Monster Mash, or How To Create A Monster

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Believe it or not, there is a science, as it were, of monsters. Known as teratology, the study sought to ascertain the origins and the significance of monsters. Originally regarded as ill omens, expressive of God’s displeasure, monsters were believed to warn of the imminence of divine judgment, or the wrath of God, and, of course, the punishment that would follow.

According to Marie-Helene Huet’s Monstrous Imagination, monsters have been considered to have originated as the result of divine creation, of demonic creation, of astronomical influences, of interspecies fornication, of imperfections in parental anatomies, and of the maternal imagination, especially as it focused upon images during the mother’s conception or pregnancy (1); “defective sperm or a deformed womb,” she adds, could also have been the causes of the births of such human deformities (6).

Later, monsters went from being regarded as warnings from God to being considered the results of birth defects, and some teratologists dedicated themselves to attempting to create monsters in laboratories--or in what passed, at the time, for laboratories. One such person, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (called Isidore of Seville, for short), claims to have created them by the thousands in an early effort to comprehend “monstrous embryology,” a study that he termed “teratogeny” (Huet, 108).

Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man, exemplifies the excrescence of body parts.

Isidore of Seville also devised a classification system, or taxonomy, of monsters that contemporary horror writers might find helpful in their creations of literary, if not actual, monsters. David Williams summarizes Isidore of Seville’s taxonomy in Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature, to which are added the examples in square brackets:

In Isidore’s structure, monstrosity is constituted in one of the following ways: (1) hypertrophy of the body [i. e. giants], (2) atrophy of the body [i. e., pygmies] (3) excrescence of body parts, (4) superfluity of body parts [Multicephalics (hydra), bicephalics (Janus), tricephalics (Cerberus), Argus] , (5) deprivation of body parts [Antipodes, Cyclops, Acephalic (i. e., Blemmye or Epifuge), Grylle, Baubo], (6) mixture of human and animal parts [Lamia, Mermaid, Satyr, Centaur, Minotaur, Cynocephail, Manticore], (7) animal births by human women, (8) mislocation of organs or parts in the body [Grylle, Baubo], (9) disturbed growth (being born old), (10) composite beings, (11) hermaphrodites, and (12) monstrous races [Sciapodes] (107).

The tricephalic Cerberus (courtesy of the poet-artist William Blake)

There was occasionally some overlap among the categories, but, in general, they manage to account for most, if not all, of the extant monsters of myth, legend, folklore, and modern literatures in which monsters still answer curtain calls, such as fantasy, science fiction, and, of course, the horror genre, such as pygmies, giants, Antipodes, shape-shifters, multicephalic animals and humans, blemmyes (also known as epifuges), plants which grow human heads instead of flowers; animals with human heads or humans with animal heads, the Cynocephali, and the Astomori, many of which Williams discusses in his book.

Shiva, an illustration of a superfluity of body parts

Other writers also compiled taxonomies of monsters, including, as Williams notes, Ambrose Paré and Claude Kappler (15).

In developing his taxonomy, Williams offers twelve ways by which writers may create monsters:

Rip Van Winkle, who suffered a condition analagous to disturbed growth culminating in premature aging

1. Hypertrophy: One or more organs (or the whole body) may be enlarged, to produce a giant of some kind. Example: Giants.
2. Atrophy: One or more organs (or the whole body) may be shrunk, to produce a pygmy of some kind. Example: Pygmies.
3. Excrescence: Abnormal outgrowths may appear upon the face, the body, or both, disfiguring a person and giving him or her a monstrous appearance. Example: the Elephant Man.
4. Superfluity of body parts: One or more superfluous body parts--arms, breasts, eyes, legs, nipples, teeth--may form on (or inside) the body, often in unusual locations. Example: Multicephalic (many-headed), tricephalic (three-headed), or bicephalic (two-headed) creatures, such as the hydra, Cerberus, and Janus, respectively.
5. Deprivation of parts: There may be an absence of one or more body parts that would normally appear on (or inside) the body. Example: One-eyed Cyclops.
6. Mislocation of organs: Body parts may be incorrectly located or redistributed. Example: Blymmes, epifuges, grylles (creatures who lack a head and whose facial features are dispersed throughout their torsos).
7. Mixture of human and animal parts: There may be a mix of human and animal body parts. Examples: Centaurs, mermaids, satyrs.
8. Animal births by women: In a means of creating monsters that implies bestiality, women may give birth to animals. Example: Mixture of human and animal parts: Body parts may be incorrectly located or redistributed. Example: Blymmes, epifuges, grylles (creatures who lack a head and whose facial features are dispersed throughout their torsos).
9. Disturbed growth: Normal growth may be “disturbed” in some way. Example: Premature aging, as with Rip Van Winkle (sort of).
10. Composite beings: A creature may result from a composite of various body parts, animal, human, plant, mineral, and otherwise. Example: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ents, griffins, Gorgons, Pegasus, and vegetable lambs.
11. Hermaphroditic births: Births of infants with both sets of genitals. Example: Hermaphrodite.
12. Monstrous races: The existence of “monstrous races” may be posited. Examples: Dog-headed Cynocephali or the Astomori, who lacking mouths, live upon the odors of apples.

