Precursors
Giant Ants of the Pulps seems like a no-brainer, right? Of course the Pulps were crawling with mad scientists creating giant bugs, or ones that comes from other planets, or are encountered when we arrive on jungle planets. A fascination with the formic race goes back to writers like H. G. Wells, who despite the film versions, never actually did giant ants. What he did do was write the first giant monster novel in The Food of the Gods (Pearson’s, December 1903-June 1904) but he chose giant bees over ants. Later he wrote “The Empire of the Ants” (The Strand, December 1905), in which he supposed an intelligent race of army ants that begin to take over the world. These critters have weapons but are not gigantic in size. Hollywood combined the two along with Joan Collins.
Before we go on, let’s address the Science. Insects were much larger in previous eras. The top dragonfly during the time of the dinosaurs was about two and half feet across in wingspan. (Imagine that hitting your windshield!) But physics gets in the way of praying mantises the size of buildings. Allometry shows us that our creepy-crawly friends will never gain enormous size. Another theory is that the evolution of birds was what caused insects to get smaller again.
One other point: I have not included stories that use termites. People call them “white ants” but they aren’t that closely related. Stories like John Russell Fearn’s “Lords of 9016” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1938) call the creatures by both names but I consider that a termite story. Besides, termites deserve their own post.
Argosy
Science Fiction writers have never been limited to what is only possible. They choose to ignore the issue (To quote the Doctor: “I’ll explain later…”) or sometimes give an explanation (derived from imagination) that allows a willing suspension of disbelief. One of the first to give us a planet of giant insects was Murray Leinster, who worked it all out very carefully. Burl and the rest of the diminutive humans don’t have to worry about mosquitos because there are no pollinating flowers for the males to eat. Leinster features a giant spider more than ants in “The Mad Planet” (Argosy, June 12, 1920) and its first sequel, “The Red Dust” (Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 2, 1921). Leinster would later write a third segment “Nightmare Planet” (Science Fiction Plus, June 1953) and combine the whole in fix-up novel, The Forgotten Planet (1954).
The book does feature giant ants:
They dared not linger, of course. They left their prey helpless—staring strangely at the world about it through its many-faceted eyes—before the scavengers came to contest its ownership. If nothing more deadly appeared, surely the ants would come. Some of them were only inches long, but others were the size of fox-terriers. All of them had to be avoided by men. They would carry the moth-carcass away to their underground cities, triumphantly, in shreds and morsels.
“The Radio Man” (Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 28-July 19, 1924) and sequels by Ralph Milne Farley took a man to Venus by radio. There he finds a race of giant ants. The creatures behave more like humans than ants despite their forms:
But my speculations were cut short by the alighting of the airplane a hundred yards down the beach. It seemed to land vertically, rather than run along the ground, but I could not be sure at that distance. What was my horror when out of it clambered not men but ants! Ants, six-footed and six feet high. Huge ants, four of them, running toward me over the glistening sands… Suddenly the ants wheeled and converged from all four points of the compass, clicking their mandibles savagely as they came. The whole movement had been executed with uncanny precision, without a single word of communication between the strange black creatures; in fact, without a single sound except the clicking of their mandibles and a slight rattling of their joints. How like a naval attack by a fleet of old-fashioned Ford cars, I thought.
The rest of it is pretty much an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure with ants standing in for Martians. The sequels bring in bees, dinosaurs and eventually veer off into less interplanetary tales using the “Radio” in the title.
The first novel was adapted in “An Earth Man on Venus” (Avon Fantasy, 1951) Art by Wally Wood
This comic is available free at DCM.
Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback created the first all-Science Fiction magazine with Amazing Stories. The previous tales appeared in general magazines. Giant ants were published alongside Westerns and romance tales. Not Hugo. Amazing gave us two tales, one in the Quarterly that supported the regular magazine. The third tale appeared in Gernback’s later Wonder Stories, after he lost control of Amazing.
