The author describes his werewolf tale in his own words
With word breaking this morning that “Red Moon”, the upcoming werewolf novel by Benjamin Percy may soon be headed to the big screen, STYD reached out to the author for a more in-depth synopsis of his tale and it’s alternate history world of werewolves.
“It’s a narrative made of equal parts supernatural thriller, love story and political allegory,” Percy explains, “There are several interlocking storylines that reach across the globe and the space of several years. I’ve always felt that the best horror stories take a knife to cultural unease — look at the way Frankenstein was born out of the Industrial Revolution or Invasion of the Body Snatchers connects to the Red Scare. So I’m taking a knife to post-9/11 xenophobic anxieties — much in the same way Singer did with ‘X Men’ — so that the Lycan, as I call them, is The Other, the hidden threat among us.”
Though the synopsis relates specifically to the upcoming novel (to be published in the fall of 2012), the genre-bending allegory of the story will also likely be the aim of the prospective feature film.
“…I have an alternate history,” Percy continues, “Lycans have always lived among us. They were massacred in the Crusades, WW2, westward expansionism. A republic was set up for them around the same time as Israel. There is an uneasy acceptance in the US — Lycans must be registered and must take a transformation-inhibiting drug called Lupex. Resistance movements have always existed, many of them peaceful, but at the novel’s opener a terrorist act — when a Lycan transforms mid-flight and slaughters everyone on board — results in a swift, severe government response that sets the narrative in motion and sends the country spiraling out of control.
Percy, whose previous output includes the novel “The Wilding” and two books of short stories “Refresh, Refresh” and “The Language of Elk” also teaches creative writing at Iowa State University. More information about the author can be found at his website, www.benjaminpercy.com.
Source: Silas Lesnick
