Kaiju novels are a lot of fun. In particular, I enjoy the crazy and extravagant descriptive language used by authors to construct their towering colossi. The books are rarely scary, but the earthshaking monsters are always a hoot.

If Gamera-like “gigaanna” are a staple of the genre, why would an author write a kaiju novel and deemphasize the monsters? That’s a question I’d like to ask Lachlan Walter, the author of We Call It Monster.

Don’t get me wrong, there are giant monsters in his book, but they’re peripheral at best. Even more disappointing, Walter clearly has no flair for the material. His kaiju are relentlessly generic. For example, here’s how he describes the first creature to stomp across Sydney, Australia: “It was a massive green-and-black thing,” he writes in the first chapter. “Its body was almost barrel shaped, the same as that of a gorilla or a wrestler.”

Later, Walter catalogues a bunch of creatures spotted during a jungle expedition. “A dragonfly as big as an eagle,” he begins. “Ants as big as dogs, millipedes as big as guinea pigs, Christmas beetles as big as basketballs, stick insects the size of a dining table and a wombat as big as a small car.” Like all newspaper editors I’m a big fan of simple declarative sentences, but writing like this is dull and maddeningly perfunctory.

To be fair, the author has an agenda above and beyond most monster novels. Along with global destruction, he’s telling a story about love and loneliness and commitment and survival. For him, the kaiju are the catalyst for poetry. Good on him.

He may have a lot to say about the human condition, but he struggles throughout the book to give his creatures any sort of unique identity. At some point he just gives up. “They were monsters, plain and simple,” he says. “No amount of jargon or doublespeak would change that.”

In one chapter, a group of strangers assemble on a hill to watch a thunderous Kaiju Big Battel. The problem? The giant monsters are the size of a thumbprint because they’re twenty kilometers away. That, in a nutshell, is my biggest complaint about We Call It Monster. Even if I thought it was a serious rumination about the eternal human spirit (which I don’t), the novel itself is still a bust. The monsters are destroying the civilized world, but the author reduces them to pint-sized specks on the horizon.

[We Call It Monster / By Lachlan Walter / First Printing: February 2019 / ISBN: 9781925840520]

Michael Drake lived a typical and uneventful suburban life. He had a job, a wife, two young kids, a couple of dogs and a sexy neighbor he liked to flirt with. On weekends, he enjoyed camping and fishing.

But Michael had a little secret that he kept from his wife and kids. His great-great-great grandfather was Igor Dracula, a blood-sucking monster that terrorized Europe during the 17th century. Michael wasn’t a vampire himself (he was just a psychologist), and he wasn’t proud of his notorious family history. He kept a daguerreotype of Grandpa Igor hidden in the garage, underneath a pile of old clothes, college mementos and wooden stakes.

Nobody escapes the past forever, however. When 12 ancient sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) are discovered buried near Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains, the Dracula curse is reborn. Igor’s faithful servant (a fractured lamia named Veidt Smit) and a giant Dobermann pinscher named Zoltan emerge from their subterranean tombs. And that means trouble for Michael Drake, the last of the Dracula line.

A fractured lamia, for those of you who skipped Strygology 101 at the Academy of Unseen Arts, is a vampire-like creature that can control its bloodlust and function in the daytime. According to Collin de Plancy, the author of Dictionnaire Infernal, lamias haunt cemeteries and disinter corpses. As such, they’ve been valuable wingmen to the Dracula family throughout the centuries. They’re especially handy when it comes to abducting victims for bloodletting.

Because of their subservient nature, a lamia cannot exist without a master. As soon as Smit awakens from his 300-year sepulchral slumber he starts sniffing around for Dracula progeny. “It was his unavoidable duty only to serve them unfailingly … and for eternity.” His preternatural spidey sense points him toward the New World. Destination: Tarzana, California.

Once in California, Smit and his vampire hound hop into a Hearst and travel up and down Highway 1 looking for Michael Drake. Don’t ask me how a guy from the 17th century acquires a vehicle and figures out how to drive. I don’t know. The author doesn’t seem interested in these trivial details and neither should the reader.

One thing leads to another and the Drakes find themselves being attacked by Zoltan and a pack of wild dogs. Their “blood-curdling, ear-splitting roar of fury” can’t be ignored, says the author. One way or another these hounds of Hell are going to turn Michael into a vampire and force him to accept his dark legacy.

Even with the rabid vampirism, Hounds of Dracula is pretty tame overall. Yes, Zoltan is a scary brute, but he’s an ineffectual tool. As a reward for being a lousy alpha dog, he’s dispatched in the most inglorious way possible. And things don’t go smoothly for the lamia either. His demise happens off the page; he doesn’t even get a memorable death scene. Oh well. All villains get the death they deserve. I guess poor Veidt Smit and Zoltan didn’t deserve much.

