The New Century Horror Novels

New-century horror fiction has caused wide attention since it generated from the Internet,and reached its peak in2006, becoming the leading role of the network literature. New-centuryhorror fiction introduced novel and unique effect, attracted the attention of the teenagers readers,and won high click rate because of its novel subject, interlocking suspense, and frighteningimage. This horror boom hasn’t cooled after2006. Horror fiction’s high click rate continues onthe internet; print-out editions in bookstores still occupy the position as eye-catcher, and oftenhit the best-seller list; there have been films adapted from the new-century horror fiction incinemas. Many new-century horror fiction have high-quality, and show a relatively high level inthe plot setting and shaping the characters. In spite of these, new-century horror fiction spreadmerely among young readers, and did not cause attention of academia. Also because of these,new-century horror fiction develops under the market which shows strong vitality, but itsexisting problems are also worrying. Therefore, researching and guiding new-century horrorfiction from academic perspective in order to correct academia’s prejudice against new-centuryhorror novel is very necessary. Meanwhile it should be noticed that, horror fiction is filled withmany frightening element and not suitable for teenagers to read for a long time, but it is theseteens reading them, which seems to be a paradox. What reception psychology the teenagers areon to read horror fiction? Is new-century horror fiction truly not worth mentioning as peopleimagined? What’s the difference between horror elements in new-century horror fiction and thetraditional horror fiction? These will be the focal points in this paper,and also the meaning andvalue of this writing. Therefore, this paper will analyze new-century horror fiction by itsbackground, horror elements and value judgment, in anticipation of playing a positive role inpromoting healthy writing of the new-century horror fiction.The paper is divided into four parts. The first part will analyze the present acceptedsituation and background of new-century horror fiction. This part firstly analyzes the popularityof new-century horror fiction, secondly the deep cultural memories of horror art in China, andfinally readers’ psychological triggering mechanism in reading horror fiction from theperspective of psychology. The second part of the paper will study on horror fiction’s text,analyzing its theme, narrative and aesthetic aspects of its horror elements. Horror fiction is sold on the basis of "terror" to win the majority of teenagers online readers. Analyzing its horrorelements enables more in-depth understanding of the new-century horror fiction. Among notmany studies of the new-century horror fiction, the text analysis is not developed in the field,and the second part of this article will make up for the inadequacy of this aspect. The third partwill analyse new-century horror fiction from the macro. With understanding its artistic value,analyzing its writing difficulties, and putting forward relative strategies to cope with thesituation, I expect the new-century horror fiction to move on in the healthy direction. The fourthpart will analyze representative writers and work of new-century horror fiction, taking anexample of Cai Jun, in order to have more intuitive understanding on the new-century horrorfiction.Above all, new-century horror fiction takes the network as the carrier, fulfills with horrorelements such as horror image, horror figure and horror plot, and effectively inspires thereaders’ terrible memories buried deep in their heart. It is this terror that novelty and readers’heterogeneity and rebelling correspond to, inspiring reading desire and realizing thecombination of the terror and pleasure. New-century horror fiction, however, has also beencriticized by the academia for its homogeneity and repetitive writing phenomenon and lack ofideological content. New-century horror fiction still has a long way to go, but we should believeunder the joint efforts of the academia and writers, it will develop more and more maturely andhealthily.