NIGHT-GAUNT

NIGHT-GAUNT

"Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell, But every night I see the rubbery things, Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings, And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth

"But Carter preferred to look at them than at his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

GUG

GUG

"It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with formidable talons. After it came another paw, and after that a great black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head of the awakened gug sentry, large as a barrel, wabbled into view. The eyes jutted two inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with coarse hairs. But the head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth. That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

GHAST

GHAST
"...the ghasts, those repulsive beings which die in the light, and which live in the vaults of Zin and leap on long hind legs like kangaroos."

"After a moment something about the size of a small horse hopped out into the grey twilight, and Carter turned sick at the aspect of that scabrous and unwholesome beast, whose face is so curiously human despite the absence of a nose, a forehead, 

and other important particulars."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

GHOUL

GHOUL
"The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground- for Pickman's morbid art was pre-eminently one of demoniac portraiture. These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness."
H.P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model

"All these things Carter glibbered to the assembled ghouls, and presently outlined that request which he had in mind, and which he did not think extravagant considering the services he had so lately rendered the rubbery, dog-like lopers."
 H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

DEEP ONE

DEEP ONE

"I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly wed tar articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth

LENGIAN

LENGIAN 

"The mouths of the men who came from it to trade were too wide, and the way their turbans were humped up in two points above their foreheads was in especially bad taste. And their shoes were the shortest and queerest ever seen in the Six Kingdoms." "They leaped as though they had hooves instead of feet, and seemed to wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns. Of other clothing they had none, but most of them were quite furry. Behind they had dwarfish tails, and when they glanced upward he saw the excessive width of their mouths. Then he knew what they were, and that they did not wear any wigs or headpieces after all. For the cryptic folk of Leng were of one race with the uncomfortable merchants of the black galleys that traded rubies at Dylath-Leen." 

H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

NAMELESS CITY INHABITANT

NAMELESS CITY INHABITANT 

"They were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated a small man, and their fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like human hands and fingers. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour violating all know biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared - in one flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bullfrog, the mythic Satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories." 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Nameless City

FORMLESS SPAWN

FORMLESS SPAWN
 "At any rate, when the men of K’n-yan went down into N’kai’s black abyss with their great atom-power searchlights they found living things—living things that oozed along stone channels and worshipped onyx and basalt images of  Tsathoggua. But they were not toads like Tsathoggua himself. Far worse—they were amorphous lumps of viscous black slime that took temporary shapes for various purposes."
H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, The Mound

"Then two arms—if one could call them arms—likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was not, as we had thought, a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and was now forming these damnable arms, that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or hands!"
Clark Ashton Smith, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros

GUARDIAN DEMON

GUARDIAN DEMON
"'Startled as I was, I looked round after him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then walk away a few yards. Then I heard him call softly, "All right, sir," and went on pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and put its arms round my neck.'"

"'My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind.  I can only just manage to tell you now the bare outline of the experience. I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several--I don't know how many--legs or arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out, Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that same step. Providentially the band round me held firm.'"
M.R. James, The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas

SHANTAK

SHANTAK

"Winged and whirring, those forms grew larger each moment, and the traveller knew his stumbling was at an end. They were not any birds or bats known elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than elephants and had heads like a horse's. Carter knew that they must be the Shantak-birds of ill rumour, and wondered no more what evil guardians and nameless sentinels made men avoid the boreal rock desert."

"It was hard work ascending, for the Shantak-bird has scales instead of feathers, and those scales are very slippery."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

IBIAN

IBIAN

"It is written on the brick cylinders of Kadatheron that the beings of lb were in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it; that they had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voice."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Doom That Came To Sarnath

COLEOPTERAN

COLEOPTERAN
"After man there would be the mighty beetle civilization, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world."

