What makes a monster? Godzilla, Medusa, Frankenstein’s monster, Fáfnir, the Alien: All these fictional fiends have disparate origins, attributes, and motivations, but they are tied together by their disregard for what we perceive as the natural order. Each is an aberrant creation — something from an earlier age, or something corrupted — that disrupts the harmonious arrangement of the universe. They are not just frightening. The tiger stalking in the jungle and the crocodile lurking in the shallows can inspire terror, but monsters are ominous beings which question the rules of existence as we know it.

There is no natural category of monstrous things. Stephen Asma, in his appropriately titled On Monsters, writes “The monster,