(One must wonder whether Isidore of Seville’s taxonomy was descriptive or prescriptive--in other words, did he create it merely to describe monsters or as formulae by which to attempt their actual creation in his laboratory? In either case, his classification scheme is useful to contemporary writers of fantasy, horror, and science fiction who want, for purposes of their own, to create such fabulous creatures).

Although Williams, quite rightly, does not include the provision, in his summary of Isidore of Seville’s taxonomy of monsters, that the monster should exist, but “far away, not here” so that its existence cannot be easily confirmed, if at all, the monster maker is well advised to add this to his or her list of principles for creating monsters, because, although it does not relate specifically to the types of monsters that exist, as it were, it does offer sound advice concerning the location of the environment in which they might best be placed.

Monsters must also be metaphorical in nature; that is, they must represent not merely themselves but also a real-life, or existential, and, usually, a cultural, threat of some kind, as Godzilla represents the Japanese’s reaction to, and humanity’s fear of, the atomic bomb and, more specifically, the long-term effects of nuclear radiation upon its human victims. We have discussed this topic in previous posts, so we shall not belabor it here, mentioning it solely as a reminder.

However, as narrators are wont to say in Infomercials, Wait! There’s more!

In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen offers “seven theses” which, with some elucidation and modification, can, like Isidore of Seville’s taxonomy of monsters, assist writers in the creation of their own monsters:

Thesis I: The monster’s body is a cultural body.
Thesis II: The monster always escapes.
Thesis III: The monster is the harbinger of category crisis.
Thesis IV: The monster dwells at the gates of difference.
Thesis V: The monster polices the borders of the possible.
Thesis VI: Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.
Thesis VII: The monster stands at the threshold. . . of becoming.

Since Cohen’s theses require some explanation, we will save the task of elucidating (and modifying) them for a subsequent post.

Sources:

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Huet, Marie-Helene. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Williams, David. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.

Frustrating Formulaic Fiction

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Genre fiction is formulaic fiction. It must be. There’s an unwritten law somewhere that requires it to be. (Or maybe it’s a written law.) Formulaic fiction fails to entertain after a while, because most people get tired of reading yet another variation on the same tired and tattered narrative formula, especially when the formula is fairly straightforward and simple. Formulaic fiction fails because it is predicable. A reader pretty much knows what to expect from the beginning and pretty much every time before something happens. Formulaic fiction is unimaginative, unoriginal, predictable, and boring. It’s a cliché. Actually, it’s a series of clichés strung together like so many faux pearls. There are no surprises, shocks, chills, or thrills because everything that happens is seen coming way before it actually arrives. Familiarity breeds contempt, and formulaic fiction, whether it’s adventure, detective, horror, fantasy, romance, science fiction, Western, or otherwise, is all too familiar to its readers. In a word, formulaic fiction is frustrating, but there are ways to frustrate formulaic fiction. In this post, we will consider a few techniques for doing so. Mostly, though, these methods boil down to this: become a Boy Scout. In other words, as a writer, expect the unexpected--from yourself and your characters. Formulaic fiction is formulaic largely because it is routine and repetitive rather than exploratory. It follows the same path over the same ground, leading around and around in the same concentric circles. To frustrate formulaic fiction, a writer must become a stranger in a strange land. He or she must choose the little-worn over the well-worn path. Better yet, he or she should choose from one of several other possible paths. Just as some moviemakers now make movies with one official ending, as it were, and several “alternative endings,” a writer should have several pathways (and possibly a few byways) from any major (or even minor) incident of the plot. Stories are, by and large, linear, but the any point from “B” to “Z” can end up as point “B.” Only after it is chosen, does it become the chosen one. Until then, several other incidents should compete for the honor and distinction of being this second incident. The same is true of incidents “C,” “D,” and so on, all the way to “Z” (or however many incidents make up the chain of actions, events, and situations that form the story’s plot). Let’s try an example. A man finds a love letter, in his wife’s hand, addressed to another man. Oops! What might he do?

