More Science Fiction Tales (Roger Elwood, Rod Ruth, 1974)

Here's More Science Fiction Tales (1974, edited by Roger Elwood, illustrations by Rod Ruth), a follow up to 1971's Science Fiction Tales (also edited by Elwood and illustrated by Ruth) and belonging to a series of hardcover children's horror/sci-fi anthology books published by Rand McNally in the 70s (I've previously posted on the Elwood-edited Monster Tales and Horror Tales, Ida Chittum's Tales of Terror, and perhaps the most sought after entry, Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures, also illustrated by Ruth).

The full title is More Science Fiction Tales, Crystal Creatures, Bird-Things, & Other Weirdies, seven tales of science fiction by seven authors, with an introduction by Barry N. Malzberg (full table of contents posted below).

Several of the stories here could rightfully be considered belonging to the horror genre, including my favorite, A Hole In Jennifer's Room by Brian T. LoMedico.

Fourth-grader Jennifer is awakened one evening by a glowing orb that materializes out of her bedroom wall. A creature that she describes as resembling a large chicken embryo emerges from the lit portal and begins stalking around her bedroom.

Frightened, Jennifer is about to attack the alien thing with a baseball bat when the creature suddenly introduces itself, speaking perfect English. Its name is Xander, and it is an inter-dimensional traveler that took a wrong turn and ended up in Jennifer's room in Dimension Three. At first it seems like the beginnings of a friendship between the unlikely pair is starting to emerge, until Xander decides to explore the rest of the house on his own and is never seen again.

Jennifer's parents don't believe her story and she is forced to see a doctor who prescribes pills to alleviate what they presume is a hallucinatory episode.

But the pills don't help, as Jennifer is continually tormented by the sounds of Xander's clicking beak, and glimpses of movement caught in her peripheral vision. Xander, as it turns out, never really did leave Jennifer, as the final chilling paragraph reveals:

And sometimes, in the deep darkened corners of her mind, Jennifer heard a whispering voice, answering her as if from a great distance. It always said the same thing. "I'm right here, Jennifer. And remember, you did it all to yourself.... You should have hit me with that baseball bat."

...

In The Bend of Time (William Danton), a boy returning to a recolonized Earth in the year 4010 is able to communicate across time with another boy his age from a prior millenium, when the world was ruled by robots called Ogolots.

In Hide and Seek (Mario Martin Jr.), a boy looking for a fallen meteor encounters a friendly crashed alien who helps him defend the Earth from some not-so-friendly crab-like invaders.

The Music of Minox (Howard Goldsmith) finds an interplanetary mining camp attacked by aliens monsters resembling crystalline porcupines that emit harp-like sounds.

In The Thing From Ennis Rock (Thomas F. Monteleone), a boy brings home a large egg found in the rubble following an earthquake and soon hatches a baby pteranodon. But mama pteranodon isn't giving up on her baby that easily. This story has a surprisingly dark ending.

A Thirst For Blood (Arthur Tofte), a story of vampires and interplanetary adventure set in the year 2040, opens with a boy being forced to carry out the grim ritual of decapitating the corpse of his father to cancel a vampiric curse.

Finally, a girl is temporarily transformed into a wolf by a mad scientist in Werewolf Girl (Nic Andersson).

Science Fiction Tales (Roger Elwood, Rod Ruth, 1973)

And finally here's Science Fiction Tales, the remaining entry in a series of hardcover science fiction/horror anthology books for children published by Rand McNally in the 70s (I previously posted on Monster Tales, Horror Tales, Tales of Terror, Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures, and this book's direct follow-up, More Science Fiction Tales).

Edited by Roger Elwood and illustrated by Rod Ruth, here are seven stories by seven authors, with an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon.

THE SMALLEST DRAGONBOY (Anne McCaffrey)

In the first story, Keevan, a young boy on an alien world, participates in a coming-of-age ritual that revolves around the hatching of baby dragons. The alien world is Pern, and this tale turns out to be an early entry in McCaffrey's successfull Dragonriders of Pern franchise.

ALONE IN SPACE (Arthur Tofte)

A young boy left alone in a spaceship after the death of his father must outsmart space pirates looking for rare interplanetary gems. The boy cleverly uses a display case of geological samples to disguise his valuable payload.

THE MYSTERIOUS GEM (Claire Edwin Street)

Two kids cross paths with blue-skinned aliens after happening upon a teleportation device.

THE TRIPLE MOONS OF DENEB II (David H. Charney)

In this werewolf story transplanted to an alien world with three moons, the livestock of interplanetary colonists are being killed and eaten by some mysterious animal whenever the moon and the moon and the moon is full....

