Updated: February 13, 2024

In 1954, deep in the Amazon Jungle, an expedition found what they assumed was one of those missing links in the chain of human evolution: an immensely powerful amphibian creature that seemed to step out of the mists of time. They tried to tame it, to break its will, to change its very being with surgery and torture, but the beast rebelled, killing almost all who stood in its way. But was the creature truly a throwback, a survivor of some prehistoric time before time . . . or was it something more?

In the year 2015 one scientist will try to answer those questions, using a time machine to pierce the veil of history and journey back to the distant Devonian era. What he finds there will not only splinter his vision of what the Creature might be, but may very well change the history of the human race forever!

Bending the conventions of what we feel we know about the Creature from the Black Lagoon on its ear, critically praised science fiction author Paul Di Filippo reinvents the classic monster with a tale of time travel, horror, and mystery that mixes the best elements of 1950s Cold War science-fiction with today's cutting-edge cyberpunk in a vision of what terrors still lurk . . . in the swamp.