وجاء العنكبوت

by Edward Levy, إيناس النجار (ترجمة), أحمد خالد توفيق (إعداد)

العناكب ضيوف شرف في أي كابوس مريع..
والرواية التي نقدمها لك هنا تتحدث عن كابوس عاشه سكان (لوس أنجلوس): غزو العناكب الرهيبة القادمة من شبكة مجاري المدينة لتحيل حياة البشر جحيما، وإدوارد ليفي يقتحم_ في هذا الكتاب _ بعدا جديدا من ابعاد الرعب غير المسبوق، والذي لا يمكن تحمله إلا لأقوياء الأعصاب حقا.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Novels

119 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 1978

Reviews

[عمرو الجيزاوي · Rating 2 out of 5]

لم تكن مرعبة بالنسبة لي و لكن مقززة .. و النهاية كانت كلاسيكية و متوقعة تماماً
من أقل كتب الرعب التى قرأتها

[Leo . · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this when I was a teen. What a great book. I am fascinated with arachnids. Especially spiders. The big ones although not necessarily the most venomous are certainly the scariest. The boy in the beginning of this novel is bitten by a huge tarantula on his forearm. When he gets home he falls into a fever and is bed ridden. A huge blister the size of a silver dollar rises on his forearm and then bursts sending thousands of tiny spiderlings everywhere. Uggh! The rest is a cracking horror tale. Imagine Daphne Du Maurier 's The Birds but with Tarantulas!
Never yet made into a film as far as I know. I think Daphne Due Maurier endorced this classic horror tale by Edward Levy. I really enjoyed it.🐯👍

[منال الحسيني · Rating 3 out of 5]

ليست رواية رعب بمفهومها التقليدي، و لكنها رواية يعتمد كاتبها على أثارة مشاعر التقزز لدى القارئ إلى أقصى حد، و يبدو أنه نجح في ذلك

[Shihab · Rating 2 out of 5]

رواية تثير الغثيان أكثر مما تثير الرعب

[حبيبة · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward Levy was actually a seventies horror author rather than an eighties horror author, but Came a Spider was one of the first books to chart the course that more recent horror novels would take, scaling down the supermonsters of fifties and sixties "atomic cinema" and switching the focus from Robert Oppenheimer to Rachel Carson. (That Rachel Carson doctored her data does not in any way invalidate the sheer creepiness of a good deal of ecohorror.) Came a Spider was his first novel, of only two I could ever find that he wrote, and while it's the lesser of the two, it's still a barnburner of a read. Levy hits you early on; in the opening scene, a large, nasty-looking spider bites a teenager, who gets progressively sicker over the next week, then dies, his purpose fulfilled-a cocoon for the spiders' eggs. From there, the babies of this mutant beast do what comes naturally to mutant monsters in horror novels. They launch a campaign to take over Los Angeles.

Came a Spider, for all the genre-writing silliness, was an insanely influential novel. Very little of what has come since has remained uninfluenced by it (the climactic hunt for the spiders' nest in the sewers of Los Angeles, especially, should be very familiar to fans of eighties mutant monster movies, starting with 1980's Alligator). It helps that Levy has a wonderfully readable style, causing the reader to want to forgive some of the deadwood in the dialogue (e.g., one of the scientists on the team trying to kill the spiders off has a tendency to use the term "personally," as in "I personally know..." and the like, way, way too much). The pages certainly keep turning quickly enough, so that if you've got an afternoon free you can probably plow through the whole book.

Levy's work has been re-released, and can now be discovered by a new generation of fans. Allilujah. ****

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, pulpy story about an invasion of very unusual spiders, attacking more or less the same part of Los Angeles that was afflicted by killer mutant babies in IT'S ALIVE. I can hardly believe this one has never been made into a low-budget horror film. A short, easy read full of questionable science, dubious character development and furry 8-inch spiders!!!

[oddo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The debut novel from the author of The Beast Within, a nature run amok book, even, Came A Spider opens with a young boy hunting with his father in the desert when he stumbles across a large tarantula with a branded number on its abdomen, close in proximity to a government testing site. Not one to miss a chance at a unique trophy, the child attempts to catch it in his gamebag but failed to notice the enlarged stinger protrude from its body and plunge into his arm. Taken back home, the boy falls rapidly ill while doctors blame flu variants, leaving time for the egg sacs that were injected into his bloodstream, finding a home to grow in the fibrous tissue of his kidneys, to burst with thousands of baby spiders, eating their way out of his chest and mouth, and this is only the beginning. What Levy has meticulously crafted here is a worrying spider invasion close to an apocalyptic scale, tethered to reality with a believable cast of characters and an insanely high body count, though some, not all, scenes of mayhem are scuttled along to keep the pacing tight. There is some real horrific stuff on display here—thick black carpets of tarantulas spreading across a freeway, exploding vehicles blocking traffic with infants and doting mothers serving as casualties of war between city police and mother nature on the offense.

