After finishing this book a few months ago, I enthusiastically tweeted:
So you've read all the @williemeikle S-Squad books and need more giant critters? Check out Generations. Bug count and size upped by 10X. Mad scientist. Dragon. Heroic horse. Plucky but not obnoxious kids. And, yeah, tanks, helicopters, and artillery. Funny too.
I could leave it at that for the review of this unjustly neglected Meikle work.
Normally, I wouldn’t read a young adult book, but Meikle is one of those authors that I’ll read whatever type of story he’s spinning.
Our protagonists are eleven-year old Kate who lives on a farm in Scotland with her parents. Fellow classmate Tom lives nearby. And so does Tom’s Granddad. (I’m not sure we ever get his name.)
Granddad is a brilliant, eccentric scientist – mad in his carelessness but not bad in his intent. A former university professor, he practices alchemy and is a believer in vitalism.
We first meet Tom catching a newt for his Granddad. He wants to make a dragon out of it by giving it some wings. The newt, Tannis, gets his wings alright, but some growth medium is accidentally spilled in the lab. The next thing you know giant bacteria and insect are crawling up from the foundation.
While the future problem under the house is growing, we follow Kate and her pet pony Champion. At one point, Granddad even thinks about turning it into Pegasus.
Granddad may be good at causing problems, but he also mounts a good defense of Kate’s home when it’s besieged by giant ants.
And, eventually, we get a full-on battle of the British Army and Air Force vs. the giant bugs threatening Edinburgh.
The destruction Meikle gleefully gives us exceeds even his S Squad series, and I can’t think of a single Meikle novel with a higher body count except, maybe, The Coming of the King trilogy.
This is a fun story and surprisingly good for a novel with two kids as protagonists. Meikle lives up to his subtitle. He does give us a funny, enjoyable, “creature feature” movie in book form complete with a cast of likable characters and widescreen mayhem.
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From the Publisher
Weird Science
William Meikle's Weird Science Fiction
The first science fiction I ever encountered was Fireball XL5, one of the early Gerry Anderson productions. I was only about four years old, but I was hooked immediately on spaceships and adventure in the stars.
I grew up during the exciting part of the space race, staying up nights to watch space-walks then moon missions, eyes wide in wonder as Armstrong made his small step. At the same time Gerry Anderson had continued to thrill me, with Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. The Americans joined in, with Lost in Space then, as color TV reached Scotland, Star Trek hit me full between the eyes.
As the '60s drew to a close, Marvel started to take over my reading habits more, and I made forays into reading novels; Clarke and Asimov at first, and most of the Golden-Age works. By the early Seventies I had graduated to the so-called New Wave, Moorcock, Ellison, Delaney and Zelazny dominating my reading, and they led me on to reading, then writing horror.
But the science is always there.
WEIRD SCIENCE
- The Dunfield Terror ( novel from Crossroads Press )
- Fungoid ( novel from Crossroads Press )
- Generations ( Self Published novella )
- Bug-Eyed Monsters ( Self published collection)
- Lab ( Self published Chapbook )
- Builders ( Self published Chapbook )
- Spore ( Self published Chapbook )
- Nursery ( Self published Chapbook )
FUNGOID
A MURMURATION OF OPAS
THE KEW GROWTHS
GENERATIONS
THE DUNFIELD TERROR
This one is set in Newfoundland and has some glowing fog, a mad scientist, lots of snow, a shipwreck, some tentacled things, a dead whale, rum, cigarettes, some boats of various sizes, a bar or two, some stiff upper lips, a shed and a multitude of universes, among other things.
Some of my major influences are on show - Lovecraft of course is obvious from the title, the cover and the subject matter, but there's also John Wyndham in there, and more than a touch of old Professor Quatermass, along with possibly bits of Doctor Who's more trippy adventures in the timey-wimey stuff.
THE INVASION
THE INVASION reached no 2 in both Kindle SF and Kindle Horror and has sold over 20,000 copies.
Most Invasion movies concentrate on the doings in big cities, and with the involvement of the full force of the military. I wanted to focus more on what it would mean for the people. Living as I am in Canada, in a remote Eastern corner, I was able to draw on local knowledge and home in on people already used to surviving in extreme conditions. I just upped the ante.
An interest in conspiracy theories and post-apocalypse survivalists also gave me one of the main characters, and the early parts of the story are a news report from the bunker where he has retreated to ride out whatever is coming.
So come with me, to a winter storm in the Maritimes, where a strange green snow is starting to fall.
THE ISLAND OF TERROR
Strange lights on the moors, weird noises in the night, cattle disappearing; these things alone are more than enough to prompt Malone’s newspaper to send him to investigate. And when his old companion Professor Challenger also goes missing, the hunt is on.
The trail leads Malone to the British military, and to a research station in the Bristol Channel, where an old terror proves, once again, that some things are not meant to be contained.
THE PLASM
A derelict spacecraft and a storage cavern on Mars are linked by a forgotten secret.
Ancient rituals are invoked, dark energy is awakened, and soon the Plasm is growing, and feeding. Desperate measures are required-but will they be enough?
This one is a wee B-movie homage-a film that was never made if you like. It runs in my head like a Gerry Anderson production, and if you think of it like that, I'm sure you'll have a load of fun with it.
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A little slice if fun
