this beastie is the Snooter, as seen on the first page of my 2002 book, After the Snooter.


Someone in comments recently drew my attention to a 'snouter' that existed long before mine, and I apologise that i can't find the comment at present. I must say I had never seen or heard of this peculiar creature before and I like to think that its resemblance to my own is one of those wonderful coincidences that happen from time to time in the creative business. It's perhaps fortunate that the real point of my story was the human version in the suit, which comes about after the insect flies in the window of the famous wealthy playboy, Bruce Wa*ne (this story was full of dodgy coincidences). I said 'existed' above, but in fact this earlier 'snouter' was a fake:

The Rhinogradentia (also called snouters, Rhinogrades, or Nasobames) are a fictitious mammal order documented by the equally fictitious German naturalist Harald Stümpke. The order's most remarkable characteristic was the Nasorium, an organ derived from the ancestral species' nose, which had variously evolved to fulfill every conceivable function.
The snouters were discovered on the main island of Hiddudify in 1941 by the Swedish explorer Einar Pettersson-Skämtkvist. Unfortunately, as a consequence of atomic bomb testing, the islands sank suddenly into the ocean in the late 1950s. Thus perished all traces of the snouters, their unique ecosystem, and all the world's specialists on that intriguing subject — who happened to be holding their congress there at the time.

You can find online pictures of these little chaps, such as stevelewalready's Flickr set, sourced from Stümpke's book, from which this comes:


I think the following photo was taken in the Folklore Section of the Haus der Natur in Salzburg, Austria, by 'curious expeditions' who have a whole Fickr set of such taxidermied curiosities.


My own Snooter recently contrived to appear on film, as hinted at in my previous post on this subject. Following are a couple of stills from it, which will have to keep us for the time being. Campbell has just been woken up in the middle of the night by an odd buzzing sound...



After the Snooter will of course be contained in Alec: "The Years Have Pants," where it will have two pages that weren't included in the original printing. One of these, titled Bastards Under the sea has never been in print before. It was half-finished at the time of going to press in 2002 and I've finished it for this edition. That'll be coming in September and is in Diamond's ordering catalogue right now. And you can click the 'alec2' label below for more excerpts and previews, and when you get to the end of that selection, look for the 'alec1' label.