You've seen the blurry photos, the rash of TV specials, the You Tube videos of the man-beast Bigfoot formerly know as Sasquatch. I think even PBS took a serious look into this cult phenomena a few times. No I'm not talking about the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, I mean the TV station.
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (oh yeah, it's real) estimates that Mr. Abominable has been spotted 3,313 times since 1921 to present day. Each dot in the image below represents a report of a sighting. Each dot represents a person who thinks he/she had a Bigfoot encounter. You know who you are but I can't help you. No one can help you.
Yes I'm making fun but I really shouldn't because you see I have a somewhat personal connection to this elusive creature or more likely his second cousin known as Yeti because of this man.
My father-in-law was a federal employee for many years before his retirement. His boss was Dr. George Moore, MD, pictured on the left who was a highly respected public health professional. At one point in his career Dr. Moore was chief of the Public Health Division of Foreign Operations and found himself pioneering a health program in Nepal. One day in 1953 he headed an expedition in the Gosainkund Pass along with staff member George Brooks. The two of them had moved ahead of their pack-laden porters and entered a thick forest at 17,000 feet. Hearing a loud scream and the rustling of leaves, they drew their.38 S&Ws and scrambled up a large boulder to get a better look at what was causing the sounds.
With a start Moore saw a hideous face appear from within a clump of large bushes. He recalls it as having grayish skin, beetling black eyebrows, a mouth extending from ear to ear and long yellowish teeth. "Yellow beady eyes looked at him with obvious demoniacal cunning and anger".
A five foot tall hairy angry looking creature ran half crouching from the misty bushes baring two protruding fangs and a long flicking tail behind it.
To their astonishment, six or seven other creatures emerged from the mist with one carrying a baby around its neck. With the creatures only ten feet away all the men could think of was to try and scare them by firing above their heads. The tactic worked and the animals retreated back from where they came.
An entire account of Dr. Moore's discovery entitled 'I Met The Abominable Snowman' was published in the May 1957 issue of Sports Afield complete with an artistic reconstruction of scenes.
Given the relentless sightings and the dedicated souls who pursue this creature day and night, an experienced penman would sooner or later feel motivated to write a compelling true story to bring this all into proper perspective and win accolades along with blockbuster creative nonfiction revenues. Well, that didn't happen.
Instead Eric S. Brown decided to pen a rip roaring adventure series that captured the imagination of a multitude of readers and along the way got a big shout from a few cunning producers in Tinseltown.
Now come on, really? Yes, really.
How do you predict when a book series will take off into the stratosphere? You can't. But one thing that helps make it possible is lots and lots of writing experience and that is what Brown has with 50 books published in the last 12 years. That's right, an average of 4 books a year! True, most of them are novellas but still 4 a year is well beyond the average writers ability not to mention motivation.
One day Brown tired of writing about zombies and decided to focus on a series called Bigfoot War. He wrote five novellas about how Sasquatch comes out of the hills of North Carolina and starts biting and pummeling everyone in sight.
Munching on small town innocent people soon became pass'e for Sasquatch so he ravenously set his sights on taking over the entire planet.
Then Brown changed his mind and decided that he hadn't quite had enough of zombies and gave birth to Bigfoot War II where, in the middle of the war between man and Bigfoot, hordes of zombies rose up and attacked both humanity and Sasquatch alike. I'm not making this up.
The first novella of the Bigfoot I saga is 121 pages and the rest range from 78 to 154 pages per book. This is pure horror with copious amounts of cutting and slashing. One reviewer said he kept looking for some character development but he never found any. Another said there are very little twists and turns, just more blood and guts.
As far as reviews go, for the first book in the series he has 137 of them on Amazon which average 4 1/2 stars.
Between Bigfoot War 1-5, Bigfoot War: The End, Planet Sasquatch, and a few miscellaneous titles like Rain: A Tale of The Bigfoot Apocalypse and Screamin' Mad Squatchies, I think there are 11 titles and spinoff titles in the series. The author seems to have run amok right along with his Squatchies.
Is this really science fiction? Technically you can call it SF Horror but then I haven't read one of the books to give an honest opinion. But that is about to change unless someone stops me. Someone please stop me.
But wait, there's more.
To top it off, this series is being adapted for the big screen. Would I lie to you? Casting is done and production started in October. It's now in post production with a release scheduled for January 2014. And guess whose staring in it?
That's right. Judd Nelson will be playing the part of Dr. Leonard Evans.
But hey, what happened to Lance 'not bad for a human' Henriksen. I know he was going to be in the original cast and, after all, starred in 'Abominable' in 2006 so he's a logical choice. What a tragic loss. Well maybe he awoke from a stupor and got hit with a wholesome dose of common sense.
So I couldn't help it. I bought the first book. I just want to see what kind of writing this is even though I detest most horror novels. I said most not all. Who knows maybe he's a hairy raising action writer who loves his subject matter.
As for the movie, when it comes out in January of next year, will it be a rental or theater viewing? Will I spring for Bigfoot War in IMAX 3D DBOX? It's not impossible.
Here's the Logline from the book:
"Jeff Taylor was an ordinary boy growing up in the small town of Babble Creek, North Carolina, until one night his life was changed forever when a Sasquatch brutally murdered his family. Taylor fled the town, hoping to leave the painful memory behind. Years later, after two tours of duty in the Iraq War, he's back in Babble Creek seeking vengeance. Taylor's lust for the blood of the monster that slew his family sets in motion a series of events that soon has the entire town fighting for its life as a tribe of Sasquatches descend from the forests and hills into Babble Creek to declare war upon its citizens. Babble Creek is about to find out Bigfoot is very real and there's more than one of the creatures that want to fill the streets with blood.."
I just opened Bigfoot War on my Kindle.
First line: "The stink was terrible."
Oh my.
I'd like to say that I'll add to this post once I've finished the first book in the series but whether I do or not entirely depends on where that terrible stink was coming from.
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