Monster from Out of Time

by Frank Belknap Long, Frank Frazetta (Illustrator)

IT CAME FROM THE SEA— —huge, hairy, glowing, terrifying. On the beach, people gathered to stare—from a distance—at a creature unlike any they had ever seen. David, a young scientist, and his girlfriend, Joan, were among them. But David was not content with a distant look. At sundown, when the crowd had gone, David and Joan returned. And that's when it happened. A blinding light was all they remembered. Suddenly David and Joan were plunged through time into a world of towering glaciers and prehistoric beings—into an adventure of cataclysmic terror from which there seemed no escape!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Aka Lyda Belknap Long.

Frank Belknap Long was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention), the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (in 1987, from the Horror Writers Association), and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an unpretentious adventure about "David, a young scientist, and his pretty girl-friend, Joan..." who are mysteriously thrown backward in time to a barbaric prehistoric ice-age by a mysterious creature. It's a short, quick read, and not among Long's best (or worst, sadly) novels. The most notable thing is the Frazetta cover, which isn't really a scene from the book. I was entertained.

[Drew Canole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up for the awesome cover art (goodreads is totally slacking). The cover is where the awesome stops. The story, although a pleasant read, doesn't do anything for me. I haven't read anything else by the author, but I would recommend fans of sci-fi fantasy to look elsewhere for their fix.

[Still · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read something soothing, mindless, and familiar.
Reading histories of the Weird Old America and associated horrors was darkening my outlook.

This is wonderfully stupid, Adventure Pulp nonsense.

I’ve enjoyed better stories by this author but this one suited my needs for a few hours.

Two guys and their feminine companions are transported through time to the Paleolithic era near the end of the Ice Age where they engage in staying warm and avoiding mountain sized reptiles. It’s a slim book. Not long after encountering a monster they’re captured by mysterious primitives who force march them to their idea of an ice capades kind of affair-but with giant albino lizards.

Zany stuff. Strange, impossible to understand explanation of how this all came to be.
There was an enormous creature came out of the Earth after an earthquake and our four lead characters are too close to the creature which is glowing colored rays of light from all about its proximity,
It’s all about radiation and exposure and lights in colors some of which the human eye can’t detect.
And somehow it hurled them back in Time.
See?
Isn’t it obvious?

Too bad no one has posted the killer Frank Frazetta cover art for their Popular Library mass paperback edition.
Probably the only reason for most fans of this stuff to have bought it to begin with.
It was why I did.

My copy’s so old the book has separated from the spine, the glue completely gone from the years of sitting on a shelf, unread.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I reread this in October of 2014. Found the beginning of it quite compelling but the rest of it dragged. A monster appears in the jungle in South America that is from some time or dimension unknown, and it produces radiation that drags several modern humans with it back to an ice age time. That part was good but once the humans arrived in the past the book deteriorated mostly into dialogue of the people talking and trying to make sense of their experience. Then there's a bit of action at the end that is not bad but the whole thing comes to an end very quickly and I found it fairly unsatisfying. As I originally said in my review, "pretty lightweight."

[Steve Goble · Rating 1 out of 5]

Frankly, this book blows, despite the giant time-traveling monsters and the modern humans thrust backward into an ice age. The plot actually is mighty thin, too much so even to carry the mere 127 pages devoted to it. Although it is supposed to be a gripping and tense adventure of survival in a strange world, it is the kind of book in which characters pause in the midst of great danger to lecture one another on the possible cultural differences between Paleolithic peoples and modern humans, or perhaps the proper dating of the wooly mammoth in the fossil record. It's just not a good idea to sit and ponder how long a man might survive in extreme cold when there is a woman freezing to death and waiting for you to bring her a damned fur.

It also is a world in which the savage barbarians kill big beasties on their frozen landscape, but don't take home any of the precious meat, because I guess they prefer to eat snow.

The mutual admiration society bromance between the two male protagonists was a bit tough to take, too.

I've read better by Frank Belknap Long, so I won't give up on him, but the only thing I liked about "Monster From Out of Time" was the Frank Frazetta cover -- which really did not depict an actual scene from the novel, but what the hell.

[Storm Bookwyrm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I grabbed this book on the virtues of the cover (a wonderful little Frazetta illustration) and recognizing the author's name as being a contributor to Lovecraftiana.
It's only virtue, as it turned out, was that it was short. Not short enough, unfortunately, but still short enough to get it over with quickly.

It's two major problems are evident right away: First is the obnoxious sexism, where men and women are described in stark terms of what 'a man would do/is' and what 'a woman is/would do' in any given situation. Women are lovely creatures, men are strong defenders, women are praised for being strong and cool-headed when they're together, but in action they often tend to make things worse, panic, and do obnoxious things, like many women in many books written by men before the 90's often did.
The second problem, that made this book unbearable, is how every character goes on the longest mental tangents and trains of thought about anything and everything. If they see a strange walking across a snowy landscape, they'll pause to wonder if they're friend or foe, contemplate on the savage instinct of man to be afraid of what they don't recognize, ponder for a page or two about how to logically approach such a person in a peacable way, wonder if the 'peacable way' they think of would translate to anyone, bla bla bla etc etc. And then when they DO actually meet and talk, it's just as bad, everyone over-explaining everything to one another like a bunch of logic engines that need to catch every character up on everything the reader already knows and then EXPLAIN IT so we're not confused by the nuances of human nature, however distorted they might be.

An obnoxious waste of time, however little time it proves to be.

[Le Maistre Chat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Old paperback, bought for the Frazetta cover

In Yucatan, a young Mexican woman and an American uranium miner meet an unknown vertebrate that lives underground and... eats radiation? Emits radiation? Somehow, being near it sends them back in time to the Pleistocene. Then the same thing happens to a man and woman arriving from America. They try to survive in the freezing temperatures, meet each other, and meet some Neanderthals or H. Heidelbergensis (in Mexico?!) before the radiation... wears off and they return to their own time? It's confusing, not much happens even for the short page count (127), and Frazetta's "idealized man uses his bow and arrow to protect a blonde woman from Neanderthals" is among the things that never happened.
Frank Belknap Long was a member of the Lovecraft circle, and unlike HP himself or RE Howard, he lived until 1994 (age 93). I'm going to assume he could write better than this. There's no reason to bother with this title: you can even leave it out of a Frazetta collection since it adds no context to the painting.

[Eric N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple and short about time travellers who wind up in a Conan-like world.