H G Wells Omnibus, page 463
Of the sixty-three stories and ten or so genre novels, seventy three works total, about a third of them have actual monsters, and many others contain humans who are not much less than horrible creatures such as madmen and anarchists. To further show Wells’ influence on monster making, you can look to Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen’s The Great Book of Movie Monsters (Contemporary Books Inc, 1983). This tome contains two hundred and thirty five monster films from the early silent monsters to the first Alien film. Of those two hundred and thirty five, seventy-five (a third!) are directly or indirectly influenced by Wells. (Compare this to Jules Verne’s paltry twelve. With the exception of the Giant Squid and dinosaurs inside the Earth what monsters did Verne give the world?)
Wells was not only a monster-maker, but also a creative one. Take any pulp era superstar like Robert Bloch or Seabury Quinn and look at their prodigious output: a continuous stream of vampires, werewolves and such. Bloch was a monster writer too (and a good one-he did give us Norman Bates) but creating new and startling creatures was not his forte. Wells had the knack. He could take ordinary animals such as the ant, spider, chicken or even a flower and make them sinister and exciting. He did this using a number of ways:
1. Wells changes the behavior of an ordinary thing. The army ant is well known as a jungle creature that clears away vast areas then moves on. In “Empire of the Ants” they don’t leave. They stay and guard their territory with poisonous weapons. The spiders in “The Valley of the Spiders” are more like ants, working together in a cooperative manner. In “The Sea-Raiders”, cephalopods rise from the sea to become killer squids. “In the Avu Observatory” a giant bat seems like a flying, killer shadow. “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” tells of a blood-sucking plant and is imitated by dozens of writers afterwards. Blind men seem grotesque and evil in “The Country of the Blind”. All these natural creatures deviate from their usual behavior and become dangerous monsters.
2. Wells changes the physical characteristics of an ordinary thing. In The Food of the Gods, an ordinary chicken becomes a menace when it is changed to the size of a house. There is nothing too frightening about a madman (serial killers aside) until he becomes invisible as in The Invisible Man. A lion or tiger might be a normal danger until Dr. Moreau turns them into men. In “The Plattner Story” a man is transported into a dimension outside our own, where he encounters strange creatures. The ordinary becomes monstrous as it mutates into something else, something evil.
3. Wells changes the landscape of our ordinary world. The War of the Worlds works so brilliantly because Wells takes a place familiar to his British readers, London, and changes it into a morbid, alien landscape, vaguely familiar but askew. In “The Time Machine” he shows our world transformed by time, first into the garden-world of the Eloi and later as the sun grows old into a beach for crab-like things. In “The Country of the Blind” he shows us an alternate reality in which sight is of no consequence. The world becomes grotesque when Wells tricks us into seeing the world in a new way.
“The Monster Genre” as I like to call it, has its supporters. To some, shows like Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits are life’s blood. While others have derisively called them “Monster of the Week” shows. My reply: “Of course, what else could you possibly want?” (I mean, really, don’t you prefer the salt-sucker episode of Star Trek to those stupid Tribbles?)
To some the Monster Genre is a lesser cousin to “pure horror”. This may be true-I would hate to guess. All I can say is a novel like Fear by L. Ron Hubbard (in which no monsters exist or appear) is of less interest to me than the worst sort of monster novel.
Forrest J. Ackerman of Famous Monsters of Filmland would no doubt agree with me (as might Carl Jung) that monsters solidify the excitement of the SF/F/H genres. The recent popularity of serial killer books and films after the mega-success of The Silence of the Lambs have bridged the monster genre to the Mystery/Police Procedural, in which the serial killer transcends the mere criminal to monster status. This shows how adaptable the Monster Genre is. The Weird Western and Supernatural Romance are just two new and popular sub-genres. Somehow the publishers never seem to realize that all they need to do is label their books “MONSTER”.
G. W. Thomas
AEPYORNIS ISLAND
The man with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my bundle.
“Orchids?” he asked.
“A few,” I said.
“Cypripediums,” he said.
“Chiefly,” said I.
