Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters
“Chief among these would have to be its persistence, its relentless pursuit of whatever its goal. That goal likely entails some threat to us, either direct or incidental, and the monster likely combines its single-mindedness with a capacity to endure whatever attacks we hurl at it. If the monster can be defeated, it will be by an artifact or invention whose uniqueness only underscores the creature’s singularity.This iteration of the monster narrative seems the polar opposite of the power fantasy that animates so many stories of the fantastic. Here, what is on display is not omnipotence, but fatal vulnerability. The particulars of what we are liable to may change with the given story, as the narratives gathered in this second section demonstrate. Clive Barker’s “Rawhead Rex” presents a monster of unbridled male aggression, while David J. Schow’s “Not from Around Here” joins a monster of more general sexual excess with a concern for suburban alienation. Cherie Priest and Jeff VanderMeer ...focus on monsters for whom our bodies are little more than raw material to be used for their own, strange arts.MoreLess
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