In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to recommend five books based around a common theme. These lists aren’t intended to be exhaustive, so we hope you’ll discuss and add your own suggestions in the comments!
There’s something about insects in literature that make them the perfect monster. It doesn’t matter how they’re written. They can be small and deadly, or gigantic and misunderstood. They can be acting on instinct or driven by hyper-intelligence. Whatever the case, they’re perfect because up close, insects can look delightfully alien, with their multitude of legs, assortment of eyes, segmented bodies, and exoskeletons.
Also because ew. Bugs.
As I was thumbing through my library trying to come up with a fun Five Book post, I spotted two of my favorite reads this year, Mort(e) by Robert Repino and Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith. Both feature gigantic insects hell-bent on eliminating mankind. So let’s take a closer look at five insects that ruin everyone’s day in five awesome books.
PRAYING MANTISES in Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
What happens when a strain of plague is discovered in a small town junk shop, and the virus starts mutating people into giant, eager-to-mate praying mantises? Absolute chaos and hilarity, mixed it with a dash of teenage angst and sexual confusion.
A brilliant piece of YA science-fiction, that touches on a lot of challenging issues. Also, giant praying mantises and the apocalypse.
BUGS IN SPACE in Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Mankind is wrapped up in an epic interstellar war with a race of giant insect creatures from another planet.
Unlike the (awesome but kind of bad but still kind of awesome) movie adaptation, you don’t actually see a lot of the bugs in the book. It’s more about themes circulating around the military and politics, than epic sci-fi space battles against multi-legged bugs. But hey, they are there.
GIANT HYPERINTELLIGENT ANTS in Mort(e) by Robert Repino
An epic science-fiction thriller out on January 20th, Mort(e) introduces you to a world that’s been conquered by hyper-intelligent giant ants.
Tired of mankind’s treatment of the world, the ants have risen to take the planet, and have made other animals self-aware. It’s an epic battle between humans, ants, dogs, ants, cats, ants, raccoons, ants, and it is incredible. And the protagonist, a housecat named Mort(e), will stick with you long after you close the pages.
GIANT (SORT OF) FLIES in The Mist by Stephen King
When a thick mist rolls over a small town, trapping a number of people in a grocery store, an array of horrifying creatures start attacking them. It ranges from a weird tentacle monster to… surprise! Bugs!
Fly-like creatures swarm the windows of the store, their skin a burnt pink and… well, gross. Technically the mist is ruining everyone’s day in this horror novella, but hey, those gross fly-like insects came along with it.
SUPERNATURAL BEDBUGS FROM HELL in Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters
What happens when you throw The Amityville Horror and Rosemary’s Baby into a cauldron and sprinkle it with demonic insects? Ben H. Winters’ Bedbugs, is a story of paranoia and terror involving supernatural bedbugs, possibly from Hell.
It’s made especially scary because the protagonist is the only one being bitten by the bugs, and no one else can see them. Ugh.
GIANT SPIDERS in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Bonus pick! Because spiders aren’t technically insects, right? They’re arachnids. But whatever, they are still hella scary. Particularly in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
I’m looking at you, Shelob.
Eric Smith is cofounder of Geekadelphia, a popular blog covering all-that-is-geek in the City of Brotherly Love, as well as the Philadelphia Geek Awards, an annual honors show held at the Academy of Natural Sciences. He lives in Philadelphia. You can find him on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks.
Shouldn’t Ender’s Game be in this list?
OMFG, there is a book about demonic bed bugs? I am kind of tempted to pick that up if only because about 7 years I suffered from a bed bug infestation (the totally mundane kind) and STILL HAVE NIGHTMARES about it.
That psyhcological terror – it’s real. Bed bugs are so hard to find too, I really did start to go kind of nuts and scared of my bed room, and even constantly imaginging things crawling all over me. UGH!
The Killik trilogy in the Star Wars Extended Universe. OMFG
I mean it was kinda neat how they went all KOTOR on us, and put in this ancient sentient species that populated all these planets first, but it was too wierd.
LOL LOL, gutter mind, I guess, but I just remember the Zekk/Jaina/(now I can’t remember -was it Raynar, or was she already with Fel at that point and was he a part of it?) hive threesome. That’s basically what that book is to me now. Although if I recall, this is also the book that sets up cray cray Alema Rar…
By the way, I feel all itchy now. I keep scratching at my neck and arms. Ughhhh bed bugs!
Not an insect, but Brian Keene’s Earthworm Gods.
I mean, it’s about giant earthworms.
Does Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera count? Because ick!
I don’t recall a threesome per se, but yes there was lots of hive sex going on between Zekk and Jaina, and since Raynar’s mind was linked with theirs he was there in a metaphysical sense I guess.
I just remember Fel being freaked out by them.
I, for one, would like to welcome our new ant overlords.
