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Post by Johnlprobert on Nov 18, 2010 8:03:54 GMT
Claude Veillot - The First Days Of Spring. The French 'Eat Them Alive'? Don't get me wrong - this is well written but it is about a giant mantis invasion and the ending is surprisingly downbeat and bleak.
Robert Scheckley - Specialist. Not actually horror at all. A spaceship loses its 'Pusher', the part of it responsible for it travelling at faster than light speeds and it won't be able to get home unless the component parts (who all have names like 'Engines' and 'Walls') find another one. Guess what kind of creatures pushers are?
Arthur C. Clarke - No Morning After. Pissed up physicist gets a message from the 37th dimension saying that in four days the earth will be destroyed. He assumes he's pissed. Four days later he's not anything. A salutory lesson to the perpetually drunk.
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Shipwreck. A blob of blue jelly crashlands on earth and can assume any shape. This being an RCH story it naturally begins to take over a henpecked husband, his nagging wife and his frigate-sized mother in law. I laughed and laughed and I was not ashamed to do so.
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Post by dem on Nov 20, 2010 12:56:02 GMT
don't you think it's a very strange one for RCH to get involved in, Lord P? i know he knocked out the occasional SF story, but he's not really the first name that springs to mind to edit an SF antho. Maybe that's why it works in a weird way? A 'proper' SF guy most likely would not have included several of these, almost certainly not the Syd Bounds or RCH contributions.
anyhow, the big question. How did the End Of The Line Launch go?
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Post by Johnlprobert on Nov 23, 2010 11:45:41 GMT
don't you think it's a very strange one for RCH to get involved in, Lord P? i know he knocked out the occasional SF story, but he's not really the first name that springs to mind to edit an SF antho. Maybe that's why it works in a weird way? A 'proper' SF guy most likely would not have included several of these, almost certainly not the Syd Bounds or RCH contributions. anyhow, the big question. How did the End Of The Line Launch go? Well RCH's first book, The Man From the Bomb, was "SF", as was The Brats but I'd agree that both of those exist 'outside' what would be considered the SF mainstream. I think he was an interesting choice for editor, and we may not have had the Syd Bounds story (which is great and properly creepy) or RCH's own of course. The Veillot is grim & was translated by Damon Knight so presumably it would have surfaced elsewhere in time. It's also the only place I've seen the Armitage story, which I've always wanted to read. As for The End of the Line launch - in the words of Sherlock Holmes that is a tale for which the world is not yet ready...  |
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Post by dem on Nov 24, 2010 21:43:29 GMT
As for The End of the Line launch - in the words of Sherlock Holmes that is a tale for which the world is not yet ready... spoilsport! anyway, inspired by your comments, i cracked on with another pair from Tales Of Terror From Outer Space. Robert Presslie - The Night Of The Seventh Finger. Not so recommended. Chav girl (or 1970s equivalent) on her way home on a Saturday night gets abducted by alien who claims to be her great-great grandson. Apparently he's responsible for the end of the world and he begs her not to have kids so the crisis can be averted. Which means never having unprotected sex again. You can probably guess the ending of this one, involving as it does local band singer Simon and his less than romantic dormobile... Not sure that i agree with RCH's opinion that Sue Bradley, the object of the Extra Terrestrial's affections is "rather revolting", but i'll go along with your "not so recommended". Presslie at least gets in some well-aimed kicks at the lack of thinking behind the soulless New Towns then very much in vogue as the answer to the perennial housing problems, and, with nothing else to do, you can hardly blame Sue for craving excitement, even if it is at the paws and bullwhip of aspiring pop star Simon Legree of Simon Legree and his Slaves. The ET/ android/ synthetic man is a right old moaner though, ain't he? Claude Veillot - The First Days Of Spring. The French 'Eat Them Alive'? Don't get me wrong - this is well written but it is about a giant mantis invasion and the ending is surprisingly downbeat and bleak. ( Fantasy & SF, Dec 1961) is something else again, a terrific 'When Alien Praying Mantis lookalikes attack!' adventure which sees the narrator, one of the few humans yet to be killed or herded into concentration camps by the Shrills and their collaborators, attempting to trace his missing wife. Inevitably, his voluntary incarceration in a camp - where a nasty gladiatorial contest is in full swing - puts him in the direst danger. As the story progresses so it becomes increasingly horrific and you can only pray M. Veillot holds his nerve as the last thing we need is an implausible happy ending. We needn't have worried! This is maybe my favourite of the humanity conquered stories i've read since David Conyers's Subtle Invasion in the very first Black Book Of Horror! |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Nov 25, 2010 7:46:32 GMT