• Confront his wife about the affair.
• Confront his rival about the affair.
• Confront both is rival and his wife about the affair.
• Leave his wife, without divorcing her.
• Divorce his wife.
• Kill his rival.
• Kill his wife.
• Kill himself.
• Kill both his rival and his wife.
• Kill both his rival and himself.
• Kill both his wife and himself.
• Kill all three parties--his rival, his wife, and himself.
• Show the love letter to his (and his wife’s) children.
• Show the love letter to his wife’s parents.
• Show the love letter to his own parents.
• Pretend he never found the love letter.
• Write a “love letter” of his own to his rival, signing his wife’s name (or using a photocopy of her signature).
• Do two or more of these options.

Of course, there are many other possibilities, some much more imaginative than any that we’ve listed, and some may suggest still others. The point is that, by listing these alternatives, the writer will have expanded his or her options considerably. If he or she chooses the more imaginative, even if it is also the more unlikely, option, his or her story will be correspondingly less predictable and, therefore, that much less formulaic.

Guest Speaker: Robert Bloch

Poe & Lovecraft

Robert Bloch, author of Psycho

Comparisons between Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft are, I suppose, inevitable; seemingly, in recent years they are also interminable.

I shall not, therefore, repeat the usual recital of similarities to be found within their work--there will be no mention of black cats, revenants, or Antarctic settings per se.

But at the same time I have no intention of making a calculated bid for attention by deliberately asserting, as some have also declared, that no real resemblance exists aside from superficial employment of stock characters and themes common to virtually all stories in the genre.

To me, this is an untenable statement: Lovecraft, like every writer of fantasy and horror fiction subsequent to Poe, was necessarily influenced by the work of his predecessor--and to certain extent his work needs must be derivative in some slight sense. Actually, Lovecraft's homage to Poe in his essay "Supernatural Horror In Literature," indicates a degree of appreciation and admiration which leaves no doubt as to the profound impression made upon him by the earlier master.

But to me the most fruitful area of comparison lies within an examination of the backgrounds and personalities of the writers themselves.

Consider the facts. Both Poe and Lovecraft were New England born. Both were, to all intents and purposes, fatherless at an early age. Both developed a lifelong affinity for poetry and the elements of a classical education. Both utilized archaisms in their writing styles and affected personal eccentricities which in time became consciously cultivated.

Although Poe spent a part of his youth in England and traveled along the Atlantic seaboard in later life--and while Lovecraft ventured up into Canada and down into Florida on vacations a few years prior to his death--neither man ever ventured west of the Alleghenies. Lovecraft, on one occasion, did skirt them to visit E. Hoffman Price briefly in his New Orleans home, but essentially he and Poe were Easterners. Their outlook was, to a marked degree, provincial; even parochial.

Both men distrusted "foreigners" in the mass: both retained a profound admiration for the English. These attitudes are plainly evident in their work, which is many particulars removed and remote form the main current of American life.

A reader attempting to capture some glimpse of the United States in the 1830-1850 period would gain small enlightenment from the poetry and fiction of Poe.

At a time when the entire nation was engaged in a westward thrust, beginning with the peregrinations of the mountain men and ending with the Gold Rush in the year of Poe's death, one searches in vain for a wet which does not seemingly even exist in his literary compass.

Byronic heroes sequestered in British and continental locales scarcely reflect the American attitudes or aptitudes in the era of Old Hickory, Davy Crockett, the fall of the Alamo, the Mexican War and the growing turmoil over slavery.