One of the scariest bug-related books I’ve read is Charles Pellegrino’s Dust. It doesn’t have giant insects in it. Actually it doesn’t have any insects at all, because that’s the premise of the story: what would happen to the world if all insects suddenly died out?
The real science behind it is the scariest part of the story.
@5 See also THE WORMS OF KUKUMLIMA by Daniel Pinkwater, with giant, superintelligent earthworms living inside an extinct volcano crater in Tanzania.
They’re not insects but the Sandkings by GRRM (read by me in high school on Easter break at home with the parents away visiting relatives out of state and during a major lightning storm outside) scared the bejeezus out of me.
I concur with Geoff K. Sandkings is awesomely freaky. Though I don’t know if it counts because it’s a novelette. I read it going through The Weird, which is just an incredible anthology.
Ed Bryant’s Nebula-winning story “giANTS” (1979) is a brilliant inversion of the typical giant-insect story, wherein The Problem With Writing About Giant Insects becomes a solution rather than a problem.
Frank Herbert’s The Green Brain (from the story “Greenslaves”).
I think the “Bugs” in Starship Troopers are actually humanoid, but I always picture them as giant bugs when I read it.
John Steakley’s Armor. Space pirate Jack Crow tries to live up to his own hype while re-living the experiences of Felix, the super soldier with a mysterious past who was trapped in a kafkaesque version of a Groundhog Day sequence not related to time travel but to military bureaucracy, during the Ant War. Because there are ants there, giant humanoid alien ants who seem conspicuously not intelligent enough to be wielding the weapons they use, so there is an unseen enemy hinted at. There are also hints to human aliens living undetected among earth humans. That book desperately needed a sequel, a whole series, sadly the author died before he could continue.
If you are looking for giant insects, check out the late Murray Leinster’s “The Forgotten Planet”. It has a whole world full of them. The planet of the title is being terraformed. But, owing to a glitch, it’s records are lost and the process never gets beyond the phase were it is stocked with insects. Without competition, the bugs evolve into jumbo sizes. Then a spaceship crash lands on the planet. The survivors’ descendants revert to savagery. When the story begins humans role in the eco-system is that of a prey species trying to hide from spiders and other predators.
Then a young man of the tribe makes an accidental discovery that leads to relearning the concept of tools. And, of course, with tools come weapons…
TH White has something slightly different in The Book of Merlin, where Merlin changes King Arthur into an ant and sends him into an ant colony: he parodies certain ideologies doing the rounds at the time.
And then – how could you possibly have not noticed or known M John Harrison’s A Storm of Wings in his Viriconium stories? It is the Time of the Locust; it is the Sign of the Locust; it is the great airboatman Benedict Paucemanly, “Listen to me, my lad (black buggery!) I can see you’re a flier. Listen, the regenerated world burrows within me!”, it is the madwomen Fay Glass, involuntary medium to unimaginable creatures of roughly locust shape, “We see your world. Killing is all dead world. World killed.” It is Galen Hornwrack, unemployed assassin and involuntary agent of Methvet Nian, Queen of Viriconium, releasing Benedict Paucemanly and himself from servitude and worse with a kamikazi dive …. abrogate all rituals! Fear death from the air! Blork! What a lovely piece of meat …
Starship Troopers The Movie is way, way better than Starship Troopers The Book.
There. I said it.
Dune? Anyone? No?
There are aliens invaders who take the form of giant wasps in the 1966 Keith Roberts novel The Furies, though technically human stupidity gives them the chance to take over. I wonder whether it inspired A Storm of Wings?
If you would rather benevolent insects, I direct you to the Thranx of Alan Dean Fosters Flinx series. Naturally pacifist and logical, these oversize mantids gravitate towards being the scientists and engineers of the Commonwealth.
Nausicaa! Yes, I know the film is better known than the books, but it would be difficult to find insects that are a) more giant and b) more intent on ruining everyone’s day- in the short term anyway.
Also re: the bonus pick- someone in a class made a disparaging remark about Sam, and the prof jumped up and yelled “He fought a GIANT SPIDER! Screw dragons, it does not get any worse than giant spiders. In my book, Sam is the greatest hero of them all!,” and then went back to teaching.
This list is useless without Armor.
“The Year of Our War” and its sequels by Steph Swainston are set in a fantasy world partially overrun by giant insects. Some very interesting ideas and characters (the main protagonist is an immortal winged messenger with a heroin addiction), and I quite enjoyed the books.
And the insects as a kind of unstoppable enemy / force of nature were very well done in my opinion.
@atlas – Yes, you said it, but that doesn’t make it true. Not by a long shot.
Andre Nortons , Storm over Warlock . The Throg were a spacefaring insectile race that humanity could not make peace with because we had no common ground ! While it was written for teens it was still a pretty decent story .
Steph Swainston’s Castle trilogy features an epic war against giant insects. They turn captured territory into papery wastes and ee on coming from another parallel world…
Shadows of The Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky?