It’s been ages now since ants took over the Earth, but they still enjoy reliving the old battles.
“One small step for an ant, one giant leap for all insects.” Conquering the humans was the defining moment in the civilization of the ants.
When they read what we wrote about them in textbooks, they weren’t insulted. “Look how the mighty have fallen!” they roared with joy.
Every year on Veteran’s Day (for ants) they re-enact the great battles and tell their children and grandchildren about the Revolution.
“Son, the history books will tell you that the 214th Leaf Cutter Division captured Washington. But by the time they got there it was just me and few other guys. Beat but not beaten.”
“Just me, a few guys and our Electro Sine Trap Tentacles of Terror!“
“Boy, tell your children and your grandchildren, if the humans ever come back from their holes in the ground, just let ’em have it with the Electro Sine Trap Tentacles of Terror. Those babies will fry ’em where they stand!”
:D Reminds me of SimAnt, an old game where you had to take care of a colony of ants… You started in a garden (beware of the lawn mower !), and the ultimate goal was to colonize a sufficient percentage of the house to force people leaving it. :D:D:D Wonderful game.
That’s not a bad analogy. But what I envisioned here as I looked at this fractal was something more like the Planet of the Apes version of SimAnt, with the people being electrocuted as they ran out the front door of their homes by ants as big as them. The smell of ozone drifting through empty neighbourhoods.
Sid Meyer’s Colonization was a favorite simulation game of mine. Similar to Civilization but on a colonial scale. I used to play it for sometimes 6 hours at a time.
Am I the only guy here who remembers Ralph Milne Farley’s The Radio Beasts?
Especially the cover of the Ace Paperback? War against the ant-masters of Venus? Of course I bought “The Radio Planet” first cause the cover has this guy dressed like an USC Trojan (with his arm protectively around the obligatory Venusian Princess) using a very wicked looking sword to fend off a giant ant.
Boys? Those days are gone fer good. Nobody write that kinda great pulp fiction anymore. If the world now is ever to get the taste of such beatific adventures (dare I say sweet naivete) they will have to be re-released. I heard recently Doc Savage is coming back and that’s a start man.
Now. why did I not say “Boys and Girls” this time? Because in those days it was “no girls allowed” they stayed sequestered in the milky ardor of the Home Ec room and learned the high magic of turning houses into homes. Those old days. those old “duck and cover” days. The day before the (open air) Soviet 100 Megaton nuclear H-bomb test (A bomb test — how ridulous is that? test one? tests them all — science works!)I would have given anything short of my long manhood to be Myles Cabot on Venus with my arm around some Venusian girl with my hand ache-ingly hovering over her bodice. And yes even with some giant ant bearing down on us bent on scissoring vivisection (happen to have this here lucky sword).
“Ant masters of Venus” Yes, they don’t write sci-fi like they did in the golden age. I think the problem is they try nowadays to be too realistic. The fantastic side of sci-fi seems to be considered unscientific or something.
As for the racy cover art… I bought two sci-fi digests from a second hand bookstore because they were from 1957 and I thought they must be real collector’s items. Looking through them I was shocked to see what sort of sleazy illustrations they had, especially considering they were from the 50s which I thought was still almost Victorian.
They would never have been able to use artwork like that in a movie poster back then, but in a sci-fi digest it wasn’t unusual, I guess. Monsters carrying off women with torn, skimpy clothing seemed to be a standard in sci-fi cover art. I wonder how many boys got their magazines confiscated or edited by their parents?