Polyphemus

by Michael Shea

From sea-monsters in outer space ("Polyphemus") to aliens in human bodies ("The Autopsy"), these six stories by the author of In Yana, the Touch of Undying display a distinctive talent for the macabre. Whether based in sf or fantasy, Shea's short fiction is not for the squeamish.

Contents:
Polyphemus (1981)
The Angel of Death (1979)
Uncle Tuggs (1986)
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen (1982)
The Horror on the #33 (1982)
The Extra (1987)
The Autopsy (1980)

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Collections, Weird Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

For the British author of thrillers and non-fiction see Michael Shea

Michael Shea (1946-2014) was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author who lived in California. He was a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award and his works include Nifft the Lean (1982) (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) (later republished together as The Incomplete Nifft, 2000), as well as The ARak (2000) and In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).

Reviews

[Benjamin Uminsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first introduction to Michael Shea, although his reputation as a fantasist and sci-fi/horror writer certainly precedes him, and was one of the reasons why I had picked up a copy of this Arkham House edition.

First let me say that not every story in this collection met my liking. Actually, the one story I am referring to, "Pearls of the Vampire Queen", I guiltily skimmed over, so that I could return to the other stories that held my fascination. It's not to say that the opening of this story bored me, but once I realized that the story was a "sword and sorcery" type of fantasy tale, I already knew that I would prefer to spend my time on the other more sci-fi and horror tales in this collection. And I'm not casting any judgement on the fantasy genre, I simply have never developed a palette for this kind of genre, and by the time I got to "Pearls", I had already been enjoying the other stories in the collection and really was not up for a fantasy interlude. Maybe I'll come back to this story one day... but on to the rest of the stories.

I think for me, the rest of the stories were an outstanding blend of horror and sci-fi, that demonstrated Shea's versatility in covering a wide range of socially/political themes using a wonderful and highly stylistic prose.

The two jewels of this collection are "The Autopsy", which I think most people have come across in various anthologies, and "The Extra". "The Autopsy" masterfully combines horror tropes (vampiric like feasting) with sci-fi tropes (parasitic pupeteering of a host body by an alien entity) to give us a harrowing mystery of one doctor's incredible but fatal discovering at the morgue one evening.

"The Extra" on the other hand is a more traditional sci-fi dystopic future kind of satire, that incorporates some particularly horrific scenes of callous blood shed. I was really blown away by this story, particularly by what it attempted to achieve with its not so veiled social commentary of "Hollywood" entertainment taken to extremes. The philosophical musings were cuttingly poignant without being preachy and Shea did a wonderful job with weaving in the satire to a highly compelling and sophisticated tale.

I would highly encourage any reader who has yet to read Shea to give him a go... definitely worth your time.

[Denny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago I attended a World fantasy convention in Madison Wisconsin. To save on some money I stayed at a youth hostel. To my surprise Mr. Shea and Mrs. Shea were staying there too. We had a nice time talking about the convention. He wound up winning a award. The next night I met up with them again after dinner at the hostels living room. We watched the movie The grudge on the tv. He kindly allowed me to send some of my books to his home which he signed and returned.

[Ctgt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Sci/fi or horror or just enjoy reading inventive stories, do yourself a favor and read this collection. Contains one of my all time favorite short stories, The Autopsy, about an aging medical examiner and what he finds while on a case after an explosion in a mine.

10/10

[Fraser Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Autopsy' is easily one of the scariest, and most depressing horrors out there, and I love it. Part MIDWICH CUCKOOS, part Quatermass; part TWIN PEAKS, part THE THING. I fucking adored it!

As for the rest of the collection...

The eponymous tale is a well considered first encounter story, of the terminal kind. It kinda dragged for me, but it's good.

And that's all I can remember, but in my defence, it's been over twenty years since I've read this. I seem to recall a BLUE WORLD/Robert McCammon vibe from one of the tales, as well.

Nonetheless, 'The Autopsy' should(and I don't use that word lightly) be read by any one who claims to have an understanding of Sci-Fi, or horror short fiction.

