Of Men and Monsters, by William Tenn
(Ballantine Books, December 1975). Cover by Boris Vallejo

After posting about The Borrowers by British author Mary Norton (1903 -1992) last week, several people mentioned other books and movies with similar kinds of themes — little people living in the houses of big people. I thought I might take another post to discuss a few other examples from my own book collection.

First up is series by American author John Peterson (1924 – 2002). The first one was just called The Littles and was published in 1967, 15 years after The Borrowers (1952). The Littles live much like the “borrowers. They look human except for having tails. (In films they apparently look very mouselike but that’s not the case in the books.)

[Click the images for less little versions.]

Unlike with The Borrowers, I never heard of The Littles until I was buying books for my own son, (Josh), even though many were written when I was a kid. I stopped by Josh’s school to pick him up one day and they were having the Scholastic Book fair.

When I was a kid, we never had a fair where you could actually see the books, but we did get the order forms and I bought quite a few books through them for 25 cents or so when in grade school. I had to stop by this one at my son’s school and found out about The Littles. I bought every one they had, ostensibly for my son but at least halfway for myself. I read them all, too, although I don’t think Josh read them all.

There are a bunch of these books and more were written after Peterson’s death, but here are the ones I have. All covers are by Jacqueline Rogers, with charming interior illustrations by Roberta Carter Clark. (These are written specifically for children and I don’t think the stories are as good as in The Borrowers series, but they are fun.)

The Littles, 1967
The Littles have a Wedding, 1971
The Littles and the Trash Tinies, 1977
The Littles Go Exploring, 1978
The Littles and the Lost Children, 1991
The Littles and the Terrible Tiny Kid, 1993

In my twenties I came upon another series about tiny people. This was a trilogy by Gordon Williams (1934 – 2017) that included The Micronauts (1977), The Microcolony (1979), and Revolt of the Micronauts (1981) — all from Bantam Books.

These are SF novels, not to be confused with the toy series and comic book series from Marvel with the same name — which I’d never heard of until I started looking into stuff for this post. The difference here is normal sized people are cloned at 1/8th their natural size in order to deal with a catastrophic future where most natural resources have been exhausted. The experiment is set up in a controlled environment but things soon get out of control.

I liked all three very much and they had some cool covers. The Micronauts has a Boris Vallejo cover and interior illustrations. The Microcolony has a wonderful Lou Feck cover that I love. Revolt has a Peter Goodfellow cover.

Of Men and Monsters, by William Tenn
(Ballantine Books, June 1968). Cover by Stephen Miller

The last book I’ll review today is one of the first adult SF novels I ever read, Of Men and Monsters, by William Tenn (1920 – 2010). It’s still a fond memory. Tenn was the pseudonym for a British born author named Phillip Klass, although he moved to the US before he was 2. The book was published in 1968 and I read it in a library edition, but years later I bought a Del Rey printing with a great cover by Boris Vallejo (see top).

This one has its own twist on the theme. The people are normal sized, but they are survivors of an invasion by gigantic aliens so huge that the humans can live like mice in their walls. I just loved it, and found out from Adam Tuchman on Facebook that it was originally published in a shorter version in the October 1963 issue of Galaxy, called “The Men in the Walls.”

Galaxy, October 1963, containing “The Men in the Walls,” plus stories
by Cordwainer Smith, Murray Leinster, and more. Cover by McKenna

I’ll note that the ending Of Men and Monsters takes us into Sword & Planet territory.

There are plenty more I could talk about here, such as Lindsay Gutteridge’s Cold War in a Country Garden Trilogy, and Ben Sheppard reminded me of an awesome story called “Surface Tension” by James Blish, which deals with the miniaturization theme. There’s Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, and even the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but this post is getting long as it is.

---

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was And Now For Something Completely Different: The Borrowers, by Mary Norton.