Robinson, £14.99, ISBN 978-1-4721-3564-3
Fantasy, 2016
When I think of kaiju, I think of giant monsters, like Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, and friends. I have to look up the definition of that word after reading The Mammoth Book of Kaiju, and yes, the word means exactly what I thought it meant. I looked that up because of one simple reason: for an anthology boasting 27 “monster” stories, there are not as many kaijus gone wild as I’d have expected from something with that kind of title.
Sure, you can argue that so many stories in a row about monsters flattening cities can get boring, and authors have the right to be creative and call a spade a car if they wanted to, but come on.
Well, buckle up as I go into how some of the stories here can make one scratch their head, because there are 27 of them, so this is going to be one long review, and I’d like to be done before the new year sets in.
Robert Hood kindly kicks things off with his introduction to this anthology and kaiju-ism in general, and On the Shoulders of Giants thoughtfully becomes a lovely piece to constantly remind people how some of the stories here play fast and loose with the term “kaiju”. Then again, who actually reads the introduction of an anthology, right?
The first story is Natania Brown’s Occupied, which is about elder gods being accidentally awakened to seize a human host and mutate it into an eldritch force of destruction. This one is alright. There is a strong clarity to the narrative that sets the sinister atmosphere very nicely, and there are moments of beautiful poetry in the descriptions of death and despair. Sure, there is some body horror here too, but this story is leans more towards cosmic horror than kaiju rave party. Maybe making this one the anthology starter may not be a great idea.
Lavie Tidhae’s Titanic! is what happens when the iceberg is an uncaring kaiju, and the protagonist is Dr Henry Jekyll who, having kept Mr Hyde persona contained for now, hopes to begin anew in America. Oh, and he’s interested in kaiju-ology. I’d give this one points for being some sort of novelty for a glorified fanfiction. It could have been worse, the author could have made the protagonist Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes instead, and throw in some Daleks somewhere, and the Cthulhu will weep for humanity.
Now I Am Nothing by Simon Bestwick—yes, I’m sure it’s the best—is about some German soldiers leading an assault on a Waffen-SS garrison, only to discover that these people have created a biological weapon, a creature that crushes and desiccates its prey in ways that cause the protagonist to shudder manfully. Wait, haven’t I seen the vampire version of this story already? Actually, I’ve seen and read variations of this story more than a few times, and I don’t feel that this one stand out much.
More aggravatingly, the author interrupts the flow of the story with italicized internal monologue of the protagonist to beat me in the head as to why this fellow eventually does what he does. Clearly, the author doesn’t trust me to grasp nuances and read between the lines of the story, and hence prefers to cut the story at its knees in order to make sure I get what the author wants me to get.
Kane Gilmour’s The Lighthouse Keeper of Kurohaka Island is the first story here that fits the theme perfectly, so I’m pleased that this story is here. More of a simple, poignant account of a father explaining to his son what a certain responsibility that he intends to bequeath to the boy really means, this one also has a pretty dramatic, if typical, monster rampage flashback experienced by the father. All in all, this one is on point—dramatic, emotional, graceful—and reading this makes me feel that the party has finally begun in kaiju-land.
In Maxine McArthur’s Breaking the Ice, a boy somehow manages to get an ice monster to do his bidding, such as payback on his bullies, only to eventually learn that there is more to life than revenge and destruction. This one is also pretty good, with the author doing almost everything right here. A protagonist with relatable emotions, good pacing, well-done epiphany… only, I feel this is more of an episode of The Twilight Zone than anything kaiju-ish. Sure, there is a big monster here, but come on.
Nick Stathopoulos’s Mamu, or Reptillon vs Echidonah is basically a typical clash of the kaiju story, but the author wants to show off that he is far more than another hack writing kaiju stories, so he has the story jumping from the day before to the some date in 1953, then “two weeks later”, then “three days ago”… oh for Destoroyah’s sake. What is basic is now a supremely obnoxious kind of basic, and the author isn’t fooling anyone one bit.
Australia has the most number of deadliest things around, so hey, it’s not too far-fetched to believe Jason Nahrung when he says that that country has its own kaiju too. Kadimakara and Curlew sees a couple of folks hoping to investigate some seismic valley in the Land of Yo-yo-wah-wah-like Aborigines. Naturally, the aborigines can’t speak straight and tell these people what is going on—they save the straight-up talk to the very end when the author needs a way to fill the reader in on what has happened, because these yo-yo-woo-woo clichés are mere plot device ripped out of a cover of some “ethnic new age” album art—and the city folks are unlikable and judgmental and the whole thing resembles a rejected Syfy movie pitch.
Emily Devenport’s Postcards From Monster Island takes the done-many-times-before premise of how kaijus just want to restore the balance of nature and we are the real enemies because climate change and what not. Okay, this one is quaint and cute at places, but nothing really interesting as the premise is a cliché close to becoming a meme by now, and this story is as preachy as can be while, curiously enough, turning the supposedly helpful kaijus into a circus attraction in the end.
Tessa Kum’s One Night on Tidal Rig #13 is a tall glass of water after the last few stories. The moon is long gone—gone just like that—and giant structures called tidal rigs are built to manually manipulate the tides. Staffing each oil rig is a single person, addressed by the number of the rig. As usual, nothing works, and nobody cares to actually fix things, and #13 is especially cranky because her tidal rig is the oldest of all the ones remaining and hence things break down at a faster rate than the other tidal rigs.
In this one, a giant crab-like kaiju is heading towards the tidal rig in that area, and #13 has better be prepared for… unexpected developments. Developments such as a researcher showing up, hoping to investigate the crab kaiju should it show up, and #13 is not too keen as she is used to being alone and talking only to other tidal rig keepers over a phone that only works half the time.
This one is fantastic. A well-actualized setting. a protagonist that feels complex and real, with a palpable sense of loneliness and isolation permeating every word in this story. It’s funny at places, but there is also an underlying twinge of melancholy that keeps this story grounded. I really like this one.
Steve Rasnic Tem’s Show Night is a hauntingly beautiful and often cripplingly heartbreaking story of a man to whom reality and fantasy become harder to distinguish after the death of his mother. I definitely do not regret reading this story, but what it is doing in an anthology dedicated to kaijus, I have no idea. Did the author have something on editor Sean Wallace that resulted in this story being in here? Perhaps submissions were so few that even something like this, that is more at home in an anthology of cosmic or psychological horror, gets a “May as well put it in.. anyway…” pass?
Frank Wu is up next with Love and Death in the Time of Monsters, which sees death and destruction wiping out big swathes of the world, and the protagonist, who is in a part of the country not yet too affected by this, whines incessantly that he is the most affected because his mommy issues and his heart is now black and full of bittersweet, wah wah wah. This one takes narcissism and self-absorption to a ridiculous, almost tragicomic new level, but the problem is, I think the author expects me to somehow see this story as some kind of deep metaphor or something. Take that crap to a Reddit sub, please, so that other narcissists congregating there can ooh and aah over it; me, I’m not into gazing into authors’ smelly navels alongside these authors, so I’m turning the page now.
Speaking of narcissists, the protagonist of Adam Ford’s Seven Dates That Were Ruined by Giant Monsters or Why I Really Need to Get Out of This City spends the whole story whining about how giant monsters keep ruining his chances of hooking up with hot women. What is it with all these authors that think the longer they title their stories, the magically funnier these stories will be? Giant monsters versus the protagonist’s puny wee-wee… gee, I wonder which one I will care more about.
There is a gripping story in Chris McMahon’s The Eyes of Erebus, when a world-destroying alien mistakes the radio signals of Earth to be a mating call and sets out to dry hump the planet into utter destruction. However, what results is some third-rate “We need to gather a team to destroy the planet-ending threat!” drama coupled to “We need to find a way to evacuate the important folks to another planet so that they can breed a new generation there!”, interspersed with pure cringe that is the first person monologue from the horny alien. Is this a comedy? A campy drama? A script for SyFy? Who knows.