"Perhaps these entities had come to prefer earth's inner abysses to the variable, storm-ravaged surface, since light meant nothing to them. Perhaps, too, they were slowly weakening with the aeons. Indeed, it was known that they would be quite dead in the time of the post-human beetle race which the fleeing minds would tenant."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time

LITTLE RED OWL

LITTLE RED OWL

"He paused in his narrative and looked archly at the children. They were listening intently. He observed with pleasure that they were both pale with excitement and what was pretty certainly distress. 'What do you think happened to Billy and Gwendolyn?' he urged them. 'Go on, tell me what you think happened to them.' 'I know!' Peter said, almost shouting, 'I know! The Little Red Owl Came and got them out!'"

"'I don’t believe it. The Little Red Owl . . . the Little Red Owl isn’t hurt. He’s all right!'”

Margaret St. Clair, The Little Red Owl

HYRA

HYRA

“And under system conditions Hyra increase so slowly that for one to bud off was a real  rarity.”

“The silicious, gelatinous bodies of the Hyra were extremely hard to destroy.”

“The reason it looked so much emptier was that the Hyra —ugh, how he loathed them—he’d never let Alice see how much) were all jammed together at one end, heaped up on one another, like a pile of oozing, pupilless eyes.”

Margaret St. Clair, The Vanderlark

VENUSIAN

 VENUSIAN

“It wasn't only the way they smelled, it was the way they talked. It was sort of gurgling and tongue-tied and it sounded like too much saliva and too few teeth." 

“The people at the door were plump, even for Venusians. The biggest one, the one with six. chins and two stomachs and whose name, was Shallot-s'hu, had brought a fossilized "Dardanor" epiphyte as a friend's gift, and the others had brought presents too. Their manner were lovely, no matter how much the Venusians themselves smelled like fish, and Oona felt herself, begin to warm to them.“

Margaret St. Clair, The Himalaychalet

“A fat Venusian had been comin’ down the steps of the Tashkent Import and Export Exchange.”

Margaret St. Clair, Return Engagement

ROTIFER

ROTIFER

"'Oh—nothing,' Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, he explained, 'I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'm looking at them.'"

"Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancies which his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering the dark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he could recognize whence this question had stemmed."

"There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems."

"'I won't tell you how to talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they hate us. They never knew before—that there was anybody but them.... So they want to kill us all.'"

"He remembered the shapes that swam and crept in the green water gardens, with whirling cilia and great, cold, glistening eyes."

Robert Abernathy, The Rotifers

LIZARD MAN

LIZARD MAN
"And then the openings poured forth lizard men. There were at least a hundred of them, all about four feet in height, their skins gray-green in the eerie luminescence. Their loins were wrapped in some sort of bindings that left room for the massive tails that dragged the ground behind them. They had almost no necks, and their lipless mouths extended more than an inch beyond where their noses should have been. Their bulbous eyes stared unblinkingly as they shambled forward on massive lower legs that bent nearly double. Had they straightened those legs they would have been the height of a man."

Lewis Shiner, Lizard Men Of Los Angeles

THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING

THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING 

"Pretty soon, entirely without volition on his part, queer, half-formed dream things would float through his mind . Like dark , polliwogs. Propelling themselves along with their tails, hinting at secrets that nobody knew, not even grown-ups. Some day he would be able to catch one, quickly, before it wriggled off into the inner hidden chamber where They had a nest and, then , he would know."

"He had only had it for a split second but he remembered it had blind, weepy eyes and was smooth."

"'"And make a thinking-time-dream-thing hold still so's I can get it. So's I'll know. I guess that's all. Hahneeweemahneemo, O Idol of the Flies, you are free to GO!'" 

"Another—shooting itself along with its tail—its greasy sides ashine . Another—and another—and another—and then a seething whirlpool of them. There had never been so many . Spiny, pulpy, slick and eellike, some with feelers like catfish, some with white, gaping mouths and foreshortened embryo arms."

"Its nose holes went in and out, in and out, in and out, like something he had known long ago in some past, mysterious other life , and it whimpered as it came and whispered things to him."

