Insects Rule My World

“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 20^th 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/.