The Furies & Other Killer Bees - Dark Worlds Quarterly

Sometimes cover art haunts me. The image of a large wasp attacking a human stayed with me for decades even though I never had a chance to read Keith Roberts’ The Furies back in the 1970s. I simply filed it away as “If I ever get my hands on a copy….”

Well, of course, I finally did. And not that Pan paperback with the killer wasp but the original Science Fantasy magazine serialization that appeared in July-September 1965, the initial appearance from when I was only two years old. I found out later that the cover art was also done by Roberts, so the very first wasp image was the author’s own.

The novel tells of an England that is invaded by gigantic wasps. It is clearly part of the British disaster SF genre made popular by John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951) and John Christopher’s No Blade of Grass (1956) and J. G. Ballard’s early novels like The Drowned World (1962). Of course, the granddaddy of them all is H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) where the pattern for this kind of novel was set. The Brits just do this kind of book better than everybody else. I think it is the calmness with which they begin it.

In Roberts’ case we have Bill Sampson, a cartoonist who meets a young sixteen year old girl, Jane. The coming of the Furies follows these two (and Bill’s dog, Sek) as they see England taken over by the ferocious insects, all the while the earth is ripped apart by earthquakes (caused by US and Russian nuclear bomb tests). Everything is logically and slowly presented. This builds the suspension of disbelief that takes us eventually to a concentration camp run by the wasps and then following a band of freedom fighters who operate from a complex of caves called Chill Leer. Their guerrilla actions against the invaders, and their willing humans slaves, end in death and fire.

The final revelation and denouement has been called “weak” but I liked it. It was very Wellsian. I won’t revel it here because I really hope you’ll track the book down and read it yourself. Roberts did not go on to write anymore disaster novels. The Guardian said of the book: “His first novel, The Furies, was a failed attempt to produce a catastrophe novel in the vein of John Wyndham or John Christopher.” Roberts is better remembered as the author of Pavane (1968) and Kiteworld (1985). His novels tend to be connected series of short stories and novellas. In truth, he is more of a short story writer than a novelist.

Being a disaster fan I, of course, wish he had done more but he probably felt he said all he wanted to with The Furies. I would not have complained about The Furies II and III. A lot of the comments on the web compare it to ’50s B-movies (no pun intended) without the fifth-rate acting. With the CGI we have today, this would make a killer film today. Not a killer bee film like The Swarm (1978) but a weird look into a world turned on its side. Even Roberts 1960s anti-nuke, pro-environment theme is welcome. These issues haven’t really gone away. I doubt you’d find a producer who wants to make such a serious film out of a theme that has received so much schlock treatment.

Killer Bee movies use ordinary bees, of course. They follow the tried-and-true B-movie formula, which comes to us from H. G. Wells. The danger becomes apparent to someone nobody will listen to until the threat becomes so big it has to be dealt with. Usually our Cassandra character solves everything with something scientific like sound, electricity or some such. The ending is usually: we’re okay for now…but what about next time? In our age of Climate Change debate, you’d think all the Bee-movie fans would be shaking their heads. We know how this will go!

Killer Bee Movies