Thank Ghidorah for Martin Livings’s Running, because I am this close to doing my own Godzilla owns Tokyo reenactment on this book by the time this one shows up. It seems pretty silly on paper, the story, which is why it is even more fantastic when the story turns out to be the way it is. Sure, giant monsters are destructive, et cetera, but adrenaline junkies have discovered a new kind of high when they risk their lives running alongside a moving kaiju. You see, the seismic vibrations and even the ground giving way with each step of the kaiju can produce, to these adrenaline junkies, the best kind of obstacle courses. They can be sent flying into the air, risk being trampled, being propelled at greater speed by the momentum caused by the monster’s movement, etc.
This story is about a first time runner that is in Mauritius, to run alongside two more experienced runners and one uncaring kaiju. It’s absolutely fantastic. I don’t know how the author does it, but I feel my heart pounding a little faster as I turn the pages, and I breathe even a little faster, because I feel like I’m in the story, running and experiencing everything these people are going through: the rush, the thrill, the terror, everything. I let go of the breath I didn’t know I was holding when I reach the last page, and I love that last sentence.
A simple story, this, but easily the best one of the lot so far.
JC Koch’s With Bright Shining Faces is about a teacher that discovers that a student of hers and this student’s creepy mother can somehow turn people into their preferred kaiju form. She is like, oh it doesn’t seem polite, this idea of a kaiju army taking over the world. Then, she discovers that her husband is cheating on her, and she decides to be a kaiju herself and rule the world with her students-turned-kaijus. Uh, okay. Good for them, I suppose.
Gary McMahon’s Kaiju is all about how the destruction caused by a kaiju makes people cry. This is because, you see, when buildings get destroyed and people get trampled, people die and everyone else cries and goes ooh and all. This is so deep, and I learn a lot of human nature from reading this one. Snort.
James A Moore’s Whatever Became of Randy is pure body horror involving malignant tumors that can somehow spread through air and grow in a human host. This is a fantastic tale that appeals to the gore hound in me, but yeah, I’m still waiting for the kaiju to show up in this one.
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Cosmonaut by Michael Canfield is a tale of a boy discovering the tragic fate of his father, and it’s a story of betrayal, disillusionment, and dreams of vengeance. Only, the title of this story spoils itself for me, and I don’t know why the author would do that. Also, while the story itself is alright in an episode-in-a-middling-horror-anthology-series way, I find myself wondering, after reading the final scene, how the poor kid is going to stay there for long. What is he going to eat? Where is he going to do his numbers one and two? Why am I thinking about these things? Is the author’s intention to have me wondering about these things?
Cody Goodfellow’s Kungmin Horangi: The People’s Tiger and The Island of Dr. Otaku form a single interminable tale of… something that tries way too hard to be clever and satirical. It’s like the author wanted to satirize weeabo culture, but his entire knowledge of that culture is restricted to tired cursory stuff like Hello Kitty. There are many things to make fun of, playfully or ruthlessly, when it comes to everything weeabo and otaku, and the author instead spends two freaking long short stories to keep missing the point, like a deranged striker that refuses to leave despite missing ball after ball.
There is a tragic, cathartic love story in Jonathan Wood’s The Behemoth, but this is another author that thinks he is being so clever when he has his story jump from “now” to “before” to “back further” and so forth. Are they handing out medals to authors that come off like the most pretentious gits in town? This isn’t literary fiction, it’s supposed to be a story about big-ass monsters, so all the eye-rolling narrative gimmicks are just annoying distractions.
Also, this is another example of a creator that, when asked to write about big monsters, go, “No, no, people read a story about monsters for the human characters and their soap opera!”
Ugh. Just take that “before” and “back further” and stick them up where the sun doesn’t shine.
Jeremiah Tolbert makes me laugh with The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad. Sure, giant monsters cause destruction and death, but who cares about these things. Each state in the US has its own kaiju, and it’s a matter of state pride to have one’s own kaiju defeat the others in a public brawl. Alas, the Kansas Jayhawk is a bit of a punchline, as it looks like a giant jayhawk and its special power is to emit a radioactive glow that doesn’t seem to do anything to its rivals.
Well, in this story, our protagonist and his Monster Fan Club friends are eagerly traveling along the course taken by the Jayhawk as it heads to what seems like a collision of the kaijus. Will the Jayhawk beat at least one kaiju this time, or will it be laughed off by other kaijus like in the past?