Nor would a reader find more typically American protagonists amongst the pendants, professors and regionally-oriented recluses of Lovecraft's tales, in which there's scarcely a hint of the manners and mores of the Roaring Twenties or the Great Depression which followed in the ensuing decade. Aside from a few remarks regarding the influx of immigrants and concomitant destruction of old folkways and landmarks, plus brief mentions of the (intellectually) "wild" college set, Lovecraft ignores the post WW1 Jazz Age in its entirety: Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Al Capone, Valentino, Mencken and the prototypes of Babbit have no existence in HPL's realm. It is difficult to believe that Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a literary contemporary of Ernest Hemingway.

And yet a further comparison between Lovecraft and Poe remains; one of profound importance in any consideration of their work, because it softens any charge that two writers were totally unaware of the actual world and unrealistic in their treatment of their times.

I refer, of course, to their mutual interest in science. Both Poe and Lovecraft were acute observers of the scientific and pseudo-scientific developments of their respective days, and both men utilized thee latest theories and discoveries in their writing. It is only necessary to cite Poe's use of mesmerism, his employment of the balloon hoax, his detailing of data in the Arthur Gordon Pym novella, to prove the point.

Lovecraft, for his part, relies on scientific background material in his Pym-like At the Mountains of Madness, "The Shadow Out of Time" and other efforts; notable is his immediate adoption of the newly discovered "ninth planet" in "The Whisperer in Darkness."

Lovecraft's interest in astronomy undoubtedly led to his increasing interest in other fields of scientific endeavor, just as Poe's early experiences at West Point must have fostered his preoccupation with codes an ciphers. And both men, as professional writers, were well and widely-read in the contemporary work of their day: Poe as a working critic, demonstrates his knowledge in his nonfictional efforts and Lovecraft, in his correspondence, proves himself no stranger to Proust, Joyce, Spengler and Freud.

But the point is that Poe and Lovecraft deliberately chose to turn their backs on contemporary styles and subject-matter and created their own individual worlds of fantasy. In this above all else they were similar.

And in this, above all else, we readers of Poe and Lovecraft are fortunate indeed.

We shall never know, and never care, what Edgar Allan Poe thought of Andy Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" or how H. P. Lovecraft regarded the Teapot Dome scandal. Small loss, when both have given us glimpses of worlds peculiarly and provocatively their very own.

For the final similarity is this--Poe and Lovecraft are our two American geniuses of fantasy, comparable each to the other, but incomparably superior to all the rest who follow in their wake.

This article was first published in Ambrosia #2 (August, 1973), © 1973 Alan Gullette and Robert Bloch. It was subsequently revised slightly by the author and reprinted in H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1980), pp. 158-160, © 1980 Ohio University Press.

Julie Bell: "Hard Curves, Soft as Steel"

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the existentialists among us, by themselves, neither objects nor people mean anything. We invest them, as we do the world itself, with whatever meaning we assign to them, even if this meaning changes from time to time and from place to place. Nature is our mask and costume, the many disguises we wear. We are protean, and our spirits possess all persons, places, and things. Although she's primarily a fantasy artist, former bodybuilder and present wife of fellow artist Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell sometimes includes the grotesque, the monstrous, and the horrific in her work, showing her fans these possibilities within existence, human and otherwise.

Pertaining to the nature and role of women in such a context, what lessons may we glean from Bell’s art?

First, the women in her art are invariably glamorous and beautiful. They are often scantily clad or nude, a state of dress (or undress) which emphasizes their feminine attributes.

Second, Bell’s idea of womanhood is not maternal; she is not interested in depicting woman as Madonna. Woman, according to Bell, is not a worker, nor is she a servant. She is not here to cook, to clean, or to serve in a subservient position to men.

She is sometimes a warrior, incongruously attired in a bikini and armed with a sword (her true weapon, and her real armor, are her womanly charms); more often, she is a force of nature who is seen in the company of predatory beasts or birds of prey, such as snakes, hawks, or tigers, and she is unperturbed, even in the presence of monsters. At times, she is seen as having domesticated dragons or other grotesque beasts.

