Wed 26 Aug 2009
An SF Review by Dan Stumpf: MURRAY LEINSTER – The Monster from Earth’s End.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[12] Comments
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.
August 26th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Leinster (Will Jenkins) is one of the great pulp masters best known today for his novel Time Tunnel and some of his other classic sf tales. Haven’t read this one, but obviously need to.
If you can find it Murder of the USA as by Jenkins is not bad. A nuclear first strike has crippled the country from an unknown source and a couple of guys manning a missile silo have to determine who made the sneak attack so they can retaliate.
At least a couple of early sf thrillers made Bill Pronzini’s alternative classics list, but generally Leinster is well worth reading for pleasure as well.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:05 am
I don’t read nearly as much science fiction as I used to. Beginning in the late 1950ss until about six or seven years ago, I must have purchased almost every SF paperback that came out, and most of the fantasy as well.
Until, that is, I tried to read some of it, and I discovered, to my dismay, I no longer could, read it, that is, especially the fantasy — and there’s precious little SF to buy to buy any more, unless it’s guns and warships in space, and I no longer need to read any of that, thanks very much.
But Murray Leinster is an author I remember reading with great pleasure. One that I picked up to read last year was a bit creaky, I thought, but I didn’t put it down.
In fact, Leinster had the cover story in what I’ve always thought was the very first “adult” SF magazine I ever bought. But when I looked it up just now, in order to find a copy of the cover to show you, I discovered that it was the second.
Close enough. The story was a serial called “The Pirates of Ersatz,” and the cover artist was Kelly Freas. The magazine was ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, February 1959.
I often wish I was 17 again, but whenever I see this cover, for one reason or another, I am once again:
August 27th, 2009 at 5:16 am
I believe this book (which I enjoyed) was made into a movie (which I didn’t enjoy nearly as much: Navy vs. Night Monsters, starring Mamie van Doren.
August 27th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Right, Jerry. Despite photography by Stanley Cortez and the assets of Ms. van Doren, NAVY VS… is a waste of the time it would take to read the book.
August 27th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Dig that slide rule between his teeth.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Steve
Like you I found myself unable to read sf or fantasy at some point, still there are some exceptions. For fantasy Neal Gaiman, Tim Powers (his Declare which mixes LeCarre with Lovecraft and the quest for Noah’s ark and Last Call which mixes Vegas, gamblers, the mob, film noir, Tarot, and King Arthur), John Crowley, and Jonathan Carroll are all literate and well above the tiresome rehash of Tokien and Robert Howard we too often get in lieu of real fantasy and imagination (Not to mention a plethora of vampires who for the most part bite — and not in a good way).
Several of the Brit Space Opera writers are exceptional. Neal Asher’s Polity series features a Bondian hero with touches of gothic and even steam punk (there is a wonderful brass assassin with a slightly dotty mind who is part Frankenstein monster, part Dalek, and part Bronte’s Heathcliff); Paul McAuley has written a number of Crichtonish thrillers as well as space opera and at his best is mindful of Graham Greene and J.G. Ballard as in White Devils; Peter Hamilton often includes thriller elements, his Quantum Murder is a mix of sf, space opera, and murder mystery; Alistair Reynolds Century Rain is a tour de force, 300 years from now an archelogist uncovers a worm hole connecting to alternate earths and threatening all of them, one of them leads to a France frozen in the 1950’s and the solution to saving the universe involves an American expatriate jazz musician turned private eye — space opera meets Simenon, film noir, and the hard boiled eye. Many of Iain M. Banks non space opera novels (as by Iain Banks) feature thriller elements though often used in the allegorical sense as do many of his sf novels, and Bill Napier and Archie Roy write Buchanesque thrillers with strong sf (and science) elements in the Crichton tradition — only with a true storytellers gift.
