If you missed the last one….
Giant and Killer Insects in the Pulps are one of Clare Winger Harris’s classic Science Fiction themes from 1931. Last time we looked at examples from the 1920s to the 1950s. This time we are more focused on the early SF years when Harris herself produced such a tale. This time I have included more interplanetary examples. In these tales brave adventurers go to other planets and encounter the Venusian version of grasshoppers or the Plutonian type of ant. That’s not to say we are shy on mad scientists producing some good earthbound versions of centipedes and bees either.
“The Miracle of the Lily” (Amazing Stories, April 1928) by Clare Winger Harris has the Earth turned into a barren shell when the insects eat all the plants, then turn on each other. The humans have the last bug, a foot-long beetle, as a reminder of the tragedy. Later when messages come from Venus, the intelligent folks there have their own invasion problem. Television signals are eventually used to see the Venusians, who are giant beetles. The creatures invading them are tiny humans. It is a reversal of what happened on earth.
“Vampires of Venus” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, April 1930) by Anthony Pelcher has Leslie Larner, an entomologist taken from a Rocky Mountains vacation to the planet Venus. The Venusians are under attack by blood-sucking insects the size of horses. Larner discovers the bugs are descended from Mercurian creatures. He has one captured and uses it to track the bugs to their hive. The creatures are destroyed. Pelcher doesn’t explain why a race of men who live to eight hundred, have gotten rid of war, and have true equality between the sexes (along with other scientific marvels) can’t kill a few bugs. No Raid, I guess.
“The Prince of Liars” (Amazing Stories, October 1930) by L. Taylor Hansen features a scientist with a far-fetched history that includes involvement with “The Men of Allos”, who are actually highly evolved insects from Sirius.
“The Silent Scourge” (Wonder Stories, December 1930) by Morrison Colladay begins in East Orange, New Jersey where people are disappearing. The cause proves to be giant centipedes that only come out at night. Our hero discovers their giant size is a side effect of a military gas. The gas also attracts the centipedes. The soldiers lure them with it, then destroy them with another poison gas, since bullets have no effect. Colladay proves to be “The Bug Man” with three stories in this list.
“Dust of Destruction” (Wonder Stories, February 1931) by P. Schuyler Miller has the Earth attacked by a ray from the Moon. Three scientists go to the Moon to find the attackers. They prove to be a race of intelligent insects. One of the scientists sacrifices himself to blow up the ray projector and the air machine of the Lunarians.
“Great Green Things” (Wonder Stories, April 1931) by Thomas H. Knight has a scientist and an aviator arguing over whether there could be giant insects in the jungle. They fly into the bush and find– you guess it— giant insects the size of large dogs. These creatures attack them and tie down one of the men with ropes secreted from their bodies. The other one, the scientist, lights a huge fire to which the bugs are attracted, destroying them. Michael Marchioni’s illustration makes the insects look like vultures.
“The Burning Swamp” (Amazing Stories, August 1931) by Morrison Colladay sounds like a version of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds— with bugs. Two engineering students see a meteorite fall and track it to a new hill. Inside are giant cockroaches from space. These wipe out a posse of lawmen using a heat ray. The whole thing is hushed up but more meteors are on the way. There is a sequel to this story four months later.
“The War of the Universe” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931) by Clinton Constantinescu is a one-hit wonder from a Canadian scientist. This tale of interplanetary war has a fleet of enemy ships being built out in space. The attackers are insects who have stolen their tech from a race of intelligent birds. The humans rescue the few remaining birds and go to war with the insects. An obvious precursor to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959) though E. F. Bleiler in Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998): calls it “Imaginative in detail…somewhat primitive in development.”
“Beyond the Star Curtain” (Wonder Stories, October 1931) by Garth Bentley has two scientists build a rocket and fly off to explore the Coal Sack. When they return to Earth they find all of civilization gone and the planet changed. There are insects the size of horses. Humans have become primitives again. The men find two attractive females and plan to restart civilization. The story was reprinted in Fantastic Story Quarterly, Fall 1950.
