/lit/ - Literature

One hundred monsters to identify. (More or less one hundred. Sometimes they come in pairs.) Non-human (with a couple of borderline cases). Menacing/antagonistic (or at least considered so by the characters). A few curveballs (‘THE REAL MONSTER, BOYS AND GIRLS, WAS OUR OWN FEAR AND HATRED OF THE UNKNOWN’), but mostly they're good solid monsters who need killing. Obviously we're spending more time than usual in the sleazier districts of the canon, but it's not my fault that e.g. Jane Austen considered monsters beneath her.

Translations marked [*]. Where the original author(s) are unknown, the translator is credited.

Hints on request.


Authors:

Douglas Adams, Richard Adams, A. Afanasyev, Dante Alighieri, Poul Anderson

Clive Barker, J. M. Barrie, Charles Beaumont, Peter Benchley, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Brennan, Flann O'Brien, Fredric Brown, Mikhail Bulgakov, John Bunyan, Robert Burns, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Richard Burton

James Branch Cabell, John W. Campbell, Lewis Carroll, Miguel Cervantes, Michael Crichton

Roald Dahl, Philip K. Dick, Arthur Conan Doyle

Harlan Ellison, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, William Faulkner, Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman, John Gardener, William Golding, Arthur Gordon, Ursula Le Guin

Thomas Harris, Seamus Heaney, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Herbert, Hesiod, Russell Hoban, William Hope Hodgson, E. T. A. Hoffman, James Hogg, Homer, Horace, Clemence Houseman, Robert E. Howard, Ted Hughes

Washington Irving, Isodore of Seville, Shirley Jackson, Henry James, Tove Jansson, John the Divine, Robert Jordan

Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, R. A. Lafferty, Laurie Lee, Stanislaw Lem, C. S. Lewis, Barry B. Longyear, H. P. Lovecraft

Richard Matheson, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, Walter Miller, A. A. Milne, John Milton

Ovid

Edgar Allan Poe, Beatrix Potter, Terry Pratchett

Rudolf Erich Raspe, Anne Rice, Patrick Rothfuss, J. K. Rowling

Saki, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Dan Simmons, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Theodore Sturgeon, Snorri Sturluson, Lord Tennyson, J. R. R. Tolkien

Jack Vance, Jules Verne, A. E. Van Vogt

H. G. Wells, E. B. White, Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe, John Wyndham

Roger Zelazny

1)
“You can’t live in the woods,” said Van Cheele.
“They are very nice woods,” said the boy, with a touch of patronage in his voice.
“But where do you sleep at night?”
“I don’t sleep at night; that’s my busiest time.”
Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling with a problem that was eluding him.
“What do you feed on?” he asked.
“Flesh,” said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish, as if he were tasting it.


2)
The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying but a law-abiding animal. At the first shriek from the conductress it retreated, stepped off the platform and sat down at the tramstop, stroking its whiskers with the ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped onto the coupling-hook of the last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks.

[*]


3)
What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it.

It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure.


4)
A monster grim and huge, and swift and strong:
Her’s were three heads: a glaring lion’s one:
One of a goat: a mighty snake’s the third:
In front the lion threatened, and behind
The serpent, and the goat was in the midst,
Exhaling fierce the strength of burning flame.

[*]


5)
He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice — a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice — spoke to him from inside the stormdrain.

“Hi, Georgie,” it said.

6)
For the first time, the woman felt fear, though she did not know why. Adrenaline shot through her trunk and her limbs, generating a tingling heat and urging her to swim faster. She guessed that she was fifty yards from shore. She could see the line of white foam where the waves broke on the beach. She saw the lights in the house, and for a comforting moment she thought she saw someone pass by one of the windows.


7)
Up. Two hundred and eighty pounds from the floor to his chest in one heave. Now over his head.

“WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?”

Startled by the voice, he nearly dropped the weight, swayed beneath it. Down. The plates thudded and clanked on the floor.

He turned, his great arms hanging, and stared in the direction of the voice.

“WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?”


8)
GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. [...] As late as the beginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.


9)
The Thing cannot be described — there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant?


10)
“If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.”

11)
Oh, the explorers had their introduction to the thieving of the little animals within five minutes of planet-landing. The creatures came into the ship itself and got into places that should have been impossible to them. They stole Selma’s candy and Dixie’s snuff. They stole (by drinking it on the spot) George Mahoon’s “He-Man Scent — Cinnamon,” thirteen bottles of it, but they did not drink any of the other scents. They went wild over mustard, emptying whole containers of it and then wheezing in delicious agony from the effect. Elton Fad tried to drive them away with heavy sticks. They fastened onto the sticks while he swung them and ate them right up to his hands. They were funny, but they could become infuriating. They stole six of Dixie Late-Lark’s French horror story novels. That wouldn’t be fatal to her. She had lots of them.


12)
“Some day,” said Smee, “the clock will run down, and then he’ll get you.”


13)
. . . As when the wherries berth
With part in water still, and part on shore;
And as, among the hard-imbibing Goths,

The beaver posts himself to practice war —
So lay that worst of monsters, on the lip
Of stone which hemmed the sandy desert floor.

Suspended in the void, a pliant whip,
His tail swam sinuous, holding up the fork
Which, venomed as in scorpions, barbed the tip.

[*]


14)
I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count’s voice saying to me, “Good-morning.” I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me.


15)
He looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nag savage.

‘It must be the head,’ he said at last; ‘the head above the hood; and when I am once there, I must not let go.’

Then he jumped.

16)
Welcome to my poor house. I cannot say whether there is fur on my wife's legs for I have never seen them nor do I intend to commit myself to the folly of looking at them. In any event and in all politeness — nothing would be further from me than to insult a guest — I deem the point you have made as unimportant because there is surely nothing in the old world to prevent a deceitful kangaroo from shaving the hair off her legs, assuming she is a woman.


17)
Lith sat on her couch near the candles, weaving a cap from frogskins. The door to her hut was barred, the windows shuttered. Outside, Thamber Meadow dwelled in darkness.

A scrape at her door, a creak as the lock was tested. Lith became rigid and stared at the door.

A voice said, “Tonight, O Lith, tonight it is two long bright threads for you. Two because the eyes were so great, so large, so golden . . . ”


18)
The man and the woman said to the clevver looking bloak, ‘Do you know how to make fire?’
The clevver looking bloak said, ‘O yes if I know any thing I know that right a nuff. Fires my middl name you myt say.’
The man and the woman said, ‘Wud you make a littl fire then weare freazing of the col.’
The clevver looking bloak said, ‘That for you and what for me?’