Third, Bell's woman embraces the otherness of the male and of male sexuality. In Bell’s art, the snake, a phallic symbol, has a terrible aspect to it (or its head, as the repository of its reptilian intelligence, does, at least). Nevertheless, the serpent is also often depicted as being not only without the armor of its scales, with an utterly smooth hide, but it is also depicted as golden (and, therefore, valuable, since gold suggests value). In its presence, Bell’s woman is not frightened, but is positively at ease with this symbol of masculine potency.

Bell’s femme fatales are at ease with nature, too. They’re able to bait their own hooks and to fish alone for their supper. They can be deadly. They can even be muscular, or buff, but they remain feminine and lovely, despite their hard bodies and their willingness to injure, destroy, or kill. They are, in a word, androgynous--physically, they are feminine, but spiritually, they are masculine--a man’s spirit (but with greater emotional sensitivity than is common among males) living, as it were, in women’s flesh. The titles of a pair of books concerning Bell’s art, Hard Curves and Soft as Steel, sum up the image that the artist’s work projects of womanhood. In the art of Vallejo and Frank Frazetta, men are often heroic figures whose daring deeds and fantastic feats include, more often than not, the rescue of a damsel in distress. In Bell’s work, such a woman rarely, if ever, exists. Women are well able to take care of themselves, thank you very much.


Sometimes, Bell’s woman is even merged with nature, as when she is portrayed as a bare-breasted female centaur or as a mermaid. In most of her work, men are absent altogether, but when a man is shown, Bell’s woman is his equal.

In fantasy art, Bell’s women anticipate the feminine heroes such as Alien’s Lieutenant Ripley, Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the slasher film’s last girl (the sole survivor who manages to defeat the monster after it has killed everyone else, males included).


Her message--and the message of Ripley, Xena, Buffy, and the last girl--seems clear. The new feminine icon is still curvy, sexy, glamorous, and lovely, but her spirit is more masculine than feminine (as gender is understood in traditional, or sexist, terms). Having forged her own independence as an individual, woman, Bell’s art insists, is entitled to become all things that males have always been: adventurers, explorers, hunters, fishers, rescuers, scouts, warriors, and, in short, heroes--or, rather, heroines. They have developed a protean nature, if not a protean form. After all, despite all the traditionally male attributes of spirit, heart, and mind, Bell’s woman remains quintessentially feminine. Contemporary horror, like contemporary fantasy art, suggests that there is a little more “man” in today’s woman, but this increased masculinity does not equate with a decrease in femininity, as it is represented physically. There is the outer woman and the inner woman, and the two need not be the same.

A Note on Bell's husband and fellow artist, Boris Vallejo:

Peruvian artist Boris Vallejo, who often signs his work simply “Boris,” draws and paints art that is similar in theme and execution to that of his wife and model, Julie Bell, and to the work of their fellow fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta. Much of Vallejo's work, in other words, is of a fantastic or an erotic nature (sometimes both), although, at times, it touches upon the supernatural and the horrific as well.

After emigrating to the United States in 1964, Vallejo became well known for his illustrations of Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan, and Doc Savage, successes which led to further commercial art assignments, critical acclaim, and a wide following of fans. His work includes many movie posters, advertising such motion pictures as Barbarella (1968), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and many others.