Jane Rice, The Idol Of the Flies

DUNE ROLLER

DUNE ROLLER

"It was not a pebble or a piece of chipped glass as he had supposed; instead, he fished out a small, drop-like object shaped like a marble with a tail. It was a beautiful little thing of pellucid amber color with tiny gold flecks and streaks running through it. Sunlight glanced off its smooth sides which were surprisingly free of the surface scratches that are the inevitable patina of flotsam in the sand-scoured dunes."

"'It reminds me of something, with that little tail. I know — Prince Rupert drops.'"

"It looked the same as the three small drops he had previously seen, but he saw that what he had mistaken for golden flecks inside of it was really a fine network of metallic threads which formed a web apparently imbedded a few centimeters below the thing's surface."

"'There have been some funny old stories told along these shores. I heard one myself from my grandmother when I was about twelve. About the Dune Roller that was bigger than a schooner and lived in the caves at the bottom of the lake. It came out every hundred years and rolled through the dune forest, leaving a strop of bare sand behind it where it had eaten the vegetation. They said it looked for a man, and when i found one, it would stop rolling and sink back into the lake.'"

J.C. May, Dune Roller

OPALESCENT THING

OPALESCENT THING

"'I can't describe it — no one could. It resembled nothing so much as a star shaped blob of transparent jelly that shimmered and changed color like an opal. It appeared to be some lower for m of animal, one-celled, not large, only about a foot in circumference when it stretched those feelers out to full length. It oozed along over the sand like a snail, groping its way with those star-points — and it hummed!'"

"'It took me about three days to trap the thing, although it gave no more actual resistance, of course, than a large snail.'"

"I saw horror — a jelly-like, opalescent thing like a five-pointed star. It pulsed and quivered for an instant, and the room fairly rocked to the unmuffled sound of that vibrant humming."

Mary Elizabeth Counselman, The Black Stone Statue

WAKANDAGI

 WAKANDAGI

"This is the name of a water monster in the traditions and beliefs of the Omaha and Mohawk Native American people of the United States. This massive being has a long serpentine body with horns on its head and legs with hooves, all of which resemble those of a deer."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

AIGAMUXA

AIGAMUXA

"In the mythology of Khoisin people of South Africa, the Aigamuxa are man-eating monsters that inhabit the dunes of the Kalahari Desert. These curious humanoids are described as having their eyes placed in the instep of their feet so that they are obliged to stop and lift a foot in order to see where they are going. Although they otherwise look relatively like humans, their huge bodies and heads make them fearsome adversaries, mainly because of their enormous fanglike teeth."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

MOKÊLE-MBÊMBE

 

MOKÊLE-MBÊMBE

"This is the name of a marine monster in the early travelers' lore of the West African coast. The Mokêle-Mbêmbe was said to be a monster resembling an elephant but having a single horn from its head and a tail resembling that of a crocodile or a scaly serpent."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

ROKUROKUBI

ROKUROKUBI
By day, rokurokubi appear to be ordinary women. By night, however, their bodies sleep while their necks stretch to an incredible length and roam around freely. Sometimes their heads attack small animals, sometime they lick up lamp oil with their long tongue, and sometimes they just cause mischief by scaring nearby people.

Matthew Meyer, Yokai.com

Among them are famous yuirei (ghosts), teenage (supernatural beings with both human and bird-like characteristics) and rokurokubi (phantoms with impossibly stretching necks, or heads that come off and fly around), all of which appear in 

Laficadio Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories

“A rokuro-kubi is ordinarily conceived as a goblin whose neck stretches out to great lengths, but which nevertheless always remains attached to its body.”

Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies Of Strange Things

HELLHEAD

HELLHEAD

"It is a creature with a face that is human-like but with an opening on the top of its head from which the righteous exit Hell. We call this creature “Hellhead.” We have found what we think is the source for this creature in a medieval Russian novel about Alexander the Great, called Александрия (Aleksandriya)."

Hell is portrayed in two ways in these icons. Firstly, as a large black, seemingly empty cave, and secondly, it is ‘personified’ as a red creature, looking like a human in many ways but with two or more eyes and an opening in its head out of which the righteous arise. We have called this creature 'Hellhead.'"

