“It
is equally probable that there will be another glacial era, upsetting all food
and living arrangements, and that the human race will virtually perish. Because
many species of insects have, next to man, the most highly developed social
instincts, they would appear to be the logical successors…Remove the
competition of man and the higher forms of animal life in the food market, and
there is a possibility that the present minute insect life might develop to gigantic
proportions…”
From
“Will Monster Insects Rule the World?” by Jay Earle Miller, in Modern Mechanics, December, 1930)
What
if humanity lost its ability to dominate the world and was ruled instead by
gigantic flying insects with superior intelligence? Variations of this theme have shown up in
countless stories and films. Here are
some of my favorite movies about bugs striving for world hegemony:
Them (1954)—the classic about giant
marauding ants attacking Los Angeles.
The Deadly Mantis (1957)—the giant insect lands on
top of the Washington Monument.
Monster from Green Hell (1957)—silly and tedious film about
two giant wasps in Africa.
Beginning of the End (1957)—giant grasshoppers crawl
up fake pictures of buildings. Not
scary.
The Deadly Bees (1966)—underrated British ‘who-done-it’
with weaponized bees. Creepy villain.
Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)—‘one night stands’ are last night stands after a weird bee
experiment.
Phase IV (1974)—an ant ‘hive mind’
rapidly evolves and makes plans for the rest of us—disturbing film.
Bug (1975)—incendiary beetles set things
on fire.
Empire of the Ants (1977)—giant ants enslave humans
to work on a sugar plantation.
Ridiculous.
The Swarm (1978)—Africanized ‘killer bees’
from Latin America threaten Texas.
Starship Troopers (1997)—earth battles outer space
bug aliens. “The only good bug is a dead
bug.”
Mimic (1997)— a well intentioned
invention goes awry in an economically depressed urban setting.
They Nest (2000)—where they nest gives this one a high Primal Yuck Factor rating.
Eight Legged Freaks (2002)—hilarious send up of the genre.
District 9 (2009)—thoughtful metaphor about
apartheid in South Africa.
This
list is not exhaustive, and excludes all the speculative fiction that preceded
these adaptations. Insects as a horror or
science fiction device are quite malleable in terms of their use as metaphors
for various social anxieties. They can
stand in for such horrors as political dictatorship, contagious disease,
unknown extraterrestrials, natural disasters, illegal immigration, subversion,
and war, among other fears. The possibilities
of bug horror were already thoroughly explored by writers who published in
magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories in the early 20th
century.
One
such author was Frank Belknap Long, Jr., who became a protégé of H.P. Lovecraft
and was a member of Lovecraft’s circle of authors in New York City. Long was a close friend of Lovecraft’s, for
whom the latter was somewhat of a mentor.
Both had been members of the United Amateur Press Association in the
early 1920s, where one of Long’s very first stories caught Lovecraft’s
attention. The two later met each other
in person when Lovecraft visited New York in the spring of 1922. Long frequently visited while Lovecraft lived
in New York from 1924 to 1926, and they later corresponded with each other
extensively.
Long
sold his first story in 1923 to Weird
Tales, when he was just 22 years old.
He went on to become a regular contributor to both Weird Tales and Astounding
Science Fiction. Long remained
active as a free lance writer of both fiction and nonfiction for about seven
decades and wrote numerous novels and short story collections. He died in 1994.
Long’s
The Last Men (1934) was published in Astounding Stories. The author envisions a world millennia in the
future, where insects are now the dominant species. They achieved this superiority after a series
of glacial ice ages reduced the human population: “…the last pitiful cold-weakened remnants of his
race had succumbed to the superior sense-endowments of the swarming masters…” Since that time, the human race has been
preserved and bred in floating, gender segregated “homoriums”. The insect overlords use gland injections, a
special diet, and moonlight powered health-prism rays to accelerate human
maturation—it only takes about 12 months.
It is
not clear why the insect overlords of The
Last Men would preserve humans or take care of them. It is not apparently for food—which would
make some sense. Slavery is offered as
their typical assignment, but Long does not elaborate on what their essential
duties might be for a vastly superior race of beings. Perhaps it is for amusement. Some of the insect masters enjoy the hobby of
collecting the “dangerously beautiful” humans from the nurseries, anesthetizing
and embalming them, and displaying them under glass. Long has fun with reversing the butterfly collector
role. Maljoc, the human narrator “knew
that his own ancestors had once pierced the ancestors of the swarming masters
with cruel blades of steel and had set them in decorative rows…”
At
the beginning of the story, Maljoc has just reached maturity, and is excited at
the prospect of having a mate. It is his
primary concern, so much so that he sings—as a male cricket or locust might
sing—in excitement. His attitude toward
the ‘swarming masters’ is worshipful and obedient. He is depicted as child-like and primitive,
and his first encounter with females of his species may remind some of typical insect
biology and mating habits. And this is
the most disturbing part of the story.
Long has imagined what the long term impact on human society might be if
it were subservient to another, completely different life form. Would we not attempt to emulate the masters
on whom we were completely dependent? Maljoc
falls in love with a woman who is ‘dangerously beautiful’, with dire
consequences. But it allows him to
recapture “for an imperishable instant the lost glory of his race…”
It is
possible that Long may have gotten the inspiration for this story in the
article quoted above from Popular
Mechanics—the issue came out just a few years before The Last Men was published. The full article is available at http://blog.modernmechanix.com/will-monster-insects-rule-the-world/.
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