[Miguel Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuckin hell!

[Michael Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mainly know Michael Shea from his sword & sorcery tales, but he's one of those authors whose work I want to track down, because of it's lack of both deserved acclaim and proper re-printings and releases. This anthology only contains one of his s&s stories, from his 'Nifft the Lean' collection, and it's a good one, Shea doing what he does best, filling a world with exquisitely sketched nightmare creatures and ne'er-do-wells.

What really stands out to me here is how versatile a writer he is- there's some very straightforward science fiction here, as well as more comedic blue collar horror, and a few stories that defy genre classification.

The works on display here also reveal something that I really love about Shea as a writer of imaginary creations- he has it all thought out before hand. Not just how to get his characters from point A to point B, or what lessons he wants them to learn, but EVERYTHING, down to the anatomical details of his monsters, his as clearly painted in his mind as it is in his prose.

My favorite story here is the last one, 'The Autopsy', and this is the one that illustrates Shea's attention to descriptive detail the best, as the entire story hinges on us understanding the form and function of an alien being's anatomy. Shea succeeds at this marvelously, giving us a full color mental image of the squirm-inducing procedure.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fun volume, reads like a lost collection of King's 80s stories. I liked these tales a lot more than the author's Lovecraft mythos stories, he should have done more original stuff instead of spending so much of his short story career on pastiche.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is by one of the best sci-fi writers you've never heard of. This book is a collection of oddly claustrophobic, gritty, hung-over sort of stories about people living in dreadful worlds that seem simultaneously to be set in the distant future and the distant past. The writing is so good that you can almost hold each character in your hand -- but after you do, you have to scrub and scrub and scrub to get yourself clean again.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection looks more toward the alien side of weird fiction. Body swapping, complex alien symbiosis, dark futures with the descent of our culture into brutal spectacle. Great stories all around even if not the most thematically coherent, but the highlights for me were:
The Angel of Death
Uncle Tuggs
The Autopsy

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to the writings of Michael Shea, whose stories here range from horror and sci-fi to weird fiction and high fantasy.

These are all great stories and really show Shea’s depth and range as a writer, able to capture a scene so weird and scary in just a few pages. The highlights are certainly the title story “Polyphemus” - a futuristic retelling of Odysseus’ battle with the Cyclops, “The Extra” in which a group of extras for an alien invasion movie find out that these aliens are real and out for blood, and the best story of them all - “The Autopsy” in which a pathologist investigating the deaths of miners in a routine mining accident finds a far more sinister cause of death - a perfect blend of sci-fi and horror.

Shea is a great writer, able to create atmospheric and unique stories that really unsettle. A real master of the short story. 3.5 stars

[Lucy Batson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had first heard of Michael Shea from Patton Oswalt championing his work on places like the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast: Shea was an uncommonly good writer, capable of stories that were highly kinetic, but also very eloquent at the same time. This is a strong collection with lots of classics, with "The Autopsy", "The Extra", and the title story being the stand-outs.

[Tom Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tight collection of Shea short stories. Seven in total, everyone a total banger. Great entry point for those new to Shea's work. I read the recent Valencourt Books edition. Very clean edit and perfectly presented.

[Vesselin Metodiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The titular story and "The Autopsy" were great. Everything else was just fine.

[N. M. D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rarely like modern horror. Very little post-1940s has done it for me. Bradbury and Matheson are about it. This book having an intro from Laird Barron, whose writing style I find mostly agonzing to read, was a big red flag.

It took me a week just to crawl through the titular story. It's a great idea but the too-many characters, whose traits are rattled off quickly, were too hard to keep straight. I couldn't even tell you how many there were. The prose is not super engaging and was so technical I had to put half of it into context. Sudden headhopping is also something I hate. Give me limited perspective or get off my shelf. The Angel of Death, about an alien academic studying Earth and running into a serial killer, is a fantastic idea but the headhopping was too much for me.