19)
Methought a cloud had come over the sun, but it was the season of summer; so I marvelled at this and lifting my head looked steadfastly at the sky, when I saw that the cloud was none other than an enormous bird, of gigantic girth and inordinately wide of wing which, as it flew through the air, veiled the sun and hid it from the island. At this sight my wonder redoubled and I remembered a story —

[*]


20)
Before we could reach her, she had lifted the bar. The door swung back.

The beast that waited there stood upon four legs; even so, its hulking shoulders were as high as my head. Its own head was carried low, with the tips of its ears below the crest of fur that topped its back. In the firelight, its teeth gleamed white and its eyes glowed red.

21)
“I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was half way up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’”


22)
Now, the monster was hideous to behold: he was clothed with scales like a fish, and they are his pride; he had wings like a dragon, and feet like a bear, and out of his belly came fire and smoke; and his mouth was as the mouth of a lion.


23)
The hydra is a dragon with many heads; this kind of dragon was in the Lernean swamp in the province of Arcadia. It is called excetra in Latin, because when one head is ‘cut off, three’ (caesus tria) more grow back. But this is only a story; for it happens that Hydra was a place that spewed out floods that devastated the neighboring city. If one outlet for the water were closed up in this Hydra, many others would burst forth. When Hercules saw this he dried up the place itself and thus closed up the path of the floods. Hydra is named from ‘water’.

[*]


24)
Quickly the one who haunted these waters,
who had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds
for a hundred seasons, sensed a human
observing her outlandish lair from above.
So she lunged and clutched and managed to catch him
in her brutal grip; but his body, for all that,
remained unscathed: the mesh of the chain-mail
saved him on the outside. Her savage talons
failed to rip the web of his war-shirt.

[*]


25)
A fox and a wolf, thought Richard, involuntarily. The man in front, the fox, was a little shorter than Richard. He had lank, greasy hair, of an unlikely orange color, and a pallid complexion; as Richard opened the door, he smiled, widely, and just a fraction too late, with teeth that looked like an accident in a graveyard. “A good morrow to you, good sir,” he said, “on this fine and beautiful day.”

26)
The spider came about eleven o'clock.

He didn't know it was eleven, but there was still the heavy thudding of footsteps overhead, and he knew Lou was usually in bed by midnight.

He listened to the sluggish rasping of the spider across the box top, down one side, up another, searching with terrible patience for an opening.


27)
They, who have seen her, own, they ne'er did trace
More moving features in a sweeter face.
Yet above all, her length of hair, they own,
In golden ringlets wav'd, and graceful shone.
Her Neptune saw, and with such beauties fir'd,
Resolv'd to compass, what his soul desir'd.
In chaste Minerva's fane, he, lustful, stay'd,
And seiz'd, and rifled the young, blushing maid.
The bashful Goddess turn'd her eyes away,
Nor durst such bold impurity survey;
But on the ravish'd virgin vengeance takes,
Her shining hair is chang'd to hissing snakes.

[*]


28)
“It was very noisy and it was yellow — as yellow as charlock: and in front there was a great silver, shining thing that it held in its huge front paws. I don’t know how to describe it to you . . . ”


29)
His back was as blue as a sword fish's and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a sword fish except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man's fingers when they are crisped like claws.


30)
Flecks of dust shadowed the sand around the crawler now. The big machine began to tip down to the right. A gigantic sand whirlpool began forming there to the right of the crawler. It moved faster and faster. Sand and dust filled the air now for hundreds of meters around.

Then they saw it!

A wide hole emerged from the sand. Sunlight flashed from glistening white spokes within it.

31)
Steadily, I neared the great building. Then, all at once, something caught my vision, something that came round one of the huge buttresses of the House, and so into full view. It was a gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright, after the manner of a man. It was quite unclothed, and had a remarkable luminous appearance. Yet it was the face that attracted and frightened me the most. It was the face of a swine.

Silently, intently, I watched this horrible creature, and forgot my fear, momentarily, in my interest in its movements. It was making its way, cumbrously round the building, stopping as it came to each window to peer in and shake at the bars, with which — as in this house — they were protected; and whenever it came to a door, it would push at it, fingering the fastening stealthily. Evidently, it was searching for an ingress into the House . . .


32)
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!


33)
She was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her — with the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and understand it — an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short.


34)
“At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late . . . ”


35)
Quietly she led the way along a passage to a baize-covered door. As she opened it there was a swish, and something slapped across the door and frame, an inch or so above her head. Hurriedly she pulled the door shut again and turned wide-eyed to me.

“There’s one in the hall,” she said.

36)
After sailing three months we knew not where, being still without compass, we arrived in a sea which appeared to be almost black: upon tasting it we found it most excellent wine, and had great difficulty to keep the sailors from getting drunk with it: however, in a few hours we found ourselves surrounded by whales and other animals of an immense magnitude, one of which appeared to be too large for the eye to form a judgment of: we did not see him till we were close to him. This monster drew our ship, with all her masts standing, and sails bent, by suction into his mouth, between his teeth, which were much larger and taller than the mast of a first-rate man-of-war.


37)
Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Fawkes swaying on his shoulder.

Slytherin’s gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.

And something was stirring inside the statue’s mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.


38)
“Do you understand?” the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy — the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. “Do you even know who we are?” it asked.


39)
Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.


40)
Deliberately, Carson picked up the rock that had been his only weapon, then tossed it down again in a gesture of relinquishment and raised his empty hands, palms up, before him.

He spoke aloud, knowing that although the words would be meaningless to the creature before him, speaking them would focus his own thoughts more completely upon the message.

‘Can we not have peace between us?’ he said, his voice strange in the stillness.

41)
Well, one very hot morning — my fourth, I think — as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing. Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.


42)
Then fell Canidia, gnawing lengthy nail
With livid tooth:— what then
Did she declaim? What did she not? — ‘Oh, thou
That witness well my deeds,
Thou, night and thou, Diana, silent queen
Above our secret rites,—
Assist me! Let your power and anger crush
The houses of my foes!

[*]


43)
That strange youth and I approached each other in silence, and slowly, with our eyes fixed on each other's eyes. We approached till not more than a yard intervened between us, and then stood still and gazed, measuring each other from head to foot. What was my astonishment on perceiving that he was the same being as myself! The clothes were the same to the smallest item. The form was the same; the apparent age; the colour of the hair; the eyes; and, as far as recollection could serve me from viewing my own features in a glass, the features too were the very same.


44)
Outside the door a clear mellow voice was calling. Tyr's bark made the words undistinguishable. No one offered to stir towards the door before Sweyn.

He stalked down the room resolutely, lifted the latch, and swung back the door.

A white-robed woman glided in.

No wraith! Living — beautiful — young.

Tyr leapt upon her.


45)
“It can’t get in,” Theodora was whispering over and over, her eyes on the door, “it can’t get in, don’t let it get in, it can’t get in — ” The shaking stopped, the door was quiet, and a little caressing touch began on the doorknob, feeling intimately and softly . . .