"Based on this representation of Hell as having a head from which the righteous rise from the mouth in the top of its head and the fact that representations of headless creatures similar to

Hellhead existed in a much copied novel29 known in Russia, we feel that it is this fanciful representation of Blemmyes in the Alexander novel that was the source for Hellhead."

Henry A. Hundt & Raoul N. Smith, A Teratological Source of Hellhead

SPIRIT OF PREY

 

SPIRIT OF PREY

"As we sat down under this tree and were thinking about that night's danger, there we saw a "Spirit of Prey", he was big as a hippopotamus, but he was walking upright as a human-being; his both legs had two feet and tripled his body, his head was just like a lion's head and every part of his body was covered with hard scales, each of these scales was the same in size as a shovel or hoe, and all curved towards his body. If this "Spirit of Prey" wanted to catch his prey, he would simply be looking at it and stand in one place, he was not chasing his prey about, and when he focused the prey well, then he would close his large eyes, but before he would open his eyes, the prey would already be dead and drag itself to him at the place that he stood."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

LONG-WHITE CREATURE

LONG-WHITE CREATURE

"We slept in the bush, but when it was about two o'clock in the night, there we we saw a creature, either he was a spirit or other harmful creature, we could not say, he was coming towards us, he was white as if painted with white paint, he was white from foot to the topmost of his body, but he had no head or feet and hands like human-beings and he got on large eye on his topmost. He was long about 1/4 of a mile and his diameter was about six feet, he resembled a white pillar."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

"Also all the terrible-creatures sent their representatives as "Skulls", "Long-white creatures", "Invincible and invisible Pawn" or Give and take" who fought and won the Red people in the Red-town for the "Palm-Wine Drinker";
Amos Tutuola, My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts

RED-BIRD

 

RED-BIRD

"After that I loaded the gun for the second red creature (red-bird) and within 5 minutes it appeared out again, then I got ready for it. I saw that it was a red-bird, but its head could weigh one ton or more and it had six long teeth of about half a foot long and very thick, which appeared out with its beak."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

TERRIBLE CREATURE OF WRAITH ISLAND

TERRIBLE CREATURE OF WRAITH ISLAND

"I could not approach him as he was as big as an elephant. His figernails were long to about two feet, his head was bigger than his body ten times. He had a large mouth which was full of long teeth, these teeth were about one foot long and as thick as a cow's horns, his body was almost covered with black long hair like a horse's tail hair. He was very dirty. There were five horns on his head and curved and levelled to the head, his four feet were as big as a log of wood."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

RED-FISH

RED-FISH 

"But when these two red creatures were coming out from the hole, they did not walk side by side but following each other and when the one at the front appeared and was coming towards me, it was red-fish in form."

"At the same tim that the red-fish appeared out, its head was just like a tortoise's head, but it was as big as an elephant's head and it had over 30 horns and large eyes which surrounded the head. All these horns were spread out as an umbrella. It could not walk but was only gliding on the ground like a snake and its body was just like a bat's body and covered with long red hair like strings. It could only fly to a short distance, and if it shouted a person who was four miles away would hear."
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

ORIONIAN

ORIONIAN

"They were tall and white. I try to see them as men in some kind of white jumpsuits. The one nearest the bank is stretching out a long white arm toward Ruth."

"The arm stretches after her. It stretches and stretches to yards and stays hanging in the air. Small black things are wiggling from its tip." 

"I look where their faces should be and see black hollow dishes with vertical stripes. The stripes were moving slowly."

"'Get in, Althea, we're taking off for Orion.'"

James Tiptree Jr., The Women Men Don't See

EGGIAN

EGGIAN

"His snuffling is partly constitutional — Moa is an amphibian — and partly directed at his current customers, two impossibly cheerful young Comenor."

"Moa Blue's stern reptilian face softens."

"Moa smiles, a toothy effect that would have been intimidating in different context."

"'And' — she takes his scaly hand shyly — 'we'll remember you.'"

"'Well, now, wait till you read this last before too many thanks are in order,' he tells them, showing the glittering array of teeth that had carried his remote ancestors to dominance on his home planet of Hard Eggs."

