Spread Me

---

---

Popular discourse surrounding body-horror is often situated around cinema, notably horror films that depict the dread and terror of the transformation and loss of agency of one’s own corporeal form. The term body-horror can be traced to Phillip Brophy’s 1983 essay “Horrorality: The Textuality of the Contemporary Horror Film” in which the scholar notes that certain contemporary fear films are focused on “the destruction of the body” and that the films “play not so much on the broad fear of Death, but more precisely on the fear of one’s own body, of how one controls and relates to it.” In A Dictionary of Film Studies, Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell note that body-horror focuses on “human bodies that are subject to torture, mutilation, mutation, decay, degeneration, and transformation, usually shown in graphic detail” while also probing concerns of embodiment, bodily autonomy, and decay. Sarah Gailey’s brilliantly inventive and squeal-inducing science-fiction horror novella Spread Me seeks to merge the cinematic traditions of body-horror with engaging speculative literary approaches.

Gailey (they/them) has gained acclaim over the past few years not only for their SF/F endeavors, but also for fan writing and contributions to comics in the Buffyverse along with original comic titles such as Eat the Rich (2021) and Know Yor Station (2021). Their 2017 American Hippo pair of novellas (River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow) pose an alternate history in which the semi-aquatic massive mammals imported to the United States in the 19^th century have run rampant and must now be exterminated by a group composed of various identities, including non-binary and Queer characters. River of Teeth was a 2017 Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novella, a 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Novella, and the 2018 Locus Award Finalist for Best Novella. Their 2020 Western novella Upright Woman Wanted centers queer librarians who travel the American Southwest under a totalitarian regime. Gailey also authored the 2019 fantasy/mystery Magic for Liars and 2021’s The Echo Wife, which concerns a scientist who abandons his spouse for her clone.

Spread Me, published by Tor’s newly established horror imprint Nightfire, takes cues from both cinematic and literary precursors. Certainly, we can sense the presence of John Campbell’s 1938 Who Goes There? as well as the 1954 Jack Finney novella The Body Snatchers. Yet, the influence of these literary works is less than the impact of their various big screen adaptations upon the novella. In particular, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is repeatedly referenced in Spread Me. At the station, if any member of the team even mentions the film or accidentally repeats a line of dialogue from the Carpenter classic, the offender must deposit money into a jar. In addition, Spread Me mirrors many elements of Alien (1979) but spins and re-spins these scenarios into intriguing, inventive and fascinating moments of tension and ghastly contortions of the human form.

Spread Me depicts a group of six researchers inhabiting a compromised scientific outpost in a desolate, desert region far from other humans or cities. On a survey to catalogue lichens, members of the field team undercover a seemingly deceased, animal-like “specimen”, break protocol, and bring the body back into their cramped lab space. The specimen, described as a “six-legged multi-segmented coyote” with three tongues, fascinates them, but this grotesque creature is much more than they first suspect. Once the team examines the specimen, they all develop various illnesses and isolate from one another. Kinsey, unknown to the others, has not fallen victim to this mysterious virus that has spread amongst the crew. But Kinsey is plagued by unquenchable sexual urges focused on images of bacteria. Following quarantine, the various members exhibit bizarre behavior focused on unyielding perversity and begin to physically transform. As the novella progresses, characters must determine who has come under the influence of the invasive “fungus” transmitted by the specimen, resulting in paranoia, metamorphosis, and body-horror in its most visceral form.

Spread Me’s non-linear structure alternates between chapters. The reader encounters a chapter set in the present, then a chapter detailing the early days of the outpost, and so forth. Though Spread Me on its surface may seem too reminiscent of its cinematic predecessors, this is a wholly new vision and inventive take on these tropes. The inciting incident mirrors Alien, and the paranoia vaguely resembles The Thing, but Gailey’s execution of speculative science, character, and suspense marks Spread Me as a novella worthy of recognition.

Beyond the structure, which compels the reader to consider the larger ramifications of the narrative and subsequent mystery of these terrifying transmutations, Gailey’s array of characters stands as a fascinating, multi-dimensional group of humans who speak and act as individuals. With six characters within the novella form, there is little time or space to differentiate this crew, but Gailey succeeds without tiresome monologues, obvious character ticks, or insipid commentary from bystanders. This crew, with all their boredom and obsession with sleeping one another before the arrival of the “specimen,” reflects the monotony of science labor counteracting the vision of science often romanticized in the SF genre. The unique descriptions of the body transformations are gut-churning and effective, truly expanding the reader’s imagination of what a human body can become. The suspense and terror further pull the reader along; yet, the narrative remains unpredictable, never sacrificing fealty to character for action and plot convenience.

Though we have had contemporary media iterations of “the fungal threat” as science-fiction horror (such as the videogame and streaming series The Last of Us and Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris trilogy), Gailey takes these properties and reformulates the mechanisms of fungal infestation for shocking, yet thoughtful, effect. In all, Gailey’s deft handling of plot, character, and action–carefully balancing horror and speculative science–marks Spread Me as one of the most enjoyable and effective science-fiction horror works of the past decade.

Shannon Blake Skelton (he/him) is a teacher, professor, author, and researcher located in the Midwest. His scholarship, fiction, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals. His volume Interviews: Wes Craven was published by The University Press of Mississippi. He is a proud contributor to the Ad Astra Institute: https://adastra-sf.com/about.htm#about.