On Giant Monster Stories

Various authors, Tim Marquitz (ed), Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

Well, I finally finished this monstrosity (pun intended)! If you are kaiju-curious, you could do worse.

I did a story-by-story review for Goodreads, with ratings and some thematic labels. The TLDR on this is that it is very uneven in terms of quality, but contains a few surprises in terms of what you can do, narratively, with a giant monster story.

I feel like the stories fell into these four, broad categories.

PA Fiction
Use the monster as a harbinger, means, or symptom of the apocalypse - so either post-apocalyptic or cautionary depending on whether they come before or after.

Military Fiction
Tell military and alternate history stories with giant monsters. I lump these together because they are mostly military fantasy/sf stories, but some are set in the future or in the past.

Social Commentary
Engage in fairly shallow commentary on religion or victims of social injustice (often children) using kaiju as a kind of karmic punishment or ally of the downtrodden. These are related in my mind because they are about the ability invoke/control a power larger than yourself, regardless of your reason but mostly to "prove" (perhaps very forcibly) to others that you are right and/or have been wronged. You might call this power fantasy too.

Pulp
Tell a pointless but fun yarn from the viewpoint of a monster hunter or the monster itself, or maybe even someone who has transformed into a monster. Sometimes these devolved into weak humor.