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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2020 7:41:04 GMT
Peter Haining (ed.) – The Monster Makers (Victor Gollancz, 1974)  David Smee
Mary W. Shelley – The Monster Lives! [Extract from Frankenstein]
Edgar Allan Poe – The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Jerome K. Jerome – The Dancing Partner
Ambrose Bierce – Moxon’s Master
W. C. Morrow – The Monster Maker
E. F. Benson – And the Dead Spake
H. G. Wells – The Stolen Body
Sir Ronald Ross – The Vivisector Vivisected
Wallace West – The Incubator Man
H. P. Lovecraft – The Plague Demon [extract from Herbert West—Reanimator]
Robert Bloch – The Strange Island of Doctor Nork
Theodore Sturgeon – It
Richard Matheson – Lazarus II
Avram Davidson – The Golem
Guy Endore – Men of Iron
Ray Bradbury – Changeling
Isaac Asimov – Robot AL-76 Goes Astray
Carol Emshwiller – BabyBlurb Ever since Mary Shelley created her immortal monster in Frankenstein in 1818, the story of the ‘mad scientist‘ and his creations has been an enduring favourite with generations of readers. Apart from the novels based on this theme, there have also been a considerable number of short stories — in the main written by masters of the Horror genre.
ln The Monster Makers Peter Haining brings together the very best of these short stories, which not only cover the intervening 155 years, but also demonstrate the variance of plot and action. Many of the stories are of considerable rarity, and few have ever been brought together in one collection such as this. One thing is certain, however: they will all fill the reader with pleasurable dread.
Included in this collection are such masterpieces as The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome, It by Theodore Sturgeon, The Facts of M. Valdemar's Case by Edgar Allan Poe, Changeling by Ray Bradbury, and many others. Each selection is introduced with details of its author and the background against which he created the story.
Peter Haining is the editor of Nightfrights, his first anthology for younger people. His new collection is illustrated with many line drawings by David Smee.Another week, another Haining (am running low now). A sci-horror anthology, forerunner of his massive The Frankenstein Collection, illustrated throughout by David Smee.  David Smee The Monster Lives!: (Extract from Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818). Having successfully given life to his monstrous creation, a miserable Victor Frankenstein is plagued by the most vivid Gothic nightmares and premonitions. What has he let loose on the world? Ambrose Bierce - Moxon's Master: ( San Francisco Examiner, 16 April 1899). Moxon, an inventor of great genius, creates a chess playing automaton. The robot proves a worthy opponent but a very sore loser.  David Smee The Monster Maker: A young man turns up on the doorstep of an elderly vivisectionist and surgeon, about whom the neighbours circulate ghoulish rumours. The visitor is here on business. He will pay the old man $5,000 to kill him. After establishing that nobody knows the youth has come here, and that he's left a note to the effect that he is going to drown himself, the surgeon agrees to help. Of course, this is too good an opportunity to waste. He doesn't euthanize the boy, merely replaces his head with ..... Three years later, the surgeon's downtrodden wife goes to the police to tell of what she's seen confined in the laboratory .... (John Gawsworth [ed] Strange Assembly, 1932: Thrills, Crimes & Mysteries, 1935). Dr. Maculligan fights a battle against the odds to prevent the death of a fellow vivisectionist who just so happens to have wronged the surgeon's brother.  Hugh Rankin ( Weird Tales, Oct. 1928) : ( Weird Tales, Oct. 1928). Following a theory of Sir Ronald Ross, the scientist condemned his son to a lonely life in a glass cage. “The best and ultimate test of the ability of man to live long beyond his present allotted score of years would be to have a man, from his babyhood up, live in what practically would be a sterilized test-tube. He would breathe sterilized air. He would eat sterilized food. He would drink sterilized liquids. He would thus be placed as far as humanly possible beyond the range of the myriad microbes that in many ways are the enemies of man and that bring about many of his ailments. Such a man, growing and living under special conditions, might live to be 200.” — Sir Ronald Ross. Living Hell of the world's first 'test-tube baby,' Columbus Norton. Prior to his birth, the boy's father constructed a germ free, airtight glass container, 300 feet square and 20ft high, to serve as his world. By the age of 150, Norton's brain holds the sum of all human knowledge, but he's lonely and depressed. A sympathetic word from a passing young actress decides Columbus to smash the glass and take his place among men. Peter Haining (ed.) – The Monster Makers (Knight, 1980) Introduction – Peter Haining
Mary W. Shelley – The Monster Lives! [Extract from Frankenstein]
Ambrose Bierce – Moxon’s Master
W. C. Morrow – The Monster Maker
E. F. Benson – And the Dead Spake
Wallace West – The Incubator Man
Robert Bloch – The Strange Island of Doctor Nork
Richard Matheson – Lazarus II
Isaac Asimov – Robot AL-76 Goes AstrayBlurb: Eight strange tales to chill the blood:
The spine-tingling story of the creation of Frankenstein's monster.
