The Appeal of Cosmic Horror (and Why It Pairs Well With Romantasy)

Put down the tomatoes, I beg you. As bizarre as this notion seems, I’ll have you halfway convinced by the end of this piece, if not all the way there. Melding romantasy with cosmic horror must appear as mad as coupling tapioca pearls with tea (of all things) or birria with ramen. Yet, two worldwide sensations later, the verdict’s in. Opposites attract in fiction as in life, and genre isn’t immune to that cosmic law.

Once thought of as frivolous and too much of a hodgepodge of genre, the eclectic combination exploded to prominence during the pandemic. Now, publishers slap it on everything. Why? Because it’s just so darn feel-good and inherently built on the most idealistic genres literature possesses. No matter how dark the world we enter is, the dark, growly misunderstood MMC (male main character) will still huff, puff, and glower his way into the FMC’s (female main character) heart. The kingdom will be saved—to some extent; this genre does have a lot of grit to it. The villain(s) will get their comeuppance—again, to some extent; romantasy is a spectrum. And most importantly, all will be well.

What joy to lose yourself in such a work during tumultuous times!

Avid readers will note that this mix of fantasy and romance has deep roots in the paranormal romance explosion of the mid-2000s to 2010s. But whereas the latter genre tended to be grounded in contemporary settings, anything goes in fantasy. And romantasy makes excellent use of that freedom.

Non-human MMCs? Why not. Fascinating anatomical additions? Yes, please. A whole new meaning to the word ‘spice’? Well, it’s the nature of language to evolve.

I greedily experimented with all this leeway in This Monster of Mine; my debut romantasy is a murder mystery/legal thriller set in a fantasy world loosely inspired by Ancient Rome at its zenith and with a strong romantic subplot. A patchwork of genre, yes, but one that resonated with readers.

Some of my favorite reads of the year were Sophie Kim’s The Winged Game, a sports romantasy and The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, a time-travel romantasy. Then, there’s the increasing rise in horroromantasy—as it’s affectionately called on social media—with such stunners as Midnight on The Celestial by Julia Alexandra that plays with the magical and monstrous, and the upcoming What Lies Beneath by C.C. Foster that takes on Poe and Gothic horror.

Cosmic horror is the logical next step. Why?

Enthralling fantasy is both blank canvas and mirror. The author paints with words and reflects the absurdities of society back at it while having us wonder about more and about what and whom we other. At the risk of having more tomatoes thrown my away, I’d argue that horror is a type of fantasy—our worst delusions, ugliest fears, and macabre desires spilled across the pages.

Where both overlap is that anything goes. That’s why readers flock to them and have rather similar expectations of each. We want to be awed, repulsed, and taken for the ride of our life.

Fantasy and horror are genres of extremes, with well-trodden ground (dragons, anyone?). But the boundary-pushing is most noticed in horror, because it doesn’t pander to the idea of humanity’s innate goodness and heroism the way fantasy does. Long-time horror fanatics and new acolytes are familiar with the visceral and gory, the blasphemous and satanic, and the wretched machinery of the human mind. We’re long overdue to explore the existential, and that’s what cosmic horror does so well.

It’s a medley of the macabre, the religious, body horror, liminal spaces, space itself, psychological terror, existential dread, and the horrifying apathy of being a speck of dust stuck in the Groundhog Day circle jerk that is the human experience.

I should add that I’m rather fond of the human experience, but cosmic horror does make one question the point, and therein lies the appeal: being able to articulate what might otherwise land you in a straitjacket, through the lens of story and in manner that asks readers to reflect on our realities, the multitudes we contain, and how you may as well buy that videogame at full price because you deserve to externally pilot a character through a story to escape the burden of your own.

Clowns, ghosts, and demons are terrors with a firm border to them. We fear the creature or what it represents. But cosmic horror encourages fear in the abstract: the infinity of space, the coils of sleep, the pressure of the ocean, the entities that could be puppeteering us from dimensions we’re incapable of fathoming. The goal is a silent scream at the workings of our world. It’s an experience that encourages the reader not to care and to drown in the futility of it all.

Those stories feel more necessary than ever in a world that feels like it’s spiraling towards some entropic explosion. A unique form of escapism, certainly, but it’s oddly cathartic to panic over at broader forces than government.

That was certainly my state of mind when I was writing the sequel to my debut romantasy, This Blade of Ours. After the tumultuous ending to the first book, the protagonists find themselves reckoning with a country that preferred them as underdogs over victors. Graduating the legal thriller subplot to a political thriller felt appropriate, but there was something missing.

So, I leaned into the Eldritch-like pantheon that took up a prominent place in the first book. They were borne of the idea that if a pantheon based on the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues existed, they probably wouldn’t appear very human. Or like us very much. Tinder meet spark; the plot caught fire. A sinister presence now loomed over the land—the shadow of an ancient presence that couldn’t be fought and cared little for pleading. The main characters went from facing political turmoil to battling an insurmountable malice. Every other piece of the story immediately fell into place.

It became a balancing of traits: romantasy versus cosmic horror, innate goodness and hope in humanity versus the existential dread that nothing is worth fighting for we’ve never been in control and never will be. That battle lent new dimension to the book’s political underpinnings and brought out a raw desperation that made the book feel utterly bleak at times, even to my eyes. Yet, it also gave the characters a fierce drive that jumped off the page and made every tender moment feel hard won. Who’d have thought? Romantasy and cosmic horror bringing out the best in each other.

At this point, if I haven’t convinced you, do proceed with the tomatoes; my rhetoric clearly needs work. But I’ll leave you with Janus, the double-headed god of beginnings and endings, doorways and passages, and perhaps, romantasy and cosmic horror. Bifurcated sections of the human imagination dissecting humanity from different vantage points just as the god does. Front and back, the eyes don’t waver. And they’ll watch as we spin within the globe and around the sun and dust talks to dust.

They’ll always be watching.

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