Pick Your Favorite: Barker or King

Barker or King?

  • Clive Barker

    Votes: 9 29.0%

  • Stephen King

    Votes: 22 71.0%
  • Total voters
    31
I cast my vote for Stephen King. However, I think it's kind of a false dichotomy, as King and Barker are quite different authors, for all the fact that they are the only two horror authors that have ever really managed to frighten me. King's work takes place, for the most part, in the real world, in my opinion. Granted, it is the real world as filtered through his wonderfully bizarre imagination. Barker, on the other hand, seems to work more in a fantasy world, especially in his novels - and in fact his novels tend to be much more fantasy than horror, even while incorporating horrific plot points sometimes. It is Barker's short stories that come much closer to traditional horror, and even those are much more fantasy ridden than much of what King has written. Another difference in their writing is that King, despite his sometimes obscenity-ridden language, writes for a more general audience than Barker does - Barker's work is much more sexually explicit much more often than King's has ever been.

I do like both King's and Barker's writing. I find King to be more of a storyteller in the traditional sense. I also find his characters to be more believable, on the whole. This is not a criticism of Barker's talents - just an acknowledgment that he works differently than King does.
 
Barking for the King


Thank you all for responding to the poll. I remember having this debate in a chatroom before and was pleased to see what people are turned on and turned off with in authors' writing styles.

I put my vote in for Stephen King, and it really comes down to only two things.

First, I believe King is better at building characters who readers can feel as real. He is great at taking a handful of character types, place them in a stressful, suspenseful situation, and let them play off each other. It showcases that strength. It feels natural. Unfortunately, King's addiction to undoing all that he had built in character development seems to crop up much more than it should. Dreamcatchers is an example. Barker doesn't need to worry about messing up the character growth in his novels because, in my opinion, character constructing isn't his strength. I read Sacrament awhile ago, and I didn't care about the main character (Will Rabjohns) any more on the last page as I did on the first one. In fact, I can say the same about all his main characters in the other two novels (Everville and The Great and Secret Show)I have read of his.

Second, King comes across as inviting and humble in narrative voice, while Barker doesn't. The biggest turn off in accomplished literature for me is sensing that the author is pretentious. To me, Barker drips of it even in his best work. I feel that he is trying to impress me with how morbid (either sexually or otherwise) he can be in his work. King may be an eternal nerd with thick glasses, but I will chose such humble demeanor over Barker any day.
 
King, even though I hate the way a lot of animals tend to suffer in his books, a couple of things seal the deal for me:

The Shining, The Dark Tower, Cycle of the Werewolf and Salems Lott.
 
I'm sitting on the fence here ( not very comfy ) I like them both.
They are two different writers and as such there styles tend to differ.
But they have both produced some very good stuff, I say good luck to them both!
 
Wow a 10 year old thread necro'd.
Clive Barker is a fantastic author for his combination of fantasy and horror. I prefer some of his earlier works. The Books of Blood are very good short horrors and The Damnation Game is a great story. For his longer novels I would put Weaveworld above Great and Secret Show. Galilee is also good. His imagination is incredible.
For Stephen King he has somewhat more real world stories but I find they are somewhat slow, until the endings. His work will appeal to more people as it is less niche. Though I do love the Shining and his Dark Tower series.

I was surprised there is no Clive Barker sub-forum here. He is a successful fantasy author, has movies made of his stories, and I think there are lesser known authors represented here.
 
One book that I keep coming back to:

Salem's Lot.

I'm a huge Barker fan, absolutely love Cabal, but nothing Barker's written comes close to giving me bad dreams like Salem's Lot does.
 
"The Shining" was my first King book.
While I was reading it I kept looking over my shoulder!
Been a big fan of his ever since.
My favourite Baker novel is "Weaveworld", outstanding dark fantasy.
And some of his "Books Of Blood" stories are brilliant!
As are some of Kings in his various collections.
Two first class writers!!!
 
I read Imajica a few months ago by Barker. Absolutely incredible. An epic story. It's a while since I have read Weaveworld but it is up there with it. They are different types of authors but I just find that page after page of Clive Barker's work has incredible descriptions while King tends to have more slow sections that build up. King is more a suspense writer while Barker is more of an imaginative fantasy author with various amounts of quite graphic horror thrown in, but he also likes to includes ideas on the meaning of life, gods, eroticism and sexuality, love etc. Though his early Books of Blood concentrate on the graphic horror. As a fantasy writer I think he has more work to suggest he should be on this fantasy/Sci-fi site forum than Barker whose main fantasy output is the Dark Tower series. But perhaps Barker doesn't have the reader numbers.
 
Neither. I'll go with SKing tho, since his 1st book had a moment or two. Then he turned into a 600 page bore. Barker is too obvious, and therefore not remotely scary.
 
But actually I've read a bunch of them and they are decent pulp ficti writers. S. King was a good writer before he became a superstar, he just had to go the way of horror for the masses instead of a smaller group of weirdos.*
 
I Like Barker , He's written some great stuff , but overall, I think Stephen King is the better writer.:)
 
J Riff said:
Neither. I'll go with SKing tho, since his 1st book had a moment or two. Then he turned into a 600 page bore. Barker is too obvious, and therefore not remotely scary.
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Have you tried some of Barker's fantasy stuff rather than his early horrors? Like Imajica or Weaveworld?
 
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