46)
Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow flurries over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following the tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that ‘stretch’ of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points. But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had gone utterly awry, was that Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing intervals . . .


47)
“Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.”

[*]


48)
She considered the Troll King could not well molest them. “For now you have his charmed sword, Caliburn, the only weapon with which Thragnar can be slain. Besides, the sign of the cross he cannot pass. He beholds and trembles.”

“My dear Princess, he has to push up the trapdoor from beneath, and the cross, being tied to the trapdoor, is promptly moved out of his way. Failing this expedient, he can always come out of the cave by the other opening, through which I entered. I deduce that if this Thragnar has any intelligence at all, and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will presently be at hand.”


49)
In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling.


50)
He started to say something again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved towards the table and reached for the overhead cord.

At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the table to grasp the edge. “Dear God!” he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the vampire.

51)
“What does the Questing Beast look like?”

“Ah, we call it the Beast Glatisant, you know,” replied the monarch, assuming a learned air and beginning to speak quite volubly. “Now the Beast Glatisant, or, as we say in English, the Questing Beast — you may call it either,” he added graciously — “this Beast has the head of a serpent, ah, and the body of a libbard, the haunches of a lion, and he is footed like a hart. Wherever this beast goes he makes a noise in his belly as it had been the noise of thirty couple of hounds questing.

“Except when he is drinking, of course,” added the King.


52)
A snakelike head as long as a man thrust out of the new-formed crevice, white-scaled above a toothy mouth, the staring eyes blue and occluded. It waved sinuously from side to side on its long neck, as though curiously observing the minute creatures who had awakened it from years-long slumber. Then, terrifyingly swift, it darted out and caught one of the huntsmen in its jaws . . .


53)
The doe in the clearing goes stiff at sight of my horridness, then remembers her legs and is gone. It makes me cross. “Blind prejudice!” I bawl at the splintered sunlight where half a second ago she stood. I wring my fingers, put on a long face. “Ah, the unfairness of everything,” I say, and shake my head. It is a matter of fact that I have never killed a deer in all my life, and never will. Cows have more meat and, locked up in pens, are easier to catch.


54)
It was a very small stuffy fusty room, with boards, and rafters, and cobwebs, and lath and plaster.

Opposite to him — as far away as he could sit — was an enormous rat.

“What do you mean by tumbling into my bed all covered with smuts?” said the rat, chattering his teeth.


55)
Sir John noticed two black objects lying close together in the lowest part of the icy depression — dark stones perhaps? Buttons or coins left behind as remembrance of Lieutenant Gore by some seaman filing by the burial site precisely a week ago? And in the dim, shifting light of the snowstorm the tiny black circles, all but invisible unless one knew exactly where to look, seemed to stare back at Sir John with something like sad reproach. He wondered if by some fluke of climate two tiny openings to the sea itself had remained open during all the intervening freeze and snow, thus revealing these two tiny circles of black water against the grey ice.

The black circles blinked.

“Ah . . . Sergeant . . . ,” began Sir John.

56)
Tim scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down hard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves...

He stopped. There was something beyond the leaves.

Tim looked up, higher.

Behind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn’t a tree...


57)
She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and carries off a man in each mouth.

[*]


58)
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge;
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. —


59)
Meanwhile his sister wandered a while underground, when lo — a hut stands on chicken legs, turning round and round in place. “Little hut, O little hut! Stand me the old way, backside to the trees, your face to me.” The hut stood still, the doors opened. In the hut sits a fair maiden, embroidering a hand-towel with silver and gold. She greeted the guest kindly, then sighed and said: “Sweetheart, sister! How wonderful that you’ve come. I will shelter you and look after you while my mother is away; but when she comes home, there will be trouble for both of us, because she’s a witch!”

[*]


60)
It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.

61)
“Don’t touch the bed! For God’s sake don’t touch the bed!” He was still speaking like he’d been shot in the stomach and I could see him lying there on his back with a single sheet covering three quarters of his body. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas with blue, brown, and white stripes, and he was sweating terribly. It was a hot night and I was sweating a little myself, but not like Harry. His whole face was wet and the pillow around his head was sodden with moisture. It looked like a bad go of malaria to me.

“What is it, Harry?”

“A krait,” he said.


62)
I passed a Brother’s cell and listened, then another; then I paused. A thick door, made of oak or pine, was locked before me. Behind it were the screams.

A chill went through me on the edge of those unutterable shrieks of hopeless, helpless anguish, and for a moment I considered turning back —not to my room, not to my bed of straw, but back into the open world. But duty held me. I took a breath and walked up to the narrow bar-crossed window and looked in.


63)
He stumbled over something bulky and yielding. Bending close in the dim starlight, he made out a limp shape on the ground. It was the dog that guarded the gardens, and it was dead. Its neck was broken and it bore what seemed to be the marks of great fangs. Murilo felt that no human being had done this. The beast had met a monster more savage than itself.


64)
. . . a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous . . .


65)
So down, under, and away. I followed a decent cast about two hundred-ninety meters out. The snaking cables burned black to my left and I paced their undulations from the yellowgreen down into the darkness. Soundless lay the wet night, and I bent my way through it like a cock-eyed comet, bright tail before.

I caught the line, slick and smooth, and began baiting. An icy world swept by me then, ankles to head. It was a draft, as if someone had opened a big door beneath me. I wasn’t drifting downwards that fast either.

Which meant that something might be moving up, something big enough to displace a lot of water . . .

66)
The rain poured down. Hogarth’s father drove hard. The headlights lit up the road and bushes.

Suddenly – two headlamps in a tall treetop at the roadside ahead. Headlamps in a treetop? How?

Hogarth’s father slowed, peering up to see what the lights might be, up there in the treetop.

As he slowed, a giant iron foot came down in the middle of the road, a foot as big as a single bed. And the headlamps came down closer. And a giant hand reached down towards the windshield.


67)
She was not particularly big and didn’t look dangerous either, but you felt that she was terribly evil and would wait for ever. And that was awful.

Nobody plucked up enough courage to attack.

She sat there for a while, and then slid away into the darkness. But where she had been sitting the ground was frozen!

[*]


68)
Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies’ hair. One could see the 250 air holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster’s mouth, a horned beak like a parrot’s, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears. What a freak of nature, a bird’s beak on a mollusc! . . .

[*]


69)
He padded along on tensed paws — through the salon — into the next corridor — and came to the first bedroom door. It stood half open. One swift flow of synchronized muscles, one swiftly lashing tentacle that caught the unresisting throat of the sleeping man, crushing it; and the lifeless head rolled crazily.

Seven bedrooms; seven dead men. It was the seventh taste of murder that brought a sudden return of lust, a pure, unbounded desire to kill, return of a millennium-old habit of destroying everything containing the precious id.


