Carnosaur, p.1
Carnosaur, page 1
Also available by Harry Adam Knight
Slimer
The Fungus
HARRY ADAM KNIGHT
CARNOSAUR
INTRODUCTION BY WILL ERRICKSON
VALANCOURT BOOKS
Carnosaur by Harry Adam Knight
Originally published in Great Britain by W. H. Allen in 1984
First published in the United States by Bart Books in 1989
First Valancourt Books edition 2022
Published by arrangement with Tor Books/Macmillan Publishing Group
Copyright © 1984 by Harry Adam Knight
Introduction copyright © 2022 by Will Errickson
Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia
http://www.valancourtbooks.com
Valancourt Books and the Valancourt Books logo are registered trademarks of Valancourt Books, LLC. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Lynne Hansen
Set in Dante MT
INTRODUCTION
‘Young boys tend to be dinosaur mad. I know I was at his age. I had a big collection of plastic ones and could give the correct name for each one.’
I was a mean dinosaur fanatic when I was growing up in the Seventies. Family trips to science museums in Philadelphia and New York allowed me to see the immense fossils in person; relatives would ask me the names of the various prehistoric animals, which I could rattle off (and spell!) with the unselfconsciousness of a precocious child. Visits to the local library were never complete without a stack of books on these fantastic, near-mythic creatures. Most of these titles were from the Fifties and Sixties and out of date by the time I was reading them, illustrated with timid little black-and-white pencil sketches of what were in essence giant tail-dragging lizards. Tom McGowan and Rod Ruth’s Album of Dinosaurs, published by Rand McNally in 1972, boasted in full color the leaping, devouring, attacking creatures, pure catnip for kids like me.
More kid-friendly dinosaur ephemera: there were model kits from Revell in a line called ‘Prehistoric Scenes’. Lots of tiny multi-colored plastic toys that your little cousins visiting from the country could easily swallow and choke on. I was obsessed with the original King Kong, Saturday mornings and Land of the Lost, Doug McClure stranded in The Land that Time Forgot, and especially a bottom-of-the-barrel TV movie called The Last Dinosaur, with a drunk Richard Boone battling a Tyrannosaurus (that is, a dude in a suit, Godzilla-style) and other archosaur baddies in a land deep inside the earth’s core. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World? You bet. I know I attempted my own version of all these stories. And who can forget good old Ray Bradbury’s masterful time-travel tale ‘A Sound of Thunder’ and its chilling climax? Not I, friends, not I.
But it wouldn’t be until the Nineties before real dino-mania took over the popular culture, and while you’re certainly right about what caused it, there was another bit of forgotten prehistoric lore that deserved excavation, this lovely preserved fossil you now hold in your hands: a book originally published in 1984, entitled Carnosaur, by one Harry Adam Knight.
*
‘Harry Adam Knight’ was a pseudonym used for a handful of pulp throwback novels by a writer named John Brosnan. Born in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, in 1947, Brosnan got his start in the fertile grounds of science fiction fandom, eventually moving to London to follow this passion. Making his name with books about genre movies – James Bond in Cinema (1972), Movie Magic (1974), The Horror People (1976), Future Tense (1978) – as well as popular movie review columns in science fiction magazines, Brosnan moved on to writing pulp fiction.
His first horror novel was 1983’s Slimer, written with fellow fandom scribe Leroy Kettle. Together they wrote four novels, including 1985’s The Fungus (aka Death Spore), sometimes using the name Simon Ian Childer as well. But Carnosaur, however, was Brosnan’s baby alone. In the e-book You Only Live Once, a collection of his nonfiction, Brosnan talked about the genesis of his primeval horror thriller:
In 1983 a film journalist colleague of mine, Alan Jones, returned from a visit to Hollywood with the news that the next big Hollywood trend would be dinosaur movies. A whole, big line-up of dino pics were on the drawing boards, he told me. So I immediately came up with a clever and cunning plan. I quickly whipped up an outline about genetically engineered dinosaurs being created in a private zoo owned by a deranged aristocrat . . . as hack novels go I thought, and still do, that Carnosaur was pretty good and I also thought, at the time, that it might do well. It didn’t . . . it sank without a trace.
Such is the life of a pulp writer. Fortunately, Brosnan was sanguine about his career prospects and wasn’t too perturbed by his lack of bestsellerdom. He remained in London and kept writing, under his own name and even more pseudonyms: pulps with Kettle, science fiction, TV novelizations, humor, guides to the Scream and Hannibal Lecter movies. Afflicted by depression and alcoholism, Brosnan died of complications from pancreatitis in 2005, aged only 57.
*
A fleet-footed, old-fashioned, no-frills, Fifties monster movie-inspired tale with plenty of gore and action, Carnosaur is as solid a vintage paperback science-gone-mad novel as one could want. James Herbert vibes abound as Brosnan ticks all the boxes and doesn’t muck about with the unnecessaries; the ride you’re in for is mean, nasty, brutish, and short. Even the characters moan and groan, so glumly rude you think, Jeez, doesn’t anyone have a nice polite word to say? Everyone’s all Johnny Rotten all the time.
Our tale begins at 2:17 a.m. sharp when a poultry farmer is woken by his wife because their chickens are squawking up a ruckus. ‘Fat lazy cow,’ he thinks first off. (See what I mean? So rude.) Of course, you’re reading a book called Carnosaur, so you know what’s about to happen when our farmer goes out to investigate. And it does. A great beastie, ‘the colour of dried blood,’ lurches out of the darkness amidst the unholy screech of upset fowl and makes short work of old Rudie McRuderson. The locale of this attack will prove to be apropos later.
Then the action switches to two teens getting it on in the back seat of a car, straight out of a Fifties monster movie, and it’s more of the same, with some class-consciousness woven in as British pulp always seems to do: ‘She’d been flattered to have been picked up by someone who was so upper class. Well, sort of upper class.’ Dino arrives, makes short work of teenage boy, girl drives off in terror and crashes into a tree: a tale as old as time.
Daytime: David Pascal is a twenty-something bloke working as a ‘journalist’ at a newspaper that’s barely a newspaper in the small English town of Warchester, ‘where nothing exciting ever happened.’ He’s just dumped his wonderful girlfriend, a colleague named Jenny, because of his dreams of leaving for a job on a Fleet Street scandal rag. Who knows when that’ll happen, since those folks keep ignoring his desperate applications. So here Pascal is, still working on a paper that’s practically a free local business flyer and having awkward moments with Jenny in the office. But you’re reading a book called Carnosaur, so you know that Warchester will offer up something soon that Fleet Street dared never dream.
Warchester’s wealthy eccentric, the big-game hunter Sir Darren Penward (erroneously referred to as ‘Sir Penward’ throughout the novel; ‘Sir Darren’ is the correct nomenclature), has his own personal zoo on his vast estate, filled with exotic and dangerous animals. This includes his ravenous ‘nympho’ wife, Lady Jane. Jane is referred to by locals as Lady Fang, and Brosnan notes that she looks ‘like something out of The Story of O’, well known for her penchant for seducing younger men while her husband tends to his menagerie.
The bodies of the chicken farmer and the teens are found; the ‘upper-class’ boy is the son of a respected MP. Suspecting one of Penward’s large felines, police begin their investigation, and ‘Sir Penward’ blames the attacks on an escaped Siberian tiger. Pascal suspects a cover-up when he and one of the police officers notice blood has been cleaned up around one of the bodies at the chicken farm. Later Pascal questions a little boy who says his family was killed by a dinosaur: ‘Simon watched his mother die without comprehending what he was seeing . . . it was as if he was watching something on television.’
Penward’s men capture and kill the escaped tiger, but Pascal is skeptical. Along with a reluctant Jenny, Pascal begins an investigation of his own. He tries to learn more about Penward and his zoo, finding the men who worked for him drinking in a locals-only pub. ‘They seemed almost to worship [Penward] . . . Like that of a High Priest and his disciples. Pascal suspected they were all crypto-fascists who were attracted both by Penward’s autocratic style and his well-publicized Darwinian social theories that were so reactionary they made Nietzsche seem a wet liberal by comparison.’
Of course, these aren’t the type of blokes who talk to nosy reporters, and they hand Pascal his ass for his trouble. Nursing his wounds, Pascal drives back to the newspaper offices only to find, alas, his ex Jenny in a tryst with another coworker. ‘The ultimate wimp,’ Pascal is thinking of himself, feeling Penward is responsible for this sudden downward trajectory in his life, both personal and professional. ‘One way or the other,
Pascal has a confrontation with Penward in which all is revealed about how these extinct monsters are suddenly alive again: the painstaking genetic process that the obsessed Penward explains like a Bond villain (recall Brosnan literally wrote a book on James Bond) which leaves Pascal muttering, ‘Incredible. Chickens into dinosaurs.’ Penward got the idea of loosing dinosaurs upon the world from a chance comment made to him by a biologist at a science convention – ‘genetic engineering’ and all that. Outside, Penward might be a man of power and authority but inside he’s a kid playing with dinosaur toys. And of course in keeping with Bond villain energy, Penward reveals to Pascal that Pascal must die for his trespasses at the zoo. Fortunately for the reporter, the dinosaurs escape – or are they released? – before that can happen . . .
‘The residents of Warchester – the ones still alive – woke up to a world that was vastly different to the one they’d gone to sleep in.’ Brosnan intermixes scenes of Pascal and Jenny rushing around Warchester, trying to alert authorities to the dangers, with scenes of dinosaurs appearing incongruously in everyday life. Behold: Tarbosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex in everything but name, traipses through backyard gardens; Deinonychus, with its scythe-clawed foot that it uses like a prehistoric exponent of kung fu, to unzip hapless folks’ guts from neck to groin; an ankylosaur faces off with a military tank; a baby brachiosaur is befriended by a boy; and a plesiosaur joins a boating party that none of the invitees will soon forget: ‘After a long, stunned silence a man’s voice said, with an edge of hysteria to it, “Well, you’ve got to say one thing for good old Dickie; he sure throws a hell of a party . . .” ’
*
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the original Eighties editions of Carnosaur. Not a single paperback of it had a cover that could be called ‘interesting’ or ‘eye-catching’ or ‘good’; personally, I think they are some of the poorest of the era, considering the dreadful dino damage within that could have inspired an exciting illustration right out of that Album of Dinosaurs. Its initial publication was in 1984 by Star Books, a paperback division of W. H. Allen, based in London. To me, it looks like a giant bloody bird claw busting through a door; maybe it’s an ostrich, an eagle, an egret, I don’t know, but it implies none of the specifically saurian menace within. In 1989, the obscure, primed-for-liquidation Bart Books released it in the United States, featuring an even less impressive cover: I think it’s a big bird opening a window shade from the outside? And a desert sunset? At least both use the word ‘prehistoric’ front and center. Then there are two movie tie-in editions for the woebegone 1993 Roger Corman movie adaptation, for which Brosnan wrote a screenplay that was all but ignored.
*
Before I sign off, I have to address the thirty-ton brontosaurus in the room: one cannot talk about Carnosaur without mentioning that other cultural behemoth, the book and movie Jurassic Park. The ground zero of dino-mania, the aftershocks still strong three decades later (the trailer for the latest installment arrived as this piece was being written). Brosnan’s unassuming little paperback preceded Michael Crichton’s bestselling hardcover novel by five or six years and is also filled with many facets that would become famous, indeed iconic, when Steven Spielberg’s adaptation was released in 1993. Chase scenes, close calls, and especially the agile killer Deinonychus – literally akin to the velociraptor – are all first seen in Brosnan’s work. The scientific basis of resurrecting prehistoric creatures is also nearly identical in both titles. After reading Carnosaur you may wonder if Crichton first read Brosnan’s book . . . or if it’s simply a case of a great idea whose time had, like the mighty dinosaurs you’re about to encounter, come round again.
