MONSTERS

   Monsters have always stalked the hinterlands of the imagination, emblems of fear and symbols of guilt. They commonly take their aspects and roles from the supernatural imagination (SUPERNATURAL CREATURES); but the scientific imagination has produced many monsters of its own. The recruitment to the HORROR story of monsters spawned by Nature was pioneered by H.G. WELLS's classic alien- INVASION story THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1897) and by William Hope HODGSON's sea stories. Sf monsters areoften familiar but repulsive creatures made monstrous by increasing their size (GREAT AND SMALL), and alien monsters are often created by chimerical redeployment of the repulsive features of earthly creatures. The fossil record has increased this vocabulary of ideas considerably.Other monsters arise as MUTANTS or as the accidental products of human scientific endeavour: the archetypal monster of this kind stars in Mary SHELLEY's GOTHIC-SF classic Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818;rev 1831). The actual scientific discipline of teratology (the study of monsters) has made little impact on sf, although its elaboration in the gruesome murder mystery The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (1934) by Alexander LAING brings that novel close to the sf borderline, and the same might besaid of Whitley STRIEBER's horror-detective novel The Wolfen (1978). Russell M. GRIFFIN's The Blind Men and the Elephant (1982) borrows heavilyfrom the well known "Elephant Man" case.Many of the standard figures of fear have made their way from MYTHOLOGY or elsewhere into sf via more-or-less ingenious processes of rationalization. The invisible monster proved easy to adapt (INVISIBILITY): one was featured in the first issue of AMZ in George Allan ENGLAND's "The Thing from-Outside" (1926). The Gorgon became C.L. MOORE's "Shambleau" (1933). Werewolves are rationalizedin DARKER THAN YOU THINK (1940; 1948) by Jack WILLIAMSON and "There Shall Be No Darkness" (1950) by James BLISH. "Who Goes There?" (1938) by John W.CAMPBELL Jr takes the idea of the menacing shapeshifter to its limit. Sf vampires are featured in numerous stories, including "Asylum" (1942) by A. E. VAN VOGT - whose The Voyage of the Space Beagle (fixup 1950) features awhole repertoire of monsters - I Am Legend (1954) by Richard MATHESON, The Space Vampires (1976) by Colin WILSON, The Vampire Tapestry (fixup 1980)by Suzy McKee CHARNAS and The Empire of Fear (1988) by Brian M. STABLEFORD. The entire retinue of mythological monsters is recreated byCOMPUTER in Nightworld (1979) and The Vampires of Nightworld (1981) by David F. BISCHOFF. Other kinds of quasivampiric PARASITISM are featured in Eric Frank RUSSELL's Sinister Barrier (1939; 1943; rev 1948), van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet" (1939) and Robert A. HEINLEIN's The Puppet Masters (1951; text restored 1989).Monsters have always been very popular in the movies, and until the 1960s sf CINEMA was dominated by MONSTER MOVIES of every possible kind. The first of many versions of FRANKENSTEIN was made in 1910, but the legend was created anew in 1931 when Boris Karloff took the role of the monster. Shortly afterwards a new legend was born in the story of KING KONG (1933), in which fear was modified by sympathy: the pragmatically necessary destruction of monster by mankind was thereafter able to take on a dimension of tragedy, and the monsters could be pitied in their monstrousness. Japanese monster movies, pioneered by GOJIRA (1954), have frequently converted charismatic monsters into heroes.Another significant cinematic innovation was the monster liberated from the scientist's id in FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956). Recent advances in special-effects technology have permitted a resurgence of scary MONSTER MOVIES, the most notable sf examples being ALIEN (1979) and its sequels,and various films dir David CRONENBERG, while TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) grafts a traditional monstrous propensity - shapeshifting-onto atechnological construct. GENRE SF, of course, made abundant melodramatic use of monsters. ILLUSTRATION played a considerable part in building sf's monster mythology - ALIEN horrors were a particularly rich source of lurid cover pictures, and the BUG-EYED MONSTER, or BEM (whose archetype appeared on the cover of ASF May 1931, illustrating Charles Willard Diffin's "Dark Moon"), quickly became a CLICHE