70)
Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams.

71)
“Put them down,” said a gentle voice.
Hung high, Jim and Will glanced over at a second man standing tall beyond the chains.
“Down,” he said again.
And they were carried through the brass forest of wild but uncomplaining brutes and set in the dust.
“We were — ” said Will.
“Curious?” This second man was tall as a lamp post. His pale face, lunar pockmarks denting it, cast light on those who stood below.


72)
He bound himself together with his will, fused his fear and loathing into a hatred, and stood up. He took two leaden steps forward.

Behind them the silver of moon had drawn clear of the horizon. Before them, something like a great ape was sitting asleep with its head between its knees. Then the wind roared in the forest, there was confusion in the darkness and the creature lifted its head, holding toward them the ruin of a face.


73)
. . . and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.


74)
I had heard of him often; now I saw him at last, striding jerkily down the street. Old as a god, wearing his chains like a robe, he exuded a sharp whiff of salt, and every few steps he sniffed at the air as though seeking some friend or victim. But he walked alone; he encountered no one, he passed through an empty village. Daughters and wives peeped from darkened bedrooms, men waited in the shadows with axes. Meanwhile, reeking with power and white in the moon, he went his awesome way . . .


75)
It began to seem to him that he had walked forever and would walk forever beside this silent being through a silent darkening land. Caution and intention were dulled in him. He walked as in a long, long dream, going no place.

The otak stirred in his pocket, and a little vague fear also woke and stirred in his mind. He forced himself to speak. “Darkness comes, and snow. How far, Skiorh?”

After a pause the other answered, without turning, “Not far.”

But his voice sounded not like a man’s voice, but like a beast, hoarse and lipless, that tries to speak.

76)
A certain generous impatience has prevented me from learning to read. Sometimes I regret that, because the nights and the days are long.

Of course I do not lack for distractions. Sometimes I run like a charging ram through the halls of stone until I tumble dizzily to the ground; sometimes I crouch in the shadow of a wellhead or at a corner in one of the corridors and pretend I am being hunted . . .

[*]


77)
Altogether he was a most disagreeable and horribly ugly figure; but what we children detested most of all was his big coarse hairy hands; we could never fancy anything that he had once touched. This he had noticed; and so, whenever our good mother quietly placed a piece of cake or sweet fruit on our plates, he delighted to touch it under some pretext or other, until the bright tears stood in our eyes, and from disgust and loathing we lost the enjoyment of the tit-bit that was intended to please us.

[*]


78)
A straight metal rod had been run through my sleeves and my wrists tied to it. As my tears cleared the sand from my eyes, I could see the Drac sitting on a smooth black boulder looking at me.


79)
A wolf’s muzzle jutted out below sunken eyes. Flat, emotionless eyes, and all too human. Hairy, pointed ears twitched incessantly. It stepped over one of its dead companions on sharp goat hooves. The same black mail the others wore rasped against leather trousers, and one of the huge, scythe-curved swords swung at its side.


80)
Behind him in the channel he heard the porpoise blow again, nearer now. He frowned in the darkness. If the porpoise chose to fish this area, the mullet would scatter and vanish. There was no time to lose.

A school of sardines surfaced suddenly, skittering along like drops of mercury. Something, perhaps the shadow of the skiff, had frightened them. The old dock loomed very close. A mullet broke water just too far away; then another, nearer. The man marked the spreading ripples and decided to wait no longer.

He swung back the net, heavier now that it was wet. He had to turn his head, but out of the corner of his eye he saw two swirls in the black water just off the starboard bow. They were about eight feet apart, and they had the sluggish, oily look that marks the presence of something big just below the surface. His conscious mind had no time to function, but instinct told him that the net was wide enough to cover both swirls if he could alter the direction of his cast. He could not halt the swing, but he shifted his feet slightly and made the cast off-balance. He saw the net shoot forward, flare into an oval, and drop just where he wanted it.

81)
“It’s a dragon,” Denna whispered. “Tehlu hold and overroll us. It’s a dragon.”
“It’s not a dragon,” I said. “There’s no such thing as dragons.”
“Look at it!” she hissed at me. “It’s right there! Look at the huge goddamn dragon!”


82)
The beast had been thawing for nearly eighteen hours now. He poked at it with an unconscious caution; the flesh was no longer hard as armor plate, but had assumed a rubbery texture. It looked like wet, blue rubber glistening under droplets of water like little round jewels in the glare of the gasoline pressure lantern.


83)
. . . . . . Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.


84)
Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.


85)
What was the dream? Or the vision or whatever it was.

I saw through something like a judas hole into this world where there were sentinels standing at a gate and I knew that beyond the gate was something terrible and that it had power over me.

Something terrible.

Yes. A being. A presence. And that the search for shelter and for a covenant among us was simply to elude this baleful thing of which we were in endless fear and yet of which we had no knowledge.

You were how old?

Ten. I think ten.

Did you have this vision again?

No. There was nothing else to see. The keepers at the gate saw me and they gestured among themselves and then all of that went dark and I never saw it again. I called it the Archatron.

The presence beyond the gate.

The presence beyond the gate.

And it was shrouded away.

Yes.

But nothing is changed.

Nothing is changed. I wish it were a dream and I could wake. I wish I could forget it but I cant. I wish I could be who I was before but I never will be.

86)
The monster lay in the water. It neither liked nor disliked this new element. It rested on the bottom, its massive head a foot beneath the surface, and it curiously considered the facts that it had garnered.


87)
‘ . . . I remember laughing with you once at a new little calf striving to use its wobbly legs, and the wind in our faces and sun a-sparkle on waves when we went sailing, and deep drinking at Yule when storms howled outside the warm hall, and swimming and running and shouting with you, brother. Now it is all over, you are a stiffened corpse and I gang my own dark way – but sleep well . . . ’


88)
Then Bond heard something he had never heard before — the sound of the hair on his head rasping up on the pillow. Bond analysed the noise. It couldn't be! It simply couldn't! Yes, his hair was standing on end. Bond could even feel the cool air reaching his scalp between the hairs. How extraordinary! How very extraordinary! He had always thought it was a figure of speech. But why? Why was it happening to him?

The thing on his leg moved. Suddenly Bond realized that he was afraid, terrified. His instincts, even before they had communicated with his brain, had told his body that he had a centipede on him.


89)
. . . . faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.


90)
The ghastly stench became stronger, and now he was sure that he could hear a strange sliding, slithering sound in the black shadows beyond the remaining spark of firelight.

He stood frozen in absolute helpless panic as the tiny fire smouldered down into darkness.

At the last instant a charred bit of wood broke apart, sending up a few sparks, and in that flicker of final light he glimpsed the horror.

It had already glided out of the bushes and now it rushed across the small clearing with nightmare speed.

91)
Grasping the sill I pulled myself up to a sitting posture without looking into the building, and gazed down at the baffled animal beneath me. My exultation was short-lived, however, for scarcely had I gained a secure seat upon the sill than a huge hand grasped me by the neck from behind and dragged me violently into the room. Here I was thrown upon my back, and beheld standing over me a colossal ape-like creature, white and hairless except for an enormous shock of bristly hair upon its head.


92)
And then he had a Clever Idea. He would go up very quietly to the Six Pine Trees now, peep very cautiously into the Trap, and see if there was a Heffalump there. And if there was, he would go back to bed, and if there wasn't, he wouldn't.

So off he went. At first he thought that there wouldn't be a Heffalump in the Trap, and then he thought that there would, and as he got nearer he was sure that there would, because he could hear it heffalumping about it like anything.


93)
You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!


94)
Then they went out into the lake called Amsvartner, to the holm (rocky island) called Lyngve, and called the wolf to go with them. They showed him the silken band and bade him break it, saying that it was somewhat stronger than its thinness would lead one to suppose.

[*]


95)
The crowd moved closer in the pouring rain.
Now that all the control was gone the Thing was dissolving into its component molecules, that were washing into the gutters and down to the river and out into the cold depths of the sea.
“It’s deliquescing,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“Is it?” said the Chair. “I thought that it was some kind of shop.”
He prodded it with his foot.
“Careful,” said the Dean. “That is not dead which can eternal lie.”
The Chair studied it.
“It looks bloody dead to me,” he said. “Hang on — there’s something moving — ”
One of the outflung tentacles slumped aside.
“Did it land on someone?” said the Dean.
It did. They pulled out the twitching body of Ponder Stibbons, and prodded and patted him in a well-meant way until he opened his eyes.
“What happened?” he said.
“A fifty-foot monster fell on you,” said the Dean, simply. “Are you, er, all right?”

96)
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

[*]


97)
Lightfoot dropped to one knee and squeezed the trigger of the .45; the Fnool, in the doorway of the ’copter, pitched head-forward and lay with its briefcase beside it. The other two Fnools watched as Lightfoot cautiously kicked the briefcase away.

“Young,” one of the remaining Fnools said, “but with quick reflexes. Did you see the way he dropped on one knee?”

“Terrans are no joke,” the other agreed. “We’ve got an uphill battle ahead of us.”


98)
The second volume of Hughes and Eugel, which I was still abstractedly thumbing through, opened with a taxonomy that was as original as it was amusing. A classification table showed the following:

Type: Polytheria
Order: Syncytialia
Class: Metamorpha.

It was as if we knew goodness knows how many specimens, whereas in reality there was still only one, which admittedly weighted seventeen billion tons.

[*]


99)
Gathering fury, Grumbler stirred on the crag, and lowered the black maw of a grenade launcher.

“I made you,” came the meaningless noise.


100)
He only heard the drumming of the woodpecker stop short off, and knew that the bear was looking at him. He never saw it. He did not know whether it was facing him from the cane or behind him. He did not move, holding the useless gun which he knew now he would never fire at it, now or ever, tasting in his saliva that taint of brass which he had smelled in the huddled dogs when he peered under the kitchen.

Then it was gone.

5) It
14) Dracula
19) Sinbad the Sailor observing a roc?
27) Medusa from Metamorphoses?
29) Old Man and the Sea
32) The Jabberwock
37) The basilisk inside the Chamber of Secrets
39) Frankenstein's creation
51) Once and Future King?
66) The Iron Giant?
83) Satan from Paradise Lost
94) Fenrir from the Prose Edda?

You've put effort into this thread so it deserves a reply. Even if this is all copied from somewhere.
5) IT
9) Call of Cthulhu
10) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
14) Dracula
31) The House on the Borderland
32) Jabberwocky
34) I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
37) The Chamber of Secrets
46) The Wendigo
55) The Terror
60) The Tempest
82) Who Goes There?
96) Revelation

>>22997901
What a fine, big duck. Ducks are woefully underrepresented on this board. And a good haul to get us up and running:

>5) It
Of course. From the book of the same name. Stephen King.

>14) Dracula
Correct. Bram Stoker.

>19) Sinbad the Sailor observing a roc?
Right. The Richard Burton translation. (He calls it a rukh but roc is the normal spelling these days.)

>27) Medusa from Metamorphoses?
Right, Book IV. The Dryden translation (but Ovid gets credited as the author since we know who he was).

>29) Old Man and the Sea
Correct. The mako shark. I didn't think the marlin the guy actually catches is really a monster since it isn't considered malevolent.

>32) The Jabberwock
Right. Lewis Carroll, Alice Through The Looking-Glass.

>37) The basilisk inside the Chamber of Secrets
Correct. J. K. Rowling making a rare appearance on /lit/.

>39) Frankenstein's creation
Right. Mary Shelley [possibly with her husband correcting the spelling].

>51) Once and Future King?
Correct, E. B. White. A strange book. It starts off with lots of wacky postmodern humour, then gets more serious.

>66) The Iron Giant?
Yup, Ted Hughes. Well the film was called The Iron Giant IIRC, but the book is the Iron Man.

>83) Satan from Paradise Lost
Yup, Milton obviously.

>94) Fenrir from the Prose Edda?
Right. Well, depends what you want to call him. I call him Fenris Wolf. But he bites Tyr's hand off either way. Snorri Sturluson wrote it.

>>22997969
>You've put effort into this thread so it deserves a reply. Even if this is all copied from somewhere.
All my quizzes are guaranteed made from scratch with the freshest ingredients.


Another goodly haul; just one slip-up.


>5) IT
>14) Dracula
>32) Jabberwocky
37) The Chamber of Secrets
All correct although you were beaten to the punch by Duck Anon.


>9) Call of Cthulhu
Of course. If it's eldritch and indescribable, it's gotta be Howard Philips.

>10) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Right. Washington Irving. The Headless Horseman being the monster in question. I guess "Ichabod" isn't too common a name.

>31) The House on the Borderland
Correct, William Hope Hodgson. The evil swine-creature. (I mean WHH wrote the book, not WHH was a swine creature.)

>34) I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Right, Harlan Ellison. No-one said our monsterse have to be organic. AM is its name.

>46) The Wendigo
Correct. Algernon Blackwood. He wrote all sorts of monster stuff, apparently (werewolves etc).

>55) The Terror
Right, Dan Simmons. (A bit of a departure from Hyperion.) The monster hasn't got a name as I recall. It's just a giant snow monster.

>60) The Tempest
Nope, "Prospero" notwithstanding.

>82) Who Goes There?
Right, John W. Campbell. The short story that was filmed as "The Thing". Again, a no-name monster IIRC. It's just called "The Alien".

