In "The Last Bonneville" by F. Paul Wilson (Weird Tales, 2023), the title character so torments his interlocutor that he drives his car--a Maserati--into an abutment along a desert highway and dies in a fiery crash. The hapless victim is named Felix De Groot, and he is a rocket scientist. Dwight Bonneville wants him erased because his mission--Bonneville's mission--is to make sure that human beings remain earthbound for the benefit of what he calls "Our Owner" (an obvious Fortean reference). He does this by killing off scientists, more accurately, by driving them (no pun intended) to kill themselves.* So he goes on the road, driving across the American West, tracking them down in his Bonneville with a recording of gibberish, fresh from the Void, in hand. He has them listen to it, and they thereby lose the will to live. It's like an audiobook version of The King in Yellow or the Necronomicon. In the end, Felix De Groot, despite his name, is neither happy nor great.
De Groot is not the protagonist of "The Last Bonneville." Although he's a human character, he's basically just a bump in the road. Bonneville is the one who acts, and this is his story. He might not be the hero of it, but he is--I think, I guess--the protagonist, a role he would probably refuse if it were offered him. In "The Last Bonneville" and most of the Cosmic Horror Issue, nobody plays the hero. There are mostly just protagonists, and even at that, most are weak. But then we live in an age of weakness and failure.
Last time I wrote about the lack of heroes in contemporary fiction. Is that a real thing, or is that just my perception? There are certainly few, if any, heroes in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales, but then this is weird fiction--or at least it's what passes as weird fiction. We think of heroes as ascendant, even if they come to their ends, for example, as Robert Jordan does in For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940). The weird-fictional protagonist more often descends, or falls, or even plunges into plutonian depths. Again, if you're looking for heroes and heroic action, you should probably read something other than weird fiction. Even so, you might not find them or it in what's out there today.
I see the artist as a leader in matters of taste. An artist is not and should not be a follower. He or she should not follow the zeitgeist. The artist should lead. The purpose of art is not to tear down or destroy. It is to create. The spirit of our time, though, is that every person and every thing, including the world, is terrible. They and it deserve to be torn down. By this interpretation, art is dishonest if it is positive, affirmative, inspirational, edifying, uplifting. In our age of hatred, cynicism, destruction, nihilism, and extreme ironic stances, there are and can be no heroes. Heroism is stupid. It's fake. It's sentimental. It's cringe. It's from the past. It might even be fascist. Heroes from previous eras are demoted in our popular culture, while horrible people and horrifying characters are elevated. People tear down statues of Abraham Lincoln while wearing Che Guevara t-shirts. Superman, the former Man of Steel, becomes a weak and whiny character, a stalker, a loser, full of self-doubt. People flock to see a very dark movie about the Joker, seemingly out of identification with a dark, mentally ill, and nihilistic character. They also go to see the story of Odysseus except that he's not the Odysseus of myth and literature. He has been made into a modern man, wracked with doubts, anxiety, and guilt. Readers, viewers, and audiences seek out works of supposed art that affirm their view of the world. And the artist stands by, weakly gives in to their demands, even chases after them, giving them exactly what they want, or what he or she thinks they want. The artist emerges from their midst, or if not, becomes one of them, all in their service. He or she is only slightly more articulate, creative, and imaginative than they are. There isn't any higher calling in any of this. We must debase everything, including ourselves. In the words of British author Duncan Williams, drawing from C.S. Lewis, we must make of ourselves trousered apes. We must create a sick literature.
None of that is to say that F. Paul Wilson is at work trying to tear things down. It is his character--his protagonist--who is doing that within his story. I think Dr. Wilson was actually trying to make a point in "The Last Bonneville"; it should probably be read in conjunction with his essay "Cosmic vs. Abrahamic Horror" in that same issue of Weird Tales. It used to be that hero was synonymous with protagonist, but as we have seen, a story does not need a hero in order to function. In a story of a different type, Dwight Bonneville would be not the protagonist but the antagonist. We would recognize him as a villain. But if there isn't any hero, how can there be a villain in opposition to him? And if the hero is absent and the villain becomes the protagonist, what is the agon? There isn't any conflict within Bonneville. He is a man of conviction. He has his obsession. His conflict isn't with the men he hunts. Being weak and without conviction themselves, they go easily to the slaughter. Theoretically, his struggle (or one of his struggles) is against a society that wants to stop him from spreading death and destruction. But where is that society? Nowhere to be found. He goes on with his mission with nothing to stand in his way. He is active, competent, and efficient. And what are we to do as readers? Identify with him? Root for him? What reader would? I guess we're left with this: we must see this story as an entertainment, while nonetheless picking up on the point being made. In that, the author was entirely correct in his approach, for "The Last Bonneville" is ironic and light in tone, even humorous, albeit in a pretty grim way. After all, who hasn't run into or been waylaid by somebody like Dwight Bonneville? If humor is about recognition, who doesn't recognize in him the patented American crackpot?
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*There has been an ongoing conspiracy theory about missing and deceased scientists, mostly in the American West. Could Dwight Bonneville be at work in the real world?
Next: Fifty-Two Miles to Terror
Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley
