Summary:
This ‘Thing’ anthology (the theme is from John W. Campbell’s original story Who Goes There?) is something of a mixed bag, but there are three better than good stories by Pamela Sargent (His Two Wars has two survivors from the Antarctic expedition meeting in 1941 Hawaii where they cope with the aftermath), Mark McLaughlin (The Horror on the Superyacht has The Thing meet Zoolander), and G. D. Falksen (Apollyon, the best of them all, has a Roman alchemist’s assistant fight to save the world).
There is also good supporting work by Kevin J. Anderson and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and even the stories that don’t entirely work come from writers who tell a story or present a distinct narrative arc, and which are largely uncluttered by politics or other (e.g. literary) baggage—what we would once have called “good reads”.
[ISFDB] [Amazon UK/USA]
Other reviews:
Various, Goodreads
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Editor, John Gregory Betancourt
Fiction:
Leftovers • short story by Alan Dean Foster ∗∗
The Mission, at T-Prime • short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch ∗
His Two Wars • novelette by Pamela Sargent ∗∗∗+
The • novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro ∗
The Interrogator • short story by Darrell Schweitzer ∗∗
“According to a Reliable Source. . .” • short story by Allen Steele ∗∗
Cold Storage • short story by Kevin J. Anderson ∗∗∗
Good as Dead • short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman ∗∗∗
The Horror on the Superyacht • short story by Mark McLaughlin ∗∗∗+
Apollyon • novelette by G. D. Falksen ∗∗∗∗
The Monster at World’s End • novelette by Allan Cole –
Thingmaker • short story by Paul Di Filippo ∗∗
The Nature of the Beast • short story by John Gregory Betancourt ∗
Non-fiction:
Cover • by Dan Brereton
Interior artwork • by Marc Hempel, Allen Koszowski, Raiky Virnicid, Mark Wheatley
Introduction • by John Gregory Betancourt
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At the end of 2019, John Gregory Betancourt launched a Kickstarter to publish Frozen Hell,1 an extended and hitherto lost version of John W. Campbell’s famous novella Who Goes There? The fundraising was so successful ($155k) that it also spawned this anthology of stories set in the same world, which was subsequently given as a bonus to those that had bought any of the packages (and it would probably help to read Who Goes There?2 or Frozen Hell, or at least watch The Thing, before starting this volume).
The collection has an interesting contributor list, and features short fiction from names that I haven’t seen at this length for some time (although this is perhaps a reflection of my reading patterns): Alan Dean Foster, Pamela Sargent, Chelsea Quinn Yarbo, etc.
The fiction leads off with the first of those names, Alan Dean Foster, and his (unfortunately aptly named) story, Leftovers. This continues on from the end of Campbell’s original story with McReady, Barclay, and Norris examining the atomic pile and anti-gravity device that “Blair” constructed. When one of them puts the anti-gravity device on, and suggests testing it outside the building, the others become suspicious and paranoid. This is competently enough done, but it feels like an story twist too far.
The Mission, at T-Prime by Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes place on a future armada of spaceships going to the Things’ home planet to destroy them. Most of this story concerns an “emotionally muted” captain’s thoughts as the fleet prepares to destroy the planet. A lot of the plot is clunkily laid out, and other parts feel phoned-in:
Some of the weapons were live. They would hit the planet’s surface, and send several different kinds of death into the ecosystem. From gas that destroyed the environment that the Things thrived in to flame that would burn off the gas (and everything in its path) to actual bombs that would drill their way into the planet’s core and, if all went as the models said it would, would blow the entire planet into tiny pieces.
By then, the ships would already be at the edge of the solar system. That was why the planet-destroying bombs were last, so that the ships had time to escape the destructive force of an exploding planet. p. 18
There is also too much emotional resistance to orders, and apparently they have had to destroy their communications devices so they can’t contact Earth, etc.—none of which convinces; I also didn’t buy the final twist (spoiler), which reveals that the commanders of the mission were infected, and that the destruction of the planet was the plan of a Thing faction.
One of the best stories in the anthology is His Two Wars by Pamela Sargent. This sees McReady visiting Norris at this home in Hawaii in 1941, en route to a job with General MacArthur in the Philippines, and sometime after the pair have returned from the Antarctic. Norris is suffering from PTSD and, apart from nightmares, thinks he can sense the presence of Things around him:
Lying next to Abby as she slept, Norris would suddenly recoil, imagining that a drop of blood from the Thing had somehow infected him and that something alien now gestated inside his wife’s body.
In her sixth month, Abby had fallen on their icy front steps and had lost the baby afterwards. He remembered sitting with her in the hospital as she wept and grieved over their loss and confessed to him that the doctor had told her there was probably no chance for another child. All he could feel was relief at knowing nothing alien could ever grow inside her again. p. 25
The story adds another facet to what is eventually a multilayered piece when a young Japanese-American boy (who Norris tutors) turns up at his house:
“I forgot to bring this back before,” the boy said, holding out the magazine, which bore a cover depicting a frightened man and a swath of starry sky above what looked like a telescope. “What a great story.”
“Which one?” Norris asked. He hadn’t read much pulp fiction during the last couple of years, although he picked up the occasional magazine mostly out of habit. Once the stories had been an escape for him; now they seemed pallid next to what he had experienced.
“‘Nightfall,’” Jonathan said as he handed the magazine to him. Norris glanced at the title, printed in red capital letters on the cover, but didn’t recognize the author’s name. “It’s about a planet where there’s no night, only daytime, so nobody ever sees the stars, they don’t even know there are any stars except for their own sun, but. . .” The boy fell silent. “Read it yet?”
Norris shook his head.
“Then I better not give away the ending.”
“Come on outside and meet an old friend of mine.” Norris dropped the magazine on the coffee table and led Jonathan toward the lanai. “He just got here from the States this afternoon.” McReady looked up as they stepped outside. “Mac, meet Jonny Nishimoto. He’s the boy I was telling you about, the one who’ll be a darned good scientist one of these days.” Jonathan lowered his head, as if embarrassed. “Jonny, this is Mac McReady.”
McReady tensed, stared at the boy for a few long seconds, and then managed a half-smile. “Hello,” he muttered. p. 26
McReady’s dislike of the Japanese (who he thinks of as a different type of alien) surfaces again at the climax of the story, when (spoiler) the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour and also bomb Jonny Mishimoto’s family house.
Before this climactic event, we spend more time in the company of Norris and his wife Abby, a reporter at the local newspaper, and see more of Norris’s fears and nightmares. We also see Norris and Abby on a double date with McReady and a nurse.
The story’s mixture of aliens, both extra-terrestrial and immigrant, Norris’s PTSD, and the attack on Pearl Harbour is an unlikely combination but one that works well. It also reads like the beginning of an intriguing longer work which could further explore these themes (with Norris and McReady compelled to return to the Antarctic on a search for war-winning alien superweapons, and where Jonny Mishimoto and his family are interned).
If I have one minor criticism of the story, it is of a telegraphic line very near the end:
They both had another enemy to fight now. Maybe, like the Thing and whatever hellish evolution had produced that alien species, human beings also had their own unconscious need for an enemy to fight. p. 39
Normally—as I’m a bit useless at working out what stories are about—I’m a fan of unambiguous endings (unless the point is ambiguity)—but I think this overdoes it. The actual final line is pretty good:
Norris looked up as an albatross circled overhead. The large white bird dipped its wings and then flew west toward the bright red sun. p. 39
The by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro baffled me as it’s the only story in the volume that isn’t remotely connected to The Thing franchise, and I’m not entirely sure why it is here (filling space I suspect). Worse, the story ends (spoiler) in mid-air (or mid-space) with the spaceship Star-Trader having wandered off course and its alien navigator mad. Even if it didn’t have this critical flaw, the story doesn’t really convince (the human contingent of the mixed species crew has to give an orchestral concert as part of their duties, and the protagonist’s wind instruments are what causes the spherical alien navigator to go insane).
This story reads like the beginning of a novel submitted in lieu of a story.
The Interrogator by Darrell Schweitzer has an expedition survivor interrogated about the murder of his colleagues during their boat journey home, and further deaths when they arrived back in America. During these conversations, there is a discussion of the Things’ biological infection mechanism, and references to H. P. Lovecraft’s The Mountains of Madness. The final revelation (spoiler) is that the interrogator is a Thing.
“According to a Reliable Source. . .” by Allen Steele starts with a journalist called Scott and his cameraman meeting the ship carrying the Antarctic survivors when it arrives at the dockside in New York. Scott manages to get past the waiting FBI agents to speak briefly with McReady, but he and his cameraman are quickly bundled away. During this encounter Scott realises that McReady given him a slip of paper with the name of the hotel they will be staying at.
The rest of the story has Scott sneak into the hotel to interview McReady, where he learns what really happened in the Antarctic. Scott is caught on the way out, and the FBI agent forces him to supress the story. During this conversation there is mention of three remaining alien bodies in the Antarctic—which points to a longer story, and therefore makes this one feel inconclusive.
Cold Storage by Kevin J. Anderson has as its protagonist Malcolm Hobbs, who works at an ultra-secret X-Files-ish government warehouse in Nevada:
In previous years, the Unusual Object Intake Office had employed many more workers. During World War II, even before the testing of the atomic bomb down in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the giant desert warehouse had been used to store dangerous and important items, including weapons stolen from the Nazis—the Spear of Destiny, some Biblical ark, spell books, magical artifacts, and numerous technological prototypes. One entire wing of the warehouse held super-secret materials from the Manhattan Project, as well as the far more destructive and even more super-secret Brooklyn Project. During the War, Malcolm often received as many as five mysterious artifacts in a single week. The work was dizzying and exhausting, not at all what he’d expected when he’d taken his civil service exam.
After the end of the war, they had begun to catch up, until the Roswell Incident in 1947 threw everything into turmoil again, forcing the intake offices to bring in an army of extra staff , with desks crammed together, diligent clerks filling drawers with classified records, and entire file cabinets rolled out and locked away forever. Now, three years after Roswell, the world had settled into a relative calm and the Unusual Object Intake Office had only himself and Glenn Romano to work on the backlog.
He hated Glenn. pp. 90-91
Blair’s journal of the ill-fated Antarctic expedition arrives on Hobb’s desk, and he starts to read through it so he can catalog and file the item. As he progresses he learns what happened at the camp, and starts to worry that the journal has infected him, a feeling exacerbated when he starts to feel unwell and have odd thoughts. Meanwhile, his colleague Glenn continues to irritate him (apart from flicking through the journal when Hobbs isn’t there—an irritating breach of security protocol—Glenn also hides a Hobb’s lunchtime sandwich in a filing cabinet).
The story’s climax features both men, the missing sandwich, and a red button with a sign saying “Never Call For Help.”
An amusing tale.
Good as Dead by Nina Kiriki Hoffman starts with Arthur, one of the Antarctic survivors, returning home to his wife Lilian along with his dirty and, we find later, contaminated washing. Although this story subsequently goes through a similar sort of arc to the original (the Things try to assimilate everyone), this has a less kinetic and more domestic execution. And (spoiler) the Things don’t get wiped out in this one.
The Things also behave slightly differently in this story: the dog, the first to get infected, telepathically communicates with Lilian while she sleeps:
In her dream, the dog spoke to her.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” said Asta in a warm voice that reminded Lilian of her mother’s. “We worked too swiftly before. We had no strategy. Sometimes that’s effective, but now it’s time to put our second plan in place. We need. . . a friend. Will you be my friend, Lily?”
“We’ve always been friends, ever since you were a puppy,” Lilian said. “But I never heard you talk before.”
“I’m not talking now,” said Asta, cocking her head to one side and then the other, the way she always did when she was considering something.
“Aren’t you?” Lilian asked.
“Not out loud.”
“Oh.”
Asta licked her hand with a warm, wet tongue. “Be my friend, Lily.” It was true: the voice didn’t come out of Asta’s mouth, but was somehow in Lilian’s head. “All right,” said Lilian p. 108
Subsequently, when a gossipy neighbour threatens to reveal Lilian’s extra-marital affair to her husband, the dog intervenes by changing the neighbour into a Thing. Later, the dog similarly makes Arthur’s violent nightmares “go away”.
A quietly effective chiller with a neat last line.
The Horror on the Superyacht by Mark McLaughlin has a group of models (Dilektibl, Anemone, Tymebomb, and Capheen) helicopter into the abandoned Antarctic station for a photoshoot. This is Zoolander meets The Thing:
“As you all should already know. . .”—Piedmont turned to Capheen for a moment as he said those words—“we’re here for the big ‘Save Antarctica’ photo shoot. People need to see that this whole continent is starting to thaw out! So, we’re going to shoot pics here at this old research base. Later, I’ll call the pilot with a special transceiver and he’ll take us back to our nice big yacht.” He turned to the photographer. “Quentin, could you start setting up over there, in front of the biggest building? Everybody else, please help him with the equipment.”
Capheen kicked at the slush with a hot-pink boot. “I always thought Antarctica was frozen solid. I guess I don’t get how this whole ‘global warming’ deal works.”
“Why did you agree to be part of this campaign?” Piedmont said.
“For the publicity—and the money, of course.”
“Well, you were right earlier: Antarctica is supposed to be a lot colder. It used to have seasonal thaws, but never like this. Right now, this part of the continent is as warm as a late-winter day in the Midwest, with spring just around the corner. Ice is melting faster than ever around the coastline, and as a result, beaches worldwide are being covered by rising water.”
Capheen nodded. “Okay, I get what you’re saying . . . but how is a photo shoot going to fix anything?”
“We’re building public awareness. Sceptir Fashions is involved with a lot of high-profile causes. It makes us look like we care for the Earth. And I suppose we do! It’s the only planet we’ve got.” He smiled warmly at Capheen. p. 116
Shortly after this, Yippy the Chihuahua escapes from one of the model’s handbags, and is later found chewing the flesh from the corpse of a burnt, partially thawed-out, and—unknown to them—infected husky from the original expedition. The dog’s owner gives the animal a mint for its breath, but this doesn’t stop matters proceeding pretty much as you would expect when the models get back to the yacht (although there is the novelty of the Things developing a taste for Bloody Marys at breakfast, and tequila shots while they party).
This one is a lot of fun.
My favourite story in the volume is Apollyon by G. D. Falksen, which is set in a Roman garrison on a Black Sea island. This is told from the viewpoint of Markos, an alchemist’s assistant, and tells of his and his master’s attempts to make naptha out of crude oil for use as a weapon of war. During their research, the fishermen employed to dig for oil come upon a large shiny vessel. After the soldiers force their way into it, they find a sleeping three-eyed devil. . . .
The next part of the story isn’t hugely different from the original, and starts with the local priest spending the night alone inside the spaceship to exorcise the devil. Thereafter, among the usual developments (which, by the by, are more coherent, fast paced, and exciting than the original tale), we have the novelty of seeing how a primitive civilization copes with the alien threat (initially I thought they were going to chop off their fingers to identify the Things, but the solution is the same as in the original).
What we also get in this gripping story, and which adds another level to it entirely, are a couple of scenes where humans and Things communicate verbally, such as when Markos confronts (spoiler) a group of Things—three soldiers and his lover Helena—in the church vaults:
Helena sighed. “If only it were so easy. Had I the means of building a spacecraft, I would depart this wretched place at once, but you don’t even have the basic materials for me to use.”
“What?”
“You Romans believe that you are the greatest civilization on your entire planet, and you cannot even fly!” Helena laughed. “You have no computers, no rocketry, no electricity. You have nothing for me to use.”
Markos felt his head spin. Helena spoke in plain Greek, but phrases she used felt out of place, like she had to jumble together concepts to explain things beyond Markos’s knowledge. Thinking machines? Flying towers? Captured lightning? Each explanation made less sense than ignorance.
“You want an explanation?” Helena asked. “It is this. I will replace your Emperor, your Patriarch, your priesthood and your nobles with myself. Through them, I will transform your entire society into a vehicle of technological progress. I will drag your species into modernity, so that within my lifetime you can build me a vessel that will free me from this place!” p. 155
There is more of this in an excellent climactic scene where Markos follows Helena (the last Thing) into the spaceship to kill her/it. Markos confronts Helena, and experiences more future-shock as he listens to an account of events from the Thing’s perspective—as well as her description of what it is like to be separated from the rest of your race, lost in space and time, and adrift in a cold, unfeeling universe.
One for the ‘Best of the Year’ anthologies.