>96) Revelation
Right. The "666" beast. Author is John The Divine, as I'm sure all good devout /lit/ anons know.

>>22998046
Same Anon you replied to.
>Right, Dan Simmons. (A bit of a departure from Hyperion.) The monster hasn't got a name as I recall. It's just a giant snow monster.
The monster is referred to as the 'Tuunbaq' in the book. I'd don't believe it's a real description of an actual Esquimaux legend. It being more like Blackwoods Wendigo interpretation.

I'm not certain of these but surely:
47) Don Quixote
And my Prospero mistake:
60) Masque of Red Death

>>22998165

>47) Don Quixote
Right. I guess a windmill counts as one of those curveball not-really monsters.

>60) Masque of Red Death
That's more like it. Edgar Allan Poe.

2)
Gotta be Master and Margarita the cat Behemoth
12)
From Peter Pan, Smee talking about the clock croc
92)
My boy Winnie the Pooh looking for Heffalunps

>>22997120
>91)
John Carter meeting the white apes?

>>22997038
>17)
I think this is Dying Earth. The first book where the woman sends the bandit guy to get some eyes.

>>22997050
>30)
The sandworm from Dune.
>>22997063
>38)
Sounds like Pinhead from Hellraiser
>>22997085
This is a guess but one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park
>>22997092
>70)
I think this might be the beginning of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde
>>22997109
>84)
Hound of Baskerville?
>>22997120
>93)
Caliban from The Tempest

>>22998544
>This is a guess but one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park
For 56)

>>22998402

>2)
>Gotta be Master and Margarita the cat Behemoth
Gotta be and is. Mikhail Bulgakov.

>12)
>From Peter Pan, Smee talking about the clock croc
Correct. J. M. Barrie.

>92)
>My boy Winnie the Pooh looking for Heffalunps
Pretty much. It's A. A.Milne, and the monster is the Heffalump, but the character involved is Piglet. (He finds a Heffalump in the trap except it's actually Pooh with a honey jar on his head.)

>>22998481

>91)
>John Carter meeting the white apes?
Correct. The first book (A Princess of Mars). Edgar Rice Burroughs.

>>22997054
James, Turn of the Screw (forget the maid's name)
>>22997085
56)
Scylla from Homer, The Odyssey
59)
Baba Yaga, Afanasyev (don't quite know which story in particular)
>>22997102
76)
Minotaur, from Borges (House of Asterion)
77)
Copelius (Coppelius?), from Hoffmann, The Sandman

Always glad to see these threads OP

>>22998617
33) for James, whoops

>>22998502
>17)
>I think this is Dying Earth. The first book where the woman sends the bandit guy to get some eyes.
Pretty much. It's "Liane the Wayfarer" from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. The woman sends Liane to recover the missing half of a beautiful tapestry, but Chun the Unavoidable gets him. Then it turns out that the woman is deliberately supplying Chun with victims. He takes their eyes and in return gives her the tapestry back, one thread at a time.

>>22998544

>30)
>The sandworm from Dune.
Right, Frank Herbert.

>38)
>Sounds like Pinhead from Hellraiser
More or less. It's the cenobites in general. ‘Hellraiser’ is the film; the story (novella) is called ‘The Hellbound Heart’. Clive Barker responsible for both book and film of course.

>56
>This is a guess but one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park
Right, Michael Crichton. It's the first appearance of the T-Rex. The film changed a few things but this sequence was pretty much exactly from the book.

>70)
>I think this might be the beginning of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Correct. R. L. Stevenson. The man trampling a child was a real incident he saw which prompted him to write the story.

>84)
>Hound of Baskerville?
Of course. Arthur Conan Doyle. A great example of ‘climactic chapter with the same title as the book’.

>93)
>Caliban from The Tempest
Correct. Not many out-and-out monsters in Shakespeare but I guess Caliban counts as non-human.

>>22998617

>33
>James, Turn of the Screw (forget the maid's name)
Right. The monster is the ghost of the maidservant, Miss Jessel. (About as close to Jezebel as you can get without falling in. Subtle stuff from HJ.)

>56)
>Scylla from Homer, The Odyssey
I assume you mean 57, but yes. Butler's translation as it happens.

>59)
>Baba Yaga, Afanasyev (don't quite know which story in particular)
It's called Baba Yaga IIRC.

>76)
>Minotaur, from Borges (House of Asterion)
Right. Of course he doesn't think he's the monster; he thinks he's the hero. (This isn't the only one from the monster's viewpoint.)

>77)
>Copelius (Coppelius?), from Hoffmann, The Sandman
Correct. The sort of ghoulishness you often find in German stories for children.

>>22997018
3 is Wendigo by Hodgson
29 is Old man and the sea
30 is Dune
31 is house on the borderland by Hodgson
53 is Grendel by John Gardner
85 is Stella Maris
100 is The Bear by Faulkner

>>22997029
>15)
Riki Tiki Tavi the mongoose vs the cobra by Kipling

>>22997092
>68)
The famous giant squid from Jules Vernes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

>>22997013
Nice thread, OP. Threads of this effort are the lifeblood of this board.

>>22997089
>65)
Moby Dick?

>>22998911

>3 is Wendigo by Hodgson
Nope. Someone already found the Wendigo; it's #41. (And it's by Algernon Blackwood.) No-one's got #3 yet (slightly surprisingly).

>29 is Old man and the sea
>30 is Dune
>31 is house on the borderland by Hodgson
All correct, but others got there first.

>53 is Grendel by John Gardner
Correct. A story told from the monster's P.O.V., like #76.

>85 is Stella Maris
Right. Alicia Western telling us about the Archatron. A difficult monster to visualize, or indeed believe in. (If I had been the doctor I would have told her to pull herself together.)

>100 is The Bear by Faulkner
It is. The short story in ‘Go Down, Moses’. (Well, ‘short’. It's a novella as far as I’m concerned.)

>>22999553

>15)
>Riki Tiki Tavi the mongoose vs the cobra by Kipling
Correct. Rikki Tikki Tavi. Nag the cobra being the monster.

>>22999560

>68)
>The famous giant squid from Jules Vernes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Right book, and right class (Cephalopoda). But it's only a squid in the film. In the book it's a cuttlefish.

>>22999773

>65)
>Moby Dick?
Nope. Moby Dick is in there but no-one found him yet, slightly surprisingly. #65 is one of the hardest, I think. A fairly obscure pulp short story (although not a totally unknown author).

>>22997018
You said you were surprised no-one has got 3 yet. Looking at it again, it should have been obvious.
3) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

>>23001040

>3) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Of course. (I don't like to repeat an author, so it was a choice between the Balrog and Smaug.)

>>22997097
Should have seen this one earlier:
71) Ray Bradbury
Bit disappointed in myself that I can't identify the Bierce quote

>>23001255
>71) Ray Bradbury
It could be RB . . . but what book, and what monster? Perhaps another anon can help?