“Anything new? I thought not. I did these islands twenty-five-twenty-seven years ago. If you find anything new here-well it’s brand new. I didn’t leave much.”
“I’m not a collector,” said I.
“I was young then,” he went on. “Lord! how I used to fly round.” He seemed to take my measure. “I was in the East Indies two years, and in Brazil seven. Then I went to Madagascar.”
“I know a few explorers by name,” I said, anticipating a yarn. “Whom did you collect for?”
“Dawsons. I wonder if you’ve heard the name of Butcher ever?”
“Butcher-Butcher?” The name seemed vaguely present in my memory; then I recalled Butcher v. Dawson. “Why!” said I, “you are the man who sued them for four years’ salary-got cast away on a desert island…”
“Your servant,” said the man with the scar, bowing. “Funny case, wasn’t it? Here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. It often used to amuse me thinking over it while I was there. I did calculations of it-big-all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring.”
“How did it happen?” said I. “I don’t rightly remember the case.”
“Well…. You’ve heard of the Aepyornis?”
“Rather. Andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a month or so ago. Just before I sailed. They’ve got a thigh bone, it seems, nearly a yard long. Monster the thing must have been!”
“I believe you,” said the man with the scar. “It was a monster. Sinbad’s roc was just a legend of ‘em. But when did they find these bones?”
“Three or four years ago-‘91, I fancy. Why?”
“Why? Because I found ‘em-Lord!-it’s nearly twenty years ago. If Dawsons hadn’t been silly about that salary they might have made a perfect ring in ‘em…. I couldn’t help the infernal boat going adrift.”
He paused, “I suppose it’s the same place. A kind of swamp about ninety miles north of Antananarivo. Do you happen to know? You have to go to it along the coast by boats. You don’t happen to remember, perhaps?”
“I don’t. I fancy Andrews said something about a swamp.”
“It must be the same. It’s on the east coast. And somehow there’s something in the water that keeps things from decaying. Like creosote it smells. It reminded me of Trinidad. Did they get any more eggs? Some of the eggs I found were a foot-and-a-half long. The swamp goes circling round, you know, and cuts off this bit. It’s mostly salt, too. Well…. What a time I had of it! I found the things quite by accident. We went for eggs, me and two native chaps, in one of those rum canoes all tied together, and found the bones at the same time. We had a tent and provisions for four days, and we pitched on one of the firmer places. To think of it brings that odd tarry smell back even now. It’s funny work. You go probing into the mud with iron rods, you know. Usually the egg gets smashed. I wonder how long it is since these Aepyornises really lived. The missionaries say the natives have legends about when they were alive, but I never heard any such stories myself. [*] But certainly those eggs we got were as fresh as if they had been new laid. Fresh! Carrying them down to the boat one of my nigger chaps dropped one on a rock and it smashed. How I lammed into the beggar! But sweet it was, as if it was new laid, not even smelly, and its mother dead these four hundred years, perhaps. Said a centipede had bit him. However, I’m getting off the straight with the story. It had taken us all day to dig into the slush and get these eggs out unbroken, and we were all covered with beastly black mud, and naturally I was cross. So far as I knew they were the only eggs that have ever been got out not even cracked. I went afterwards to see the ones they have at the Natural History Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours’ work just on account of a centipede. I hit him about rather.”
[*] No European is known to have seen a live Aepyornis, with the doubtful exception of MacAndrew, who visited Madagascar in 1745.-H.G.W.]
The man with the scar took out a clay pipe. I placed my pouch before him. He filled up absent-mindedly.
“How about the others? Did you get those home? I don’t remember—”
“That’s the queer part of the story. I had three others. Perfectly fresh eggs. Well, we put ‘em in the boat, and then I went up to the tent to make some coffee, leaving my two heathens down by the beach-the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him. It never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position I was in to pick a quarrel. But I suppose the centipede poison and the kicking I had given him had upset the one-he was always a cantankerous sort-and he persuaded the other.
