Will Spook You for Real: Strategies of Inspiring Societal Anxieties

Popular fiction can be more than feel-good diversion . Stories which are intended to entertain are uniquely suited to affect their recipients’ feelings or moods, and tend to leave a more sustained impression than lectures or lists of facts. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that story-telling keeps on thriving in the 21st century, with ever new media providing ever new space for narratives.

In Will Spook You For Real, Huber examines a wide range of strategies used in fiction to trigger a specific emotion in the readers: anxiety regarding the social constructs they live in, and their specific positions within these constructs. Can we trust our neighbours? Can we rely on our governments? What do big corporations have in mind? And what happens if I cannot conform to the role which has been assigned to me?