This one is a comedy, so it’s easy to go along with the absurd premise. In fact, the author manages to get me in the same mood as the main characters here, and I find myself rooting for the underdog kaiju as well. My only complaint is that the final confrontation is described to me; I don’t get to read about it as it happens, and that feels tad anticlimactic after all the fun build-up leading up to that point.
The Black Orophant by Daniel Braum is about the elephants and the lions summoning the spirits of the greatest of their kinds to help the last of humanity fight off some aliens.
You know what is going on in my head while I’m reading this? That annoying tribal chant in the cartoon version of Circle of Life in The Lion King.
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba
Sithi uhhmm ingonyama
Siyo nqoba!
Wait, this isn’t a fanfiction based off that show, right?
I like this story. It’s interesting, unique, and there are some moments of pure poetry in the prose.
Yet again, it’s the same issue: where is the kaiju? I keep waiting for a gigantic Pumbaa to show up and smash everything, but no, sadly that isn’t happening.
I think by this point editor Sean Wallace has given up, because up next is Penelope Love’s The Unlawful Priest of Todesfall, a dark fantasy tale of a priest and a “strong female character” (which, by modern standard, means shrewish, shrill, and unlikable while taking no responsibility for her own screw-ups) trying to stop an “immense statue of dark obsidian” from destroying humanity in its path.
I suppose a “big statue” may rhyme with “kaiju”, but it’s a stretch to pass that off or the dark force in it as a kaiju, sheesh. This one is more of a dark fantasy with a tinge of Lovecraft-ian horror, sheesh.
Also, this story ruins itself towards the end, when it refuses to let its main characters experience any genuine loss, thus cheapening the sacrifices made by these characters and practically nullifying the entire thing up to that point.
Terraformers in Mars encounter an unusual giant squid that seems like a threat, only to learn too late that it’s actually quite benign. Alys Sterling’s Cephalogen has a plot that is done at least once in every season of The Twilight Zone and other genre anthology series, as well as in various “The real enemy are humans… and climate change!” stories. Can we have a new plot, or at least do this old plot in a more interesting manner? I could see the “twist” of this one coming from a mile away.
Oh, and where’s the kaiju? Sure, the squid thing is big in size, but size alone doesn’t make a kaiju. It’s… never mind, this anthology is almost done, and I think nobody cares anymore about the theme of the anthology. What’s the next story?
That will be Frozen Voice by An Owomoyela. It’s a dystopian world, a time when humans are ruled by mysterious, terrifying, and big of course (have to pretend to fit the kaiju theme, after all) things that dictate what is and is not acceptable behavior for these humans. Our main character’s mother sneaks off to collect books for her kids to read, and one day she goes missing. Her two kids go out to brave the dangers of outside to search for her.
I can’t recall the exact title or titles, but I have read a story, or perhaps stories, that has this very same premise and the plot develops in the exact same way. Not that I am accusing the author of plagiarism, mind you. I’m just saying that this is more of a case of a well-worn plot, with well-worn tropes and archetypes, being used to deliver the same old message about free will and the right to access knowledge without restrictions and censorship.
On top of me feeling that I’ve read this one before, I also find myself wondering where the kaiju is. This story will be more at home in a sci-fi anthology populated by pretentious authors that like to pepper their stories with italicized words to show off how profound and deep they are.
Oh, thank god, the last story has arrived. Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck by Neal Asher is about a bunch of humans trying to hunt down the… duck.. in the title. The incestuous siblings that want to kill the thing are pure evil, if people can’t tell by that incestuous angle, while the protagonist stumbles his way into happy-ish ending in a tale that is all about, yes, human beings are the real enemies. I’m pretty sure climate issue isn’t an issue here, but what the heck, humans and climate change are the real enemies in everything and anything, forever and ever.
So, that’s The Mammoth Book of Kaiju. There are a handful of really good stories here, floating in a sea along with some turds, some pretentious gits blowing bubbles up my arse, and only the occasional kaiju, So much for sticking to the theme—it’s pretty clear that everyone in this anthology has stopped giving a flying duck about kaiju somewhere a few stories in.