The first-person stories fix this problem and I enjoyed those more. Uncle Tuggs is a straightforward, redneck horror story. The Pearls of the Vampire Queen is high fantasy and, though creative, not my vibe at all. The Horror on the #33, told by two first-person narrators in partial epistolary format was a nice bit of existential horror. My favorite was probaby The Extra, despite a dated, stereotypical depiction of street-wise poor people, a dystopia where you become a film extra that stands a good chance of dying on set for the sake of entertainment is a lot of fun.

The Autopsy, though a wonderful idea, also suffers from the overly-technical descriptions. It's great when a writer is knowledgeable, but not great when the story is so high context you're constantly tripping over words.

Half these stories are equal parts horror and SF, a hard balance to strike well, and Shea does it consistently. At the beginning of this collection I was leaning on a hard pass, but by the end I was willing to check him out further.

[Jon Carroll Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection from a tragically overlooked writer. What I learned: Shea had a thing for spiders and was particularly fond of using the word "palps."

The story "Polyphemus" was a little tedious for me but most of the other stories stand well above the standards of their various genres. "The Autopsy" and "The Horror on the #33" were both great in the "Lovecraftian" tradition. "The Angel of Death" and "Uncle Tuggs" were also great, and reminded me more of good Stephen King with their balance of darkness and humor. I also really enjoyed the dark fantasy/adventure "The Pearls of the Vampire Queen" and it made me want to read the other stories in Shea's series, "Nifft the Lean."

[Bbrown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not going to go so far as to say that Michael Shea is a hidden gem of an author, but this collection is of a high enough quality that he should certainly be better known. Most of the seven short stories in Polyphemus are quite good, and even the ones that I enjoyed a bit less are at the very least doing something interesting. The most impressive aspect of the collection is the variety of stories it contains, ranging from science fiction (the titular Polyphemus), to supernatural backwoods horror (Uncle Tuggs), to dark fantasy (The Pearls of the Vampire Queen), as well as some interesting genre hybrids. I could easily see each story in this collection being someone’s favorite. Shea’s writing ranged from solid to good throughout, though there are a few authorial decisions that I found quite questionable. Still, the ratio of hits to misses in Polyphemus makes me rate it a 3.5/5 and round up.

To briefly talk about each of the individual stories:

The titular story Polyphemus is actually one of my least favorite in the collection, but that’s because Shea is intentionally mimicking 1950s sci-fi pulp. I don’t care for the boring–sorry, stoic–main character, and his relationship with the female lead is cringe-inducing, but these are part-and-parcel of the type of story he’s aping here. Still, the fact that this is essentially the story of some sci-fi fishermen on an alien world that turns into a creature feature is weird enough to be mildly interesting. Don’t write off Shea because of this first story alone.

The second story The Angel of Death is much better, with its intertwined tales of a serial killer and a shapeshifting alien anthropologist. It immediately makes you curious about how the paths of the two characters will cross–and what the response of the serial killer who thinks himself so much better than the masses will be when confronted with an actual superior being. I wish Shea had trusted his readers to figure out the parallels between the serial killer and the alien on their own instead of spelling them out, but so it goes. One of my favorites of the collection.

Uncle Tuggs cements that Shea has some solid range in his writing. This hillbilly horror story is slightly comedic at times, but still manages to be effectively creepy. The narrator is also well-rendered, with a distinct personality that comes through without Shea having to use any gimmicks. The very end note of the story is a unique one that will stick with me. Another good story.

The Pearls of the Vampire Queen is a dark fantasy tale focused on the thief character Nifft that Shea has apparently written a whole collection of short stories about. The character doesn’t rival Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or anything, but he’s serviceable enough. It’s a heist narrative, keeping you guessing about the particulars of the scheme, though you know at least Nifft survives the job thanks to the story taking the form of a letter from Nifft to an unnamed friend. No real horror here, but still solid.