“Spawn of the Comet” (Astounding Stories, November 1931) by H. Thompson Rich has meteorites that are eggs landing on the Earth. These eggs hatch into giant radioactive ants. The invaders build a city in the desert. Humanity is almost wiped out because their weapons are useless against the insects, which are not entirely made of terrestrial elements. The human win when they invent a radiation weapon.
“The Blattids” (Amazing Stories, December 1931) by Morrison Colladay is the sequel to “The Burning Swamp”. Three months later our engineering heroes help in the search for the new base of the Blattids (our space roaches named at last). They use compasses to find it above ground. Donning canisters of poison gas, they allow themselves to captured and kill off the bugs with the gas They also rescue a military man who had been taken earlier. The Blattids are wiped out but there is chance of more meteors. (No further sequels showed up.)
“The Land of the Mighty Insects” (Wonder Stories, April 1934) by A. C. Stimson is a one-hit wonder that takes us to Antarctica. An expedition finds a world heated by volcanoes where giant insects abound. Among these are ants that keep humans like aphid cattle. The expedition members turn on each other when they discover a woman who has lived her whole life in a tree. One man escapes to be found half-mad and physically wrecked, to tell the story.
“The Insect World” (Wonder Stories, April 1935) by Thomas S. Gardner has interstellar insects come to an Earth devoid of humans. The insects of Earth help the visitors to puzzle out what happened to the humans. Under threat from a species of termite, one that could withstand cold, the humans developed a race of intelligent tool-using ants. With the ants to do everything, the humans quietly disappeared. The story was reprinted in Tales of Wonder and Super Science #15 (September 1941).
“The Lords of 9016” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1938) by John Russell Fearn has a scientist in the year 9016 threatening our time with mutated insects. To stop him, our heroes must venture into the future. This story was expanded as The Red Insects (1951) by Vargo Statten.
“The Insect Invasion” (Fantastic Adventures, September 1939) by Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. has poisonous prehistoric dragonflies from the Arctic attacking Chicago. The scientists save the world using electricity. Arthur Herzog III’s novel, The Swarm (1974) and the movie (1978) would recycle this tale. The choice of Chicago rather than New York was because the magazine was published by Ray A. Palmer out of Chicago. (Why should NYC get all the fun? See below.)
“New York Fights the Termanites” (Fantastic Adventures, February 1940) by Bertrand L. Shurtleff has man-shaped termites coming up in the subway of New York City. The tunnel has burrowed too deep and broken into the tunnels of the Termanites. A group of people trapped below have to fight their way out. When the reporter takes a picture with his flash bulb they learn the termites don’t like light. The prisoners escape and the photographer has a wonderful pile of photos to sell to the papers.
“Revolt of the Ants” (Amazing Stories, April 1940) by Milton Kaletsky is a satirical piece with the ants of America marching on Washington to demand their rights. A war with the insects ensues with the ants, bees and other insects withdrawing from human service. Kaletsky probably based this on the 1932 march on Washington by the Bonus Army.
Conclusion
These examples of Giant and Killer Insects in the Pulp are all from the early years of Pulp Science Fiction (1928-1940) with many of them coming from Hugo Gernsback magazines. (Hugo liked a good bug story.) One thing I noticed was the small majority were published with an April date. This is similar to the trend I noticed with Plant Monster stories appearing in May in the comics (allergy season). And I suppose it makes sense. April in the United States is when insects come to life after winter and seem to be everywhere. (A little later in Canada.) The Pulp reader will think of bees and other insects more readily if surrounded by them in their every day life.
When Robert A. Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in 1959, he was working in a well-trod territory. Critics usually focus on his politics and forget that the novel is a great example of an alien insect story. The film version made this very evident. Many of the best scenes in the film look like the illustrations from these Pulp stories. Man versus Giant Insect has been a classic since The Strand Magazine published “If Insects Were Bigger” in 1909.
