This is a collection of speculative fiction stories featuring monsters and published between around 1900 and 1960. The only one I had read before was Eric Frank Russell's "The Witness" (which happens to be one of my favourite reads from him).

The presentation was tidy. In contrast to some other "Golden Oldie" collections, I only noticed a couple of typos. As we'd expect from a collection spanning six decades, the stories were of variable flavours and styles, some feeling very "What Ho! Jolly Old London's under attack again!" and others (such as James White's "Resident Physician") feeling considerably more modern.

One thing I noticed with the earlier stories in the book, was that they seemed to explore an idea about a monster/alien/"other" with the humans just going along for the ride without much influence. That is, the characters were only there to observe or explain the author's idea, or to be victims/recipients of the monsters' actions. For me, it made the reading feel dry and almost like a thought experiment. Given the age of the works, perhaps that's what they were at the time.

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Title: Menace of the Monster
Series: British Library Science Fiction Classics
Editor: Mike Ashley
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 266
Words: 98.5K

Synopsis:

From Isfdb.org

The War of the Worlds (abridgement) • (1920) • short story by H. G. Wells

The Cloud Men • (1911) • short fiction by Owen Oliver

The Dragon of St. Pauls • (1899) • short fiction by Reginald Bacchus and C. Ranger Gull

De Profundis • (1914) • short fiction by Coutts Brisbane

Dagon • (1919) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft

In Amundsen's Tent • (1928) • novelette by John Martin Leahy

King Kong • (1933) • short story by Draycot M. Dell and Edgar Wallace

The Monster from Nowhere • (1939) • short story by Nelson S. Bond

Discord in Scarlet • [Space Beagle] • (1939) • novelette by A. E. van Vogt

Monster • (1950) • short story by John Christopher

Resident Physician • [Sector General] • (1961) • novelette by James White

Personal Monster • (1955) • short story by Idris Seabright

Alien Invasion • (1954) • short story by Marcia Kamien

The Witness • (1951) • novelette by Eric Frank Russell

My Thoughts:

I went into this knowing that Ashley was going to blab before each story. Thankfully, there was a LOT less sociocultural BS than in the previous book. He actually talked about the stories and authors as stories and authors instead of as representative of this or that modern idea. I didn't want to stuff a sock down his throat and choke him to death so that was quite the improvement from last time :-)

With that being said, the stories here weren't quite as engaging, hence the 3.5star rating. The War of the Worlds abridgement was just too short. It did make me want to seek out the full version though, so that's something. King Kong was a short story based on the screen play and man, did it feel like it. I'll take Jackson's Director's Cut of the movie any day. I'd read several others of these throughout the years so that familiarity helped ease me along.

Overall, this series is exposing me to authors that have disappeared or fallen out of the knowledge of even the SF community and it is very interesting to read such things. I like the short story format, as I'm not getting bogged down because an author can't shut the feth up. I didn't even realize how much I am starting to hate modern authors because of their bleeding wordiness until I started reading more short stories and the distillation of an idea instead of an expansion of the idea. As much as I loved Sanderson when he started, I'm not sure I can read much more by him. And don't get me started on jackasses like Gwynne who think they're somebody and have the right to pen tomes as newbie authors.

To end, this one went MUCH better even while some of the stories weren't as good. I hope things can stay at this level.

★★★✬☆ ( )