“The Master Ants” (Amazing Stories, May 1928) by Francis Flagg has men traveling to the future to find the ants have taken over. The ant masters ride the humans like horses and even milk the females. The heroes team up with the last of the intelligent humans and go to Science Castle, where the ant invade riding mutated bees.
The World of the Giant Ants (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1928) by A. Hyatt Verrill was a complete novel. Dr. Hendon and his assistant, Tom, go into a volcanic crater where insects are large in size. The giant ants dominate this lost world. Hendon joins the forces of the black ants against the aggressive red. He arms them with gunpowder. He is mortally wounded and sends Tom out of the crater at the end. The story was illustrated by Frank R. Paul but also had ant images from “Nature’s Craftsmen” by Henry C. McCook.
“The War with the Great Ants” (Wonder Stories, July 1930) by Jim Vanny has Dr. Marsden on a second expedition in Malaysia. He discovers the journal of the previous expedition lead by McConnell. He learns they have been taken prisoner by giant ants, who use human slaves to cultivate their gardens. Marsden, and another expedition lead by McConnell’s daughter, find the ant city and are captured. They escape when driver ants attack the city at the same time as the colonial office sends an army. The inevitable romance between Marsden and Miss McConnell happens.
T. O’Connor Sloane
“The Ant With a Human Soul” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1932) by Bob Olsen offers both giant ants and miniaturization. Williams is a man who has lost his faith. He decides to kill himself. He is rescued by Dr. Villa, who offers him ten thousand dollars to have his brain placed inside a giant ant. (Oh, we get a rampaging giant ant with human brain. No, we don’t!) To convince Williams, the doctor shrinks him to a tiny size and allows him observe ants. The experience restores Williams faith and he doesn’t do the experiment.
Argosy
“The Insect Invasion” (Argosy, April 16-May 14, 1932) by Ray Cummings has ants and people changing size as a mad scientist attacks a mine in the South American country of Guatanara with his gigantic creations. The villain proves to be Juan Aguila, a chemist who was fired from the mine. This one has other giant creatures like mosquitos and spiders too.
Farnsworth Wright
“A Message From Mars” (Weird Tales, November 1930) by Derek Ironside has an expedition to Mars that discovers large four-foot ants that are intelligent. The expedition is in contact with Earth via radio. The broadcast ends suddenly after discovering the ants.
“The City of Crawling Death” (Weird Tales, July 1932) by Hugh B. Cave has Trench and Professor Murgusson going into the Amazon to find a missing scientist. They go by boat to the village of Badama. The place is over-run by ants the size of panthers. When they try to land, their Portugese guide is captured. He is placed in a prison along with Lord, the missing man. Murgusson leaves his new experiment, some kind of machine gun, behind on the boat when he and Trench sneak into the village. They make the prison, then sneak out of a tunnel that Lord has been digging. All four men run for the boat. Once there, Murgusson uses his new machine/laser to turn all the ants into green slime. They escape but Trench knows they did not kill all of the giant creatures. Some day they will come to destroy all humankind.
Hugh Cave has borrowed his over all structure from H. G. Wells’s “The Empire of the Ants”, right down to the denouement. What he has changed is the size of the ants (something Hollywood would agree on). The weird dimensional laser gun is a weird touch, working on color theory and prisms (This is Weird Tales, after all!) He also has his ants become more spider-like, creating a sticky web they use to tie up their prisoners. Lord spent sixteen months as a slave, building the bulwark around along the shore and the many paths through the jungle.
H. Warner Munn’s “The City of the Spiders” (Weird Tales, November 1926) is an earlier and similar tale of giant spiders. Munn’s story seems more convincing and better worked out.
