HUMANOID AMOEBA

HUMANOID AMOEBA
"Looking down again, they saw that a blob of something was growing on the pavement ten feet from them."

"Turning they saw it emerge into the light--shapeless and jelly-green under the white flare."

"There was a final surge, a shrinking, and its shapelessness contracted into limbs, a head, feet. the naked man-thing pushed itself to its knees and then stood straight, the flesh by now opaque. Eye sockets caved into the face. A mouth ripped apart on the skull and the chest began to move with a west steamy sound in irregular gasps."

"Something was happening at the front. Figures, three or four of them, were detaching themselves from the mother mass and preceding it."

Samuel R. Delany, The Jewels Of Aptor

KIRKHUSA

KIRKHUSA

"Kirkhusa look more like big land-bound otters than canines. They're trainable, cheap as anything because they eat only the leaves of low bushes and the insects that grow on them. And they're even cuter than puppies when they're small....but this kirkhusa isn't cute. It's big, a good hundred pounds of healthy, sleek-furred flesh."

"It's growling, and as it slinks out of the grass and up onto the road, you see red blooms in the fur around its mouth and on its clawed, prehensile paws."

"That's the problem with kirkhusa, see. The reason everyone can afford them. They eat leaves -- until they taste enough ash, which triggers some instinct within them that's normally dormant. Then they change. Everything changes during a Season."

N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

INTERDIMENSIONAL SLUG

INTERDIMENSIONAL SLUG

"The light-robed dweller in the red barrens sat there, and the great black blob of shapeless jelly heaved gently on the crystal floor. She saw others she had watched enter, and many more. One was a female creature whose robe of peacock iridescence sprang from her shoulders in great drooping wings and folded around her like a bat's leathery cloak. And her neighbor was a fat gray slug of monster size, palpitating endlessly."

C.L. Moore, Jirel Meets Magic

NAGA

NAGA

"The naga was massive, wingspan of ten houses, clawed feet and barbed tail, mouth big enough to swallow a person whole."

JY Yang, The Black Tides Of Heaven

"Above all, there were the naga. More lizard than serpent, they soared through the skies on wings of leather, bird boned and jewel toned. These were apex predators, graceful and deadly, inscribed into the journals of adventurers with a kind of reverence reserved for the gods of old. A single bite could cut a man in half."

JY Yang, The Red Threads Of Fortune

"The word literally means 'snake' in Sanskrit but in Java it normally referred to serpent deities. Serpents in ancient Java and India were usually connected with water and fertility. They can be either good or evil. On Borobudur they are depicted in human form, but elsewhere they may appear in their natural animal shape."
Oleh John Miksic, Borobudur: Golden Tales Of the Buddhas

KIRIN

KIRIN

"The kirin lurched out of the shadows a the same second they felt its presence in the Slack."

"The kirin reared, wings swallowing the sky, head brushing the top of the trees, screech shaking the bones of the earth. A creature that was half bird, half lion, and all terror."

JY Yang, The Black Tides Of Heaven

"It is described as being a multicolored animal with a single horn protruding from its forehead."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

This week....

Clockwise from top left:
JY Yang, C.L. Moore, N.K. Jemison & Samuel Delany

Starting tomorrow I'll be posting a weeks worth of monsters from various authors who's work I love! We'll start off with two from JY Yang's amazing "silk punk" Tensorate series, then move on to an obscure creep from a classic C.L. Moore story. After that we'll jump to a creature from N.K. Jemisin's award winning Broken Earth trilogy that I've wanted to draw since I read it. And we'll wrap up with an extremely deep cut from one of Samuel Delany's early novels The Jewels Of Aptor!

MURK

MURK

"What were those flying out of it? Bits of incinerating building? They looked like bats. Demons." 

"It was a large black bat. And it was clutching her wallet, her glasses in their hard green case, and Udide's Book Of Shadows in its strong sharp claws." 

"Murks look like tiny bats and dwell in pools of darkness-under a fallen tree in a lake, beneath houses, under beds, whatever." 

"'Murks like to slap, ' Chichi said. 'Their wings feel like hot steel.'" 

Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Warrior

GHOST HOPPER

GHOST HOPPER

"'What the hell is that?' she asked. It looked like a red grasshopper the size of her hand.

'It's a ghost hopper,' Orlu whispered. 'They're harmless.'"

"It sat on her bed staring at her with its large orange compound eyes. Sunny wasn't afraid of grasshoppers, not even their strong flicking legs. But this creature was the size of an American football. It turned and, with a soft hum, hop-flew across the room, landing on the wall."

Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch

GLOWING SPIDER

GLOWING SPIDER

"Tower 4 was a concrete flower that housed suicidal birds called phoenixes, shape shifting monkeys, glowing spiders, lightning birds, cheetahs with deformed tails who drooled and ran fast as airplanes."

Nnedi Okorafor, The Book Of Phoenix

NTU NTU BUG

NTU NTU BUG

"The dry yellow grasses there had been cut low but still were occupied by hopping ntu ntu bugs, their brilliant orange-pink pigmentation eye-catching in the sunlight."

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: The Night Masquerade

SNAKE-LIKE SHARK

SNAKE-LIKE SHARK

"Something huge and snake-like leaped out of the water. It arched in the air, twisting in a spiral and noiselessly dropping back into the depths. At least ten grey shark-like fins all in a row surfaced not far from short. They - or it - sharply turned and headed farther out to sea."

"Then Adaora saw something below Hawra swimming up, quickly. Something huge, black, with too many fins. She could see the thing more clearly now. A mouth. Opening. Full of teeth."

Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon

PIG-LIKE BEAST

PIG-LIKE BEAST

"I was in the forest digging up clay to make my otjize when a large piglike beast came running at me. I twas too late to make a run for it, so I froze and looked it in the yes. The beast stopped, sniffed me with its wet snout, rubbed its rough brown furry rump against my arm, lost interest and walked off."

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home

TREE-LIKE INDIVIDUAL

TREE-LIKE INDIVIDUAL

"He'd immediately struck up a conversation with the dorm's elder, a treelike individual who spoke in a series of cracking and creaking sounds."

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home

JELLYFISH-LIKE CREATURE (MALE)

JELLYFISH-LIKE CREATURE (MALE)

"Over the last year, I'd learned (well, brashly been told) that the females of this group of people had the long antenna with the yellow eyes. The males simply had a large green eye on their dome, no antenna."

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home