Scared to death: has horror fiction run out of common fears to trade on?

Whereas Victorian writers could rely on repressed sexuality to generate unease, today's horror and fantasy novels put sex on the front cover. But the best new examples of the genre still bring up the things we don't like to talk about

When Bram Stoker penned Dracula in 1897, Eastern Europe was still remote for most Britons. But Jonathan Harker's tortuous overland journey to Transylvania would today be a short hop on a budget airline. And Count Dracula, as both a Romanian immigrant and wealthy foreign plutocrat, would be attacked on arrival first by the Daily Mail for taking our jobs, and then the Guardian for forcing up property prices in the capital.

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