Snake Gods & Were-Serpents

Snake gods and were-serpents are the rarest of creatures! Finding Pulp stories with snakes in them is not hard. Finding weird tales or even Science Fiction stories where the monster is more than just a giant snake is much harder. Plots involving a jungle full of poisonous serpents or even one gigantic snake are pretty common. It is these others that I am after.

Snakes as monsters begin back in mythology, of course. The Midgard Serpent, the Worm Ouroboros and such were joined by Gothic examples like M. G. Lewis’s “The Anaconda”. To find one that is a little more special you have to look to Bram Stoker’s final novel, The Lair of the White Worm (1911), which was made into a film by Ken Russell (1988).

The grand-pappy of Pulp snake monsters is no-surprise, A. Merritt. This writer for the soft weeklies inspired many who came after, including C. L. Moore and Jack Williamson. His lost race novel, The Face in the Abyss, appeared as two novellas: “The Face in the Abyss” (Argosy All-Story Weekly, September 8, 1923) and “The Snake Mother” (Argosy, October 25-December 6, 1930). It was reprinted in Fantastic Novels, November 1940 with Virgil Finlay artwork. Merritt doesn’t give us an evil snake lady but a kind one who is opposed to Nimir, the Lord of Evil. Merritt’s snake goddess will inspire several of the stories to follow.

“The Were-Snake” (Weird Tales, September 1925) by Frank Belknap Long is an early Long tale heavy on atmosphere. It is a great example of how good FBL was, even in the early stages of his career. The narrator learns that the snaky worshipers of Ishtar are not all gone from this earth.

Of all the Pulp writers, Robert E. Howard certainly uses snakes the most often. he lived in Texas rattlesnake country so it isn’t hard to see why. In “The Dream Snake” (Weird Tales, February 1928) he has a man crushed to death by a constrictor in his dreams, several Conan stories feature giant snakes such as “The Scarlet Citadel”, “Black Collosus”, “The Devil in Iron” and “Beyond the Black River”. There are others.

But it is his first Sword & Sorcery tale, “The Shadow Kingdom” (Weird Tales, August 1929) that sets King Kull against the Serpent Men. This insidious race is as old as the dinosaurs and hides behind magic that makes them look human. The new usurper, Kull, has been marked for death by the serpents and must fight a desperate battle to survive. H. P. Lovecraft pulled the Serpent Men into his Cthulhu Mythos by mentioning them in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Weird Tales, August 1931). Howard wrote other stories about a degenerate strain that survives into ancient Britian in “Worms of the Earth” (Weird Tales, November 1932). Lin Carter borrowed the Serpent Men for his first Thongor novel, The Wizard of Lemuria (1965) renaming The Dragon Kings.

Equally as influential was Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Horibs from Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (Blue Book, September 1929-March 1930). This race of serpent men live in the interior world of Pellucidar. The Horibs show up in the last part of the novel. They ride around on giant lizards and take humans for captives and food.

Another cornerstone creation is the serpent god, Yig, which became part of the Cthulhu Mythos as well. H. P. Lovecraft made a poor living re-writing stories for other authors. One of these was Zealia Bishop, who wrote the first draft of “The Curse of Yig” (Weird Tales, November 1929) before HPL turned it into a much longer and scarier piece. The story appeared under Bishop’s name alone. The story has a man who kills so many rattlesnakes that the snake god Yig exacts a terrible revenge. That Rankin illo may be the most horrific that ever appeared in WT. HPL and Bishop did a sequel called “The Mound” but it didn’t feature Yig.

Science Fiction writers weren’t neglecting the scaly race either. “The Lizard-Men of Buh-Lo” (Wonder Stories, October 1930) by Francis Flagg has scientists breaking through to another dimension where lizard men reign.

And Edmond Hamilton wrote “Monsters of Mars” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, April 1931) where explorers to Mars find it inhabited by aliens who look like crocodile men. The plot of this story is very familiar to Hamilton fans.

Weird Tales wasn’t the only magazine who use serpents for horror. Arthur J. Burks got the cover with “The Place of Pythons” (Strange Tales, September 1931). Strange Tales was a WT competitor produced by the Clayton chain, the same ones who published Hamilton and his serpenty aliens. Clayton paid two cents a word on acceptance so they stole many WT writers away for a time, but the company went bankrupt in 1933. Burks had been a marine colonel (where he experienced jungles first hand) before becoming the “million-word-a-year” man, writing for all kinds of Pulps.

“The Siren of the Snakes” (Weird Tales, June 1932) by English author, Arlton Eadie. Eadie sets his story in Colonial India near the Himalayas. An English officer meets his death in the arms of the Naga-Kanya.

Edmond Hamilton returned to snakes and horror with  “The Snake-Man” (Weird Tales, January 1933). He used his pseudonym “Hugh Davidson” for a story that isn’t very typical for him. The story does have a giant snake but unlike most, it is a were-snake. The characters in the story are trying to capture the serpent, or kill it and find out who the lycanthrope was.

“The Flower Women” (Weird Tales, May 1935) by Clark Ashton Smith has vampire flowers as the title characters but it is a race of serpents that attack them. The invincible sorcerer, Maal Dweb, takes on the Ispazar and the outcome is pretty much a forgone conclusion.

“The Ho-Ho Kam Horror” (Weird Tales, September 1937) by Bruce Bryan is a largely unnoticed Cthulhu Mythos sequel to “The Curse of Yig”. His archaeologist falls astray of Yig-Satu when he goes to Superstition Mountain. The story includes a Lovecraftian diary and italics on the last sentence: But from those wicked jaws dangled a futile human arm! Bryan was an actual archaeologist as well as a writer.

“Snake Goddess” (Strange Stories, August 1939) by E. Hoffman Price has Warren and Murdoch in the jungles of Siam looking for the legendary Naga, a serpent woman. A comic book version appeared many decades later.

“Dragon Moon” (Weird Tales, January 1941) by Henry Kuttner shows Kuttner’s affection for A. Merritt’s Snake Mother. Elak is fighting a terrible hybrid of goddess and man named Karkora, the Pallid One. His mother is Mayana, a snake mother-like being descended from Merritt.

“Beauty’s Beast” (Weird Tales, May 1941) by Robert Bloch uses more mythology to create its horrors. Hanuman and Yama fight it out in Mardu’s pet shop.

“Serpent Princess” (Weird Tales, January 1948) by Edmond Hamilton has Hugh Macklin, archaeologist, come face-to-face with the ancient snake goddess, Tiamat. A love story of weird proportions.

This isn’t every serpent man from the Pulps, so if you think of others, let me know.

The 1970s and 80s embraced the  serpent and used it in a way that resembles Bram Stoker more than A. Merritt. Serpent people were more likely to show up in heroic fantasy. The role-playing game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons introduced “lizard men” in their first edition. Based on Howard’s Serpent Men and ERB’s Horibs, lizard men are seven feet tall and hang around in groups of over a dozen. Stay out of the swamp unless you want to get ambushed.