[Hounds of Dracula / By Ken Johnson / First Printing: October 1977 / ISBN: 9780451077394]

Bug-eyed monsters were popular in the early days of science fiction with their bulging eyes, groping tentacles and dripping ichor. Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft (among other writers) built entire careers on the endless confrontation between man and monster.

No one takes bug-eyed monsters seriously anymore. They can only be mocked or evoked in deprecation. It was more fun, however, in the old days when BEMs were featured prominently on the covers of Astounding Stories, Weird Tales and other sensational pulp magazines. That’s what the editors of this short story collection think. And I agree.

Brian Aldiss once said that science fiction was the image of the unspeakable human heart given shape as the grotesque other. And if that’s the case, then bug-eyed monsters are “the unassimilable vision of ourselves, safely distanced, invariably rejected.” As such, they’ve been an important subtextual figure of science fiction from the very beginning.

Take for example “Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim. It’s a story about an alien creature living among us in plain sight. He looks like everyone else (sort of) but he’s a loner who never fits in. Like a moth that looks like a wasp or a caterpillar that looks like an armored beetle, the creature in Wollheim’s story uses camouflage to assimilate and survive. “Even here, in the heart of the largest city in the world in swarming New York,” says the author, “the eccentric and the odd may exist unhindered.” In other words, we are all bug-eyed monsters—alone and unloved.

“The Last One Left,” by co-editors Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, is even more direct. In their story an alien invasion is taking place, and no one seems to notice—no pandemonium in the streets, no newspaper articles, no nothing. The BEMs have arrived and they’re slowly taking over the planet. But whatever. Obviously, the aliens, with their mass hypnosis and “rolicular modal control,” are superior to humans in every way. What can we do but shrug our shoulders in defeat?

These two stories, as good as they may be, are indicative of the entire collection. This isn’t a book for nostalgic readers looking for hideous creatures, Flash Gordon-like heroes and women in brass brassieres. Every author from Damon Knight (“Stranger Station”) to Isaac Asimov (“Hostess”) is trying to deconstruct the sub-genre in their own particular way. Are they successful? Probably not. You can almost see the writers (especially Poul Anderson and Robert Bloch) smirking as they pound away at their clackity typewriters.

But I would recommend checking out Bug-Eyed Monsters nonetheless. Part of understanding what we are and where we are going is understanding where we’ve been. In this way the past always inspires the future. Says the editors: “The bug-eyed monster is where science fiction has been—and in its own way it wasn’t such a bad place to be.”

[Bug-Eyed Monsters / Edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg / First Printing: 1980 / ISBN: 0156147890]

There’s a lot of bad stuff going on at the U.S.-Mexico border. Human smuggling, human trafficking, inhumane detention facilities and indefensible family separation policies are all horrible.

Things are so fucked up that cartels and coyotes are now digging tunnels from one country to the other. In theory, these subterranean passageways make it easier to sidestep ICE agents and border patrol hassles. A tunnel is especially convenient for Central and South American drug syndicates looking for a way to get their contraband into the hands of their loyal customers. If you didn’t know, the U.S. is the largest market for recreational drugs in the world. Go team!

In this novel by Gayne C. Young there’s a tunnel in progress linking “a nondescript ranch house in Mexico to a nondescript ranch house in Texas.” It’s a big commitment for the Acuña Cartel, but it’s worth every penny. “The tunnel is a sizable investment,” admits Miguel Alvarado, a high-ranking official in the organization, “but it will earn 400-to-500 times its cost once the first shipment of fentanyl makes it across the border.”

And that’s why the cartel is upset when a mysterious incident abruptly stops construction. Each day a delivery truck doesn’t drive through the underground freeway represents a loss of tens of millions of dollars. Jeff Hunter and Jarrett Taylor, two Afghanistan War veterans now employed by the drug mob, are immediately dispatched to the site. Along with an alpha team of mercenaries, their mission is to clean up the situation using any means necessary.

Initially, Hunter thinks that a rival gang is responsible for the narco tunnel mishap. Or perhaps it’s the result of overzealous immigration agents. But he’s wrong. Some type of monstrous creature is obviously attacking the diggers. Says the author: “The bodies were mutilated beyond recognition and resembled caricatures of human forms as if fashioned from a fevered dream or by evil itself. The tunnel floor was littered with dried blood, viscera and torn earth that told of struggle and carnage.”