The Horror on the #33 is another of the weaker works in the collection, mostly because it is written in a genteel manner that I did not care for. The horrors faced by a homeless person are unique enough that I wish the story delved more into the main character’s day-to-day struggles and the paranoia that his supernatural encounter engendered instead of jumping so quickly to the main threat yet again. I also wish that Shea had not written this as an epistolary story, as this necessarily undermines some of the tale’s tension (Shea does this in other stories in the collection as well). The weak philosophical note of the conclusion also wasn’t great. Even with all these problems, though, even this story was fine, just nothing special.

Shea deciding to write The Extra from the perspective of a self-described “welfare monkey” whose dialogue has a smattering of ebonics is certainly a choice. Once you get past that, though, this is one of the most interesting works in the collection. Set in a dystopian future with mass overpopulation, the plot here predates the show Squid Game by almost 35 years, and it is a more interesting take on the same premise. The Extras asks, in a future where lives are so plentiful, why would movies bother to use CGI when human flesh is even cheaper? Definitely worth reading, another of my favorites. The ending is a little goofy though.

The Autopsy is the most famous work in the collection, another sci-fi horror hybrid like The Angel of Death. The beginning does a good job establishing the mood, and I appreciated that it’s set in a mining town with an accompanying atmosphere but the entity isn’t some unearthed horror. While I initially thought that the alien was too verbose, I now think it was an effective way to make you dislike this antagonist. In this story Shea actually trusts his reader to realize the parallels between the parasites the main character is dealing with instead of spoon feeding them, which I always appreciate. The ending is even creepier than what I guessed it would be. I see why this one is so popular, and I liked it very much, though I’d only put it in my top three of this collection–which shows how strong Polyphemus is!

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Somewhat-Less-Than-Mild Spoilers Follow*

After first developing interest in Shea's work on the occasion of last year's adaptation of his story "The Autopsy" by David A. Prior for Guillermo Del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities" series on Netflix, I was stoked to discover that Valancourt books were reissuing this - his most evidently celebrated collection of short stories.

To say that "The Autopsy" is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Shea's work would be something of an understatement. It's excellent, of course, and incorporates some shadings absent from the (still eminently worthy) adaptation. Perhaps no writer has ever proven more adept at depicting encounters between human beings with truly alien creatures, and that's a skillset which returns us to the opening, titular story.

"Polyphemus" the story is a marvel. Perhaps there's a bit too much shoe leather given to interpersonal dynamics among the crew of characters here, but that's a minor complaint for a work that so fully illustrates an attempt to wrap our tiny human brains around an unknowable creature. It's what Lovecraft might have done had he been possessed of a more scientific bent, and it's truly remarkable stuff.

"Angel of Death" also plays out this "human beings encountering alien creatures" string, and put me in mind of one of the most famously unmade film projects which was gestating around this time (perhaps it was something in the air?): "The Tourist" (which - after Googling - sounds different from what I'd recalled in my memory). It also reminded me a bit of "Under the Skin," which is no mean feat and no faint praise. The only weak link here for me was the oppressively pathetic character of the serial killer (rewarding though it rendered his comeuppance).

"Uncle Tuggs" is a classically spooky story with a soupçon of the grand guinol for good measure. It's the kind of thing that implies an unreliable narrator, and we could just as easily be reading a man's justification for a series of cold and calculating murders as what's presented on the surface.

I was EXTREMELY skeptical of "The Pearls of the Vampire Queen," but it actually might have ended up being my favorite story in the whole collection by the end. Just astonishingly well written, and I hope to be able to read the further tales of "Nifft the Lean" at some point in the near future. The alien creatures Shea describes here are exquisitely fully conceived, and the prose is so sumptuous and inviting. I've never really considered myself a fan of fantasy novels, but if there are others like this, then count me way the hell in.

"The Horror of #33" is also great. A depiction of an encounter with a horrifying alien intelligence with shades of Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train" as well (not sure the timeline of when each was published but I suspect it's a case of parallel thinking). I did wonder how a homeless guy and the narrator were sending letters back and forth (don't you need an address for that? or specifically a pair of them?), but it's a minor hurdle to overcome to enjoy the story for what it is.

