While watching the movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters, one question kept popping into my head: Where was Kong? Surely, he must have heard the rumble of Monster Zero or the bio-sonar signal from Fenway Park. Every time Ghidorah flapped his wings and every time Godzilla retreated to the bottom of the ocean, the giant ape from Skull Island was conspicuous in his absence.

To his credit, author Greg Keyes attempts to answer my question in the movie’s accompanying novelization. According to him, Kong did, in fact, hear the call of Ghidorah. It made him restless and it made him a little angry, but he chose to ignore it nonetheless. Let all the monsters destroy themselves, he figured. He was a solitary fellow and he wanted to be left alone. Moviegoers and G-fans know that’ll change, however. To be continued in Godzilla vs. Kong, coming to theaters in 2021.

Without a doubt there’s a giant gorilla-sized hole in the latest Godzilla movie. But what can you do? Everybody knows that the thunderous battles featuring Mothra (“the queen of the monsters”), Rodan (“Satan himself could not be as terrible“) and Monster Zero (“the one who is many“) are just an amuse-bouche for the inevitable Godzilla/King Kong “MonsterVerse” main course.

Like every author who’s ever written a film novelization, Keyes can’t be criticized for a movie’s screenwriting shortcomings. But there are always opportunities for writers to add context, explore motivation, insert transitions and sneak bonus material into their manuscripts. Keyes dutifully does all of this. He even gets inside Godzilla’s head.

His depiction of Dr. Emma Russell is probably the best thing about the book. She’s wholly unlikeable in the movie (despite her endgame redemption). But in prose, she’s a complicated character saddled with a God-like burden. Her goal is to kick start Earth 2.0, but she screws up big time and becomes a mass-murderer on a global scale. “She didn’t hit the reset button,” writes Keyes, “she hit the detonator instead.” Like all great villains, such as Dr. Doom and Magneto, Dr. Russell thinks she’s the hero of her own story.

Nobody can control nature, not even a smarty-pants paleontologist with a God complex. Trilobites, synapsids, the dinosaurs, brontotherium, the woolly mammoth, Hedorah, Destroyah, Baragon and Fin Fang Foom—all of them have come and gone. After all this time, the only one remaining is Godzilla. Long live the king.

[Godzilla: King of the Monsters / By Greg Keyes / First Printing: May 2019 / ISBN: 9781789090925]

The first sentence of any novel is important. Not only does it grab the reader’s attention, but it also affords the author an opportunity to craft something eloquent and memorable.

Many first sentences are so extraordinarily notable they are absorbed into the culture and exist beyond the page. “All happy families are alike,” wrote Leo Tolstoy back in 1867, “and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” With a flick of his quill pen, Tolstoy was able to encompass the entire human experience in one snappy sentence.

Tolstoy wasn’t the only writer with a knack for writing first sentences. Off the top of my head, I can recall plenty of great openers. “It was a pleasure to burn,” for example. Or “If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me.”

Author William Meikle begins his novel Crustaceans with a memorable sentence too: “The whale farted,” he writes. It may not be the politest way to start a book, nor does it exist on the same level as Ray Bradbury or Saul Bellow, but it does kick things off in a lively fashion. And it sure is memorable. Job well done, that’s what I say.

The reason the whale farted, btw, is because it ingested a bunch of over-sized crabs. The critters are using the whale as a taxi to travel up the eastern coast from Cuba, to Florida, to Virginia, and ultimately to New York. Their destination: the abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of Manhattan.

It’s up to the U.S. military, a lone marine biologist, and a boozing down-on-his-luck fisherman to stop the upcoming Crabageddon. “If those things reach Manhattan,” warns Colonel Stack-Stark, “there will be panic and slaughter on the streets of New York.”

That’s okay with me, of course. I bought this book because I wanted to see giant crabs rampaging down Broadway and Wall Street. I don’t want the military to yuck my yum. And I definitely don’t want to read an Anna Karenina-like doorstopper about crabs and infidelity and social mores. I want 10-foot-wide crustaceans decapitating and eviscerating New Yorkers. And thankfully that’s pretty much what I got. I also got a little bit of romance and redemption too.

