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Bentley Little is a writer of the horror genre. He's known for high levels of Gorn and pitch-black comedy.
Bentley Little's books, in order, are:
- The Revelation (1990)
- The Mailman (1991)
- Death Instinct (1992) (writing as Phillip Emmons) aka Evil Deeds
- The Summoning (1993)
- The Night School (1994)- released as University in 1995
- Dominion (1996)
- The Ignored (1997)
- Guests (1997)-released in the U.S as The Town in 2000
- The Store (1998)
- The House (1999)
- The Walking (2000)
- The Association (2001)
- The Return (2002)
- The Policy (2003)
- The Resort (2004)
- Dispatch (2005)
- The Burning (2006)
- The Vanishing (2007)
- The Academy (2008)
- His Father's Son (2009)
- The Disappearance (2010)
- The Haunted (to be released- 2012)
This author's work includes examples of:[]
- Abusive Parents: "Life with Father" features a couple of girls who live with their father who is extremely obsessed with recycling everything they use, eat, and create. He is so obsessed that he forces the elder daughter to help him "recycle his seed". The elder daughter gives herself up to keep him from harming her younger sister.
- Adult Fear - Many of his novels deal with these, including the nullification of personal identity (The Ignored) and the destructive power of consumerism (The Store).
- Ancient Conspiracy - Occurs often. "Colony" reveals that America never won its independence from Britain and still answers to the Queen. Kennedy was assassinated for not following orders.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy - "The Washingtonians" reveals that George Washington was a murderous cannibal.
- Blessed with Suck -The short story "Estoppel" puts this spin on a variety of Reality Warping. The protagonist's ability is that anything he says out loud about himself becomes true. As a result, he has to be very very careful about what he says, lest he accidentally rewrite his (and the world's) history in disastrous ways or trap himself into a form incapable of speech. And that's without even getting into the issue of talking in his sleep.
- Bloody Hilarious
- Brown Note - One of Little's Hot Blood anthology stories features a code of numbers that causes anyone who looks at it to experience a crippling orgasm. The military briefly considers using it as a weapon to use against enemy nations.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive - Newman King, founder and CEO of the eponymous retail chain of Bentle Little's The Store. Whereas the average CCE causes suffering as a side-effect of their ruthless pursuit of profit, King and his organization go out of their way to cause completely unnecessary suffering on top of the side-effects of his ruthless pursuit of profit. The company's corporate motto might as well be "For the Evulz." The Store sets up shop in small towns, buys the local government and puts small business owners out of business, like a relatively normal company might. But then it also does things like buy up the town's utilities so it can spy on people's phone calls and e-mails, murder small business owners, force employees to go out and beat the homeless, stock child pornography and other bizarre, illegal products, whore out female employees, sic zombies on people, trick a man into having sex with his own daughter and send his wife the videotape of it, etc.
- Creepy Child - Though the antagonist in The House is said to be some sort of demonic entity, she appears as a 10-year-old Depraved Bisexual.
- For the Evulz - Many of his villains.
- Gorn
- I'm a Humanitarian: "The Washingtonians"
- Infant Immortality - Averted. Frequently.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday - The Store: A nice little patch of land turns up bulldozed one day. Despite a dead guy under some knocked-over trees, the eponymous store is built and all kinds of horrors, mundane and supernatural happen. Anything can be bought, if you ask the right questions. From the oddly possible, powerful firecrackers for a nickel, to the insanely impossible, such as a video game called 'N*** gerKill' (not censored) . Eventually the whole place goes cockeyed, the villains seemingly defeated but...a small farmer's market several hundred miles away terrifies a traveling couple.
- Mars Needs Women - The Vanishing centers around the modern descendants of 19th-century couplings between humans and a secret race of monsters who, despite being hideous 8 foot tall Mix-and-Match Critters who speak in Black Speech, have a practically supernatural sexual appeal that makes them irresistible to humans. As a result, they don't need to chase or abduct human women or men; the humans tend to seek them out, usually just for a quickie, but sometimes going on to abandon their families to go live amongst the monsters.
- Predatory Business - The Store.
- Nightmare Fetishist - Many a character in his works.
- Rape as Drama - Happens quite a bit, especially in University.
- Refuge in Audacity - It's hard to think of what taboo he hasn't crossed.
- Religious Horror - "The Revelation".
- Rule of Scary - Somewhere between the cult of women who have sex with a tire iron and the humanoid figures in trenchcoats who are faceless except for their huge disembodied grins, you'll realize that absolutely none of the horrifying, insane things that happen in his novels make the least bit of sense; your best bet is to simply assume that the evil...whatever...that's causing it is powerful enough to warp reality and do whatever the hell it wants. Even making that assumption, most of it still comes across as lunacy. Extremely creepy lunacy.
- Snuff Film - A snuff show appears in "The Show".