My least favorite story here is one I believe Shea would go on to expand into a pair of novels, and it's "The Extra." Though I think the concept is interesting, I don't think it's fully realized here and it raised too many questions about its world without providing satisfying answers (although I'm sure that's remedied in the larger text that would eventually arrive).

So, um, yeah. That brings us back to "The Autopsy," which is utterly spellbinding in every conceivable way.

[Shaun Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to splurge on this rarity after reading some glowing reviews here on Goodreads. Unfortunately, my opinion of Mr. Shea's short story collection is not nearly as high due its inconsistent quality. Here are my brief thoughts on the stories I read.

The Autopsy (4.5/5): Well-written, with some cool ideas and an interesting protagonist. Riveting descriptions of how a seasoned pathologist works.

The Horror on the #33 (4/5): Perhaps a little pointless, but it has a cool, mysterious vibe. Like there's more to it than meets the eye.

The Angel of Death (4/5): Balances comedy and science fiction skillfully. It does, however, leave important questions unanswered.

Uncle Tuggs (3.5/5): A good concept and suspenseful at times, but it doesn't have a satisfying payoff.

The Extra (2.5/5): Again, a good idea for a story, but this one is just not well written. I constantly wrestled with the prose, and it was hard to tell what was being said or described.

Polyphemus (0.5/5): Wow, this was one of the worst stories I've ever read. It's confusing, bombastic, and features characters with all of the eye-rolling stereotypes of early science fiction.

The Pearls of the Vampire Queen: Did not read.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really grew on me. Shea's rococo prose was at first hard to take, but on a second attempt, it really grew on me. The variety of stories here is quite fun--"The Extra," a cyberpunk story that anticipates The Purge and Squid Game, with its tale of extras facing real-life death to make an alien-invasion movie more fun; a drolly told encounter between an alien scientist studying human behavior, especially its reproductive aspects, and a puritanical serial killer; a Whitmanesque wino/student of humanity encounters and debates an equally existentially-minded evil on the #33 bus; there's a gleefully black-comic backwoods revenge story that sounds like Eric Powell; and "The Autopsy," in which a lonely pathologist faces off against a parasitical alien that is full of ideas about life and meaning. There's also a consistently dispassionate, almost diagnostic, intelligence at work, especially in the opening and closing stories, that both featured compromised heroes trying their best to work out how to deal with an alien presence, which makes me wonder if Shea had scientific or medical training. If you can get past the ornate phrasing in some of the stories, this is philosophically rich and smart on a sentence-to-sentence level.

[Pam Winkler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid good read.
Polyphemus was kind of stereotypical sci-fi, and the wording was kind of purple. But I liked most of the people in it, and there were interesting little bits of humor that I never expected.
The Angel of Death was good. I thought it was going to be more stereotypical but it was actually pretty weird and interesting
Uncle Tuggs was good. It was vaguely familar, but I'm not sure if I've actually read it before.
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen was interesting and very much of the 'Dying Earth', as it was supposed to be.
The Horror on the #33 - I didn't think I was going to like this one? But I adored the ending.
The Extra I liked. I thought it was going to be just pure dystopian, but I ended up liking it a lot.
The Autopsy I've read before and it's solid and good.

[Kyle Pinion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appreciate Shea’s genre flexibility - with stories ranging between sf, horror, and fantasy, sometimes all within the same story. And when he’s cooking, he’s really cooking. The Autopsy is one of the great sf horror tales (and the best episode of Netflix’s Cabinet of Curiosities from a few years back), The Pearls of the Vampire Queen is a lush sampling of his sadly out of print Nifft the Lean work (it won the World Fantasy Award, beating George RR Martin and we still can’t get a reprint??), Uncle Tuggs is a fun rural horror yarn, and The Angel of Death reminded me of the very underrated movie The Hidden in concept.