At some point in the novel, the marine biologist tells the clueless Homeland Security agents that giant crabs have been causing trouble since the 70s. Her history lesson will no doubt put a smile on the faces of informed readers. Guy N. Smith, after all, wrote his first monster crab novel back in 1976.

Many other authors (most notably J.F. Gonzalez) have contributed their two-cents to the crabby sub-genre over the years. Like it or not, the giant crustaceans are here to stay. The only way to get rid of them for sure, says the biologist with a shrug, is to nuke the entire island of Manhattan from orbit.

[Crustaceans / By William Meikle / First Printing: April 2012 / ISBN: 9781626410947]

Within the very first pages of this anthology, author A.E. van Vogt describes the story’s monster like this: “The creature was tiny, but it was a monstrous, many-legged, long-bodied, long-snouted, hideous miniature, a very caricature of abnormal life, a mad creation of an insane imagination.”

With this extravagant description, van Vogt establishes his concept of “alien attraction,” defined loosely as mankind’s ever-lovin’ fascination with “monsters, things, creatures and aliens.” And certainly, the eight stories in this collection feature a riot of fantastical science fiction beasts. Spoiler alert: mankind is often revealed as the ultimate monster in a few of the stories.

Like all science fiction writers from the early twentieth century, van Vogt was interested in simple things like robots and space travel. And because of this, some of these golden age stories haven’t aged very well. “Robot Command,” in particular, is a bit creaky. Back in van Vogt’s heyday, the future was fuzzy and romantic. But today, with artificial superintelligence and whole brain emulation right around the corner, debating robot civil rights seems a tad quaint.

But it’s easy to forgive van Vogt for such things, mostly because he was a delightfully quirky writer. He obviously loved monsters (avianoid, oceanic, Martian or otherwise), and you can’t help but marvel at his “plot ingenuity, skill in mystification and his flair for poignancy.”

The first story (“Not Only Dead Men”) is about monsters and men working together to fight a common threat. As it turns out, the otherworldly creatures stranded on Earth understand the concept of humanity better than their human counterparts. Similar stories such as “War of Nerves,” “Enchanted Village” and “Concealment” make it clear that there’s always a compassionate solution to any dire situation.

The collection ends with a bang. “Vault of the Beast” is easily the best story of the bunch. “The creature crept,” wrote van Vogt. “It whimpered from fear and pain. Shapeless, formless thing yet changing shape and form with each jerky movement. It crept along the corridor of the space freighter, fighting the terrible urge of its elements to take the shape of its surroundings. A gray blob of disintegrating stuff, it crept and cascaded, it rolled, flowed, and dissolved every moment an agony of struggle against the abnormal need to become a stable shape. Any shape!”

Just as Frankenstein’s monster was created by man and rejected by mankind, the wretch of this story eventually develops a case of existential ennui. “Am I just a machine?” it laments. “Do I have a brain of my own?”

Despite its grotesque appearance and murderous mission, van Vogt’s “metimorph” monster is simply trying to find a little dignity in the madness of life. “The struggle to be human was a continuous ache,” acknowledged the author. Mary Shelley couldn’t have said it any better.

[Monsters / By A.E. van Vogt / First Printing: February 1965 / ISBN: 9780552085700]

On the very first page of Chris McInally’s novel, a thousand pound, 35-foot mako shark begins chomping on unlucky bastards living near Minerva Lake. But it takes the author a long time to figure out what to call the “watery demon from the deepest layers of hell.”

Torpedo-shaped predator, top-of-the-line predator, marauding predator and wandering predator are just a few of the euphemisms the author uses. He even calls the shark a brute, a bitch and a bloodthirsty fucker. Finally, in chapter eight, McInally hits gold. He describes the mako as an apex predator—and voilà! a star is born.

But why is an apex predator prowling a shallow lake instead of swimming with sharks in the ocean? McInally’s got the answer. “The extent and impact of environmental degradation upon Minerva Lake was astounding,” he writes. “The lake’s natural balance had irreversibly changed. Over the course of 200 years, it had transitioned from a freshwater environment to a quasi-marine habitat.”