[Ayman Elgazzar · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية مرعبة مقززة مقرفة
دا كان شعورى مع كل صفحة اقرأها
رغم انها رواية رعب الا اننى احسست بالرعب و القرف معا لذا يكفى ثلاثة نجوم

[Hamza El-Kady · Rating 4 out of 5]

يمكن انا مش من النوع اللي بيتقرف بسهوله بالعكس انا فعليا بحب نوع الرعب البيولوجي
و خاصه لو الكاتب بيرعبني بحاجه انا اساسا بخاف منها :D
العناكب من اكتر الحشرات اللي انا فعليا بكرهها جدا جدا
الاسلوب اللغوي ممتاز و الترجمه ممتازه جدا جدا
النجمه الناقصه عشان صغر الروايه بس مش اكتر
مسليه سريعه مشوقه

[Ahmed · Rating 2 out of 5]

رواية تقرف ونهايتها رخمة
جو العناكب والهري ده مبياكلش معايا

[Beauregard Shagnasty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-done "Nature Amok' story that moves along briskly and has moments of pulse-pounding suspense and a high "ick" factor, especially if you are afraid of spiders.

[SĦorouk Nasr · Rating 3 out of 5]

.. بالنسبة لي هذا النوع من الروايات هو قمة الرعب فعلا
الحشرات والعناكب هي أشنع المسوخ على الإطلاق
!فما بالك إذا كانت مفترسة
D:

..

[Aya · Rating 3 out of 5]

المشهد الاخير من الرواية بشوف فيه مبالغة .. لكن بقى الرواية جميلة جدا .. بس منصحش اي حد عنده فوبيا من الحشرات انه يقراها :)

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Came A Spider is a blast from the past with the book being released first in 1979, in what I consider the start of the golden age of horror. As one would expect from the title this book is not for those who have an aversion to our arachnid friends.

Whilst the plot is nothing new Levy delivers it in a highly entertaining and hair raising manner. The spiders are straight out terrifying and has your skin crawling all through the book. The book is somewhat dulled a little bit by the passing of time but that is to be expected. It touches on some modern day issues like global warming which I found very interesting.

This book is one or the classic horror fans out there. I am very glad I came across a second hand copy of this book and intend to explore Edward Levy more.

[أحمد الكيلانى · Rating 5 out of 5]

هى احدى روايت الرعب البيولوجى ، عن عالم العناكب نتحدث
الرواية رائعة الا ان المؤلف يمتاز ببعض السادية حيث هناك الكثير من القتلى بما فيهم الاطفال ، الا ان خطر العناكب فى رايى ايا كانت ليست بتلك البشاعة لكن عند النظر للزمن الذى كتبت فيه الروايةو هو عام 1979 فهى خطرة فعلا ، الجميل فى الرواية هو توصيح اهمية العمل الجماعى بين العلماء و الشرطة على عكس ما يحدث هنا فىان كل جهة تحاول ان ترمى باللوم على غيرها او تنفرد بالعمل وحدها ، فقط انا افتقد مقدمة احمد خالد توفيق المعتادة فى التعريف بالكاتب و الكتاب نفسه

[Nelio Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a pulpy romp through the marauding arachnid sub-genre, the descriptions of the marauding are so spine-tingling as to overshadow the under-developed characters and the predictability of some aspects of the plot. If you have an inkling of arachnophobia, and are looking for some light reading, I would recommend Levy’s ‘Came a Spider’. As accurately summed up by Booklist: “a terrifying page turner!”

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bitten by a crazy, angry, violent spider a boy has his kidney as an incubation environment and the baby spiders hatch eating through his body and coming out of his mouth. These spiders will breed to millions upon millions and cause havoc plunging the city into a black crawling mass of hell and destruction. A simple virus will eradicate these demons but can any mutant strain survive to carry on the evil?

[Timo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utter sheer brilliance. Classic.

If interested, here is a link to my longer review of the Finnish edition of Came a Spider: http://www.kolumbus.fi/taksi.56/kirja...

Timo

[Osama Yosre · Rating 4 out of 5]

تهرب مجموعة من احدى المعامل ويتم تحولها جينا وتتكاثر بشكل غريب وتتحول الى كاتنات مفترسة لكثرة عددها فى قنوات المجارى فيحاول المسئولين عن المدينة ايجاد طريقة للقضاء عليها
الاحداث حلو وسريعه وبها جانب كبير من التشويق

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Killer spiders. I was into monsters back then. Entertaining.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great 'creature-feature' type of tale...well written and grounded in psuedo-science...

[Cathel1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining read slightly marred by a predictable ending

[Trent · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, this might be the scariest book I've read in twenty years.

[Fatma Mahmoud · Rating 2 out of 5]

معفنة ! جابتلي شلل ..

