Recent Reading No. 2

In our most recent weird fiction book club we read stories by Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985). Although Sturgeon had eight stories in Weird Tales in 1947-1949, we didn't read any of those. Instead we read several that were in science fiction and fantasy magazines, beginning with "It," published in Unknown in August 1940.

On March 23 of last year, I wrote about swamp monsters in an entry called "The Internet Ooze, Blobs, Jellies, & Slime Database" (click here). Because I had never read it and didn't know anything about it, I did not include it--or "It"-- in my database. It definitely belongs there. I wonder if the monster in "It" was the first swamp monster or muck monster in literature.

Last year and the year before I wrote pretty extensively about Joseph Payne Brennan  as well as his story "Slime," published in Weird Tales in March 1953. In his writing "Slime," think that Brennan was very likely influenced by the first Weird Tales cover story, "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud, which had preceded it in print by exactly thirty years. A couple of comic book writers and artists of the early 1950s also seem to have been influenced by "Ooze." See Beware #13 (Jan. 1953) and #15 (May 1953).

As I read the first few paragraphs of Theodore Sturgeon's "It," I was struck by the similarity between "Slime" and "It." See what you think.

Here are the first few paragraphs of "It" by Theodore Sturgeon:

     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. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and  thought and saw and was hideous and strong and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.
     It crawled out of the darkness and hot damp mold into the cool of a morning. It was huge. It was lumped and crusted with its own hateful substances, and pieces of it dropped off as it went its way, dropped off and lay writhing and stilled, and sank putrescent into the forest loam.
     It had no mercy, no laughter, no beauty. It had strength and great intelligence. And--perhaps it could not be destroyed. It crawled out of its mud in the wood and lay pulsing in the sunlight for a long moment. Patches of it shone wetly in the golden glow, parts of it were nubbled and flaked. And whose dead bones had given it the form of a man?
     It scrabbled painfully with its half-formed hands, beating the ground and the bole of a tree. It rolled and lifted itself up on its crumbling elbows, and it tore up a great handful of herbs and shredded them against its chest, and it paused and gazed at the gray-green juices with intelligent calm. It wavered to its feet, and seized a young sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender trunk back on itself again and again, watching attentively the useless, fibered splinters. And it snatched up a fear-frozen field-creature, crushing it slowly, letting blood and pulpy flesh and fur ooze from between its fingers, run down and rot on the forearms.
     It began searching.

And here are the first few from "Slime" by Joseph Payne Brennan:

     It was a great gray-black hood of horror moving over the floor of the sea. It slid through the soft ooze like a monstrous mantle of slime obscenely animated with questing life. It was by turns viscid and fluid. At times it flattened out and flowed through the carpet of mud like an inky pool; occasionally it paused, seeming to shrink in upon itself, and reared up out of the ooze until it resembled an irregular cone or a kind of gigantic hood. Although it possessed no eyes, it had a marvelously developed sense of touch, and it possessed a sensitivity to minute vibrations which was almost akin to telepathy. It was plastic, essentially shapeless. It could shoot out long tentacle feelers, until it bore a resemblance to a nightmare squid or a huge starfish; it could retract itself into a round flattened disk, or squeeze into an irregular hunched shape so that it looked like a black boulder sunk on the bottom of the sea. 
     It had prowled the black waters endlessly. It had been formed when the earth and the seas were young; it was almost as old as the ocean itself It moved through a night which had no beginning and no dissolution. The black sea basin where it lurked had been dark since the world began--an environment only a little less inimical than the stupendous gulfs of interplanetary space. 
     It was animated by a single, unceasing, never-satisfied drive: a voracious, insatiable hunger. It could survive for months without food, but minutes after eating it was as ravenous as ever. Its appetite was appalling and incalculable.

By that, I think it likely that Brennan was influenced not only by "Ooze" but also by "It." Notice that both passages include the word ooze.

Here's something else to think about: modern-day squatchers believe that signs of Bigfoot in your woods include twisted trees. Here's a smaller passage from the larger passage above:

It wavered to its feet, and seized a young sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender trunk back on itself again and again, watching attentively the useless, fibered splinters.

So another connection is made between the swamp monsters or muck monsters of both fiction and comic books and the Bigfoot creatures of later pseudoscience.

Marvel Comics adapted "It" in the first issue of Supernatural Thrillers, published in December 1923. The cover artist was the essential Steranko.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley