Killdozer! (story)

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Astounding Science Fiction (Nov. 1944). Cover art by William Timmins.

"Killdozer!" is a science fiction/horror novella by Theodore Sturgeon originally published in the magazine Astounding (Nov. 1944) and revised for the 1959 collection Aliens 4.

The story inspired a 1974 TV-movie and a Marvel Comics adaptation by Gerry Conway and Dick Ayers in Worlds Unknown #6 (April 1974).

In the story, an alien being composed of pure energy "possesses" a bulldozer being used by a construction crew on a small island. The energy being then uses the bulldozer (called "Daisy Etta" by the workers in the island, a mispronunciation of De-Siete (D-7, in Spanish) to start killing the workers for no clear reason. Ultimately, the surviving workers manage to destroy the bulldozer and (presumably) the creature.

In the TV movie version, the alien energy is contained in a meteor found by the crew's excavation.

In the Marvel Comics version, the creature is explained as being a leftover from a war involving sentient machines in a long-lost civilization.

[edit] Reprint history

Best of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin (Crown, 1946 and 1963)
Famous Fantastic Mysteries vol. 14, #1 (Dec. 1952)
Aliens 4 (Avon, 1959)
Spectrum 3, edited by Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964)
Wondermakers, edited by Robert Hoskins (Fawcett Crest, 1972)
Strange Orbits, edited by Amabel Williams-Ellis (Blackie, 1976)
Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction, Third Series, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg (Bonanza/Crown, 1984)
Machines That Kill, edited by Fred Saberhagen, Martin H. Greenberg (Ace, 1984)
A Touch of Sturgeon, by Theodore Sturgeon (Simon & Schuster UK, 1987)
Cinemonsters, edited by Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, Frank D. McSherry Jr. (TSR, 1987)
Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Horror Novels, edited by Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg (Crown/Bonanza, 1987)
To Marry Medusa, by Theodore Sturgeon (Baen, 1987)
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1940s, edited by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg (Robinson, 1989)
Astounding Stories: The 60th Anniversary Collection, Volume 2, edited by James E. Gunn (Easton Press, 1990)
Killdozer!: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Volume 3, by Theodore Sturgeon (North Atlantic Books, 1996)
Selected Stories, by Theodore Sturgeon (Vintage Books, 2000)