When is it SF - and when is it horror?

I noticed in a Facebook feed that Prometheus 2 is scheduled to hit the movie theatres in 2016. And having just googled the movie, it seems Alien 5 is on its way, too. Here's the post. Excuse me while I unboggle my mind.

Ahem. Back to business. As it happens, these movies segue neatly into one of those silly “which one are you” tests littering the Facebook feeds. This one was “which SF hero from the eighties are you?” Mine turned out to be Ellen Ripley, which amused me because Morgan Selwood in the series of the same name owes a tiny bit to Ellen Ripley. And that in itself is amusing because I have not, and will not, see any of the Alien movies – including (of course) Prometheus 1 and 2. So what I know about Ripley comes from the media.

I can imagine a few of you readers are frowning, but it's like this, see? You know how we endlessly discuss science fiction romance and what it really IS? The same can be said about SF fantasy, or SF horror. And while I love my SF and my fantasy, I do not like horror. This is one of the reasons for my aversion to zombies, vampires, and dystopian storylines. I've explained in the past how I see SFR as a spectrum depending on the emphasis placed on the romance arc. The same thing happens in SF horror. As far as I'm concerned, Alien is a horror movie set in space. Who can forget the iconic tagline “in space no one can hear you scream.” It has all the classic elements of a horror story – a monster; the high-tech, even more isolating equivalent of a haunted house; and a trapped bunch of people dying one by one. In a similar vein The Thing (set at an Antarctic base) is most definitely a horror movie, as the being in question morphs from one form to another, obliterating its (trapped) victims as it goes.  Arnie's Predator was very similar, with even less of a passing nod to near-future SF. And let's not talk about Alien vs Predator.

No thanks, not my thing. As far as I'm concerned these movies are gore fests which I place firmly in the same category as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the Thirteenth. Not going there.

At the other end of the spectrum, horror stories can have more of an SF feel. Lovecraft's novella, At the Mountains of Madness, is one such. Lovecraft is known as a writer of horror. As a younger person, before my aversion to horror flared, I read all his Cthulhu mythos stories. For me, At The Mountains of Madness came across as SF more than horror. A more recent example is Apollo Eighteen, which is sort of thriller/horror/SF. (See? Genres mix)

I'm sure you can all think of other examples. As for me, I'll wait with bated breath for Star Wars VII. That kind of SF/fantasy is right up my alley.