Menacing infants in fiction, then and now
Two stories about evil infants crossed my desk this weekend, one from 1951, the other from 2008.
First, this old one: a scan of a comic book story from 1951 about a killer baby.
Next, a satire about a lascivious newborn, from Rogier van Bakel, who says: "We've recently seen a six-year-old turned over to the police for having playfully slapped a classmate on the behind. A four-year-old was punished for sexual harassment two years ago after he allegedly pressed his face into the pre-school teacher's décolletage during a hug. Where does it end? I wrote a little Onionesque fantasy about that here:
Continue reading...CLOVIS, NM — Just hours after being born, an allegedly sex-obsessed infant was taken into custody on charges of harassment.
A maternity nurse present at the birth of Ryan Sambora, the son of Gabriel and Mindy Sambora of Kingfisher Lane, called police after she determined the child had "enjoyed his time in the birth canal a little too much." The hospital worker, Valerie Shales, a six-year veteran of Gouldsborough Family Health Centers, said the woman was clearly in discomfort, even agony, while the son seemed "unwilling to dislodge himself from the mother's vagina."
"He cried in protest as soon as we got him out," Shales explained the ordeal. "He just seemed really determined not to leave Mindy's genitals in peace." Shales said she was obligated to notify the police by the hospital's zero-tolerance sexual-harassment policies.
the latest
latest episodes
Not only a diabolical killer baby, but a diabolical killer baby that speaks PERFECT grammar ("I shall kill you with this gun!")
The final volume of the manga Mail has a malicious baby story in it too. I think someone at BoingBoing was the one who turned me on to this series.
Funny, just before I read this, I finished watching some episodes of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, including one in which they fight a giant robot baby.
Maggie Simpson shot Charles Montgomery Burns in the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" cliffhanger and gunned down the mobsters who had the intention of whacking Homer Simpson.
One of my favorite horror short stories from when I was a kid was "Cradle Demon" in an anthology called Young Monsters edited by Asimov, Greenberg and Silverberg (I think; I remember taking comfort that three Jews were the arbiters of good SF taste). A babysitter is terrorized by her ward's murderous tendencies and mouth that makes Baby Herman sound sweet; it turns out to be an incubus at the end. My best friend and I would randomly growl "cradle demon" at inappropriate moments.
I think it was Ray Bradbury who growled once about how the old 1950s horror comics kept ripping off his stories without paying him. The "killer baby" notion is straight from one of his stories (but not the speech part).
Ah! Authors! Never want to admit it's all derivative.
@6 Yes! "The Silent Assassin" by Bradbury is one of the scariest stories I've read from him.
I came here to post about Bradbury's short story "The Silent Assassin." Unfortunately, I'm too late.
I can post this though: apparently someone made a new film version of the short story last year. It's listed here on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1031278/
And, we'll probably rape this server, but there's a trailer here:
http://raybradburyboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3791083901/m/2341040502
Enjoy.
I have the first edition of The Autumn People, with art by Al Feldstein. It contains The Small Assassin and seven other gems, with a foreward by Bradbury.
The stories use Bradbury's own prose.
A classic.
Here's the cover:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Autumn_people.jpg
The final page of the story has the doctor finding the baby (who murders both parents, by the way) out of his crib because the door blew shut to the nursery.
Something rustled down the hall. Something small and very quiet. Jeffers came out of the nursery...
"I had to operate to bring you into this world. Now I guess I can operate to take you out of...see baby? Something bright! Something shiny!"
A scalpel....
See also the Baby-heads in Jonathan Lethem's Gun with Occasional Music.
Those guys were creepy!
I doubt that Ray Bradbury invented the killer baby idea. There are plenty of cultural stories and myths surrounding children that date way before Bradbury.
Kids and babies are scary. It's my personal feeling that they are human-like enough, but not quite, to occupy the 'Uncanny Valley' and that's why.