adorshki
Reverential Member
"The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth". Magnificent. Technology gone awry. Even presaged the "cloning" debate:No love for H.G. Wells here?
Research chemist begins search for growth-promoting compound (HGH, anybody?):
"After a year of research and experiment, he finds a way to make what he calls in his initial enthusiasm "the Food of the Gods", but later more soberly dubs Herakleophorbia IV. Their first experimental success is with chickens that grow to about six times their normal size on an experimental farm at Hickleybrow, near Urshot in Kent (where H. G. Wells was born and raised).[3]
Unfortunately Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, the slovenly couple hired to feed and monitor the chickens, allow Herakleophorbia IV to enter the local food chain, and the other creatures that get the food grow to six or seven times their normal size: not only plants, but also wasps, earwigs, and rats.[4] The chickens escape, overrunning a nearby town."
The chicken episode, genius! I was laughing out loud.
Gets real dark when the compound works its way through the food chain producing giant children. (Where I saw the same issues raised by cloning r):
What to do, what to do. What happens when they grow up?
Verne. "The Mysterious Island". The movie was pretty darn good, too, lots of great Harryhausen work.
The bird:
The crab:
The bees:
And the Nautilus:
Asimov used to write a monthly column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
One month was dedicated to proving why a certain planetary alignment depicted in "2001:" Another was about why giant critters are impossible, as their mass increases beyond the capabilities of their structures to support. Most critters are already at their optimum (current) evolutionary size. But I can't remember him ever making me laugh.