The idea of being trapped on an island with some kind of terror is not a new theme. But of all those Dr. Moreau scenarios there are two stories that stick out in my mind and share an odd kind of connection. These are “The People of the Black Coast” by Robert E. Howard and “The Quest For Blank Claveringi” by Patricia Highsmith. You wouldn’t put Howard and Highsmith together for much but at the intersection of WEIRD and ISLAND you do.
“The People of the Black Coast” first appeared in Spaceway (September-October 1969), so it was published thirty-three years after Howard’s death. I’m not sure in what year he wrote it. The 1960s to 1980s were filled with lost and incomplete REH stories that appeared in smaller Science Fiction magazines like Fantastic Universe and Spaceway. Kirby McCauley reprinted the story in Night Chills (1975) and that is where I saw it first. Later in 1978, Berkeley Books put out Black Canaan with a Ken Kelly cover that features this story. (You know the ones, with the cool fold-out posters.)
“…If you can imagine spider crabs larger than a horse—and yet they were not true spider crabs, outside the difference in size. Leaving that difference out, I should say that there was as much variation in these monsters and the true spider crab as there is between a highly developed European and an African bushman.” (“The People of the Black Coast” by Robert E. Howard)
In the Pacific, between the Philippines and Guam, lies the Island of the People of the Black Coast. The narrator and his girl, Gloria, have to swim to the island after her airplane failed and fell into the sea. The island is actually a vast basalt city inhabited by intelligent giant crabs. The People have superior intelligence to humans but weaker senses. They communicate by telepathy. They can also use their mind powers to overwhelm their prey. The story ends with the man contemplating nature’s cruel law and looking forward to killing the crabs though he knows he will not survive.
If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 3:From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly