Smith found a scrap of tablet containing the missing part of the Flood story [from Gilgamesh]. He telegraphed word of his find back to the Daily Telegraph, giving Edwin Arnold the scoop he wanted, and his feat was reported in newspaper stories around the globe.

It is appropriate that the recovery of this ancient text was announced to the world by the most modern of means. The world’s first telecommunications system, commercial telegraphy had been pioneered by Samuel Morse in the 1840s. It came into wide use around the world in the 1860s, and the first successful transatlantic telegraph line was laid in 1866, just seven years before the Daily Telegraph sent Smith to Iraq. On the day that Smith made his great discovery, the New York Times ran an article reflecting on this convergence of ancient and modern modes of communication: “It is hardly possible to conceive of two more opposite literary productions than the modern newspaper and the crumbling and mysterious records found among the ruins of antiquity…. There is something startling in associating the two together, in thrusting them into sudden and unexpected juxtaposition; and this is what has just been done by a London journal, which has sent Mr. George Smith, the well-known archaeologist, to puzzle out the antique inscriptions of Assyria.” The ancient tablets were joining forces with the latest technology as they circulated out into the world.

~ David Damrosch, The Buried Book (45-46)

Will Buckingham’s novel Cargo Fever (Tindal Street) is certainly a gripping adventure story, but it’s also an intriguing contribution to the the genre of the ape-monster story. I won’t assume Buckingham had such an academic goal in mind for the novel, but I do think Cargo Fever responds to the canon in interesting ways.¹

Orkneyjar — a website dedicated to the preserving, exploring and documenting the ancient history, folklore and traditions of Orkney – a group of islands lying off the northern tip of Scotland, where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet.

Including the Nuggle, a much less adorable version of the water horse.

There was a time when the atomics industry fueled more than political debate—it fueled the growth spurts of God’s creatures, which turned the tables against the domineering species known as man. Giant spiders, towering ants, train-sized gila monsters, praying mantises larger than 747s, and yes, even mutated leeches big enough to swallow you whole.

These were the themes behind the classic Creature Feature films of the 50s and 60s. By the 70s we learned that no amount of atomic radiation would cause a flea to grow so large it could leap across an entire city, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look back on those drive-in films with a sense of fondness. They are as fun today as they were back then. It was, after all, the sight of these giant beasts attacking man that became the catalyst for many of today’s horror writers to pick up a pen.

~ call for submissions @ Permuted Press

Last Friday I drove north to a college in the mountains to talk about monsters in literature and film. On the way home after dark I nearly (but not quite!) veered off a lonely road in the snow. At the time, I thought it was good luck, but now I wonder if I missed my chance to meet a yeti — it’s the perfect start to a story, isn’t it, urban academic lectures about monsters as fiction only to meet one face to face?

I shall have to drive less carefully in the future.

Once upon a time people believed the world was populated with terrible monsters and fabulous mythical beasts. They thought if they just searched long enough and hard enough, they’d find them. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the mythical beasts of folktale and legend, and the modern researchers who are still hunting for them. Tales of sea serpents, lake monsters, and abominable snowmen.

(via Endicott)

Can we right now put out an offering, a meek and humble supplication to the gods of nature and time and science and human endeavor? Can we make it a juicy and spiritually-charged appeal that runs in direct opposition to the mad and never-ending human need to find and grab and trap and kill every gorgeous messy squishy mystery we ever encounter so as to study it and quantify it and force-fit it into our rather narrow worldview, a very specific offering that says please, oh please, let us never, ever capture and understand and fully comprehend a live 50-foot, 2-ton colossal deep-sea squid? Please?

~ SFGate (via Burningbird)

Instead, let’s find a giant squid (without the trapping and killing and fully comprehending, please) but also find something else and something else again to look for after that.

NEW YORK —A peacock that roamed into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant was attacked by a man who vilified the bird as a vampire, animal-control authorities said.

I really hope there’s a follow-up story to this.

Are you an able-bodied Sasquatch aged 10 to 150 who loves his or her country? If so, The Republic of Cascadia needs YOU to enlist in the Sasquatch Militia and defend our homeland against our many enemies…

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of fed up with realism. After all, there’s enough reality already; why make more of it? Why not leave realism for the memoirs of drug addicts, the histories of salt, the biographies of porn stars? Why must we continue to read about the travails of divorced people or mildly depressed Canadians when we could be contemplating the shopping habits of zombies, or the difficulties that ensue when living and dead people marry each other?

~ Audrey Niffenegger (via Endicott Redux)