Frazetta: Work That Is Beautiful Even When Horrific

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Artists are imaginative people. Most of us are, but few of us, unless we are artists ourselves, are as imaginative as those who make their livings by exercising--and, in the case of those artists who illustrate horror fiction, perhaps exorcising--their imaginations on a regular, if not routine, basis. In previous posts, we have considered the art of Rene Magritte (a superb surrealist), H. R. Giger (whose biomechanical art was accomplished with airbrushes), and the pen-and-ink illustrations of such Weird Tales artists as Margaret Brundage and Virgil Finlay. In this post, we turn our gaze upon Frank Frazetta, a pioneer in, and master of, contemporary fantasy, science fiction, and (occasionally) horror art. The purpose of cover art, we argue, is to sell the magazines upon which it appears. For the male adolescents who made up most of the readership of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines devoted to horror, scantily clad or nude women, often in perilous situations, accounted for a lot of the images that appeared on the covers. Occasionally--especially when technique outweighed theme--such masters as Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, and Julie Bell departed from imperiled, half-naked maidens to depict other themes. Sometimes, a sexual--or a sexualized--undercurrent remained--but the direct appeal of this type of art was the physical and martial prowess of the hero, depicted as a sinewy, usually lone, adventurer who represented a law unto himself and just happened--most of the time, at least--to fight on the side of right. In other words, he was fantasy and horror’s answer to the knight in not-so-shining armor (who later was transfigured into the Western’s laconic sheriff or gunfighter). If the nude or semi-nude damsel in distress represented the type of woman whom the adolescent male (or those adolescent males who read Weird Tales and its ilk, at any rate) wanted to meet, if not necessarily take home to mom, the barbarian as lone-wolf avenger and righter of wrongs represented this reader’s alter ego, the man whom he would like to be or, perhaps, to become. In Frazetta’s artwork, the two archetypical characters--imperiled damsel and anti-heroic rescuer--often were depicted together. In fact, there were often several nude or half-naked damsels in distress, all at the same time, for the hero (or anti-hero) (frequently, a barbarian) to rescue. When Frazetta’s paintings weren’t suggesting to boys that real men rescue women (who, it seems, had a penchant for imperiling themselves), they created a mood that is consistent with mystery, if not always horror. A case in point is his painting, The Moon’s Rapture, the title of which is obviously a pun upon the use of “moon” as a slang term for the buttocks. In the painting, there are two moons--one lunar, the other anatomical. It goes without saying which of the two is the source of the adolescent male’s “rapture.” 

The painting is interesting for more than its subject matter, however, as it demonstrates several features common to Frazetta’s artwork in general. A full moon, not featureless--shaded patches in green, purple, orange, and gray suggest craters--appears in a blue-gray sky, its upper hemisphere veiled, as it were, by the mossy branches of a great tree. The back of the female figure’s head overlaps the bottom arc of the moon, and her right arm is raised as she clutches one of the tree’s branches to support herself as she stares, presumably enraptured, at the moon. Nude, she stands upon one of the thick, serpentine boughs of the tree, one of her ankles crossed over the other, her left arm at her side. Except for the moss-covered, mostly brown and gray limbs in the painting’s lower foreground, the muted blue-gray sky, and the dappled colors that signify the moon’s craters, the only other color in the painting is that of the female’s figure, which, since she is naked, is more extensive than it would be were she clothed. The effect of the darkness across the top of the painting, down its right edge, at its left edge, and at its bottom is to frame the female figure, drawing the viewer’s attention to her body and, since her buttocks are projected back, toward the viewer, as it were, as a result of her stance, focusing the viewer’s concentration upon her derriere. The title’s play on words, The Moon’s Rapture, is hard to miss. As the female figure is enraptured by the moon upon which she gazes, the viewer--likely to me male, since Frazetta illustrated the covers of magazines purchased largely by adolescent males--is enraptured by her own “moon.” This painting associates women and femininity with nature in general and with the moon in particular, as do many myths, legends, and literary traditions. Archetypes serve the painter’s purpose, giving the images a depth that they might not have otherwise, showing women to be forces as enchanting to men as the beauty and mystery of the natural order is, or can be, to women. The Barbarian is typical of Frazetta’s depiction of the lone wolf who fends for himself, seeking vengeance or, more rarely, justice for others (usually an imperiled woman). Lean and mean, the barbarian stands, muscles bulging, his left hand resting upon the hilt of his unsheathed sword, which has penetrated the hill underfoot. His garb is slight, but exhibits his machismo. Pirate fashion, he wears earrings and sports a necklace that appears to have been fashioned of animal fangs or claws. His chest and abdominal muscles are as individually distinct as if they were sculpted from flesh instead of marble, and the wide, leather wristband and matching belt are both decorated with metal studs. An ornate scabbard hangs, empty, at his waist, from which dangles the lengths of a chain. On his right forearm, he wears a simple bracelet. He also wears boots with large cuffs. At first, because of the fiery yellow background against which he, an imposing, dark-haired, sun-darkened figure, stands, and the darkness of the mound upon which he is, as it were, rooted by his sword, it is not apparent that the hill is built not of soil alone but also of the body parts--an arm and a skull are visible--and a battleaxe--of enemies he has vanquished. The fiery yellow sky behind him has an almost subliminal quality as well. After discerning the body parts in the hill, skulls, a castle upon a mountainside, vague suggestions of tree branches, and a bird--an eagle or maybe even a phoenix--emerge, as it were, from the wavering flames, representing, perhaps, the memories of the barbarian and the souls of the dead or both.