You have to wonder: What type of animal is responsible for such slaughter? Dogs? Hyenas? Jaguars? How about a vampire-like chupacabra or a mythical jackalope? Maybe a troop of invasive Japanese snow monkeys? That’s the best (and funniest) theory.

For the record, the author never reveals what kind of monsters are down in the dig dug tunnel. He does, eventually, provide a pretty good description of them, however: “The animals resembled baboons except for the eyes, which appeared three to four times larger than they should have been on similar animals of size. Their eyes were coal black and void of pupils. Their fur was dirty white and course. Their claws were elongated, razor sharp and pale ivory in color.”

The Tunnel is written in short, rapid-fire chapters that compel readers to keep turning pages. The monsters are sufficiently scary and the subterranean world is vivid. There’s a long literary history of secret underground worlds, and this book fully embraces it. There’s also a little bit of munitions porn (chapter 27) for those of you who like that sort of thing. And finally, there are some truly laugh-out-loud moments between border agents Joel Andrews and Champe Carter. I hope the author has plans to revisit these two oddballs in future efforts.

The novel ends with a couple of burning questions: Why are these troglobites attacking people? And why did the mere presence of humans whip them into such a frenzy? The answer to both questions is simple. “They liked the taste,” says one of the mercs.

[The Tunnel / By Gayne C. Young / First Printing: June 2019 / ISBN: 9781925840797]

There’s nothing particularly funny about the worms in John Brosnan’s novel. They’re nasty and icky things that look like “a thick thread of dark jelly loosely packed within a transparent membrane.”

But when the worms launch a unified strike on the citizenry of London (chapter six), the author starts having a little bit of fun. Tendrils come up through the toilet to suck on sphincters. They attach themselves to boobs and they drill into eyeballs. In fact, these subterranean creatures inevitably find a way to attack their victims in the most indecorous manner.

It all starts when a geology team looking for a suitable place to dump nuclear waste punctures a prehistoric cocoon 500 feet below the surface. Unknowingly they release a dangerous alien organism of monstrous dimensions under London.

The worms begin their “harvest of humanity” right away. Ninety-three people (and a few cows) are killed the first night. After being dormant for 65 million years, the tendrils are hungry. Thankfully (for them) London contains a scrumptious and plentiful food supply.

Throughout the book, the creatures are repeatedly called worms. But eventually, Dr. Clive Thomas, his lab assistant and a newspaper reporter discover the truth. The worms aren’t worms at all. They’re part of one vast organism. Says the author at the end of the book: “It was a huge, repulsive jellyfish. The bulbous, spongy mass was mounted on a thick stalk from which countless tendrils protruded. Rising 400 feet above Regent Street, it looked like a gigantic phallus.”

As it turns out, the monster is a parasite from outer space, which infects planets, feeds off animal life, then goes into hibernation while it waits for new species to evolve and restock the planet. Then it wakes up. “It would explain why there are several inexplicable periods of mass extinction in our fossil records,” muses one scientist.

To destroy the monster, Dr. Thomas and a small team of solders venture forth armed with machetes, axes, sub-machine guns, flamethrowers and one chainsaw (and a dose of “Chemical X”). The giant jellyfish is destroyed, but not without a few complications.

But Londoners shouldn’t rest easy just yet. Dr. Thomas and his crew suspect there might be more Jellyfish monsters. Buried deep underground. Asleep, like this one was, but waiting for an alarm call. “It stands to reason, doesn’t it? That there’d be more than just one of them,” says a chatty medic on the last page. “I suppose so,” sighs Thomas.

[Tendrils / By John Brosnan writing as Simon Ian Childer / First Printing: January 1986 / ISBN: 9780586064375]

When did nerd culture officially begin? Maybe it started in 1977 when Star Wars (A New Hope) debuted in theaters. Or maybe it was nurtured slowly by the cumulative efforts of Doctor Who, Peter Parker, James Kirk and Kevin Smith. Author Mark Voger suggests that Comic-Con culture began way back in 1957 with the publication of Famous Monsters of Filmland #1.

Not only did Famous Monsters of Filmland coalesce a hyper fan community, but it also kicked off a creepy and kooky monster craze that lasted 16 years. The magazine was successful from the git-go and sold like wolfsbane in Vasaria. “Famous Monsters was porn for monster fans,” says Voger bluntly.

The monster craze in the U.S. was also fueled by a syndicated package of 52 Universal Studios horror films distributed to local TV stations across the country. These movies, airing late at night and hosted by a gaggle of colorful ghoulies and crypt-keepers, brought monsters to the mainstream.

No one could have anticipated the mania that followed. Remember those torch-wielding villagers in the original Frankenstein movie? That’s how adults felt about monsters back in the 50s, says Voger. “Parents feared that monsters would give their children nightmares. Even worse, they regarded them as false idols that glorified the occult.”