>>23002145
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The monster is Mr. Dark

>>23001255
>Bit disappointed in myself that I can't identify the Bierce quote
I feel the same about Robert Howard. Still pretty sure it is one of the snakes but can't say for sure.

4) Chimera

8) Ghoul (because it says so)
13) Manticore
14) Vampire (dracula)
23) Hydra (because it says so)
27) Medusa / Gorgon

>>22997089
>64)
>. . . a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous . . .
The humor of this makes me think Douglas Adams. Or maybe Terry Pratchet or Gaiman.
I'm going to put my money on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and one of the whacky aliens he meets.

>>23002204
>Something Wicked This Way Comes
>The monster is Mr. Dark
Indeed. Another masterpiece from the J. R. R. Tolkien School Of Subtle Character Naming.

>>23001255
>Bit disappointed in myself that I can't identify the Bierce quote
This guy
>>23003651
might be able to help you.

>>23003526
>Robert Howard
>one of the snakes
Not a snake. The extract is from one of the most famous Conan stories, but it's a bit tricky because the monster I'm after is only being referred to indirectly.

>>23003651

>4) Chimera
Correct, but to qualify for a Valuable Prize you really need the author & work as well. This one is tricky admittedly since a) it's translated and b) many authors have written their own versions. This is the earliest description, as far as I know.

>8) Ghoul (because it says so)
Sure, but what book?

>13) Manticore
Nope.

>14) Vampire (dracula)
>23) Hydra (because it says so)
>27) Medusa / Gorgon
All correct, but other anons got there already.

>>23004508

>64
>I'm going to put my money on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Correct. It's the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal.

>>22997114
>88)
>Then Bond
Ian Fleming's James Bond

>>23005062

>88)
>Ian Fleming's James Bond
Correct, but which book? (This incident is in the film, albeit modified slightly.)

>>22997023
>6)
I'm going off a hunch just from the movie but is this the skinny dipper opening to Jaws?

>>23005079
Dr. No?

>>22997018
>4)
This is obviously a chimera from Greek myth. Ovid and Homer have already been named so that leaves on Hesiod of the ancient Greek dude.

>>23005173

>6)
>is this the skinny dipper opening to Jaws?
It is. Peter Benchley.

>I'm going off a hunch just from the movie
We like hunches (as long as they're right, of course):

“for you do not desire to feel for a rope with cowardly hands; and where you can *guess* you hate to *calculate* — ”

[Thus Spake Zarathustra]

>>23005182
Correct. (The centipede is much more legitimately scary than the film's spider since those big tropical centipedes are lethal.)

>>23005340
>4)
>Ovid and Homer have already been named
>so Hesiod
Correct. ‘Theogony’. It's the main primary source for all those Greek monsters.

>>22997029
13)
Dante's description of Geryon as the manticore

>>23005723
>13)
>Dante's description of Geryon
Correct. Inferno.

>>23005906
Geryon brings us to the half-way point, if I count correctly.


2) Behemoth (Master and Margarita)
3) Balrog (The Fellowship of the Ring)
4) Chimera (Theogony)
5) Pennywise (It)

6) Shark (Jaws)
9) Cthulhu (The Call of Cthulhu)
10) Headless horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

12) Crocodile (Peter Pan)
13) Geryon (Inferno)
14) Dracula (Dracula)
15) Nag (Rikki Tikki Tavi)

17) Chun the Unavoidable (Dying Earth)
19) Roc (Tales of 1001 Nights)

27) Medusa (Metamorphoses)
29) Mako shark (The Old Man and the Sea)
30) Sandworm (Dune)

31) The swine-creature (The House on the Borderland)
32) The Jabberwock (Through the Looking-Glass)
33) Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw)
34) AM (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)

37) Basilisk (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
38) Cenobites (The Hellbound Heart)
39) Creature (Frankenstein)

46) Wendigo (The Wendigo)
47) Windmills (Don Quixote)

51) Questing Beast (The Once and Future King)
53) Grendel (Grendel)
55) Tuunbaq (The Terror)

56) T-Rex (Jurassic Park)
57) Scylla (The Odyssey)
59) Baba Yaga (Baba Yaga)

60) Red Death (The Masque of the Red Death)

64) Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy)

66) Iron man (The Iron Man)
68) Cuttlefish (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
70) Mr Hyde (Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

71) Mr Dark (Something Wicked This Way Comes)

76) Minotaur (The House of Asterion)
77) Coppelius (The Sandman)

82) Alien (Who Goes There?)
83) Satan (Paradise Lost)
84) Hound (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
85) Archatron (Stella Maris)

88) Centipede (Dr. No)

91) White ape (A Princess of Mars)
92) Heffalump (Winnie the Pooh)
93) Caliban (The Tempest)
94) Fenris wolf (The prose Edda)

96) 666 (The Book of Revelation)
100) Bear (The Bear)

Through the power of proper nouns or weird words that I thought would be unique to the story I was able to find the following

>>22997018
>1)
>Van Cheele.
Gabriel-Ernest by Saki
>>22997023
>8)
>Amiens
Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
>>22997029
>11)
> Selma’s and Dixie’s George Mahoon’s “
Thieving Bears Lafferty
>>22997068
>42)
>Canidia,
Horace poems
>>22997068
>45)
>Theodora
Haunting of Hill House
>>22997072
>48)
> Thragnar
Jurgen by Cabell
>>22997089
61)
>krait
Poison by Dahl
>>22997097
>75)
>otak
Earthsea by Le Guin
>>22997109
>81)
>“Tehlu
Kingkiller Chronicles
>>22997120
>95)
>Ponder Stibbons
Discworld
>>22997122
>97)
>the Fnool,
The War with Fnools by PKD
>98)
>Hughes and Eugel,
Solaris

>>23006878
These all look good, although just using a search engine wasn't really what I had in mind. I would think if you did a text search with Google Books / Internet Archive you would find all (or nearly all) the answers without much trouble. The idea was for people to see what they recognize, then perhaps search at the end when there's just a few obscure things left.

That said, you found the answers and no-one else did, so we can't, in all fairness, withhold the cute anime girl. And the thread's been up a couple of days, so perhaps any technique is fair game now :)

Just to go through them:

>1)
>Gabriel-Ernest by Saki
Correct. G-E is a werewolf of course.

>8)
>Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
Correct.

>11)
>Thieving Bears Lafferty
Correct. The bears are almost-cute-but-a-bit-scary, which is near enough to monsterhood.

>42)
>Canidia
>Horace poems
It's an ode, IIRC. Canidia was a famous witch in Roman folklore.

>45)
>Haunting of Hill House
Correct. Shirley Jackson. The ‘monsters’ are the ghosts, which definitely seem to exist, although it's not 100%.