James Tiptree Jr., The Starry Rift

MURNOO

MURNOO

"It is the embryo of a Murnoo often called a 'sex-animal.' The Murnoo is a very important part of the Ziello race, but it isn't a Ziello."

"The Murnoo grows very fast, and as soon as it releases the teat in the male's pouch it is born — a tiny furry helpless creature who requires care at first, but grows very fast."

"In only about three years it is full grown, but it doesn't look much like its Ziello father and mother. It's much shorter, with a rounded face and ears, rudimentary upper arms, and a short tail."

"Well, as a sex-animal it turned out a strange cream shade, quite lovely, with red ears and paws."

"They look partly like Ziellos and partly like big rabbits."

James Tiptree Jr., Collision

HRATTLI

HRATTLI

"We know it doesn't mean anything — you have Hrattli in top Gal Fed jobs and they look like poached eggs."

James Tiptree Jr., Your Haploid Heart

ESTHAAN

ESTHAAN

"Very human, is my snap reaction. He has the same number of fingers and features, his joints work like ours, and his skin texture — a feature on which i place great hunch reliance — is a cream-yellow version of my own brown. Eyes round, with laugh lines, and his smile shows human teeth with an extra pair of frontals. All quite standard except that his torso looks a trifle thick or blocky."

"'These owl-eyed marshmallows'"

"I rip the pilots clothes, exposing his swollen body. Two great angry scars run from each pubic ligament to above the crest of the pelvis."

"A supreme convulsion sweeps the Esthaan and the two gashes in his flanks swell, pulse, and slowly evert themselves like giant pea pods turning inside out. Amass of wriggling blobs of flesh tumbles down his sides. He screams."

James Tiptree Jr., Your Haploid Heart 

MPIRI

MPIRI

"With bodies rivaling those of lions in size, and wingspans that exceeded the width of an elephant's ears, only kyame of the most potent quality could have muted the sounds the creatures' approach would otherwise have made. The intruders' nightmare aspect was like that of an unspeakable amalgamation of serpent and bat. Long, coarse black hair covered their wings and bodies, leaving only their hind-limbs bare. The appendages at the end of those muscular limbs bore a repellant resemblance to human hands."

"Long, blunt-ended jaws opened wide to reveal sharp, spiky teeth. The eyes above those fearsome jaws glittered with cold intelligence - and hatred."

Charles R. Saunders, Dossouye II: The Dancers Of Mulukau

OMULUDU

OMULUDU

"The being that now stood before Imaro bore the semblance of an emaciated ape, with sinewy arms and legs that were longer and straighter than those of a gorilla or chimpanzee. Its torso was thin but muscular, like the body of a snake. hair the color of river-mud covered all of the creature's body except its face, which was only vaguely anthropoidal."

"Instead of a nose and a mouth, a hooked beak like that of an eagle jutted form the middle of the creature's face. In place of hands and feet, its limbs ended in curving talons resembling those of a gigantic bird of prey. Unlike those of beast or bird, however, the being's slit-pupilled eyes blazed with malevolent intelligence."

Charles R. Saunders, Amudu's Bargain

CHEMOSIT

CHEMOSIT

"The chemosit is described as part human and part bird. It has one leg and nine buttocks. Its red mouth shines like a lamp at night. Whatever else it may be, the chemosit is unquestionably a new being in distinct visual form."

Charles R. Saunders, Out Of Africa

SICHI

SICHI

"His body was tall and gaunt, but beneath his earth-colored skin swelled ropy thews that bespoke of a strength that was more than human. His hairless skull sloped to a peak, and his ears were pointed like those of a jackal. His jaws protruded in a beast-like muzzle. Within those jaws a carnivore's teeth gleamed as Umanya Kwi smiled."

"'Do your legends not tell you how many of your kind were needed to bring down one of mine? I am a sichi, yes! I am worth ten of you! Pray to your ancestors, ahosi, for your armor will adorn these trees before this night ends!'"

