About clay creatures with a malignant god

steviesmith

steviesmith

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Hello all

I read a book in the mid 1980s which I remember finding very weird but would love to read again. As I remember, it was about some clay creatures who were made by a god who would occasionally cause them great pain and distress, but as I remember, they managed to overcome it/him. Very vague I'm afraid!

Has anyone ever come across this book and remember the name?

Thanks!

Steve
 
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Hi,

Are you sure it's a book? There was a section of Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark where the golems - some of them clay - were left behind suffering a sort of half life after their gods left them behind.

Cheers, Greg.
 
There's a clay animated film from the 1980s called The Adventures of Mark Twain, which includes a section in which the devil makes clay people and torments them. I think it's from a section of one of Twain's books, but I'm not sure which. It's pretty sinister.
 
I wonder if you could be thinking of The Jheherrin - soft bodied creatures made and cast aside by Lord Foul in the Thomas Covenant books? I'm sure they help Covenant in his quest to defeat Foul in the first or second trilogy.

It's a long time since I read the series but I think that they may have been made of clay.
 
Foxbat said:
I wonder if you could be thinking of The Jheherrin - soft bodied creatures made and cast aside by Lord Foul in the Thomas Covenant books? I'm sure they help Covenant in his quest to defeat Foul in the first or second trilogy.

It's a long time since I read the series but I think that they may have been made of clay.
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Thanks. I've had a look and it doesn't look familiar. But it was a long time ago so I may be mistaken...
 
Toby Frost said:
There's a clay animated film from the 1980s called The Adventures of Mark Twain, which includes a section in which the devil makes clay people and torments them. I think it's from a section of one of Twain's books, but I'm not sure which. It's pretty sinister.
Click to expand...
Sounds very sinister! I'll have a look... Thanks.
 
Hello Greg. I was on a family day at the beach a few years ago. It got to picnic time and I casually glanced at a nearby sandcastle ..... some kid had scratched a face on the side of it !! - for the next two hours I sat bolt upright in the Meerkat stance, staring at the sand around it and looking out for the white ones
 
Toby Frost said:
There's a clay animated film from the 1980s called The Adventures of Mark Twain, which includes a section in which the devil makes clay people and torments them. I think it's from a section of one of Twain's books, but I'm not sure which. It's pretty sinister.
Click to expand...
"The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain.
Also on Project Gutenberg.

Though I've never heard of the animated film, a friend told me everyone in her private (church) college class read it, because the teacher assigned the textbook and told them not to read "The Mysterious Stranger".
I thought that was most excellent, and read it for myself.
It's worth it, and it has the finest ending quote on laughter *ever*.

You never, ever, not ever forget it after reading it.

Even though it's not SF and not the answer, the question is very evocative of The Mysterious Stranger:

Satan (the nephew of the famous uncle of the same name) visits the town boys. Says "Why are you so worried about people and animals? We can always make more!" Not an exact quote decades later.
 
Toby Frost said:
This is the section from the children's film The Adventures of Mark Twain. It's really quite disturbing.
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Thank you! It is, a bit. But several lines like the one about "the damned human race" indicate Mark Twain's strong moral sense, writing whatever shocking thing it takes to get people to see how awful they are and start fixing it in themselves. And the scene of Mark Twain at the organ so reminiscent of The Phantom of the Opera represents (I think) the writer evoking his people, their character, the horrible things they do to other life forms. (Wow, even the clay figures fought!)

It doesn't have to represent the feeling of The mysterious Stranger, of course, which is good because it doesn't. Satan was just a playmate, albeit a callous one toward life forms, because he could always make more. Like SF authors use aliens to show how awful people are, Twain used a devil.

More than once.

Off-topic from the original question, he did write about time travel. But though I read A Connecticut Yankee in king Arthur's Court, it must not be as memorable. All the memories I have are a depressed feeling and someone saying about the anachronous bullet, "I put it there."

But I did click on your impressive list of books. I'm more of a short-story, hard-SF, time travel and alien languages kind of reader, but still, checkin' it out. :)
 
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