>48)
>Jurgen by Cabell
Right. 'Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice'.

>61)
>Poison by Dahl
Correct.

>75)
>Earthsea by Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea, yes, although ideally the monster still needs to be identified.

>81)
>Kingkiller Chronicles
Yes, Patrick Rothfuss. Specifically, ‘The Name of the Wind’. Again, the monster needs to be identified (it's not a dragon).

>95)
>Discworld
Terry Pratchett, sure. But which Discworld book, and what's the monster?

>97)
>The War with Fnools by PKD
Correct. Ridiculous comedy ‘monsters’ determined to take over the world.

>98)
>Solaris
Correct. Stanislaw Lem. What's being described is the possibly-sentient ocean. (A bit of a stretch to call it a monster, but never mind.)

>>22997050
29) Moby Dick

>>23007752
Nope, sorry. It's already been identified — it's the mako shark coming to steal the fish in The Old Man And The Sea.

>>22997097
73 is Moby Dick, i'm surprised nobody got that one yet

>>23009250

>73 is Moby Dick
Correct.

>i'm surprised nobody got that one yet
I agree it's pretty memorable, especially as it's a chapter ending.

Bump.

We're about 2/3rds done. Still some fairly well-known works unidentified.

A couple of hints:
Female authors: 44, 50, 54, 67
Short stories: 40, 44, 54, 62, 63, 65, 69, 78, 80

bump for reading with the hints

>>23011103
44 is Hausman I think. The Were-wolf
54 is from peter rabbit lel

>>23012029
and 25 is from gaiman, I think. I forget if it's American gods or neverwhere.

>>23011103
Alright time to finally figure out which is Conan. I read all his stories just last year I should get it.
It is a short story so that brings it down to 9 choices.
Not written by a woman so 44 and 54 are out.
Conan stories weren't written in fist person so 62, 65, 78 are out.

That leaves 40, 63, 69, or 80

40 is a dude named Carson
63 is a dude named Murilo
69 is from the monster perspective
80 is a fisherman

Carson is not a Hyperborean sounding name.
Conan was a pirate at sea not fisherman.
Howard rarely wrote from the monster perspective.
Guard beast or thing being killed by scarier main monster is a Conan thing to happen.

I'm going to say 63 is from a Conan short story. As for the monster you said it wasn't a snake which leads to the second monster type Conan always fought an ape like creature.

>>23011103
with the other anon guessing 44 and 54 of the females and 67 being translated
50)
Is left as the only Anne Rice option. It is a vampire. Interview with a Vampire Lestat series I'd wager.

>>23011103
Oh and 67 female not English means it must be Tove Jansson.
I can only guess Moomins?

Bump

>>23012029

>44 is Hausman I think. The Were-wolf
Correct. Clemence Houseman (A. E. Houseman's sister, or cousin, or something. She was a bit weird. Prolly a lesbian.) The monster is a female werewolf called White Fell. She's a beautiful woman who seduces men then devours them. But of course the faithful doggo is not deceived and can see (smell) she's really a wolf.

>54 is from peter rabbit lel
Sort of. It's Beatrix Potter, yes, but it's The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. Tom Kitten goes wandering and encounters this rat (called S.W.). S.W. & his wife wrap Tom in pastry intending to eat him.

>>23012038

>and 25 is from gaiman, I think. I forget if it's American gods or neverwhere.
It's Neverwhere. Croup and Vandemar. Scary & funny (the only good bit of the book in my opinion). Terry Pratchett ‘paid homage to’ (stole) them for Mr Tulip & Mr. Pin in The Truth. (C & V call themselves ‘The Old Firm’, and Tulip & Pin say they're working for ‘The New Firm’, so he wasn't exactly trying to hide it.)

>>23012094

> . . .
><lengthy process of reasoning, eliminating possibilities with Holmesian precision>
> . . .
>63
>Conan short story
>ape like creature

Correct. It's ‘Rogues In The House’. The monster is Thak. Conan shows him who's boss eventually, but it's quite a tussle.

>>23012104
>50)
>the only Anne Rice option.
>Interview with a Vampire Lestat series I'd wager.
Correct. Louis de Pointe du Lac.

>>23012119
>67
>Tove Jansson.
>I can only guess Moomins?
Also correct. The Groke, from Finn Family Moomintroll.

Bump. A few random hints:

26 & 82 are much better known as films. (Several others have been filmed, but the films have not eclipsed the books so much.)

40 & 62 are much better known as TV episodes.

79 is (in total) much the longest work in the quiz.

99 is a short story by an author much better known for another work.

>>22997018
>2)
Mikhail Bulgakov. This is either super obvious or I really am getting this first, holy shit this board.

>>22997018
>5)
It

>>22997054
34)
Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

>>23015587
You're right, but you're not first:
>>22998402

There are a few still unanswered from books commonly mentioned on /lit/. 20 & 21 for example.

>>23015598
Correct, Pennywise just about to do some arm-collecting. But others already got it.

>>23015640
Correct, AM the evil computer. But already identified.

>>23015643
Ok, sorry, should have read thread. Finally good thred btw

>>23015083
>99
Philip K Dick? Maybe a lazy guess with the grenade launcher and the talk of creation

>>23015970

>99
>Philip K Dick?
Nope. PKD is #97 and I don't repeat authors as a rule. Also, I said the author of #99 is famous for "another work" i.e. just one work. PKD wrote several books which are all more-or-less equally well-known.

>>23015083
>62 are much better known as TV episodes.
62 wouldn't happen to be the Twilight Zone episode Howling Man or something where the devil is trapped in a room with a monastery would it? I have ZERO idea about book though.

>>23015083
>79 is (in total) much the longest work in the quiz.
Longer than the Bible?

>>22997018
>5
It, Steven King
>9
Something by Lovecraft
>14
Dracula?
>27
Metamorphoses
>37
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
>83
Paradife Loft
>96
My memory fails me, but I suspect the book of revelation. I can't think of any other book that uses beheld in this manner.
Well, I tried my best.

>>23016577
Looking at the authors might be Wheel of Time

>>23016521

>62
>Twilight Zone episode Howling Man
>the devil is trapped in a room
Correct. A 1959 short story by Charles Beaumont, adapted as S2E1 of TTZ.

>>23016717

>5
>It, Steven King

>9
>Something by Lovecraft

>14
>Dracula

>27
>Metamorphoses

>37
>Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

>83
>Paradife Loft

>96
>revelation

All correct, although other anons already got them.

>>23017470
>79
>Wheel of Time
If it were WoT, what would the monster be?

Bump. A few hints:
7 & 72 don't technically exist as distinct entities.
24 is related to a monster already found.
‘Realistic’ monsters: 26, 28, 36, 74, 80, 99 [more or less].