Mutant fetus villain?

Okay, before I start the what-was-that-book communities, I shall seek knowledge from you, O vast cross-section of fandom!

Do any of you remember a book…pretty sure it was science fiction…where the villain was a weird evil fetus thingy? He could walk around, he was human sized, but he had that freaky fetal head thing going on, only bigger. Possibly he was telepathic, not entire clear on that, but he was definitely bad. I recall the weird eyes and whatnot being rather horribly vividly described and it gave me the screaming weeblies, and for some reason I forgot it for, oh, twenty years or so, and now it’s poking at my brain with a stick.

I am pretty sure this is neither “Lasher” nor “Demon Seed” which as I recall also involved freaky mutant fetuses.

7 thoughts on “Mutant fetus villain?

  1. TanitIsis says:

    No help, sorry. But I clicked on the post title totally hoping to see your new painting of that title. Now I’m going to be imagining villainous fetuses all day. Possibly in little black hats with moustaches.

  2. Tim McDaniel says:

    Well, I cheated and posted the query to the rec.arts.sf.written Usenet newsgroup, which among other things does YASID requests (Yet Another Story ID). Suggestions include

    * Kurt Busiek, who I’d much prefer doing more Astro City, writing “Probably not what she’s looking for, but the comic book CAPTAIN VICTORY AND HIS GALACTIC RANGERS had an awesome villain named Paranex, the Fighting Fetus.”

    * “Van Vogt’s _The Battle of Forever_ had earthmen (and women) reduced to super fetuses more or less, but the protag was a hero.”

    * “I don’t suppose that could by any chance be Jane Gaskell’s _Strange Evil_?”

    * A story by “Kuttner(?)”, about an in-utero superbaby who was running his parents’ lives telepathically.

    See more at
    http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/f7a92e19635c82f6/415fed6c705bf510

  3. Angie says:

    There’s a great fetus-like villain in Michael Moorcock’s “Runestaff” novels, named King-Emperor Huon. He’s encased in an orb, and I think he was telepathic? Creepy, either way.

  4. Bernie Badger says:

    Could that have been “The Manitou”?

    IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077904/ says:
    A psychic’s girlfriend finds out that a lump on her back is a growing reincarnation of a 400 year-old demonic Native American spirit.

    I never saw the movie, but I remember some posters with a hunch-back swollen head kind of thing.

  5. Amy Edwards says:

    I can’t remember the name of the book, but if the evil telepathic fetus lived in a post-war community on the west coast of the USA, it’s a Phillip K Dick book, which was originally a short story and became a novel.

  6. dreadpiratekurt says:

    In Marvel’s Excalibur comic book series, there’s a fetus-y character called JoyBoy with psionic powers that mess with its victim’s greatest wish. It flies around in an egg thingy and is part of a bounty hunting group called TechNet.

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