Friday, November 20, 2009

STRANGE MONSTERS OF THE RECENT PAST

By Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop seems to be an expert on everything just so he can write about it. It’s a bit like encountering a strange eclectic encyclopedia where the entries come to life and hold a booze party in the subconscious.

In this case the entries include Monster movies as seen from the point of view of the last survivor of humanity. A pair of travelers journey through a landscape created by Heironymous Bosch. There’s a loving tribute to the publishing empires of Onitsha, Nigeria (I’m not making that up either). The icing on this cake is “A Dozen Tough Jobs” detailing Hercules’ adventures in rural Mississippi. Strange Monsters is about as weird and weird fiction can get and highly enjoyable.

-Dave Hardy



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