By: Joseph Payne Brennan
Appeared in: Weird Tales (March, 1953)
A volcanic upheaval on the bottom of the ocean floor releases a primeval, gelatinous glob that rises up and slithers through the outskirts of a New England town. As people (and cows) begin to vanish, a police search is set in motion and the true nature of the slithering horror is gradually revealed.
Slime follows a very simple and episodic plot but Brennan’s writing and the sense of terror he creates of what might be lurking out in the darkness is superb. Drawing on the Lovecraftian tradition of unstoppable, primeval horrors, Slime’s influence on both horror fiction and Hollywood is clear. The 1958 sci-fi classic The Blob isn’t an adaptation of Brennan’s story but it comes damn close.
Although Brennan would go on to become one of the greatest writers of short horror fiction of the ’60s and ’70s, by 1953 the age of the pulp magazine was coming to an end. Weird Tales folded the year after Slime‘s publication and, in response, Brennan founded his own magazine – Macabre – as a rallying point for all Weird Tales alumni who needed a new outlet for their stories. Always an H. P. Lovecraft enthusiast, Brennan printed several articles devoted to the master of cosmic horror and Macabre became an important step in the continuation of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.
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