[كريم الخالق · Rating 5 out of 5]

من أوائل الروايات العالمية اللي قرأتها
حلوة و أحداثها جميلة و ممتعة
الترجمة بتاعت د.أحمد خالد توفيق رائعة

[Lynnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a crazy fear of spiders, so much like Arachnophobia I had creepy nightmares. But I did like it anyway. It was an easy read.

[Georgette Kaplan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scaled-up Fifties B-Movie for the Eighties reader. Tarantulas have become mutated by government experiments and after a taut sequence of infecting a boy with, essentially, mini-Chestbursters, it's a breed-a-thon in the middle of Los Angeles. (Unrealistically, the authorities cordon off the area and start working on exterminating the spiders. In the real world, of course, Los Angelenos would vote for a law against killing spiders and then move to Texas to get away from all the spiders.)

So yeah, it's basically an American version of those James Herbert or Shaun Hutson ecohorrors about slugs or what have you taking over Great Britain. It definitely delivers the ooky creature terrors, with carpets of spiders invading zoos and attacking movie theaters and, come to think of it, acting way more like rampaging army ants than spiders. Los Angeles doesn't even get covered in webs. Maybe the writer didn't want himself compared to Them! too easily...

This came out in the seventies, so it's a bit late to blame anything on the atom bomb and too soon to declare that genetic engineering is responsible. It's also lacking a bit of the soul that Herbert or Hutson (or, yeah, Stephen King) put into their work. Those guys tend to excel at putting a little life into the victims before they get monstered, while here, you pretty much get the character's name or, at most, them doing some heavy petting with their girlfriend (ah, the seventies) before dinner is served. The main protagonist is an over-the-hill cop, and as much fun as it is to imagine Andy Sipowicz Vs. The Spiders, he's never as robust in his characterization as that. He's not even Dennis Franz's cousin from Die Hard 2.

There's also a stalwart scientist and a lovely lady scientist who ends up assisting him (see what I mean about this being a fifties B-movie writ large?). They, natch, fall for each other. There's even a bit where something in the lab proves to be the creatures' only weakness and our eggheads have to figure out what it is before L.A. is (gulp) nuked! Could it be the Pepto-Bismol? Quick, Dr. Quincy, get that bunsen burner burning!



Shades of Eight-Legged Freaks, which was nice enough to make its mutant spiders super-sized. I won't shame Came A Spider for being more committed to the bit than its more parodic cousins, but it is kinda limp when the scientist behind the (frankly ridiculous) change in spiders never gets destroyed by her own creation and no one even laments that there's been tampering in God's domain. More realistic, perhaps, but c'mon, man, there's totally been tampering in God's domain! Just admit it!

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t deny that in 2024, there are a plethora of decent creature feature novels being produced from Indie publishers like Severed Press, but nothing holds a candle to the peak 70s and 80s sub genre of horror.

Like James Herbert with The Rats, Mark Kendall’s Killer Flies and even the schlock master Shaun Hutson’s gross and over the top Slugs, Came A Spider is yet another glorious example of creature feature done right.

Came a Spider is a perfect picture of killing and rampaging creatures on the loose. Full of giant spiders, creative deaths, wonton destruction, and even the cliche scientific solution, this book is a ton of fun. Levy never wasted time with pointless exposition and weighty scientific reasons for the titular creepy crawlies and instead leaves this book rocketing along at a pace that never really stops, making for a very difficult book to put down.

Would I have liked a bit more schlock and ridiculousness like the aforementioned Hutson? Of course (I love lots of gratuitous sex and violence in this particular kind of horror story) but I honestly can’t complain about Came A Spider. It’s cheesy and simplistic, but for a couple of hours of mindless entertainment, you’d be hard pressed to find anything better, especially considering this was Levy’s debut novel.

[Bassem krayem · Rating 5 out of 5]

الرواية: وجاء العنكبوت
الكاتب: إيدوارد ليفي
المترجمة: إيناس النجار
إعداد: أحمد خالد توفيق
السلسلة: روايات عالمية (العدد 11)
التقييم: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
تخيّل لو استيقظت يومًا على خبر غزو العناكب لمدينتك!
إنها ليست عناكب عادية، بل عناكب عملاقة، تم تطويرها في مخابر خاصة، ولكن لسببٍ ما خرجت للعالم، وتكاثرت بسرعة هائلة، لتغزو ولاية لوس أنجلوس الأمريكية.
هذه الرواية تذكّرني بأرك نمل الكيميرا في أنمي هانتر × هانتر.
إنه شيء مشابه بالفعل، وربما يكون توغاشي، كاتب المانغا، قد استلهم فكرة ذلك الأرك من هذه الرواية... الله أعلم.
إنها رواية مرعبة، تقشعر لها الأبدان عند قراءتها.
أنصح بها كل عشاق الرعب، فهي ستعجبهم بالتأكيد!