He says:
In essence, where we arrive is at a simple question with a lot of baggage: what, exactly, is horror? Or, to put it in a way pertinent to this article, where do we draw the bounds between a horror story and an action-adventure story? While I'm known to abhor genre when it limits writing, such blurred boundaries can indeed pose a problem when authors are trying to promote their work; the public will want to know whether a book falls within their taste.The simple answer is that horror in a story deals with theme, mood, setting, character, etc. but the genre does not really describe how the story is told. It's the same in science fiction which can range from deep exploration and extrapolation of a known scientific principle to cowboy stories and Arthurian romances dressed up with space-ships and laser guns. Most science fiction stories are adventure stories but they don't need to be.
Interestingly, science fiction has spawned the steam-punk genre which often overlaps with the so-called "dark adventure" stories. This is easy to see in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Hellboy, as well as the fantasy novels of China Mieville.