But once the black cat was out of the bag, there was no turning back. Famous Monsters of Filmland, Shock TV, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Curse of Frankenstein were the harbingers of the future—a new golden age where monster nerds became friends with mummies, vampires, giant lizards and aliens from Mars.

Voger was a kid during the 60s and he experienced the monster invasion firsthand. As such, Monster Mash is both a primer and a nostalgic romp chock-full of funny antidotes, interviews and amazing images. Chats with James Warren (“The Hugh Hefner of Horror,” says Voger) and Forrest J. Ackerman are especially interesting.

The monster craze came to a crashing halt in the early 70s. Dracula was hanging out with hippies, Apes were traveling through time and Barnabas Collins was dead. When Linda Blair used a crucifix as a dildo in The Exorcist, the bloom was off the rose, says Voger.

But this is how we’ll remember the groovy age of monsters: It was a time when monsters hung out; they inhabited the same universe; they posed for group shots. They were old buddies who shared adventures like the Justice League.

Monsters made us better people. They were our friends. We identified with these deformed, hated creatures who, after all, only wanted love. More than anything else, says Voger, the monster craze was “an innocent, naïve, fun time for us dopey little kids.”

[Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957–1972 / By Mark Voger / First Printing: July 2015 / ISBN: 9781605490649]

We all know what’s coming. And it’s not going to be pretty. At some point in the future, earthquakes will rock our world. The planet’s axis will shift and the magnetism of the North and South Poles will spin out of control. Oceans will flow in new directions and land mass will change dramatically. Don’t be surprised to wake up one morning and discover entire continents under water.

But that’s not all, folks. Expect a natural disaster of this magnitude to trigger a nuclear winter. Global positioning systems will malfunction and send atomic warheads skyward—mostly toward friendly soil. The ensuing fallout will poison the atmosphere and take hundreds of years to dissipate.

That’s the situation in Radio Run, a post-apocalyptic novel with giant monsters and a Hunger Games-like twist. The year is approximately 2109, nearly forty years after earthquakes and nukes change the world forever. South America is now underwater and Arizona is an uninhabitable polar ice cap. Canada is “balmy,” and the People’s Republic of Alaska is a paradise wistfully known as New Eden.

Getting to Alaska is a problem, however. The terrain between Niagara Falls and Anchorage is a wasteland filled with giant birds, mutant insects and roving tribes of fifty-feet tall sasquatch. And don’t even think about jumping on a boat. The water is teeming with predatory fish and whales that would make Jonah flinch. Even beyond the scary cryptids, the path to New Eden winds through a fog that is thick with face-melting radiation.

Over the years, the mad scramble to get to Alaska has morphed into a top-rated game show. Each season, a handful of people are selected to participate in the hopeless adventure. Drones follow them as they stumble through the wasteland while smarmy celebrity hosts keep viewers (and gamblers) entertained in the studio. Part Battle Royale and part Naked and Afraid, Radio Run was the biggest and best game show on TV.

The parade of monsters is what you’d expect in a world awash in nuclear radiation: three-foot tall ants, eight-inch long houseflies, eagles with a wingspan of 20-feet, whales the size of islands, etc. The animals survived because something in their genes used the poison like steroids to create monster magic. They all embodied the genetic rewriting of life.

Without a doubt the most dangerous creature roaming the wasteland was the sasquatch. Fifty feet tall, its fur was coarse and thick like a bear’s quill-like pelt, but its shape and rippled muscles resembled something more like a gorilla. Most disturbing of all, says the author, its face had a recognizable human-like quality. Think about that for a moment or two.

The contestants get picked off one by one. The first guy dies when a bird opens his skull like a can opener, a parasitic plant gets the next unlucky slob and the third guy gets thrown overboard as chum. The carnage continues until two survivors eventually reach Alaska. That’s a first. Nobody has ever crossed the finish line in the history of the Radio Run TV show.

But alas, there’s bad news in Anchorage. Like Thelma and Louise, the two finalists embrace the futility of their existence in the most dramatic way possible. “This isn’t worth it,” says one of the dispirited winners. “The government poisons the planet and we have to pay? Those a-a-abominations, they chase us. Them and the birds and the wasps and we just run and run and run. That isn’t living.”

[Radio Run / By Eddie Generous / First Printing: September 2018 / ISBN: 9781925840230]

Mummies are creepy and dusty and probably smell like rotten flesh, but they aren’t very scary. Think about it, whom would you rather meet in a dark alley? Nosferatu or Imhotep?

