|
Post by dem bones on Dec 23, 2007 19:40:45 GMT
As we may have mentioned once or twice, the new Paperback Fanatic is a 'When Animals Attack!' special. Justin concentrates on the novels of course, but it's not as if there aren't plenty of examples of the genre in short stories either. Here's some top picks for arachnophobics.
Fritz Leiber - Spider Mansion: The head, its golden hair disarranged, lolled backward. The arms stretched taut to either side. Then I began to see the thin opalescently grayish strands that twined around her wrists and arms, and wrapped around her skirt, drawing it tight against her legs. The strands seemed to radiate off in all directions. My flashlight roved out across the glimmering network. Horror and revulsion rooted me to the spot where I stood. The thing was a gigantic spiderweb.
Tom and Helen Egan drop in on the old Orne House to escape a storm. The last time Tom met Malcolm Orne he was a midget, but now the guy's seven foot tall and married to the beautiful, if strangely terrified Cynthia. Orne is a maniac and a sadist who has avenged himself on all who he considers to have disparaged him when he was Johnny no-legs, including his brother and the surgeon responsible for his startling transformation. He keeps everyone in check with the help of his pet, a murderous giant spider.
Paul S. Power - Monsters Of The Pit: Port Said. Scott falls in love with Irene, the sheltered daughter of Prof. Denham, mad scientist and misanthrope. Denham has bred ghastly, squirming diseased bacteria to unleash on the world, and he's also been experimenting with insects. He throws Scott into the pit where, caught in a huge web, he awaits the approach of giant spiders (their last meal was an ox). He escapes minus an arm, which Irene is obliged to hack off with an axe when one of the arachnids sinks its fangs in. It takes her three attempts.
David Fletcher - Corabella: Michael’s happiness with Janice is tempered by the fact that the two children by her previous marriage, Paul and Melinda, despise his guts. He does all in his power to be friendly, patient and sympathetic, but they’re not buying into him at all. Things come to a head when Melinda shows him her new pet - Corabella, the fat, juicy spider. How could she know he’s arachnophobic?
Some weeks after the flare up, the kids approach him in conciliatory mood. Will he take them to the funfair? Michael is only too pleased, and all is going so well that Melinda wants to give him a present. And she does. Once they’re right up top of the Big Wheel.
Philip K. Dick - Expendable: Unnamed man is declared war upon by the ants because he knows too much about their plans for world domination. The spiders assure him that they and the birds will save the human race - but there's not much they can do for him ...
Basil Tozer - The Pioneers Of Pike's Peak: Told in a Colorado saloon. "Mad Harry" relates how the first expedition to the summit of Pikes Peak ended in disaster when one of the party squashed a spider. Billions of its mates turned up and surrounded the mountaineers, eating their eyes and crawling down their throats and things. Even now Harry throws a mental whenever he talks about it and has to be restrained from harming himself.
Erckmann-Chatrian - The Crab Spider: The hot springs at Spinbronn are popular with gout sufferers until one day they flood and a heap of animal skeletons are washed out of a nearby cave, and with them that of a little girl who died five years earlier. What is responsible? All is revealed when Sir Thomas Haverchurch decides to have a swift skinny dip ...
Edmund Snell - The Black Spider: Mirabalu, Borneo. A half-drowned Japanese is rescued by The Batilcoa and Dr. Langley saves his life. In his delirium, Kamaga raves about his pet which has to be fed as it must grow and grow. The ‘pet’ turns out to be a massive spider. Kamaga takes a shine to Langley’s charge, Bianca Seldon, and sets up his laboratory close to her brother, Barry’s estate. When the brother boots him off his property for stalking the girl, Kamaga unleashes his pet plus other huge monstrosities from his terrifying menagerie which, of course, have all been treated with a serum. Terrific ending.
Robert S. Carr - Spider-Bite: In the tomb of Ner-Taul lies Za the scribe, guardian of the treasure of Ahma-Ka. Prof. Ashbrooke and young assistant Phil find the mummified Za in a vault beneath a vault and discover a means to revive him using the juice of the Mona bush and the venom of the huge white tomb-spiders which were incarcerated with him. The natives don't like these albino arachnids at all, and Ashbrooke and Phil are none too keen by the end of the story.
D’Arcy Niland - The Web: Gramps moves in with his daughter’s family. They accept the blind old man from the first, but he has to work on the boy, Joe, who’s remote, wary …. until he learns of the old man’s aversion to spiders and cash signs flow before his eyes. Will he live long enough to win a Young Businessman of the Year award?