Charles R. Saunders, Dossouye I

INGULUKU

INGULUKU

"If a lion could have been mated with a crocodile, the offspring might have resembled the inguluku. Spiky teeth lined its long jaws. Eyes set in deep sockets glared in a sloping, reptilian skull."

"Legs that were slightly bowed held a sinuously muscular body high from the ground. All four of the inguluku's paws were equipped with hook-like talons. Its body was cat-like, but its tail was a long, tapering cone of sinew, like that of a lizard. Dull, green scales covered the beast's body. Spiky black hair grew in tufts across its head and along its spine."

The fresh wounds seared Imaro like fire, for the inguluku's talons were sharply serrated."

Charles R. Saunders, Imaro IV

ANGLI

ANGLI

"The color of course you know––sky-blue in the main, with here and there blues lighter or darker from slate to peacock blue, from pale blue foam to deep marine. And the great eyes were quite Human-shaped, though the size of foot-lockers. And the tentacles you have met––each had groups of suckers-discs which were apparently quiescent unless the owner wished to cling."

"To put it bluntly, the aliens looked like gigantic cerulean octopuses."

"Their heads were large and bald and shiny above the single eye, and their mantles began where a chin should be, concealing their noses and mouths, or beaks, or whatever. Also to be glimpsed beneath the mantle's rippling edges was a mass of darker blue fur-like organs among which seemed to be some very small, delicate tentacles of unknown use."

"And their basically radial bodies were obviously in transition to a bilaterally symmetrical form––the four 'back' leg-tentacles were much larger and longer, to free the front four. In face if––as happened later––a small one wore a long robe with a good to conceal the shiny bald dome above the eye, it could pass for a large, somewhat top-heavy human form."

James Tiptree Jr., Second Going

PARADISIAN

PARADISIAN
"Gray rotten little things were humping toward them out of the walls, stopping to stare."

"Three of the lumps were humping closer. All dove-gray like himself, but it was hide, not silk, that bloated at elbows and knees. Gray splayed feet, and between them, under bags of belly, the giant genitals of two of them leaving triple furrows in the mud."

"From their blue-black face holes came gentle glubbering sounds."

James Tiptree Jr., The Milk Of Paradise

DRON

DRON

"'Oh, sure. Well. Big white bodies with fur all over. And six legs, they mostly walk on the back four, the top two are like arms. They have like long bodies, long white cats, big; when they rear up to look, they're over our heads. And they have....' Here the voice stammers, as if finding it hard to speak. 'They have like two, uh, private parts. Two sets, I mean. Some of them. And their faces' --the voice runs on, relieved-- 'their faces are fierce. Some teeth!"

James Tiptree Jr., The Only Neat Thing To Do

JOILANI

JOILANI

"Her huge dark-lashed Joilani gaze implored him mutely; in her terror she forgot the warnings, and her small dove-gray face contorted in that rictus of anguish the Terrans called a 'smile'."

"She tore the jelmah off, exposing her wide-hipped, short-legged little gray form, with its double dugs and bulging pouch."

"Her short twin birth channels."

"Amid the boots and the shouting, her wrist glands leaked scarlet Joilani tears as she foresaw the slow and merciless death that would now be hers."

James Tiptree Jr., We Who Stole the Dream

ZIELLO

ZIELLO

"And their body shapes, as far as we could see, are just what we expected--taller and bigger than us, extra pair of uppper arms, one big single eye, and a long heavy pointed tail they brace on. Their skins are covered with very short fur, like that cloth, velvet. Mostly brownish gold."

James Tiptree Jr.,  Collision

KRAKOW MONSTER

KRAKOW MONSTER
"The monster of Krakow, born in 1547, was a terrifying demonic figure in appearance, with webbed claws instead of hands and feet, a forked tail, flaming eyes, a sharp trunk-like nose and lion-like mouth, and animals' heads at its armpits, elbows and knees."
Jennifer Spinks, Monstrous Births

MARGYGR

MARGYGR

"This is the name of a type of mermaid in the traditions and folklore of the people of Greenland. The Margygr is described as hideously ugly with piercing eyes and a flat face."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons