‘Our Hideous Progeny’ by C.E. McGill
Less than 1% of my Goodreads reviews are a perfect 5/5 rating. But so strange an accident has happened to me that I cannot forbear recording it.
Those of us who are obsessed with Mary Shelley long for a continuation of the Frankensteinian mythos but are entirely surrounded by the frozen ice of bastardised pop-culture Franken-weeny clones, cheap imitations, and satirical exploitations of ‘the offspring of happy days’.
Our situation is somewhat dangerous, especially as we are compassed round by a very thick fog of classical illiteracy and ignorance. I hear many of my Shelley aficionados groaning and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted my attention, and diverted my solicitude from my own situation.
I perceived a new release 400-page novel displaying a fossil-mirrored stitched-up illustration on a lustrous black cover flowing with the words ‘Our Hideous Progeny’. The ‘Our’ hinted at a collective appetite and ambition. Little did I know at the time that this story would be of gigantic stature. This appearance excited my unqualified wonder, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light I saw the dull yellow pages of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated my limbs. I am a blasted tree, the bolt has entered my soul.
“Everything about it was alternatively curved and pointed, delicate and piercing. Calligraphy made flesh.”
C.E. McGill would be worthy of a personalised invitation to join company with those romantics at Villa Diodati, for the author has dared to play ‘god’ by attempting to manufacture with alchemistic artistry that which is of the same DNA of Shelley’s unique species but having its own original and unique identity.
They have done it! They have managed to galvanise the electric current that raced through the brain waves of the grandmother of gothic science fiction and brought to life the most unnatural beautiful demon.
I have been its reader, but it is my master. I obey!
