Late on in Stephen T. Asma’s On Monsters he concedes that “one will search in vain through this book to find a single compelling definition of monster.” As he goes on to say, this is not because he forgot to include one, but rather because he does not think there is one. What qualifies as a monster in this chronological study, is simply that which has been considered as such by the age in which it appeared or indeed by subsequent ages. If this seems like a perilously loose definition, then it is one from which the book benefits. Rather than attempting an encyclopaedic account of monsters through the ages, Asma instead gives us a cultural history. He presents us with a fascinating look at the perennial human response of fear, focussing on the various manifestations it takes. These manifestations, from the mythical beasts of ancient legend up to the terrors of contemporary news reports and beyond, provide a prism through which to view shifting cultural backgrounds.

Asma divides the book into five parts, each of which deals with a different age and a different concept of the monstrous. Asma opens with ‘Ancient Monsters’, where we encounter the famous creatures of legend many of which have grown almost too familiar to elicit much fear, yet still make entertaining reading. The second section, ‘Medieval Monsters’, serves as a worrying reminder of how little progress has been made in the world of religion when compared to our wholesale abandoning of the Hellenic mythology. Although witches are no longer burnt in the West, for some the devil is still terrifying real and exorcism a rational response to mental illness. The third, ‘Scientific Monsters’, is perhaps the most disturbing section (depending on your proclivities of course), in the age of Enlightenment and empirical rationalism the human body itself becomes a monster: deformed babies, freaks and nature’s mutants are examined and paraded. ‘Inner Monsters’, the fourth section, looks at the effect psychology and our cultural of the self has had on our notion of the monstrous. These inner monsters are those of today and Asma particularly looks at their representation in film. Slasher movies, torture porn and serial-killers exert today that mixture of horror and fascination once reserved for snake-headed woman and eagle-winged lions. Finally, Asma looks to the future in ‘Monsters Today and Tomorrow’. Here, as well as considering the future monsters presaged by biotechnology, Asma also looks at some contemporary causes of monsters: xenophobia, oppression, societal pressures.

However, it is certainly not the case that each of these ‘ages’, or indeed each of these chapters, is limited to only one type or view of the monster. In the section on Ancient Greeks, for example, Asma includes Medea, a mother who murdered her two children and would fit without problem into our post-psychiatric world-view of the monstrous; while in looking at today’s monsters we find many who would be right at home in ancient mythology, Godzilla and King-Kong for example. In fact, while there is certainly no attempt in this book to offer a complete run-down of monsters through history, there are very few which don’t get a look in.

This inclusiveness is certainly one source of the brilliance of the book: it manages to be both a serious and intellectual look at monsters as products and reflections of human nature, whilst also satisfying the morbid urge to hear all the gruesome details. Asma certainly relays these with relish and has an obvious love of the subject, evinced in part by the inclusion of a number of his own excellent line drawings. These drawings are just one testament to the attention to detail applied to the visuals of whole package: from the beautifully understated cover, to the initial-letter illustrations at the start of each sub-section, this is a book that is not just wonderful to read, but also to experience.

Listen to Steven Asma’s interview on Bookhugger.co.uk

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