Hi Ben Thomas, I really enjoyed this piece; it was quite informative and thought-provoking for someone who knows little about the topic, but is himself “fascinated by the abomination.”

As a sci-fi nerd this specifically made me think of two things that are very related to the concept of the abomination you described, but perhaps less primeval and/or more modern.

The first is the movie Event Horizon. Admittedly I haven’t seen it in over a decade, so I don’t recall the specifics, but I remember that the ship was sucked through a black hole into an alternate universe of chaos — which is an omnipresent theme in your piece. When the ship returns it is somehow infected by the laws, or rather the anarchy, of that universe. Space terror reigns. It’s not any more or less scary or gory than many more traditional horror movies, except that the violence doesn’t come from a grudge which can be rationalized or addressed, but from chaos. Total anarchy. That, to me, is much scarier, but also much more fascinating. And perhaps even though Event Horizon is a sci-fi movie, the return to an alternate universe of chaos is very primeval…

The other thing I thought of was the second in the Batman Trilogy, The Dark Knight, and specifically Heath Ledger as the Joker. His amazing performance aside, the way he is presents himself as “an agent of chaos,” and the way that manifests in the movie are quite terrifying. Whereas Event Horizon is total anarchy and therefore total chaos, the Joker represents something perhaps even more terrifying: sporadic but extremely violent and totally unstoppable terrorism. He is chaos personified, willing to exist within the rules of our society but randomly blow up a hospital or something similar. Inexplicable and therefore unstoppable; violence without bias.

My final takeaway was the realization that the reason I enjoy sci-fi is b/c space is my — and my generation’s — version of Marlow’s map. It is fascinating and terrifying to imagine what might be out there, and it is so indomitably vast that there could almost literally be anything we can conceive of, and that brings me full circle, because however unlikely it may be, my fears and fascinations could be somewhere out there in the blank canvass that we get to fill with these stories.