Dr Hermes
2004-01-22 14:35:07 UTC
From the August 1940 issue of WEIRD TALES, this is thirty
pages of pure nightmare. Theodore Sturgeon was only twenty-two when he
came up with this vision. Already, his earliest stories showed the flair
for word choice and intense visual images that would make his work
memorable. I first happened upon "It" when I was about eleven or so, and
it darn near electrocuted me. Reading it again all these decades later,
I find the story is still genuinely frightening and unnerving.
On the most basic level, this is a tale of a monster that comes
wandering out of the woods, kills some animals and then a dog named
Kimbo and then Kimbo`s owner. In a scene that`s really hard to take, it
absolutely terrorizes a ten year old girl named Babe before finally
meeting its ironic and well deserved end. The final words have haunted
me all these years; even after the monster is destroyed, life doesn`t
just bounce back to normal. ("So the Drews had a new barn and fine new
livestock and they hired four men. But they didn`t have Alton. And they
didn`t have Kimbo. And Babe screams at night and has grown very thin.")
Aside from the unique loathesomeness of It`s physical being, Ted`s
creature presents us with one of the most convincing examples of a
nonhuman consciousness I can remember. The monster has vague curiosity
and no memories, so it`s starting from scratch. It calmly rips apart a
dog to see what`s inside and then (in a surreal bit of logic) when night
falls, It concludes that it`s dead and passively lies down in the
forest. ("Black and liquescent it lay in the blackness, not alive, not
understanding death, believing itself dead.") To me, this weird
unpredictable behavior is much creepier than a straightforward predatory
sort of critter. One meek character escapes unknowingly because the
skulking thing swings a heavy arm just as the man bends to pick up his
handkerchief, then loses interest in the guy. (This bit of relief is
just to let you catch your breath, the worst is coming.)
And of course, there is the way the thing comes to be. The
skeleton of a man long dead, lying under a mass of rotting vegetation,
somehow stirs into unlife in a process of slow spontaneous combustion.
("It walked in the woods. It was never born. It existed. Under the pine
needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and
darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth.
It grew but it was not alive....")
What we are dealing with here is a rotting mass of stinking
matter*, somehow getting up and lumbering around and casually killing
things. If you are standing right next to it, you would have no warning
it can suddenly grab out at you. I think I understand now why this idea
has such chilling power. When you`re concentrating on something,
completely alone without even a pet in the house.... and then abruptly,
a stack of magazines or a sack of groceries loudly falls over, you jump
much more than you would if the dog suddenly started barking or your
roommate sneezed. Your mind half expects movements from living things,
but when something moves that shouldn`t, it triggers an extra strong
alarm response. That`s what we have with the monster here.
"Standing there was, not Uncle Alton, but a massive caricature of a
man: a huge thing like an irregular mud doll, clumsily made. It quivered
and parts of it glistened and parts of it were dried and crumbly. Half
the lower left part of its face was gone, giving it a lopsided look. It
had no perceptible mouth or nose, and its eyes were crooked, one higher
than the other....." Ickk and more ickk.
With this charmer, Sturgeon created a new species of monster for
horror stories. The dead body clotted with rotting vegetation has been
used several times since, resulting in four characters who still are
stalking the pages of comic books to this day, terrorizing civilians and
giving superheroes cold sweats. Alfred Bester created Solomon Grundy as
an opponent for the original Green Lantern in ALL-AMERICAN COMICS.
Although he shared It`s origin and nature, Grundy also had a strong
element of Karloff`s Frankenstein Monster. This white zombie is still
around, a bit less gruesome, showing up on the Cartoon Network`s JUSTICE
LEAGUE now airing.
At the same time, the Heap appeared in AIR FIGHTER COMICS (later
AIRBOY). Looking sort of like a haystack with legs, the Heap was
initially a rampaging blood-drinking brute but he later developed into a
sort of Nature`s Avenger under the guidance of the goddess Ceres,
wandering the world as a Greenpeace enforcer. The Heap was ressurected
in the 1970s in a sleazy black and white magazine, then came back in his
true winsome glory with a revival of AIRBOY
comics. Who knows, he may lurch up out of the undergrowth again. I know
I would like to see a trade paperback collecting his 1940s appearances.
And of course. in the 1970s DC came out with Swamp Thing and Marvel
dug up Man-Thing. (Marvel also did a one-shot adaptation of Sturgeon`s
tale. I give Roy Thomas credit for always honoring the sources of comic
book themes.) These guys are pretty well known, especially considering
Swamp Thing has had two feature films, a TV series and those famous
issues written by Alan Moore.
Oh, wait. There was also a cheapo horror flick called SLITHIS, about
a pile of murderous mud (seriously) which seems to bear a close
resemblance to the monsters we`re considering here. A film maker looking
for something a bit different from the glamorous vampires and serial
killers so overused lately would do well to buy the rights to Sturgeon`s
story.