At the barbarian’s feet, her flesh of a hue similar to that of the fiery yellow sky, and looking as if she herself is emerging from the hill, a woman, nude but for the armbands that adorn her left biceps, rests her head against the barbarian’s left calf. Has she been rescued from the hands of the dead who lie beneath the victor’s feet? It seems that she is the only spoil of battle that he has seen fit to spare and, therefore, the only one that he regards as having any value. What is important in the barbarian’s world, Frazetta’s portrait of this pagan warrior suggests, is his physical and martial prowess, his memories of vanquished foes (or, it may be, his possession of their spirits), and women (albeit as little more than sex objects that may be acquired as possessions, or as part of the victors’ spoils of battle). Part of the appeal of Frazetta’s work is that it is often based upon these archetypal, if sexist, images of the masculine and the feminine, suggesting that men are loners who wage war with one another, with beasts, and with the occasional monster, exhibiting their strength, stamina, and fighting skills, and, to the notion that, to the victor, go the spoils, including ubiquitous half-naked damsels in distress. In other words, his depictions of men and women fit the idealized, if adolescent, ideas of the sexes that are typical of the readers of the types of magazines upon the covers of which Frazetta’s work was apt to appear. The rest of the appeal of the artist’s illustrations and paintings lies in the superb talent and the accomplished technique with which Frazetta draws and paints. Even when he depicts horror, the result is, in its own peculiar way, a thing of beauty.

Everyday Horrors: Anglerfish

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

What lies beneath? Three-fifths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, and the oceans are deep. Strange, shadowy shapes weave and waver beneath the waves, suggesting fabulous creatures beyond human ken. As well as warnings of boiling seas, the maps of ancient and medieval mariners were crowded with images of mythical sea monsters that sailors swore they’d seen. These strange, misshapen creatures, sometimes of colossal size, greater even than that of the sailing ships from which, allegedly, they were seen, are revealing, if not of nature per se, of human nature, at least, and of the nature of fantasy.

Usually, scientists believe, such creatures have some real-world inspiration, but they are products of fear more than of observation, a part of something mysterious giving rise to something even more baffling and horrible. Exaggeration is often at work, too, in the creation of the serpents of the sea. Attributes are multiplied, enlarged, combined, or, in a few cases, denied. Jules Verne combined a parrot’s beak with an octopus to create the giant squid of which he writes in 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, and the delta of a river may have given birth to the many-headed Grecian hydra that Hercules and Iolaus slew. Columbus, as we saw in a previous post, may have mistaken manatees for mermaids.

As an American Museum of Natural History piece points out, monsters are also born of misinterpretations, with seaweed being taken for sea serpents and a “deformed blacksnake” having been thought to be a newborn specimen. Moreover, stories told one place are retold in another region, and, often in the retelling, the monsters at their hearts are reformulated and recast, becoming different, at least, if not more hideous and menacing. Before long, there is such a disparity between the original monster and its offspring that any family resemblance is lost, and the two relatives are mistaken for entirely distinct creatures. Sometimes, such monsters are even “manufactured,” purposely, as hoaxes, as the article observes, citing none other than P. T. Barnum as a perpetuator of such a fraud. The showman’s version consisted of a monkey’s head, a fish’s tail, and, perhaps, fish bones and papier-mâché.

However, the world’s oceans, especially at their lowest depths, offers many a strange creature that, with a little modification, might well suggest possibilities for horror story monsters. We’re going to mention only one in this post--the anglerfish, which is known for its method of obtaining prey and its way of reproducing others of its kind.

A moveable fishing rod of sorts grows from their foreheads. It is baited, so to speak, at its tip with an blob of flesh that attracts would-be carnivores of the deep. The anglerfish can wiggle its fleshly fishing rod, called an illicium, in all directions to lure prey close enough to its jaws for the anglerfish to swallow them in a single gulp. The jaws spring into action automatically, by reflex, when the prey brushes its illicium. Some anglerfish are luminescent. Both jaws and stomach can expand so that the anglerfish can swallow prey twice its own size.

Some anglerfish have modified pectoral fins that allow them to “walk” upon the ocean floor, where it conceals itself in the sand or among seaweed. It can change the color of its body to camouflage itself.