“I remember I was sitting and smoking and boiling up the water over a spirit-lamp business I used to take on these expeditions. Incidentally I was admiring the swamp under the sunset. All black and blood-red it was, in streaks-a beautiful sight. And up beyond the land rose grey and hazy to the hills, and the sky behind them red, like a furnace mouth. And fifty yards behind the back of me was these blessed heathen-quite regardless of the tranquil air of things-plotting to cut off with the boat and leave me all alone with three days’ provisions and a canvas tent, and nothing to drink whatsoever, beyond a little keg of water. I heard a kind of yelp behind me, and there they were in this canoe affair-it wasn’t properly a boat-and, perhaps, twenty yards from land. I realised what was up in a moment. My gun was in the tent, and, besides, I had no bullets-only duck shot. They knew that. But I had a little revolver in my pocket, and I pulled that out as I ran down to the beach.
“‘Come back!’ says I, flourishing it.
“They jabbered something at me, and the man that broke the egg jeered. I aimed at the other-because he was unwounded and had the paddle, and I missed. They laughed. However, I wasn’t beat. I knew I had to keep cool, and I tried him again and made him jump with the whang of it. He didn’t laugh that time. The third time I got his head, and over he went, and the paddle with him. It was a precious lucky shot for a revolver. I reckon it was fifty yards. He went right under. I don’t know if he was shot, or simply stunned and drowned. Then I began to shout to the other chap to come back, but he huddled up in the canoe and refused to answer. So I fired out my revolver at him and never got near him.
“I felt a precious fool, I can tell you. There I was on this rotten, black beach, flat swamp all behind me, and the flat sea, cold after the sunset, and just this black canoe drifting steadily out to sea. I tell you I damned Dawsons and Jamrachs and Museums and all the rest of it just to rights. I bawled to this nigger to come back, until my voice went up into a scream.
“There was nothing for it but to swim after him and take my luck with the sharks. So I opened my clasp-knife and put it in my mouth, and took off my clothes and waded in. As soon as I was in the water I lost sight of the canoe, but I aimed, as I judged, to head it off. I hoped the man in it was too bad to navigate it, and that it would keep on drifting in the same direction. Presently it came up over the horizon again to the south-westward about. The afterglow of sunset was well over now and the dim of night creeping up. The stars were coming through the blue. I swum like a champion, though my legs and arms were soon aching.
“However, I came up to him by the time the stars were fairly out. As it got darker I began to see all manner of glowing things in the water-phosphorescence, you know. At times it made me giddy. I hardly knew which was stars and which was phosphorescence, and whether I was swimming on my head or my heels. The canoe was as black as sin, and the ripple under the bows like liquid fire. I was naturally chary of clambering up into it. I was anxious to see what he was up to first. He seemed to be lying cuddled up in a lump in the bows, and the stern was all out of water. The thing kept turning round slowly as it drifted-kind of waltzing, don’t you know. I went to the stern, and pulled it down, expecting him to wake up. Then I began to clamber in with my knife in my hand, and ready for a rush. But he never stirred. So there I sat in the stern of the little canoe, drifting away over the calm phosphorescent sea, and with all the host of the stars above me, waiting for something to happen.
“After a long time I called him by name, but he never answered. I was too tired to take any risks by going along to him. So we sat there. I fancy I dozed once or twice. When the dawn came I saw he was as dead as a doornail and all puffed up and purple. My three eggs and the bones were lying in the middle of the canoe, and the keg of water and some coffee and biscuits wrapped in a Cape Argus by his feet, and a tin of methylated spirit underneath him. There was no paddle, nor, in fact, anything except the spirit-tin that one could use as one, so I settled to drift until I was picked up. I held an inquest on him, brought in a verdict against some snake, scorpion, or centipede unknown, and sent him overboard.