The level of anthropogenic degeneracy was now snowballing at an exponential rate due to increased agricultural demands. A whole new food web had developed in the lake, and the shortfin mako shark found itself at the top of the food chain. It was a big fish in a small pond.

There was only one problem, however. The hungry shark couldn’t sustain itself on crayfish, bluefish and pufferfish. It needed a higher caloric intake. To survive, it started attacking cows and fat humans.

For the next 134 pages, everybody who ventures into Minerva Lake becomes a tasty treat on the mako’s dining menu. Fishermen, farmers, tourists, skinny dippers, college research assistants and police officers all meet a horrible and ultra-violent death. It’s like the plot of some Z-grade horror movie, says Dr. Hailey Benson at one point.

As it turns out, Dr. Benson has a plan to capture the shark and release it into the ocean. “It’s about doing what’s right,” she explains. “Human manipulation of the environment brought about this horrific aberration. That means it’s up to us to solve the problem. Someone has to take ownership of this mess.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Dr. Benson’s humane agenda backfires in the messiest way imaginable. She only succeeds in agitating the shark to an insane level. When she finally comes face to face with the mako’s toothy grin, she changes her tune immediately. “Killing it would be a mercy,” she cries. “It’s mad with hunger and blood lust.”

Final verdict: Apex is a thin book—maybe too thin—but it has a cinematic quality to it. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that it was originally a screenplay. Also: there are a couple of quirky characters worth mentioning. The scrawny deputy sheriff is a badass like Barney Fife. And Demi, the militant animal rights advocate, is a brooding presence throughout the book. The inscrutable shark, however, is the star of the show. Despite the unrelenting carnage, Dr. Benson had to admit: “The mako was beautiful in a terrifying sort of way.”

[Apex / By Chris McInally / First Printing: October 2016 / ISBN: 9781925493917]

The title of this book might be misleading to anyone slightly familiar with French literature. Be forewarned, it has nothing whatsoever to do with a 16th century writer named François Rabelais. There’s no Pantagruel, no grotesque realism, no social satire—nothing literary at all. It’s just a story about a giant monster terrorizing a small island in the South Pacific.

But that’s not exactly true either. There are actually four giant lizards in this book: a baby, a big brother, a mommy, and a daddy. It’s a mad monster party with a Gorgo twist.

The first of the gargantuan brood appears pretty quickly (page nine) off the coast of Malau. “The thing was green and scaly, with a small horn protruding from just above the eyes, like some kind of lizard or gecko or salamander or something,” says a witness close to the action.

As each monster thunders across the landscape, the locals struggle to find a way to describe them. Are they dinosaurs, vultures or beasts from a Ray Harryhausen movie? A newspaper reporter describes the creatures as “Ghidrah lookalikes” even though none of them have three heads or wings or anything else. Me thinks King Ghidorah deserves a little more respect.

Oh well, what can you expect? Not everyone grew up watching silly Japanese monster films. If they had seen just one Godzilla movie, they might have solved the mystery of Gargantua sooner. Eventually the Malauans discover what the reader already suspected: Years ago illegal toxins were dumped secretly in the waters surrounding the island. “These creatures aren’t biological anomalies,” says Jack Elway, a visiting marine biologist. “They’ve been mutated by a concentrated diet of artificial chemicals.”

Based on a TV movie from 1998, Gargantua isn’t strictly a giant monster story. The book (more than the movie) has a lot to say about fractured families and the bonds that bind us. As it turns out, Elway and his son have a lot in common with the family of displaced sea creatures. To quote the Eurythmics: “Everybody’s looking for something.”

The events of the novel take place over the course of a single week. “But what a week!” says Elway. Not only does he discover a new genus of reptile, but he also discovers a new path in life. And if he’s lucky, the cute island doctor might someday go out to dinner with him. “I think after all of this,” he muses, “we all, human and reptile, deserve some happy endings.”

[Gargantua / By Keith R.A. DeCandido writing as K. Robert Andreassi / First Printing: 1998 / ISBN: 9780812570984]