Their method of mating is as peculiar as any of the anglerfish’s other characteristic behaviors. When the male reaches maturity, its digestive system degenerates to the point that it is no longer able to feed itself, and it attaches itself to the much larger female’s head, biting into her flesh. The male’s body then releases an enzyme that digests its mouth and the flesh of the female at the site at which the male has attached itself to her, fusing the two sexes so that the female and what is left of the male--eventually nothing but its gonads, or sex organs--share the same blood supply.

There are as many as eighteen families of anglerfish, including humpbacks, monkfish, frogfish, seadevils, footballfish, sea toads, and batfish. Those who have sampled them compare their taste to that of lobster tails.


“Everyday Horrors: Anglerfish” is the part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Imagining the Monster, Part III

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

In earlier posts, we considered how to create imaginary monsters of the animal variety, but we didn’t touch upon plants. Some stories, such as H. G. Wells' "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," deal with bizarre plants. However, even stories that are more about insect or animal monsters are creepier if their descriptive passages include verbal depictions of eerie plants.

Again, science comes to the aid of horror, fantasy, and science fiction writers. In cooperation with scientists, artists have created paintings and illustrations that scientists believe portray ancient and prehistoric plants as they appeared long before the developments of camera and film. Writers can refer to them, describing in words what painters and illustrators have, with a little--okay, a lot--of help from botanists and other scientists, presented in images. Even with plants that are more beautiful than bizarre, the results can be truly uncanny, adding an atmosphere of uneasiness and fear, perhaps even horror, to a narrative’s setting and tone. Here are a couple of pictures, the one on the left of the Cooksonia, the one on the right of the Archaeamphora longicervia, which also happens to be the earliest carnivorous plant.

Nature has also come to the aid of the aspiring and established horror writer. Glacial ice is rapidly melting. In the process, according to “Ancient plants exposed,” these mountains of ice have revealed living plants that are believed to be as many as 6,500 years old--“mosses and grasses from a former wetland.” Moreover, as “Jurassic Park Plants” points out, “Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona contains hundreds of acres of perfectly preserved logs from ancient araucariad forests that grew in nearby highlands during the late Triassic Period (over 200 million years ago).” The forest “coexisted with dinosaurs,” the article observes, and, as one might expect, its plants look bizarre to the modern eye. Detailed descriptions of these ancient and prehistoric plants would lend an air of strangeness and disquiet to a story--perfect for the habitat of a monster.

In fact, as Joshua Siskin points out, it’s possible to grow 4,900-year-old plants at home, in one’s own garden: “if you want to connect with these ancient species, you can plant them in any well-drained garden spot or in containers filled with sandy topsoil. They could become your family's heirloom plants, to be passed down from generation to generation.” These plants would give a writer a living, breathing (after a fashion) link to a mysterious past inhabited by organisms that look very different than most of the ones around today. Such a link should be at least as inspiring as a muse.

If one wants nothing more to do than to describe these plants, he or she can leaf through (yes, pun intended) pictures on an Internet web browser, selecting those which appear the most fantastic and strange. Then, all that needs to be done is to describe what is seen.

Of course, as in the case of animal monsters, writers are not bound by what nature has produced, what artists have imagined, or what scientists say is likely or even possible. The imagination can create whatever type of monstrous plants (or animals) it likes. As long as, in the process, a writer doesn’t make a reader’s effort to effect what Samuel Taylor Coleridge termed a “willing suspension of disbelief” impossible, the result could be especially frightening.

In describing plants, we may also want to envision the monstrous plants from the point of view of their victims. In doing so, we might imaginatively enter the anthropomorphized brains of such creatures as houseflies. What, for example, might a fly think of the Venus Fly-Trap? Most likely, its thoughts and feelings would be very different from ours. Instead of finding such a plant “interesting” or “curious,” the fly might see it as something as horrifying and terrifying as an iron maiden or some other human torture device. If a writer can transfer the fly’s sensibility to his or her human protagonist when the main character comes face to flower, leaf, or stem, the effect could be horrible, indeed.

Sources cited:

“Ancient plants exposed”
Joshua Siskin, “In the Garden, Grow Strange Plants At Home”
“Jurassic Park Plants”