January 18, 2010

"Save the Ants!"

Last year, I cited Nicholas Wade's interview with sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, in which Wilson disclosed that at age 79, he was writing his first novel, but he was in a tussle with his publishers over whether his main characters would be human beings or ants. I argued that we had plenty of novels about human beings, so why not let the world's foremost ant expert write a novel about ants?

Now, under "Fiction," The New Yorker has published an excerpt from E.O. Wilson's upcoming novel Anthill, a short story entitled "Trailhead:"
The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself.

Here's an interview with Wilson about his novel.

One inevitable shortcoming of ant fiction, however, is that all dialogue is exchanged by smell:
The ants expelled a pheromone from a gland that opened at the base of their jaws. A chemical vapor spread fast. It shouted, Danger! Emergency! Run!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

xzxxxzzx

Mr. Anon said...

Incidentally, a french science fiction author, Bernard Werber, has already written a book told from the point-of-view of ants: "Empire of the Ants":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Werber

Anonymous said...

I think I saw this movie. Empire of the Ants.

Kylie said...

Steve Sailer writes: "One inevitable shortcoming of ant fiction, however, is that all dialogue is exchanged by smell:
The ants expelled a pheromone from a gland that opened at the base of their jaws. A chemical vapor spread fast. It shouted, Danger! Emergency! Run!"

Yes, the ant fiction genre is obviously self-limiting. Witty dialogue and rapid-fire repartee like that found in Hammett's novels will not be one of its hallmarks. Nor will we ever see, say, a Jamesian exploration of ant consciousness.

If Anthill is made into a movie, however, that shortcoming might be minimized by the strategic use of Smell-O-Vision.

albertosaurus said...

Ants are interesting. Maybe not as interesting as termites but none the less interesting.

Complex adaptive behavior emerges from a colony that isn't present in any individual. Colony action isn't the result of leadership - there is no leader. The so called Queen is just a specialized reproduction robot.

Interesting.

Baloo said...

I'm reminded of Douglas Hofstadter's Ant Hillary (pre-Clinton) who was not a society, but an individual.

Anonymous said...

Read Empires in Anarchy, a book by someone who really loves ants, even when they strip away the living flesh of sacrificial victims in Africa.

Anonymous said...

I think I saw this movie. Empire of the Ants.



No, it was "Antz", with Woody Allen playing a neurotic ant and Gene Hackman as "General Mandible". A classic.

Anonymous said...

A fact of life seemingly remote to all this is that in law enforcement or quasi law enforcement, if you want to "coast" without having arguments with the prosecutor about the quality of the evidence you've gathered OR ending up in court to testify and having a variant of a "Mark Furman" eperince, you've reached bureaucratic utopia when you can monkey around with this sort of non-criminal activity of "thought violations" Given the moral meltdown in our nation, count on this being a "growth industry" among federal , state, and local
"enforcement" units for a helluva long time to come. Everybody's gotta eat.

Anonymous said...

Great stuff. Is Wilson's portrayal of ants any less profound and sensitive than most Hollywood movies? Are his ants any less three-dimensional as characters than, say, Vin Diesel?

Mr. Anon said...

"Kylie said...

Yes, the ant fiction genre is obviously self-limiting. Witty dialogue and rapid-fire repartee like that found in Hammett's novels will not be one of its hallmarks."

".....All I could see was her legs. Six of 'em."

".....The big chinese fire ant went down, his glands barking formic acid."

Hey, I'm no Hammett, but I tried.

keypusher said...

There is also the chapter in The Once and Future King where young Arthur lives as an ant in a colony preparing to go to war with another colony. Judging from the pre-war propaganda, many of Arthur's fellow ants later found work at the Weekly Standard and AEI.

We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their syrup.

We must attack in self-defence.

They are attacking us by defending themselves.

If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

In any case, we are not attacking them at all; we are offering them incalculable benefits.

Anonymous said...

"One inevitable shortcoming of ant fiction, however, is that all dialogue is exchanged by smell"

The other inevitable shortcoming ant fiction is that it's fiction about ants.

It's like Watership Down only not cute. At all.

FatCaveman

Anonymous said...

All that I know about marching ants, I learned from a 12 year long real-life ant horror movie called compulsory public schooling.