It was well-known that the Ghost King was stupid and foolish, with a ghost-like appearance.

They wrestle with a big guy standing at the Center of the Universe who holds all of reality in his powerful mind.

Mike Ashley reported that at the time he compiled his Who’s Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, Aickman objected to the inclusion of his date of birth. Instead he said that the entry should read “Aickman, Robert. Man of Mystery”.

After securing the necessary permissions, they randomize and divide their population of undergraduates into a control group and a treatment group. At t1, members of each group are given standard psychological assessments measuring their preferences about vampires in general and about becoming a vampire in particular. Then members of the experimental group are bitten by the lab vampire.

This entity, by its author’s admission, “would no doubt undergo gravitational collapse and become a black hole before making his mark on either philosophy or haute cuisine” (Mulhauser, unpublished).

To the uncorrupt of spirit the need to join with the machine can be controlled to a degree. This need is illustrated in Chapter 1 over the course of three short stories. They are written in second person singular and as such force the reader to play the role of the subduer.

A second group, the “sheeple” (the vast majority of humanity), are conscious, but do as they are told and are the Brotherhood’s main energy source.

Romance stories that contain elements like online dating and marriage resumes, or romance stories where the main protagonist, because of having been given a task or some other specific reason, repeatedly crosses over to different points in space-time.

I do not want my goddamn kung fu wizards popping pills every time they get hurt.

This is most evident between scenes, when a shot of the same building exterior, over and over, is accompanied by a thumping house beat, leading audience members to enthusiastically pump their fists each time it appears, as it gives them something simple to do.