__________________
*Ted Sturgeon`s famous and much quoted law that ninety per cent of
everything is crap seems to be literally true with this creature. It
actually IS ninety per cent crap.
http://community.webtv.net/drhermes/ForbiddenKnowledge
pages of pure nightmare. Theodore Sturgeon was only twenty-two when he
came up with this vision. Already, his earliest stories showed the flair
for word choice and intense visual images that would make his work
memorable. I first happened upon "It" when I was about eleven or so, and
it darn near electrocuted me. Reading it again all these decades later,
I find the story is still genuinely frightening and unnerving.
On the most basic level, this is a tale of a monster that comes
wandering out of the woods, kills some animals and then a dog named
Kimbo and then Kimbo`s owner. In a scene that`s really hard to take, it
absolutely terrorizes a ten year old girl named Babe before finally
meeting its ironic and well deserved end. The final words have haunted
me all these years; even after the monster is destroyed, life doesn`t
just bounce back to normal. ("So the Drews had a new barn and fine new
livestock and they hired four men. But they didn`t have Alton. And they
didn`t have Kimbo. And Babe screams at night and has grown very thin.")
Aside from the unique loathesomeness of It`s physical being, Ted`s
creature presents us with one of the most convincing examples of a
nonhuman consciousness I can remember. The monster has vague curiosity
and no memories, so it`s starting from scratch. It calmly rips apart a
dog to see what`s inside and then (in a surreal bit of logic) when night
falls, It concludes that it`s dead and passively lies down in the
forest. ("Black and liquescent it lay in the blackness, not alive, not
understanding death, believing itself dead.") To me, this weird
unpredictable behavior is much creepier than a straightforward predatory
sort of critter. One meek character escapes unknowingly because the
skulking thing swings a heavy arm just as the man bends to pick up his
handkerchief, then loses interest in the guy. (This bit of relief is
just to let you catch your breath, the worst is coming.)
And of course, there is the way the thing comes to be. The
skeleton of a man long dead, lying under a mass of rotting vegetation,
somehow stirs into unlife in a process of slow spontaneous combustion.
("It walked in the woods. It was never born. It existed. Under the pine
needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and
darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth.
It grew but it was not alive....")
What we are dealing with here is a rotting mass of stinking
matter*, somehow getting up and lumbering around and casually killing
things. If you are standing right next to it, you would have no warning
it can suddenly grab out at you. I think I understand now why this idea
has such chilling power. When you`re concentrating on something,
completely alone without even a pet in the house.... and then abruptly,
a stack of magazines or a sack of groceries loudly falls over, you jump
much more than you would if the dog suddenly started barking or your
roommate sneezed. Your mind half expects movements from living things,
but when something moves that shouldn`t, it triggers an extra strong
alarm response. That`s what we have with the monster here.
"Standing there was, not Uncle Alton, but a massive caricature of a
man: a huge thing like an irregular mud doll, clumsily made. It quivered
and parts of it glistened and parts of it were dried and crumbly. Half
the lower left part of its face was gone, giving it a lopsided look. It
had no perceptible mouth or nose, and its eyes were crooked, one higher
than the other....." Ickk and more ickk.
With this charmer, Sturgeon created a new species of monster for
horror stories. The dead body clotted with rotting vegetation has been
used several times since, resulting in four characters who still are
stalking the pages of comic books to this day, terrorizing civilians and
giving superheroes cold sweats. Alfred Bester created Solomon Grundy as
an opponent for the original Green Lantern in ALL-AMERICAN COMICS.
Although he shared It`s origin and nature, Grundy also had a strong
element of Karloff`s Frankenstein Monster. This white zombie is still
around, a bit less gruesome, showing up on the Cartoon Network`s JUSTICE
LEAGUE now airing.
At the same time, the Heap appeared in AIR FIGHTER COMICS (later
AIRBOY). Looking sort of like a haystack with legs, the Heap was
initially a rampaging blood-drinking brute but he later developed into a
sort of Nature`s Avenger under the guidance of the goddess Ceres,
wandering the world as a Greenpeace enforcer. The Heap was ressurected
in the 1970s in a sleazy black and white magazine, then came back in his
true winsome glory with a revival of AIRBOY
comics. Who knows, he may lurch up out of the undergrowth again. I know
I would like to see a trade paperback collecting his 1940s appearances.
And of course. in the 1970s DC came out with Swamp Thing and Marvel
dug up Man-Thing. (Marvel also did a one-shot adaptation of Sturgeon`s
tale. I give Roy Thomas credit for always honoring the sources of comic
book themes.) These guys are pretty well known, especially considering
Swamp Thing has had two feature films, a TV series and those famous
issues written by Alan Moore.
Oh, wait. There was also a cheapo horror flick called SLITHIS, about
a pile of murderous mud (seriously) which seems to bear a close
resemblance to the monsters we`re considering here. A film maker looking
for something a bit different from the glamorous vampires and serial
killers so overused lately would do well to buy the rights to Sturgeon`s
story.
__________________
*Ted Sturgeon`s famous and much quoted law that ninety per cent of
everything is crap seems to be literally true with this creature. It
actually IS ninety per cent crap.
http://community.webtv.net/drhermes/ForbiddenKnowledge