But sometimes he gets a little too purple, and I’d lose the thread. Occasionally that was on me, but not always. Plus, the title story sucks, and The Extra did little for me either. More like 3.5 stars, but The Autopsy and Pearls are the ones that will linger in my memory.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounding up to three stars. This is an odd collection of stories... none of them are especially outstanding but most of them are engaging (and weird) enough to keep you reading. The title story is intriguing if overlong; its characters are a bit stilted but the conflict at its core is an interesting intellectual puzzle. "Uncle Tuggs" is just comically and grotesquely over the top, while "The Extra" is an amusing exploration of a dystopian future based around class inequality. "The Horror on the #33" was disappointing and not at all scary; "The Autopsy" on the other hand effectively builds a chilling scenario but the atmosphere doesn't quite survive the big reveal. "The Pearls of the Vampire Queen" is a really fun fantasy caper in the mold of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories, and for what it is, it succeeds beautifully.

[juuls · Rating 4 out of 5]

i always struggle to rate anthologies so i will now rate each story individually:

BOPS:
The Autopsy (5/5) - the ending had me fucked up
The Angel of Death (5/5) - such a hilarious interaction of characters
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen (4/5) - i liked the narrative aspect and the heist was fun

OKAY:
Polyphemus (3/5) - it was okay just a little slow
Uncle Tuggs (3/5) - I didn't really understand this one's placement in a sci-fi anthology
The Horror on the #33 (3/5) - same thing, just felt like filler

FLOPS:
The Extra (2/5) - THIS WAS SUCH A COOL CONCEPT but the ending pissed me off wtf

overall i think there was a lot of cool concepts and ideas in this anthology but some of them fell kind of flat

[Anandaroop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the titular story was a bit disappointing. It was as if they decided to execute the ocean in Solaris.

But from the second story on (The Angel of Death), the book did not look back, not once. What struck me was the number of genres the author appeared to be completely at home with. There is the classic vengeful ghost story, a public transportation urban legend, a sword and sorcery epic, a dystopic future, and finally the atmospheric body horror of The Autopsy that contains probably one of the most sympathetic lead characters that ever walked off the pages of the genre.

Every story lifted the genre it belonged to, each was nothing less than memorable.

I am a fan.

[Joshua Begley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the 2023 Valancourt reissue. Really interesting set of short stories. I'd read "The Autopsy" before, so I was very excited to read more by Shea. I was surprised at the variety of stories and the way he blended science fiction, fantasy, horror, and a hardboiled pulp style. Because of that, I never quite knew what to expect, and that made this incredibly fun to read. I did find that there were some moments that took me out of the stories, particularly when he gave a character what I think was a silly name. I think Shea was being playful, but it didn't always fit. At least not for me.

For the record, "The Autopsy" is still one of the most terrifying stories I've read.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forgot to log it and now I don't recall the details but I an impression of it being a funny and gruesome collection.

reading notes:
uncle tubbs
tucker and dale vs evil vibes
vampire queen pearls
weird a little lost but funny
6. bus
his style feels retro so its funny when like this one its contemporary
7.the extra
japhet again as a future name lol
"is it grooving? do I give good palp?"
8.the autopsy

[Malcolm Fraser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook. Outstanding narration, tones of amusement and mild incredulity from Matt Godfrey as though he can't quite believe what's happening in these stories. Great character voices too.

What a blast - some of the weirdest stories I've read. Surprisingly detailed technical knowledge on display in several of the stories - ecology, parasitism, anatomy and autopsy methods(!)

And such weird scenarios - whaling on another planet, a haunted redneck scrapyard, cosmic horror on a city bus!

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the first story in this anthology, I had it pegged as sci-fi with horror themes, but the stories were really diverse. There was horror, crime, sci-fi, and combinations of each. All were well written.
Special mention to the last story, The Autopsy. It straight up scared me.

[Abby Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful mix of excellent short stories, a real pleasure

[Rick Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent! The Autopsy is riveting! Michael Shea died way too soon. Cosmic horror and Science Fiction at its finest.