But more than any other monster, mummies provide grist for authors to explore universal themes of life and death. Thousands of years old, mummies roam the earth, a perverse embodiment of immortal lust.

And so it is with the mummy in The Long Night of the Grave. As a priest of Ra during the Egyptian reign of Mentuhotep, Sakhtu lived outside of the law. He was persecuted during his lifetime but he knew the way to power and wealth was through life itself. “The longer you live, the more you have of both,” explains the priest’s modern day disciple. “The most powerful man is the man who outlives his enemies.”

The big question, of course, is who will do the living and who will do the dying? The ancient Egyptians found a way to extend life beyond death. If you knew the secrets, possessed the artifacts and paid attention to ceremony, you could live forever. Who cared if you were wrapped in gauze and slept in a sarcophagus?

Sakhtu is brought to the U.S. by a dilettante named Jeffrey Isle. Nobody in his family had lived beyond the age of 50 and it was his desire to use ancient dark magic to break the “curse of the Isles.” Things go sideways pretty quickly. The mummy, unchained and footloose, goes on a murderous rampage, and Isle is undone by his unchecked ambition. Spoiler alert: the kerfuffle at the end results in a Land of the Pharaohs-like climax.

There’s more to this novel than mummy mayhem, however. The author is trying to make a point about the folly of immortality. The Long Night of the Grave takes place during the late 19th century, a time when emerging technology (like electricity, automobiles and telephones) is on the horizon. Mankind is racing toward the future, and there’s no place in the world for a dusty old mummy from 2100 BC.

The mummy is a seven-foot-tall brute—“dark and black and torn from the mist by a madman’s hand.” He’s an impressive Blackshadow all right, but he’s nothing but an anachronistic curiosity. Poor ol’ Sakhtu. He used Egyptian thaumaturgy to live forever. But he couldn’t find a way to stop the hands of time from moving forward. He discovered too late that the gift of immortality was actually a curse.

[The Long Night of the Grave / By Charles L. Grant / First Printing: January 1988 / ISBN: 9780425106273]

Ben Lee and his sister Cindy believed in monsters. They’d never seen one of course, but that didn’t matter. If there were talking raccoons and seven-foot-tall ambulatory trees in outer space, then why couldn’t there be monsters on Earth?

So it didn’t surprise them too much when a blobby monster showed up in their hometown one night. Glop was vaguely human-like in shape, but it was mostly amorphous like Silly Puddy. When it moved, it walked and oozed at the same time. It left a trail of goopy footprints wherever it went.

At first, Ben and his sister were thrilled to see Glop. “We have a real live monster in town!” Cindy whooped with glee. And Ben took pictures of it with his smartphone. “It’s amazing, unbelievable, astonishing!” he concurred.

But Glop was a monster with a ferocious agenda. The first words out of its mouth were (and I quote): “Hhhhhhhuuuuumannnsssss, yyyoouuu aaarrrrrrrrre doooooooomed!” Its voice was like a creaky door being opened slowly, mixed with the bubbling sounds of a pot of boiling water. Clearly the town of Highland Park was in grave danger.

For help, the kids send a desperate text to Kid Kaiju, the world’s #1 monster expert. Thankfully, Kaiju responds with a flurry of timely messages. He knew the origin of Glop and he knew how to stop it. Doing so, however, was going to be a huge challenge for Ben and Cindy.

Pursued by the icky monster, the brother and sister team dashed through the woods, traipsed across a graveyard and sought shelter in a haunted house. Ultimately they found themselves on the campus of Jacob Kurtzberg Middle School. Named after Jack “King of Monsters” Kirby, the school held the secret to defeating Glop.

In the end, the kids don’t totally vanquish Glop (the author wisely makes sure to keep the door open for a sequel). But with the help of Kid Kaiju, a fire-breathing dragon named Slizzik and the school’s weirdo art teacher, they found a way to temporarily halt the monster’s creeping horror.

Of the bunch, the biggest hero of the book was undoubtedly little Cindy. Her brother had a giant monster rep, but he was an ineffectual hero who shrieked in terror at the sight of a single rat. More than a few times, Cindy tricked the monster and saved her brother’s life. She even selflessly protected him from the neighborhood bully. She was more than a tagalong sidekick. She was a pint-sized Buffy Summers.

Glop was stopped but questions remained. “What was that thing?” asked Ben in the penultimate chapter. Was it the Blob? Hedorah? Slimer? Or what? Did it come from Transylvania or outer space? What the Glop?! “There are some things you’re just better off not knowing about,” said his art teacher cryptically. “And this is one of them.”

[Marvel Monsters Unleashed: Beware the Glop! / By Steve Behling / First Printing: July 2017 / ISBN: 9781368002479]