Somebody published a book especially for me. They Came From Outer Space, Jim Wynorski editor, is a collection of twelve short stories by twelve different writers, which were the basis of twelve of the great classic 1950s science fiction movies. The book was published in 1980, but there is no doubt that it belongs right here.
Light shafted in whitely. Instantly Stockton saw that they were in the cellar, at the foot of a flight of stairs that led up to an opening door. On the threshold stood Dr. Thorkel, looking down at them. Satanas, the cat, crouched at the scientist’s feet.
“He has made us little!” Pedro screamed.
And it was true! Thorkel was—a giant! A thirty foot titan towering over them! The cellar door seemed as big as a two-story house; Satanas was a sabre-toothed tiger
Dr Cyclops by Henry Kutter, filmed under the same title in 1940, starring Albert Dekker as the doctor.
The room stiffened abruptly. It was face up on the plain, greasy planks of the table. The broken half of the bronze ice-axe was still buried in the queer skull. Three mad, hated-filled eyes blazed up with living fire, bright as fresh-spilled blood, from a face ringed with a writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow—
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr, filmed as The Thing (From Another World), in 1951, produced by Howard Hawks, directed by Christian Nyby, screenplay by Charles Lederer, starring Kenneth Tobey and James Arness as the monster.
With graciousness and dignity the man pointed to himself, then to his robot companion, and said in perfect English with a peculiar accent, “I am Klaatu,” or a name that sounded like that, “and this is Gnut.”
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates, filmed as The Day the Earth Stood Still, in 1951, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe and Billy Gray, directed by Robert Wise.
The Fog Horn blew.
The monster answered.
I saw it all, knew it all—the million years of waiting alone, for someone to come back who never came back. The million years of isolation at the bottom of the sea, the insanity of time there, while the skies cleared of reptile-birds, the swamps dried on the continental lands, the sloths and sabre-tooths had their day and sank in tar pits, and men ran like white ants upon the hills.
The Fog Horn by Bradbury filmed as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in 1953, special effects by Ray Harryhausen, with Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey, Frank Ferguson and Ross Elliot in the cast, and Lee Van Cleef in a walk-on as the soldier who kills the monster.
Joe Wilson stood by the window and as Cal went out toward the ship he knew he’d been correct in that glimpse he’d got of the cockpit canopy silhouetted against the sky.
The plane was pilotless.
Another whispering clue to a mighty, alien technology.
The Alien Machine, by Raymond F. Jones, filmed in 1955 as This Island Earth, with Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason and Faith Domergue.
Slowly the monster, the thing that had been my husband, covered his head, got up and groped its way to the door…. Until I am totally extinct, nothing can, nothing ever will make me forget that dreadful white hairy head with its low flat skull and two pointed ears. Pink and moist, the nose was also of a cat, a huge cat. But the eyes! Or rather, where the eyes should have been were two brown bumps the size of saucers. Instead of a mouth, animal or human, was a long hairy vertical slit from which hung a black quivering trunk that widened at the end, trumpet-like, and from which saliva kept dripping.
The Fly, by George Langelaan, filmed in 1958, screenplay by James Clavell, starring Vincent Price, Al (David) Hedison and Herbert Marshall.
So they left a sentinel, one of millions they have scattered throughout the universe, watching over all worlds with the promise of life. It was a beacon that down the ages has been patiently signaling the fact that no one had discovered it.
The Sentinel, by Arthur C. Clarke, filmed in 1968 as 2001: A Space Odyssey produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, photography Geoffrey Unsworth, effects Douglas Trumball et al, music by Richard and Johann Strauss et al, written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Leonard Rossiter and Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL 9000.
Which of course, is itself a leap into the future, where I arrived almost a decade later. The book also contains the originals of Target Earth, Invasion of the Saucermen, The Tenth Victim, Death Race 2000 and A Boy and His Dog.
