Kevin's Watch

Or wherever.

I would have to say that Iago from Othello is what I find most despicable in humanity. A man of petty spite and desires.

As for chilling, MacBeth is too real not to chill. Many people refuse to believe he is evil, but he very much is. We just see his corruption is all, and that makes it so much more chilling. Empathy is the key to unlocking the human mind. That is the difference between Iago and Macbeth. We see everything from MacBeth's perspective, so we can feel what he feels, and see things as he sees them. However, this does not make his actions any less evil.

I also think Tony Soprano is a chilling vision of evil, for most of the same reasons as MacBeth. In addition, he is 10 times a likable a person. He is a person we can go to the mall and see at the food court. We could be nailing his daughter in college. (Come to think of it, that's not that frightening, Meadow is HOT!) That's what is chilling about him to me.

Anyone else?

Jack of Shadows from the science fiction classic of the same name by Roger Zelazny...the thing about Jack is that he is so damned cool, it is easy not to see -- and easy to forget -- that he is one very evil character.

seen Hellboy?

Spoiler

The devil unleashed at the end is pretty unnerving

Remember David Warner as The Devil in "Time Bandits"?

No, seriously....AM in Harlan Ellison's "I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", which is, quite simply, the most horrifying piece of fiction I've ever read. AM is a computer that keeps a small group of people alive for over a hundred years just to torture them for it's amusement. It was written in '67 I believe, and several works of sci/fi and horror have drawn liberally from it.

Put it this way, I consider myself to be a pretty tough S.O.B., but I think I'm gonna have nightmares tonight just typing about it (I didn't sleep well for a week after the first and only time I read it).

Dreaming: Tony Soprano...Excellent choice.

Hanuman Li Tosh in The Broken God!

Oh, yes. He is terrifyingly evil!

Cail wrote:..AM in Harlan Ellison's "I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", which is, quite simply, the most horrifying piece of fiction I've ever read.

A truly excellent short story. One of my all-time favourites, and as horrifying as Cail says.

--Avatar

God I am a dork. Any of you played a System Shock video game? Among the greatest games ever made. The villain, SHODAN, was a computer program that became self aware and came to believe she transcended all flesh-bound life. It wasn't just the villain that made the game scary, it was the implementation. The way the game is designed, the story is told entirely from audio, diary style logs you find and by real time "e-mail" transmissions. SHODAN talks to you all the time. She taunts you, goads you, and even seems to really fear you. A bit off topic, but you got me thinking of rogue AI.

P.S. And yes I have seen Time Badits. LOVE it. "If I were creating the universe, it would have started with the laser, eight o' clock DAY ONE!"

" Now Benson, I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while."

"Oh Benson, dear Benson, you are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence."

I think the most chilling representation of eeevil in english literature has to be the eponymous Jane Eyre. What a pyscho bitch.

Wow, I really thought you were going to go for the easy joke there. As soon as I saw "last post by Dr. Evil" I started cringing. Good show of willpower avoiding it.

Jeez, how self-centred do you think I am? And my eeevilness is nothing when compared to the queen bitch herself, Jane Eyre. She gives me shudders, and not in a good way.

Avatar, I don't know if that's the most chilling representation of evil, but if its not, then the best place to look is in other H. E. books. Dreams with Sharp Teeth might be a good place too.

I think that H. E. has actually done me permanent damage.... wow, talk about train wreck stories. He's the king.

I remember reading one about a woman who was murdered over a period of like an hour in an appartment building courtyard, multiple witnesses and no one called it in... and it was based on a true story...

he has a special way of showing the most horrible things in the most penetrating emotional way. Shivering just thinking about it.

I think I've blocked most of his stories out.

JemCheeta wrote:I remember reading one about a woman who was murdered over a period of like an hour in an appartment building courtyard, multiple witnesses and no one called it in... and it was based on a true story...

Give me enough time and I'll give you the name of the story and the real woman's name. The actual woman, IIRC, was repeatedly raped on a streetcorner in NYC on a summer evening in the mid-late 60s. I don't belive she was killed.

H.E. is an interesting writer. From what I've read, about 1/3 of it is schlock, 1/3 is passable/OK, and the other 1/3 will stay with you for life.

Yeah. I think reading some of his stories (at 15, very recently after I finished Illearth War) actually drove me near a nervous breakdown. Of course, that was right after finishing the Illearth War. Which leaves you cheerful and bright eyed/bushy tailed.

JemCheeta-- Oops, I didn't really mean that I considered the computer in that story to be the most chilling representation of evil in literature. Just that it was an excellent story, and definitely a horror.

To be honest, no fictional character ever really seems "cilling" to me, perhaps for the simple reason that I can never escape the knowledge that it is fiction.

BTW, the woman's name was Kitty Genovese, it happened in 1967 I think, and although she was first raped, and then her attacker fled, he returned shortly afterward and stabbed her something like 37 times. She did die. It was later established that over 30 people had heard her cries for help, and nobody even called the police. The most common reason was that they "didn't want to get involved."

That's pretty chilling if you ask me.

--Avatar

Thanks Av, you remembered before I did. I remember reading about that in a high school psych class.

Oh, I remember reading that Harlan Ellison story. Freaked me completely out...some of his short stories are really, really out there!

Yeah, we don't need to look into literature for our representations of evil...

JemCheeta wrote:Yeah, we don't need to look into literature for our representations of evil...

Not as long as Bill Maher still has a TV show.....