“After that I had a drink of water and a few biscuits, and took a look round. I suppose a man low down as I was don’t see very far; leastways, Madagascar was clean out of sight, and any trace of land at all. I saw a sail going south-westward-looked like a schooner, but her hull never came up. Presently the sun got high in the sky and began to beat down upon me. Lord! It pretty near made my brains boil. I tried dipping my head in the sea, but after a while my eye fell on the Cape Argus, and I lay down flat in the canoe and spread this over me. Wonderful things these newspapers! I never read one through thoroughly before, but it’s odd what you get up to when you’re alone, as I was. I suppose I read that blessed old Cape Argus twenty times. The pitch in the canoe simply reeked with the heat and rose up into big blisters.
“I drifted ten days,” said the man with the scar. “It’s a little thing in the telling, isn’t it? Every day was like the last. Except in the morning and the evening I never kept a look-out even-the blaze was so infernal. I didn’t see a sail after the first three days, and those I saw took no notice of me. About the sixth night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me, with all its lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. There was music aboard. I stood up and shouted and screamed at it. The second day I broached one of the Aepyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and I was glad to find it was good enough to eat. A bit flavoury-not bad, I mean-but with something of the taste of a duck’s egg. There was a kind of circular patch, about six inches across, on one side of the yolk, and with streaks of blood and a white mark like a ladder in it that I thought queer, but I did not understand what this meant at the time, and I wasn’t inclined to be particular. The egg lasted me three days, with biscuits and a drink of water. I chewed coffee berries too-invigorating stuff. The second egg I opened about the eighth day, and it scared me.”
The man with the scar paused. “Yes,” he said, “developing.”
“I dare say you find it hard to believe. I did, with the thing before me. There the egg had been, sunk in that cold black mud, perhaps three hundred years. But there was no mistaking it. There was the-what is it?-embryo, with its big head and curved back, and its heart beating under its throat, and the yolk shrivelled up and great membranes spreading inside of the shell and all over the yolk. Here was I hatching out the eggs of the biggest of all extinct birds, in a little canoe in the midst of the Indian Ocean. If old Dawson had known that! It was worth four years’ salary. What do you think?
“However, I had to eat that precious thing up, every bit of it, before I sighted the reef, and some of the mouthfuls were beastly unpleasant. I left the third one alone. I held it up to the light, but the shell was too thick for me to get any notion of what might be happening inside; and though I fancied I heard blood pulsing, it might have been the rustle in my own ears, like what you listen to in a seashell.
“Then came the atoll. Came out of the sunrise, as it were, suddenly, close up to me. I drifted straight towards it until I was about half a mile from shore, not more, and then the current took a turn, and I had to paddle as hard as I could with my hands and bits of the Aepyornis shell to make the place. However, I got there. It was just a common atoll about four miles round, with a few trees growing and a spring in one place, and the lagoon full of parrot-fish. I took the egg ashore and put it in a good place well above the tide lines and in the sun, to give it all the chance I could, and pulled the canoe up safe, and loafed about prospecting. It’s rum how dull an atoll is. As soon as I had found a spring all the interest seemed to vanish. When I was a kid I thought nothing could be finer or more adventurous than the Robinson Crusoe business, but that place was as monotonous as a book of sermons. I went round finding eatable things and generally thinking; but I tell you I was bored to death before the first day was out. It shows my luck-the very day I landed the weather changed. A thunderstorm went by to the north and flicked its wing over the island, and in the night there came a drencher and a howling wind slap over us. It wouldn’t have taken much, you know, to upset that canoe.
“I was sleeping under the canoe, and the egg was luckily among the sand higher up the beach, and the first thing I remember was a sound like a hundred pebbles hitting the boat at once, and a rush of water over my body. I’d been dreaming of Antananarivo, and I sat up and holloaed to Intoshi to ask her what the devil was up, and clawed out at the chair where the matches used to be. Then I remembered where I was. There were phosphorescent waves rolling up as if they meant to eat me, and all the rest of the night as black as pitch. The air was simply yelling. The clouds seemed down on your head almost, and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were baling out the waters above the firmament. One great roller came writhing at me, like a fiery serpent, and I bolted. Then I thought of the canoe, and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again; but the thing had gone. I wondered about the egg then, and felt my way to it. It was all right and well out of reach of the maddest waves, so I sat down beside it and cuddled it for company. Lord! what a night that was!