Will Errickson
February 2022
Will Errickson is a lifelong horror enthusiast and author of the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, where he rediscovers forgotten titles and writers and celebrates the genre’s resplendent cover art. With Grady Hendrix in 2017, he co-wrote the Bram Stoker Award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, which featured many books from his personal collection. Today Will resides in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Ashley and his ever-growing library of vintage horror paperbacks.
1
‘Des, wake up!’
Des Cartwright tried to ignore his wife’s hand tugging on his shoulder. He wanted desperately to sink back down into his sleep. He’d been having a wonderful dream and being wrenched out of it was almost too much to bear. ‘Leave me alone,’ he growled, still half asleep.
‘Des!’ she cried again, shaking him harder. ‘The chickens! Something’s upsetting them!’
‘Something’s always upsetting them,’ he muttered. But he was fully awake now and the dream was fading from his mind like the tantalizing after-taste of some beautiful flavour. He couldn’t remember what the dream had been about but he felt a sharp sense of loss.
Feeling strangely sad he turned over on his back and listened. Julie was right. The chickens were in a hell of a state. What was scaring them, he wondered. A fox? Or one of the local dogs? But how could any animal have got in? He’d checked the fences only a couple of days ago.
He sighed, sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. The alarm clock said it was only 2.17 a.m. ‘Shit.’ He got up and put on his dressing-gown. Julie was sliding back under the covers, eyes screwed shut against the light. He felt a momentary wave of revulsion wash through him. Fat lazy cow, he said to himself as he looked at her and then immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t her fault she’d been sick the last couple of years and put on so much weight. I still love her, he told himself definitely, but he knew it wasn’t true. He hadn’t felt anything like love for her in years. Even before she got sick.
He tried to shut out these unwanted thoughts as he walked through to the kitchen. The chickens were continuing their frantic squawking. If anything they were making more noise than before. Then he heard a crash as a heavy object hit the floor in one of the sheds. A cage had been overturned. He stopped thinking of foxes. It had to be one of the local dogs. A big one. Or perhaps more than one.
He went to the cupboard by the back door and took out a 12 bore shotgun. He loaded it with cartridges kept in a kitchen drawer, then went outside. It was a warm August night and the air smelled of summer. It brought back memories of summer nights long ago as he walked across the yard towards the three large buildings that housed the chickens. Unexpectedly a fragment of the dream flashed through his mind. He had a mental image of a girl’s face. She seemed very familiar but he couldn’t remember who she was. Was she someone from his school days, he wondered. A girl he’d had a crush on? Or was she merely a figment of his imagination? The feeling of familiarity could be a trick of the mind. Dreams were funny things . . .
The noise was coming from the middle shed. He opened the door and went inside. The long, narrow building contained over a thousand birds and every one of them seemed to be squawking. Cartwright paused at the doorway and stared down the central aisle. The lights were on – as they always were – and he could see all the way to the end of the building, but there was no sign of any animal. Holding the shotgun ready he walked to the top of the next aisle. In the distance he could see that a whole section of cages had been knocked over. They had been ripped open and there were feathers all around. He began to walk towards the wreckage, curious to see what had caused all this damage. He didn’t feel afraid. He was confident that the shotgun was adequate protection against any dog, no matter how large. And by the look of the cages it was large. He tried to think of anyone nearby who owned a large Alsatian or Dobermann, but couldn’t.
Then he became aware of the smell. He stopped walking. Suddenly he was very frightened but he had no idea why. The smell was unlike anything he had ever experienced before but it produced an atavistic terror within him. He started to shake. He knew he had to get out of there . . .