F. Orlin Tremaine
“The Last Men” (Astounding Stories, August 1934), “Green Glory” (Astounding Stories, January 1935) and “The Great Cold” (Astounding Stories, February 1935) by Frank Belknap Long forms a trilogy of tales about a future in which humans are slaves to insects. Only the second tale features ants. “Green Glory” tells the story of Atasmas, an ant slave who is chosen for a special mission, to take a cylinder containing a flarra-eson spore. This seed will cause the rival armies of the bees to become fossilized. There is only one problem, the night shapes. These wild humans live among the bees. Atasmas is saved from a larval bee by one of these wild girls. He is immediately smitten. This doesn’t stop him from activating the spore. He clutches his new love tight as the green glory kills them.
Frank Belknap Long got his start in the horror genre, being H. P. Lovecraft’s best friend. In the 1930s FBL began writing Science Fiction as well. (His horror fiction often has SF trappings.) F. Orlin Tremaine was editor of Astounding in 1935. He liked to present stories that were “thought variants” or strange new ideas. This series by Long certainly qualifies. Frank would write more SF later for John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science-Fiction. His relationship with Lovecraft often makes people see him as a Cthulhu Mythos writer rather than a member of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Mort Weisinger
“Hands Across the Void” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1938) by Will Garth (actually written by Henry Kuttner) has Glathnor of Titan designing the destruction of the humans of Earth. He does this by agitating the giant ants that humans use as servants. In the ants’ minds is an event called “The Day of Devouring” when the insects will revolt. In opposition to Glathnor is Rondar of Hawk Valley, an Earthman. The conflict won’t end until both men are dead, Glathnor in the jaws of a giant ant.
The fact that “Leiningen Versus the Ants” (Esquire, December 1938) by Carl Stephenson–perhaps the most famous story about killer ants– appeared the same month as Kuttner’s tale, explains a little why SF Pulps dropped the giant ant after 1938. If the generic magazines could do ants, well, Science Fiction could do something else. And it did for a while.
“Kingdom of the Ants (Startling Stories, September 1940) by Gerald Bowman has Clive Halloran in Australia. He joins Dr. Flint and his experiment with making ants giant in size. Of the head-hunters and giant ants, Halloran preferred the head-hunters.
Conclusion
“The Ass’s Ears” by Peter J. Ridley (Nebula #1, Autumn 1952) has humans going to Venus and finding the native humanoids extinct. I wonder what ate them all? Then an ant runs across the narrator’s book…
“Legacy of Terror” (Amazing Stories, November 1958) by Henry Slesar is a story I suspect was ordered by the editors to take advantage of the current giant animal movies. One character says, “You said them. You mean there is more than –this ant.” (How’s that for working in the title of the most famous giant ant movie?) The plot has a scientist who creates a formula for making animals larger. Soon giant crickets, spiders and ants appear. In the finale, it is an ant that menaces the scientist’s family. The cover artist, Edward Valigursky, chose this seen for the magazine’s cover. Virgil Finlay chose to draw a spider in the illustration. But Virgil would get his chance for an ant in the next story.
“The Large Ant” (Fantastic Universe, February 1960) by Howard Fast is a good example of a late comer, a last hurrah if you will, to the giant ant. Fast’s tale has a giant ant appear at the foot of man’s bed in his fishing cabin. In his panic, he kills it, then later examines it. He finds the creature possessed tools and behaved with intelligence. Where did it come from? Was it from outer space? Under the earth? Another dimension? Fast doesn’t tell you. What he does do is tell us that the man feels the Earth is being judged, and that his violence means we have failed the test.
Most of these stories were written before the drive-ins went crazy with Them! (1954) and other giant insect movies. The comic books produced Ant-Man in 1962. Only a craze for environmental disaster in the 1970s could bring back the normal sized bugs in novels like Barry N. Malzberg’s Phase IV (1973) and Peter Tremayne’s The Ants (1979). But we aren’t done with ants yet as Orson Scott Card’s award-winning Ender’s Game proves. We might have to go out into space to meet giant ants today, but Giant Ants of the Pulps haven’t changed all that much.