As for The End of the Line launch - in the words of Sherlock Holmes that is a tale for which the world is not yet ready... spoilsport! anyway, inspired by your comments, i cracked on with another pair from Tales Of Terror From Outer Space. Not sure that i agree with RCH's opinion that Sue Bradley, the object of the Extra Terrestrial's affections is "rather revolting", but i'll go along with your "not so recommended". Presslie at least gets in some well-aimed kicks at the lack of thinking behind the soulless New Towns then very much in vogue as the answer to the perennial housing problems, and, with nothing else to do, you can hardly blame Sue for craving excitement, even if it is at the paws and bullwhip of aspiring pop star Simon Legree of Simon Legree and his Slaves. The ET/ android/ synthetic man is a right old moaner though, ain't he? Claude Veillot - The First Days Of Spring. The French 'Eat Them Alive'? Don't get me wrong - this is well written but it is about a giant mantis invasion and the ending is surprisingly downbeat and bleak. ( Fantasy & SF, Dec 1961) is something else again, a terrific 'When Alien Praying Mantis lookalikes attack!' adventure which sees the narrator, one of the few humans yet to be killed or herded into concentration camps by the Shrills and their collaborators, attempting to trace his missing wife. Inevitably, his voluntary incarceration in a camp - where a nasty gladiatorial contest is in full swing - puts him in the direst danger. As the story progresses so it becomes increasingly horrific and you can only pray M. Veillot holds his nerve as the last thing we need is an implausible happy ending. We needn't have worried! This is maybe my favourite of the humanity conquered stories i've read since David Conyers's Subtle Invasion in the very first Black Book Of Horror! Glad you enjoyed the Veillot, Dem! I do think the Presslie is a bit too miserabilist and sorry for itself to work in a Fontana anthology - he should have waited 20 years |
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Post by dem on Nov 25, 2010 14:26:43 GMT
Ha! There's no stopping me now. Didn't get on with Ray Bradbury's opener as much as i'd have liked to - i far prefer his Mars Is Heaven! - but can appreciate it's a fine story, despairing as opposed to maudlin and mercifully bereft of his brand of cloying nostalgia. As to Athur C. Clarke's blackly comic No Morning After, i thought Bill Cross, binge-drinking rocket engineer, had some valid points (the entire "I'll tell you this, it [the sun exploding] would be the best thing that could possibly happen" sequence). Better than these, perhaps best of all after the Claude Velliot instant classic, is Ray Nelson's supremely paranoid Eight O'Clock In The Morning. This really is a masterpiece of brevity. That Nelson packs so much story into just the six pages is a remarkable achievement. I'm wondering if David Icke ever read it and, if so, was the impact on his psyche so profound as to provoke his "the Royal Family (and Kris Kristofferson) are twelve-foot alien lizard people" outburst? Ironically, Nelson's anti-hero George Nada is reminiscent of the reanimated William Lantry who wages a similar one-man war in Ray Bradbury's Pillar Of Fire, another story that wouldn't be out of place in this book.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 20, 2012 12:39:13 GMT
A few thoughts halfway through this one:
I agree that I, Mars isn't one of Bradbury's better stories, or even one of his better Martian stories. "Mars Is Heaven" (a.k.a. "The Third Expedition") or "Usher II" would have been a better choice.
Eight O'clock in the Morning is a good one. I didn't read John's comments beforehand, but it took me around a page to recognize it as the basis for They Live. I was disappointed, however, that nobody said, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum."
Bloch's Girl From Mars is typical 1950s Bloch--somewhat predictable but enjoyably sardonic. He seemed to have a thing for carnival-themed stories (see also "Double Whammy," "The Animal Fair").
Heresies of the Huge God isn't so terrifying, but it is funny. I particularly liked the list of calamities toward the end (including "deluges of icicles," "plagues of wolves and dragons," and "yearlong thunderstorms").
The Head-Hunters, on the other hand, isn't especially terrifying or funny. Alas, poor Snrrr.
The Animators may be my favorite so far--a relentless zombies-in-space tale.
The Night of the Seventh Finger didn't do much for me. I second what Dem said, however, about Sue not being all that "revolting" (Chetwynd-Hayes to the contrary). Vapid, yes, but not without some wit and compassion for the Eeyore from space.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 22, 2012 18:55:21 GMT
No More For Mary didn't leave much of an impression on me. A rich playboy captures a strange insect for his entomologist sister, but things are not all as they seem. I think I've heard this one before.
I found Invasion Of Privacy somewhat difficult to read--not because it was bad, but because it revolves around a parent's nightmare. That nightmare involves a sick child and a dead grandmother hanging about in a supposedly abandoned house with a number of other folks who are supposed to be dead.
A Ruum is an unstoppable specimen collector. While prospecting for uranium in the Canadian northlands, our protagonist stumbles across one. From there on, he's running for his life. This one reminded me a bit of Fredric Brown's "Arena."
Bleak is the word for The First Days Of Spring. Nothing else to say here.
I liked Specialist, a tale that vaguely recalls Theodore Sturgeon's notion of Homo Gestalt. Still, I have no idea why Chetwynd-Hayes classifies it as a "tale of terror."
Nothing else I'd read by Arthur C. Clarke suggested to me that he had a sense of humor (except maybe "The Nine Billion Names of God," but that's fairly existential humor), so I was surprised to see one on display in No Morning After. Not a great sense of humor, mind you, but evidently there.
I may have laughed while reading Shipwreck. Unlike John, however, I can't so say without at least a little shame.
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Post by dem on Feb 19, 2013 10:47:35 GMT
Sydney J. Bounds - The Animators. An absolutely cracking zombies-on-another-planet tale that probably the best SJB story I've ever read. Fast paced, scary and a pulpy standout. Highly recommended. The Animators may be my favorite so far--a relentless zombies-in-space tale.  photo; Nick WallClive Dawson - whose previous screen credits include The Bunker and an episode of Holby City - on his screenplay for the forthcoming Last Days Of Mars starring Liev Schreiber, Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas and Johnny Harris. For more details, read Clive's guest blog at Screenwriting Goldmine |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 10, 2013 19:54:57 GMT
I have now seen THE LAST DAYS ON MARS, and enjoyed it. It does seem to owe quite a lot to Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965). Whether Bounds's original story also does, I cannot say, as I have not read it.
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