I finally got around to reading Dean Koontz, since he was recommended to me as a horror fan.

It’s become clear through reading his books that Koontz thinks giving villains any remotely sympathetic backstory or nuanced character traits is “Freudian” and “making excuses” for them. His villains are almost never redeemed and are flat characters with no motivation or backstory for their actions beyond being sociopaths. As a result they’re almost never interesting, as pure evil characters rarely are.

They’re also often straw men who represent cultural causes he dislikes - secular humanism, science in general, universities, modernist art, politicians, drug use. There isn’t really a scientist, professor, or academic character in Koontz’s work who isn’t a bad guy.

I might dedicate a second post to his Frankenstein series, since I’ve studied the original novel and have Opinions on it. But the issues become more glaring when Koontz is working with characters he didn’t create.

Then there’s the case of Dr. Kirby Ignis in 77 Shadow Street, who learns that his experiments with nanotechnology partly create the bad future seen in the story. Ignis isn’t happy about the bad future, and learns that he’s killed in it, but is unwilling to abandon the nano machine tech in hopes of a better result. So the main character basically decides to murder Ignis to prevent the bad future. Ignis is unarmed and not attacking him, and rather than try and reason with Ignis or engage with his point of view he takes out a gun and shoots him in the chest.

I ended up feeling sympathy for Ignis and I’m pretty sure Koontz didn’t want me to. It would have bothered me less if the moral choices made by the heroes were treated more seriously, but there’s a distinct undertone that I’m supposed to feel Ignis got what he deserved rather than think the good guys did something morally wrong or at least questionable.

But it’s framed as okay because Ignis was a Bad Guy, and the characters shrug off his murder as necessary and good. Koontz’s heroes don’t do anything wrong, even when they essentially executed someone whose main crime seems to have been expressing Koontz’s strawman views on environmentalism - because wanting to curb destructive human behaviors means you’re a loon who wants to wipe out humanity and deserve to die.

The sad thing is Koontz wasn’t always like this. He treated the Outsider with some sympathy in Watchers, and Roy Borden in The Voice of the Night gets a sad backstory and some pity, but later on in his career he decided that giving his villains motivations and character traits outside of pure evil was bad.

Is anyone else put off by the odd black-and-white morality in Koontz’s books?