Elizabeth Walter - The Spider: Bad enough that luvvy journalist Justus Ancorwen (he writes for a ’sixties equivalent of Hello) was reckless enough to start a relationship with virginal Isabel Bishop, but it’s even worse that she occupies the rooms below him so, when he leaves her, there’s little chance of avoiding her for long. Tonight though, he’s almost relieved that she lives in such close proximity as a spider “as big as a coal scuttle” is out for vengeance after he flushed one of its brethren down the sink. He can’t abide spiders at the best of times, but this thing! Isabel mockingly wonders if it comes from Mars and generally uses the opportunity to humiliate him for his caddish behaviour. But when they return to his room the following morning and she locks him in with his “imaginary” eight-legged friend …
|
|
|
Post by redbrain on Dec 23, 2007 20:16:19 GMT
It's interesting that two of the spider covers are for the second Fontana book of great horrors. Was that the one with Gay as Cheese? Gay as a cheese spider??
|
|
|
Post by redbrain on Dec 23, 2007 20:21:23 GMT
Checking - it is the Gay as Cheese one. But the covers are more likely to refer to The Spider by Elizabeth Walter. Oh well. I rather like spiders. Don't see many of them about my house, unfortunately, as I have a cat - and cats eat spiders.
|
|
|
Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jan 9, 2008 14:30:29 GMT
I would have to add M.R. James (well, I would, wouldn't I?) and his horrible spiders in "The Tractate Middoth" and I can still remember the sickening jolt when I realised just exactly what it was that was nestling in "The Ash Tree".
|
|
|
Post by carolinec on Jan 9, 2008 15:49:44 GMT
I can cope with spiders, but if I pick up a book and it has a snake on the cover - I immediately drop it! I'm petrified of the things. You don't have a thread here with snake covers, do you? If so, I'll avoid it.
I have to agree with the Lurker about James' "The Ash Tree" - wonderful stuff!
I'm afraid I don't have the technology to put pics up here, but there's a great spider-themed cover on Ramsey Campbell's collection of articles, etc "Probably", showing a hairy spider with Ramsey's face in the middle.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 16:03:05 GMT
We certainly dug up some rattlers on our old board and I'm sure you'd love the current issue of Paperback Fanatic, a 'When Animals (Reptiles/ Rodents/ Insects/ Fish, etc.) Attack' special which includes some rather fetching slimy sssss-snake covers. Is Ramsey's Probably (ever likely to be) available in paperback? I read the essays he contributed to the Shock Xpress Yearbook and I gather he's updated them both?
|
|
|
Post by carolinec on Jan 9, 2008 16:13:38 GMT
We certainly dug up some rattlers on our old board and I'm sure you'd love the current issue of Paperback Fanatic, a 'When Animals (Reptiles/ Rodents/ Insects/ Fish, etc.) Attack' special which includes some rather fetching slimy sssss-snake covers. I'm not even going to look! Is Ramsey's Probably (ever likely to be) available in paperback? I read the essays he contributed to the Shock Xpress Yearbook and I gather he's updated them both? It's a paperback I have sitting on my desk here - do you mean mass market (ie. cheaper) paperback? I'm afraid I don't know. It's a pity you missed the PS Publishing sale as you could have got one half price!
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 17:28:44 GMT
Yeah, sorry, I meant mass market. We've not covered Probably so if you (or anybody) would care to share their thoughts ....
|
|
|
Post by sean on Jan 9, 2008 17:55:59 GMT
Spiders don't bother me (although I prefer them not to be around), but I don't think Coral enjoyed me reading this one much!
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 18:24:18 GMT
.... and I just remembered, the 'vampire hunter' article is updated in this one, ain't it? Forget it. I'm not giving that tommy rotter any publicity on here, we'd never get rid of the f***. Thanks for the scan, though, Sean.
|
|
|
Post by carolinec on Jan 9, 2008 18:31:06 GMT
That's the one - super cover. Thanks Sean! I must admit I haven't read it all, and I'm a bit busy with work at present to comment on those bits I have read (except to say that I was crying with laughter at the "School Visit" piece!). And the "Vampire Hunter" piece is one which I haven't read - so now you've got me so curious I'm just going to have to go and read it. I assume it's not Ramsey you're calling a f*** and tommy rotter, and don't want to give any publicity to?
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 18:36:52 GMT
You assume correctly. Ramsey's great, but if you get around to the VH piece I don't think it will take you forever to work out who I'm perhaps a little less fond of.
|
|
coral
New Face In Hell
Posts: 3
|
Post by coral on Jan 9, 2008 20:42:02 GMT
Actually, I HAVE taken a small look into "Probably", Sean, despite the cover. I could only read a little in it admittedly before aracnophobia set in and I had to throw it to the ground. But in my defence I must say that I actually own, and have read, some of the books whose covers are above, and with hardly a twitch!
The story about the spider that wends it's way into the female corpses womb affected me quite badly as a nipper. Does anybody here recall it, I've lost the title and author in my swiss cheese of a memory?
Spiders are easily dealt with, one simply throws the book at them. I find the Guiness Book of Records the most effective.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 21:28:28 GMT
The story about the spider that wends it's way into the female corpses womb affected me quite badly as a nipper. Does anybody here recall it, I've lost the title and author in my swiss cheese of a memory? It sounds horribly familiar .... Uh, look away now if you really hate arachnids: When I used to work over near West Ham FC, I once met this guy out sunbathing his pet tarantula on the back of his hand in the High Street. Anyhow, I got talking to him and, you know, he could see I was kind of smitten with his furry friend and he asked me if I wanted to take over for a minute. I'd never been much fussed with spiders one way or the other until then but what a feeling that was, having those ticklish little legs scoot along my arm and into my hand. Since then, I absolutely adore them.
|
|
|
Post by Johnlprobert on Jan 10, 2008 9:51:34 GMT
Has anyone mentioned 'The Man Whose Nose Was Too Big' by Alan Hillery?
|
|