I’m still trying to figure out why H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1898) works so well. Wells spends 30 pages building up to the obvious, radically shifts focus three times, and doesn’t ring in the nominal hero till it’s too late to care much about him.

   Yet somehow we do. The last few chapters of Kemp besieged in his house by the Invisible Man make for good action and genuine suspense, which is agreeably true of the book as a whole. I just can’t figure out why.

   I mean, there are all these words, paragraphs, pages and chapters where a mysterious stranger turns up hiding his face; there are uncanny noises, things move about, and all the while the astute critic ought to be saying, “Y’know the title of the book is like The Invisible Man … Hell-loool”

   That the reader doesn’t say any such thing — this reader didn’t, anyway — tells me Wells may have been a more gifted story-teller than I realized.

   And yup, he was. I’ve just finished reading The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and it seems H.G. really knew how to spin a yarn.

   From the initial ship-wreck to the resolution on an Island Hell, this is the kind of writing that deserves to be called Crackerjack: piratical captains, mad doctors, chases, fights, monsters… and an undercurrent of thoughtfulness that reads like Jonathan Swift writing for the Pulps.

   It’s nowhere near as scary as the movie they made from it back in the 30s, but it has stayed on my mind since I read it back in grade school, and I’m glad I revisited it.

         —

Editorial Comment: The spooky cover image for The Invisible Man came from a vintage paperback edition published by Pocket in 1957. The one for Dr. Moreau is a book club edition that contains both Wells’ book and Joseph Silva’s novelization of the American-International film that came out in 1977 (with Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport, Barbara Carrera and Richard Basehart). Joseph Silva is often better known as Ron Goulart.

MURRAY LEINSTER – The Monster from Earth’s End. Gold Medal s832, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1959.

   In the mood for something to make my hair — such as it is — stand on end, and getting pretty discouraged in my quest when I had a few minutes off one day, popped into a used book store and picked up (for 50 cents) The Monster from Earth’s End by Murray Leinster.

   This is It: The genuine article, the real banana, a taut, suspenseful, exciting and genuinely creepy couple hours packed into 176 pages by a writer who knew how to do it.

   The story, which owes a bit to the movie The Thing, is set in a remote island off the coast of Chile used as a way-station for supplies and scientists bound to and from an Antarctic research station.

   Everyone on the island is eagerly tracking the progress of a north-bound plane bringing nine scientists and some botanical specimens from the South Pole for study when the pilot’s radio traffic suddenly becomes confused. Then panicky.

   After more than an hour of erratic flying, the plane lands with the wheels up and cargo bay open — thus blocking the airstrip — and the only one left on board is the pilot, who immediately blows his own brains out.

   Weird enough, but that’s just the start, as the staff on the island find themselves stalked at night by some unseen thing big enough to devour a man, pestered through the day by growing numbers of inch-long carnivorous crawling insects, and disbelieved by the brass on the mainland, who can’t get there anyway because the runway is blocked.

   Leinster develops the story nicely, cleverly increasing the isolation of the island workers while developing character and situations. And the characterization here is ably done indeed; I’d swear I have worked with some of these guys. The result is a book I can recommend heartily to anyone looking to tingle a spine or two.