THE LAUGHING LION (Raymond F. Jones)

A boy accidentally time-travels back in time to a medieval castle on the eve of its mysterious destruction. A knight wearing the crest of a laughing lion helps protect him and his egg-shaped craft from superstitious villagers.

TWO YEARS TO GAEA (Rick Bowles)

The last young survivor of a spaceship in which the rest of the crew has been killed off one by one after succumbing to madness, encounters friendly plant-like aliens.

SOME ARE BORN CATS (Terry & Carol Carr)

This humorous story suggests your pet cat just might be an alien in disguise.

Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures

A spooky little book, which I purchased new in 1976, and has since become somewhat of a collector's item. It's comprised of nine short stories by nine different authors, an introduction by science fiction author Andre Norton, and beautifully illustrated by Rod Ruth.

I'm constantly surprised at what trivial nonsense can be found on the Internet, and yet strangely I've found virtually nothing about illustrator Rod Ruth. I was already aware of this artist from his work on many of the "Album of..." books ("Album of Dinosaurs" being one of my favorites...to be featured in a future post.) Here he provides a full page, full color illustration for each story, plus a small black and white title graphic for each.

.

The interior cover spread, illustrating a scene from "The Spell of Spirit Stones" by Alice Wellman.

The contents of the book are as follows:

Introduction by Andre Norton

The Patchwork Monkey by Beverly Butler

The Yamadan by Lynne Gessner

Monster Blood by Charles Land

Tigger by A.M. Lightner

The Spell of Spirit Stones by Alice Wellman

The Night Creature by Richard R. Smith

To Face a Monster by Carl Henry Rathjen

You Are What You Eat by Wilma Bedmarz

Nightmare in A Box by Rita Ritchie

In a future post I'll get into more detail about individual stories. My favorite is the creepy The Patchwork Monkey. You can see the little guy on the cover image at top, sitting benignly on the tree branch just below the rooster-looking Basilisk monster.

The Patchwork Monkey apparently had an impact on quite a few readers... it was even translated into a short film in 2003, although I haven't seen it. There's an entry for it at IMDB here.

Stay tuned for more about "Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures"...

UPDATED: Subsequent posts related to this book can be found here, here, and here.

Album of Dinosaurs (Tod McGowen, Rod Ruth, 1972)

I've always considered dinosaurs to be a sub-category of monster. They've always carried that aura of the fantastic, as wondrous and terrifying as any dragon, sea-serpent or other monster from mythology or the imagination.

Imagination isn't really required any longer to envision living, breathing dinosaurs. Modern productions like the Jurassic Park series or Walking With Dinosaurs have given us dinosaurs that seem more real than anything I ever dreamed up as a child. Yet in doing so, I think they robbed the dinosaur of some of its mythic grandeur, reducing them to just ordinary, albeit extinct, members of the animal kingdom.

But lets step back in time just a little bit. Pre-CGI and pre-Jurassic Park, dinosaurs in film were never very convincing. There were some impressive stop-motion dinosaurs created by Ray Harryhausen (Valley of Gwangi, One Million Years B.C.) or Jim Danforth (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) and traditional cel-animated specimens (Disney's Fantasia, Hanna Barbera's Valley of the Dinosaurs). There were also dinosaurs realized through costumes or puppets (The Last Dinosaur, The Land That Time Forgot). And finally, real live iguanas or other reptiles, dressed up with horns and fins and photographed up close to emulate their prehistoric ancestors (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth again, Journey to the Center of the Earth). While they all made for exciting spectacle, they rarely seemed very realistic.

Which is what made Album of Dinosaurs (1972) such a great book. For a kid in the 1970s, the beautiful pictures contained here (illustrations are by Rod Ruth, of Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures fame) were like a window into the past, presenting dinosaurs more realistic than could yet be found in any film, while still retaining that intangible mythic, larger-than-life quality that elevates them above mere animals.

On a more practical level, the book’s large size and smooth hardcover made it the perfect portable work-surface, which means I logged countless hours staring at that magnificent cover T-rex while it peeked over the top of whatever writing or drawing project I was working on.

These scans don’t really do the illustrations justice.

ALLOSAURUS

ANATOSAURUS
ALLOSAURUS ATTACKS APATOSAURUS

COMPSOGNATHUS

COELOPHYSIS

APATOSAURUS

ANKYLOSAURUS BATTLES TYRANNOSAURUS REX

STRUTHIOMIMUS

STEGOSAURUS BATTLES A CERATOSAURUS

PROTOCERATOPS

IGUANODON

TYRANNOSAURUS REX

TRICERATOPS
There were many books in the “Album of...” series, including Album of Prehistoric Animals, Album of Sharks, Album of Prehistoric Man, Album of Whales, Album of Astronomy, etc. Books of this series used to be common staples of any good used book store, but it seems they’ve become increasingly rare. Worth seeking out.