Genre Surgery, or, A Moby-Dick Experiment

Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Restructured into Horror

She still calls to me sometimes. Ishmael, Ishmael, her haunting voice echoes through the waves that lap the Manhattan shoreline. It used to be harder to ignore her siren song, and I spent many years at her beck and call, her fingers brushing over my wind-torn clothes as I gripped the mooring lines in a storm, holding tight for dear life as she tried to grab me from the ship and make me one with her.

Ishmael, Ishmael, she sang through the salt spray that blew over the deck of the ship, let go, Ishmael. Come to me, Ishmael.

I never fell over to join her, though I’ve known many men who refused to resist her, and many more who tried and failed. There was one time, though, that I almost lost myself in her.

Out at sea, the days blended together, but not as much as they do on land for me now. I can’t say how long it’s been since I sailed with Ahab and the Pequod, only that she had called me to glide over her smooth surface, and my empty purse and belly cried for me to set out once again.

Ishmael, Ishmael, I heard her sigh as I boarded the Pequod. Had I only known that those whispered sighs and gentle caresses that I was accustomed to would give way to something fierce, something vengeful, something that keeps me ashore until my final day.

Once you hear my tale, you’ll never set to sea either.

What is Genre Surgery?

Simply put, genre surgery is taking an existing story in one genre, and reimagining it in a new one. Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for instance, asks "What if this was set during a zombie outbreak?" This stitches together the original romance by Jane Austen with a new horror subgenre - with some martial arts thrown in for good measure. Henry H. Neff's Tapestry series takes the Irish legend of Cú Chulainn, moves it to a contemporary, US-based setting - Max is from Chicago, IL - and adds in a magic school fantasy subgenre. This surgery can be seen as a bit more subtle, particularly for those unfamiliar with the original legend. In order to drive the point home, Neff often refers to the Cú Chulainn myth in relation to Max, the main character, and gives a brief re-telling of the original in the process.

Why Horror for Moby-Dick?

The first thing I always think of with any tale of sea expeditions is horror, since there’s always been an air of the unknown for what’s beneath the surface of the ocean. Even now, there are depths that we have yet to explore. I also wanted to lure readers in with a more romantic idea of the sea, with hints of the horrors that would come as the story unfolds. I noticed most of the opening paragraphs of Moby-Dick described how everyone Ishmael encounters is drawn to water, so I wanted to give more characterization to the ocean itself, and describe how Ishmael was drawn to it in his earlier years.

I should note that I’ve never read Moby-Dick beyond what I’ve done for this exercise, so I may be missing some major plot points that make this introduction nonsensical to the overall story.

I don’t read horror nearly as often as I would like, since it’s difficult to find something that tingles my spine in the way I look for in the genre; however, my love affair with horror goes back to sneaking into the living room when I was four years old and watching a hefty chunk of Silence of the Lambs before my mom noticed me and kicked me out. So, when I try to write my own horror (this is among my first attempts), I try to incorporate a more psychological element to it than visual horror.

Try it Yourself

What's your favorite story? What's a story you wish could have been better? Is there something you've read that sparks your imagination towards something different entirely? Take those ideas, and re-write the opening of a book of your choice. You can be as verbose (or not) as you choose - mine was 250 words, yours could be 100 or 5000. Feel free to comment below with what you've come up with - I'd love to read them!