But then I have a taste for a blend of sf and mystery that is best described by books like William Sloane’s Edge of Running Water, Leiber’s Conjure Wife, Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, MacDonald’s playful The Girl The Gold Watch and Everything, Aldris Budry’s Who?, L.P. Davies novels, some of J.G. Ballard’s (Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes), the Quatermass films, Creasey’s Dr. Palfrey, Philip McCutcheon’s Esmonde Shaw series, even Dennis Wheatley and a handful of others who mix the element of thriller, mystery, and sf/fantasy/horror. Alexander Laing’s The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck is a classic example of the form as would be Per Wahloo’s The Thirty First Floor, Gerald Kersh’s The Secret Masters, and Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Many of Geoffrey Jenkins novels fall in this category and some of Hammond Innes. John Buchan’s Gap in the Curtain is an early example, as would be C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength, and the British Charles Williams thrillers such as All Hallows Eve, The Place of the Lion, and Shadow of Ecstasy.
You might try some of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, a young adult series that features a young super criminal in the making who finds himself often reluctantly teamed with a tough beautiful cop from the land of Farie. The books are clever and funny, with a sense of adventure and real humor.
There is good stuff out there if you can wade through all the endless pages of the same old same old that tends to crowd it out.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Steve in Comment #2 mentions discovering SF in the 1950’s and buying just about everything for many years. I also did the same from about 1956 to 1980. Now I mainly reread the back issues of the SF magazines and reread my favorite SF authors such as J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, Alfred Bester. I agree with David about Tim Powers, one of the current writers I can still read. There are more I’m sure and I just ordered White Devils and Century Rain to give them a try since they sound excellent.
I think as we age we tend to look back on the favorite writers of our youth, trying to recapture the joy and excitement of reading before we became jaded after reading thousands of books. Now I have to really search for the exceptional novel to keep my interest. Just being good doesn’t cut it anymore, and forget the usual, average fiction.
I reread all of the novels of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald recently and found that they still retain the power to excite my interest. Just finished Pynchon’s INHERENT VICE and loved his portrait of the 1960’s doper society combined with the screwball PI detective genre. Which brings up the question of how did I ever survive that decade? I found it very funny and witty, so there is still hope that new fiction can interest us old timers.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Looking forward to reading Inherent Vice. Pynchon’s last book, Against the Day, was a wonderful paean/send-up of dime novels,the Nickel Library, Frank Merriwell, Tom Swift, Jules Verne, and Pynchon’s usual mix of sex and insanity. One of the lead characters based more or less on Wyatt Earp, deserved his own book.
I think you will like Century Rain and White Devils — both men can really write, but don’t be put off by the cover of White Devils that makes it look like yet another of those medical thrillers — it isn’t — it’s set in a near future Africa out of Conrad and Greene by way of Ballard and there are twists along the way you may not see coming. It keeps surprising you by going places you may not expect it to.
August 27th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
David in comment #8 mention the Wyatt Earp type character in Pynchon’s AGAINST THE DAY. In INHERENT VICE there’s a couple funny scenes involving the main character buying the original mustache cup that Wyatt used, even has his name on it I believe. He doesn’t believe it really is a collector’s item and eventually gives it away, only to be told later that it is the original and thus very valuable. There must be hundreds of funny references like this throughout the novel. Makes me long for the good old doper days except I’m too old now and it would kill me for sure!
August 27th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I thought I missed most of the counter-culture scene — though I read the literature and saw the movies, and heard the music — until in my mid twenties I found out the headache medicine I was taking all through college was a prescription form of LSD. Here I was a genuine stoner and didn’t even know it.
I guess it was just as well I didn’t know what I was taking. Imagine the lines in front of my dorm.
I think Against the Day is my favorite Pynchon book after V. And all the reviews — including yours — have me looking forward to Inherent Vice. Unlike some writers from our misspent youth Pynchon is just as good read stone cold sober, not something you can say for many of the movies and much of the music. The seventies were a blur for many — and probably more enjoyable for being so.
November 29th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for posting this review – much appreciated. I can hardly wait to read this book – it sounds exactly like the type of SF I like best (a’la The Thing.)
March 16th, 2012 at 12:34 am
Might I also recommend The Clone by Theodore L. Thomas and Kat Wilhelm? It’s a bit clunky with its borderline omniscient narrative structure, but I found it to be a fun and inventive, and unjustly forgotten, little take on a blob monster story.