Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A movement within horror fiction distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depictions of violence.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

splatter +‎ -punk, coined in 1986 by David J. Schow at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

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Examples

  • From what I’ve read so far the anthology is takingÂa sensible line of giving authors freedom to take the idea where they want to go with it but not get bogged down in splatterpunk (a sub-genre I [...]

    Yatterings » 2007 » February » 15 2007

  • From what I’ve read so far the anthology is takingÂa sensible line of giving authors freedom to take the idea where they want to go with it but not get bogged down in splatterpunk (a sub-genre I thought could be fun in the right hands but those right hands were oh so few and far between) or the working of the machine.

    Yatterings » Machine of Death short story collection 2007

  • Two, because she's had two careers: first as they doyenne of a lurid and literary horror subgenre they called "splatterpunk," a literary movement that she defined with books like The Cipher, which combined intensely poetic language and lavish grotesqueries.

    Boing Boing 2008

  • On the subject of "splatterpunk": ... to my knowledge no one ever uses the term anymore, other than when they're referring to the time nearly twenty years ago when four writers referred to themselves that way.

    The best thing I've read all day Arbogast 2008

  • Not for the squeamish, these definitely are in the "splatterpunk" genre of horror.

    Monday vignettes badger 2001

  • But if you really want examples of books that I simply don't understand the appeal of, you can take pretty much anything from the splatterpunk horror shelves (because I don't need to be reminded that human beings can imagine and occasionally do horrible things to one another, and if I really want to horrify myself, I might as well spend a productive hour doing my accounts, thank-you-very-much).

    MIND MELD: Books We Love That Everyone Else Hates (and Vice Versa) 2010

  • And I totally have an essay in me for eventually about the characterization of violence -- from comic-book unreality to splatterpunk to cinema verite -- in the movie version of The Watchmen, and what it means thematically.

    Monkey? What are you doing? batwrangler 2009

  • "Live Girls" by Ray Garton - Fun 80's splatterpunk book set in sleazy old Times Square

    Voice of the Fans: What Book Have You Recently Read That's Good Enough To Recommend To a Friend? 2010

  • Not splatterpunk, but elegant, gorgeous dark books full of fright and touches of the numinous.

    Peter Straub's A Dark Matter yuki_onna 2010

  • Rarely has a story had such a visceral effect on me, and all without using much explicit imagery; this isn't a splatterpunk story, but a story about the choices of the rich and bored, or, as Barron himself puts it, "[r] evelry, privilege, decadence, and deceit."

    REVIEW: Poe edited by Ellen Datlow 2009

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