A young man rises again like Lazarus from the dead - his brain now contained inside a robot.
The Strange Island of Doctor Nork, where characters from comic strips act out their stories - the Iron Maiden, the Mad Doctor, a human frog. It is worth noting that this belated paperback sampler drops the David Smee line drawings along with several stories.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2020 13:46:19 GMT
"Take out my brain." Artist uncredited, Fantastic Story Magazine, July 1953. : ( Fantastic Story, July 1953). Could a selfish mother tie a machine to her apron string? They saved Peter Dearfield's brain. Or rather, his scientist father did. At mother's insistence. Wired it inside the tin bucket head of a robot. A human mind, fettered to a steel-jawed snare, and no hope of escape. With parents like his is it any wonder the poor bastard slashed his wrists? When he had killed himself the despair was a quiet one, a despair of hopelessness. It had not been this brain-bursting agony. His life had ebbed away silently and peacefully. Now he wanted to destroy it in an instant, violently.Which would at least get it over with - were he not programmed against doing so. Jerome K. Jerome - The Dancing Partner: ( The Idler, March, 1893). Herr Geibel, the greatest toy-maker Furtwangen, creates a waltzing automaton to his daughter's specifications. Lieutenant Fritz has but one flaw. He doesn't know when - or how - to stop. Guy Endore - Men of Iron: ( Magazine of Fantasy #1, Fall 1949). "Every machine should be completely automatic. A machine that needs an operator is an invalid." After fifty years on the shop floor, Anton is now surplus to company requirements. At home as in the factory, a machine has condemned him to obsolescence. Avram Davidson - The Golem: ( MFSF, March 1955: Damon Knight [ed], The Dark Side, 1967). "When you learn who - or, rather, what - I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror." So declares the tall grey stranger. Mr. and Mrs. Gumbeiner, supremely unfazed by his bluster, set the impolite man of clay to mowing the lawn.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 12, 2020 8:31:38 GMT
 David Smee And the Dead Spake ...: ( Hutchinson’s, Oct 1922; Visible and Invisible, 1923). "It's grand to be dead if you can help the living." Among the several genius inventions of Sir James Horton, the reclusive and brilliant surgeon and scientist, a gramophone-like contraption which can read the molecules of the brain and reveal ones innermost secrets. His housekeeper, Mrs. Gabriel, was recently acquitted of killing her husband, a drunken wife-beater who, according to her legal team, cut his own throat while shaving. It must be tempting for Sir James to discover the truth ... Story is included here under slightly false pretences in that, although we learn Sir James has created an artificial being, we're never shown it, nor has it any bearing on the murder mystery. |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 14, 2020 6:47:35 GMT
Ray Bradbury - Changeling: ( Super Science Stories, July 1949). Leonard - or the thing that had been Leonard - must be destroyed!. Martha has grown suspicious that Leonard Hill has invested in a replica of himself from Marionettes, inc. - "life-size marionettes, mechanical, stringless, secretive, duplicates of real people" - enabling him to be in two places at once, carry on with some fancy piece while she's fobbed off with the duplicate. An intolerable situation calls for desperate measures. H. G. Wells - The Stolen Body: ( The Strand, Nov. 1898). Evil Entity Seizes a Man's Body and tries to Destroy It. George Bessel's attempt to project himself to a friend as "a phantom of the living" goes horribly wrong. As he enters the astral plane his body is commandeered by an elemental. That night a hatless fiend answering to his description runs riot in Covent Garden and Tottenham Court Road, lashing out with a cane and torching properties. The ousted Bessel appeals to Mrs. Bullock, the celebrated medium, to reunite him with his corporeal body. Isaac Asimov - Robot AL-76 Goes Astray: ( Amazing Stories, Feb. 1942). A lunar robot is lost in transit and shipped to Hannaford County, Virginia where it meets with fear and hostility from all but one one man. Randolphe Payne, a somewhat eccentric hoarder of scrap metal, befriends 'Al' with a view to turning him over to the authorities for a substantial reward. Comic SF take on Mary Shelley's novel, though the tin-man from the moon has a better time of things than Victor Frankenstein's creation.
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 14, 2020 11:53:55 GMT
H. G. Wells' "The Stolen Body" can be found here:
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