Ungi (2011)
Posted: August 9, 2011 Filed under: art, monsters, Shaver 2 CommentsMonths ago I finished this ink drawing of an ‘ungi’ and never got around to looking at it or scanning it until now. This is a creature Richard Shaver described as having lived on Venus at some time in the distant past in the story, “Gods of Venus” in the March 1948 issue of Amazing Stories.
If I remember right, the ungi was described as a predator with rubbery skin, a bloated body, flexible legs and a mean disposition. The feet were said to be hairy and able to ‘grip things like a fly’ — which somehow made me imagine them being like hairy suction cups. My drawing was based on the drawings from the original story by an illustrator named Rod Ruth. I don’t know much about Ruth other than that he did a lot of illustrations for Amazing Stories and similar magazines that I like a great deal.
An highly-unlikely predator from Venus imagineered by a crazy man? Awesome!
Unfortunately, the story itself is not really a good read, although there is one villain in it that consists of an amorphous blob of eyeballs, mouths and other gooky bits in a huge tank.
I wish one could get ahold of copies of Shaver's original manuscripts which the editors at Amazing Stories apparently extensively edited. The stuff in the magazines read like they were written by Edgar Rice Burroughs whereas some of Shaver's unaltered writing reads more like William S. Burroughs.