Nick Mamatas Talks About ‘120 Murders’ And More!

The “Nostalgia Pendulum” theory, coined by Patrick Metzger in 2017, asserts that pop culture revolves in a thirty year cycle. This is why the 2010s came to be dominated by numerous imitations of 80s aesthetics. Look no further than Stranger Things, for example.

If this theory is to be believed then our current decade will surely come to be defined by nostalgia for the 90s, otherwise known as the Alternative Era. You don’t have to look very far to see that this phenomenon is already well under way. Next time you’re in a crowded place, just count how many Nirvana t-shirts you see.

Into this zeitgeist comes 120 Murders, a collection of dark fiction developed by Nick Mamatas which serves as a love letter to the alternative music genre of the mid 80s and 90s. 

I spoke to Nick via Zoom in June about the upcoming anthology. 

 

 

To start with, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how the project came about? Has this been a passion project of yours for a while?

It has. There’s been a trend in the US, more in crime fiction than anything else, to have tribute volumes to this or that musician. A friend of mine Joe Clifford started the trend by doing crime fiction in tribute to Bruce Springsteen. In the US, crime fiction means something more specific than in the UK, where it relates to all mystery, all sleuthing. In the US, it means stories about crime, capers, heists and noir, but not necessarily sleuthing and solving a crime or whodunnit. 

So this took off as a trend. I enjoyed reading many of them. But I was frustrated because many of them were being done by very small presses and there didn’t seem to be a lot of money going into them. So I thought what if there was a broader umbrella then just one group. What if it was an entire era? 

It started as a crime fiction anthology. But as it turns out, among bigger publishers, crime fiction anthologies are almost always handled in-house. I was talking to an acquaintance of mine from House of Gamut, who specialise in speculative dark fiction. I then expanded my proposal to include all modes of dark fiction, in honour of the alternative music era from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, and they were very excited about it. I exhausted my rolodex and email accounts to find people who were prominent, but also those who weren’t so prominent.  We even have debut fiction from a former student of mine whose presence in my online workshop was a lucky stroke for me.

 

Am I right in thinking that each story is in dialogue with a specific song from that era?

Almost. One makes exceptions for certain people. It began with a list of songs I had, a very broad list. But as time went on, I started to make exceptions. 

So for the most part, they are in dialogue with, or inspired by, or just riffing on, one’s experience of listening to a song or seeing an image in a music video. It is not retelling the song or using the lyrics from the song or trying to recreate the plot of the song. But then someone like Todd Grimson sends you a story. He didn’t have anything particular in mind, except that he loves listening to Cabaret Voltaire, the electronica artist, whenever he writes. It is a sort of cypberpunk, Dennis Cooperesque, Gay, street, cyborg story; and I loved it so much that I expanded the remit to include “not quite” one song. 

But for the most part, yes. People are inspired by one song they love. 

 

What is it about the alternative era, that generation, which is so compatible with dark fiction?

Good question. On one level, it’s because as people age, they start reading mystery and crime stories, even if they never have before. That’s just a demographic reality. Once you turn 50, you think Hmm, what if start reading mysteries? What if I’m worried about the future?

Of course, the alternative era came into being in the 80s, where we had Reagan in the US, Thatcher in the UK, Helmut Kohl in Germany. There was the collapse of the Cold War. Then immediately afterwards, there was no peace dividend whatsoever but instead a significant number of wars, depressions, and so things were “dark” in the 80s and 90s. 

The music of that era reflected that darkness. It was also lyrically interesting in a way that pop at the time was not lyrically interesting. Because of that, I think it attracted people who were interested in the written word and thus those people tended to become writers. 

 

You’ve said that Generation X is the ‘Cynical Generation of Dark Romantics’. As someone who grew up during that time, did you feel this sense of cynicism among young people?

It was definitely an issue when it came to politics. It was very easy to become cynical. But of course, cynicism only takes you so far when you’re, say, protesting the war in Iraq. 

Even though there was cynicism, there was also this impulse towards sincerity. I don’t want to make generalisations, but people say Generation X was the last generation to care about “selling out” or even to know what that means. Just the other day, I was at an event with Paul Tremblay, who is of the same age as me, and who I badgered into writing a story for me. It hasn’t turned into anything yet, so no promises but he’s says he’s working on it! 

But Paul told me he asked his daughter, ‘Do you know what selling out means?’ And she said, ‘It’s when someone builds a brand and then betrays that brand.’ So the younger generation still have to use that word – branding – as part of their conception as to what selling out is. Where as those in Generation X would be horrified to think of themselves as ever having a brand. 

 

We’ve seen other examples of writers and even filmmakers in the horror genre looking to the alternative era for inspiration. I’m thinking of Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, for example. Even Robert Pattinson’s Batman is very “grungy”. Do you see this collection as part of a broader trend in the horror genre currently? 

I do now. Probably because you said so, but you did remind me of something that I saw in a movie the other day called I Saw The TV Glow, which I thought was an amazing dark fantasy. It is about the 90s. It is more about TV nostalgia for Nickelodeon-style shows and others like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

It’s about two people in high school who are obsessed with this show. They are also dealing with issues due to with their gender. But the name of the show is “the Pink Opaque”. And for those who don’t know, the Pink Opaque, is also a Cocteau Twins record. 

So when I was sitting in the theatre, I thought Aha! I am a barometer, this is all going to work out. 

 

***

 

120 Murders is currently available for pre-order. You will receive a PDF copy of an original story by Nick if you pre-order now.