dr_hermes (dr_hermes) wrote in scans_daily, @ 2009-06-08 13:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | char: the heap, era: golden age |
Big piles of muck and weeds walking around
Thinking about the Golem legend a few days ago made me remember a similar theme in fantasy and horror stories. This is one the rare new additions to the pantheon of vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc... the pile of undead muck and vegetable debris (usually surrounding a corpse or skeleton). The Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, the Heap, Solomon Grundy.. they all derived from a short story by Ted Sturgeon, "It." From the August 1940 issue of UNKNOWN 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. SPOILERS AHEAD, Just so you know.