Thingmaker by Paul Di Filippo takes place in an alternate world where Audie Murphy3 is a driver/aide for Harry Truman, and begins with the pair arriving in an anti-gravity car at a secret warehouse installation. Inside there is a biologically secure environment where scientists have a huge glass vat of Thing cells that have been rendered harmless but which can still be differentiated into various living tissues—chicken meat, a human heart etc.
The story ends (spoiler) with an unrelated mob attack on the warehouse. Murphy is critically injured in the attack but is saved by a poultice of thing cells.
The Nature of the Beast by John Gregory Betancourt opens with a Thing imprisoned in a glass cage undergoing electric shock interrogation administered by two men. Despite this harsh treatment the Thing remains silent. On day 79, however, it adopts the form of a human and starts to communicate.
When a shift change happens shortly afterwards (spoiler) the doctor and the new crew are revealed as Things, and the narrator and his companion are absorbed.
This story has a good start but a completely arbitrary ending.
Up until this point in the anthology, the various stories had been a pleasure to read, even if they were a mixed bag. In comparison with a lot of other contemporary fiction, nearly all the writers here—whether they succeed or not—appeared to be trying to tell a relatively straightforward and structured story, or were producing something that had a distinct narrative arc. They certainly weren’t cluttering up relatively simple tales with a lot of literary padding, or bludgeoning the reader about the head with identity, tribal, or party politics (and where this sort of thing does feature, e.g. the Sargent and McLaughlin stories, it’s organic, and done with a light touch.) This was not the case with the last story I read.
The Monster at World’s End by Allan Cole initially gets off to quite a good start with what appears to be a human narrator in the Antarctic who is tortured by two “Things” in the presence of the body of a dark-skinned one which has had its throat cut. During this ordeal, the “Things”attempt to stab the narrator in the eye, at which point the latter’s talons lash out, revealing he is actually the Thing. Another, hitherto unnoticed, dark-skinned human woman stops any further attacks on the narrator, and the three of them leave. The woman, who we later find is a biologist attached to a mining expedition, returns later to clean the Thing and give it something to eat and drink.
This is where the story starts to go off the rails: the Thing does not attack and assimilate her, or behave as we would expect, but increasingly reveals itself to be more like a 21st century environmental campaigner than alien invader. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After the Thing recovers from its ordeal it manages to escape from captivity and, during an extended chase sequence (with all sorts of helicopters and autonomous vehicles with laser guns chasing it, etc.) we find out that the Thing is one of a dozen scouts surveying Earth as a potential refuge for its race. We also learn that it was held captive by the staff of an Evil Mining Expedition when it later watches its captors blow up a huge ridge, which slides down to the shore destroying an entire penguin colony. Oil subsequently pours from the blast site into the waters below. Later on the miners supposedly find uranium among the oily rubble (I’m not a geology major but I don’t think combined crude oil and uranium deposits occur in reality, and am pretty sure you wouldn’t search for them like this).4 During this devastation, the Thing also sees the dark-skinned biologist compassionately euthanize a seal caught in the oil spill by firing two darts into it (and by the time I got to the end of the story, I wished she had put them in me).
During a later visit to the base (spoiler), the Thing stumbles upon its two torturers attempting to rape the biologist. It kills the men and saves her, and we learn that the pair raped the other biologist whose body the Thing saw during its interrogation, later cutting her throat to silence her (yes, this is another one of those stories where the only two black/woman characters are there to be actual or potential victims).
The Thing and the woman then set part of the camp on fire and escape to its refuge. The story ends with an extended data dump that (a) talks about what the Thing observed but did not entirely understand (the mining, etc.), and (b) preaches a long sermon about humanity and the environmental damage it causes. This wokefest ends with the Thing’s decision to get rid of humanity:
I looked out at the pristine waters of Deception Bay. As my eyes took in the shimmering emerald green iceberg, I saw a little penguin in a comic waddle to the edge. Once there it dived into the bay and literally flew through the water.
“So graceful,” Eva murmured. “And beautiful. How could something that looks so funny be so beautiful?”
As I watched there was a whooshing sound, and a geyser of water shot into the sky. Painting glorious rainbows.
Then I saw the waters gently part.
An enormous gray shape surfaced.
A whale.
Magnificent and in its own way as graceful as the little flightless bird.
