From It's a Wonderful Life to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, there are no shortage of "What If...?"-style stories that tackle an alternate history of what came to be. But none of them have focused on an alternate world where Ed Gein didn't become infamous, which is the subject of James Murray's NO GEIN. From the story's origins to his take on "Pop Culture Alternative History" and how it would impact a movie like Halloween, we dive all into NO GEIN in our latest Q&A:
Ed Gein has captured the attention of so many storytellers. What drew you to the story of Ed Gein?
I’m an 80’s kid, so during my childhood, Friday the 13th and all those other slasher movies were popular. Later, I got into Halloween and Psycho, but I didn’t know who Ed Gein was for a while. At some point in my mid 20’s I borrowed a book from a friend; it was called something like, “The A to Z of Horror.” The “E” entry was about Ed Gein, and it was there I first learned about the case and its direct influence on Psycho.
Your fascination resulted in "No Gein," and how pop culture would have changed if he had never been caught. What inspired this novel idea?
No Gein was born from the COVID era. I was actually working as a teacher in China at the time and was traveling South East Asia for my winter holiday. It was then that the news broke about Covid 19; and I ended up spending most of my 2020 back home in the United States with my family.
While at home, I was thinking I should spend this time writing something, but I didn’t know what yet. I’d borrowed a book by Harry Turtledove, who is kind of the master of the alternate history subgenre. Then, one night on TV, I watched a documentary about Ed Gein.
So, with Turtledove on the brain, and looking for what my next project would be, watching this Gein documentary got me thinking. What if Ed Gein never got caught, or at the very least, what if the general public never knew who he was? Without Gein, Robert Bloch doesn’t write Psycho. No Psycho novel means no Psycho movie with Janet Leigh in the shower. Then her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, doesn’t get cast in Halloween. Halloween is not as successful, and the whole scene of 1980’s American horror has a different look to it. I had to figure out what the actual story would be with all this, but that was the initial idea. It’s what I call Pop Culture Alternative History.
You have an extensive timeline, with your stories covering decades. Was this an organic process where the ideas spilled out over time or did you thoroughly plan the timeline out ahead of time?
It was an organic process. Originally, my only idea was for the first No Gein story, so I pumped it full of pop culture references. Later, I had an idea for a follow up. Then I figured, if I do two stories, I might as well do a trilogy. Along the way came smaller stories called No Gein: Leftovers. As I wrote all these, I actually went back and edited out some pop culture stuff from the first No Gein and spread them out through the other stories.
To answer your question in a roundabout way, as I wrote more and more tales of this world, I started developing a timeline for myself just so I could keep track of what was what. Developing this tool to write my stories soon became as enjoyable as writing the stories themselves. Since it was so enjoyable I began adding more to it, such as the release dates and plot summaries of these films from an alternate world. I realized a time-line could be a means to flesh out some of the pop culture deviations that I couldn’t fit into the proper stories. It was fun writing it out, so I decided to share it with some friends and to post it on my blog.
Can you talk to our readers about a specific example of how Ed Gein not being caught impacted your fictional world?
On the pop culture end of it, I enjoyed playing around with Halloween. Carpenter wanted to turn the series into an anthology, but after Halloween III flopped, the series re-focused on Meyers. In the world of No Gein, Halloween continued as Carpenter envisioned. I had a blast speculating what further Halloween anthology films might have looked like.
On the dramatic side, in real life, the people of Plainfield hate the association their community has with Ed Gein, which is understandable. In my stories, Plainfield gets to remain this quiet unknown place, for a while. Then, it’s kind of like the town pays a price for keeping a secret, and the place becomes even more of a circus than it does in our world.
No Gein is available on your website. Are there any other release plans for the stories and/or plans to translate this into a screenplay or graphic novel?
I put No Gein on my blog because I was unsure of the legalities of a story that leans so heavily into other people’s intellectual property. In a way, it’s kind of borderline fan fiction. So, I don’t have any plans to adapt this into anything else. I’m not big on comic book adaptations of prose. If I could publish it all in a book form I have an idea for some little things that would be fun to add. I could see No Gein as a series for a streaming service, but it would take a small miracle to sort out all the rights.
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You can read No Gein right now at James Murray's website: https://jemurr.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/no-gein-an-alternate-horror-part-one/
After spending more than 10 years as a consultant in the tech and entertainment industry, Jonathan James launched Daily Dead in 2010 to share his interest in horror and sci-fi. Since then, it has grown into an online magazine with a staff of writers that provide daily news, reviews, interviews, and special features.
As the Editor-in-Chief of Daily Dead, Jonathan is responsible for bringing the latest horror news to millions of readers from around the world. He is also consulted with as an expert on zombies in entertainment and pop culture, providing analyses of the zombie sub-genre to newspapers, radio stations, and convention attendees.
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