of commonplace technology, artificial intelligence. What is it telling us? What, if anything, is it thinking?
More to the point, what is it planning?
Available now on Amazon as ebooks, Disturb Ink’s SINISTER CENTURY series is sure to have enough disturbing ink to keep you awake for days. Click on the images above to be taken to the individual collections, or dare to use the button below to take in a hundred years of terror at once!