“Beauty comes in all sizes, does it not?” Eva said in a low voice.
As the whale glided through the water, I imagined it was observing me from through one great eye.
“She looks so wise,” Eva murmured.
“Infinitely so,” I replied.
“It’s as if she held the secrets of everything—past, present and future,” Eva said.
I felt a tingling sensation, as if the whale was trying to speak to me.
I strained all my faculties trying to catch what she was saying. Then she spouted water and went under, her tail slapping the surface of the bay, as if in farewell.
Eva said, “Could you feel it?” She tapped her head. “Up here, did you feel it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I think she was trying to talk to you,” Eva said.
“You mean to us,” I said.
Eva shook her head. “No, to you. She was speaking to you.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“You know,” Eva insisted. “You know.”
I sighed. “She said, ‘Welcome, brother.’”
And at that moment I knew what the future would hold. pp. 200-201
Pass the sick bag. A story that is bad in so many ways (believe me, I’ve barely scratched the surface).
The Cover by Dan Brereton is a striking piece, and has the retro feel of an Adventure cover.5 However, there is too much type on the cover, and the font is too big.
The Interior artwork (which is largely uncredited/unsigned) is of a variable standard. Some of it looks like the kind of stuff you’d find in semi-pro fanzines of yore, but the illustrations for the Sargent, Yarbo, Anderson, and McLaughlin stories are okay or better.
There is a very short Introduction by John Gregory Betancourt which describes the genesis of the volume, and also contains this baffling statement:
These stories—with one exception, my own “Nature of the Beast”—are not officially part of the Thing canon. p. 7
And what is the difference exactly?
Apart from the Cole story, the volume is also let down by its appalling proofreading (the Yarbo piece reads as if it hasn’t been proofread at all). Hoffman’s name is misspelt on the contents page, several of the stories have underlined rather than italicised words, and there are many, many typos.6
In conclusion, this anthology is well worth a look, even it is a bit of a mixed bag . It also made me wonder whether there is a gap in the market for a magazine that contains relatively straightforward short fiction without excess literary or political baggage. If Betancourt started one, or a regular anthology series, I think I’d be a regular reader. ●
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1. This project raised $155k—so much for the many recent attempts to traduce Campbell’s character and cancel him, and another reminder (if any was needed) that social media bubbles do not reflect the larger world.
2. John Campbell’s original story is here; the extended version can be bought at Amazon UK/USA.
3. Audie Murphy at Wikipedia.
4. While we looking at possible scientific howlers, Cole’s story also has this:
“Even though it is painfully obvious what is happening to our world. Air so polluted it is unhealthy to breathe. Water so poisoned that our own children are getting sick and dying. Devastating storms and Fires. . .”
Her voice trailed off. She drew a deep breath. Then she pointed at the startling blue sky. With winter near, the sun was low on the horizon. And I could plainly see an enormous pale yellow halo directly overhead. It seemed to vibrate and I could see darkness just beyond. As if I were looking at outer space.
“That is a hole in the sky,” she said. “A hole created by us. And we’re leaking atmosphere like crazy. Not long ago it was starting to heal, then we resumed doing the greedy practices we had all agreed had to stop.” p. 199
Is this supposed to be about the ozone layer? Because that’s not how it works, and isn’t what’s happening. The ozone layer at Wikipedia.
5. An old style Adventure cover from 1919:
6. These are the typos, etc., a lazy reader found:
Title page: “Dan Brereton” is in a different font from the rest of the page.
Contents page: “Hoffmana” instead of Hoffman
p. 9 tropic instead of tropical?
p. 10 “You” underlined rather than in italics (many, many other examples not listed here)
p. 15 “giving off” rather than radiating?
p. 45 change of font and font size in paras 2 and 4.
p. 46 “sever al” rather than several
p. 47 oens rather than ones
p. 53 sign’s rather than signs.
p. 59 ‘The rather than “The.
p. 62 sizs rather than size.
p. 63 ro rather than to.
p. 63 “remove from” rather than leave.
p. 119 Tymebob rather than Tymebomb.
p. 122 Piedmon rather than Piedmont.
p. 133 viscus rather than viscous?
p. 200 Evan rather than Eva.
I bet there are many more. ●
