The Haploids

by Jerry Sohl

[Front Cover]
"ONE WOMAN LEADS A WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES"
[Back Cover]
"It began in Union City when they brought in the man who screamed before he died, his flesh a mottled gray. Then it spread. The disease hit South Bend. Then Chicago. Men dying. Their skin a lead gray, their lips browned, and screams tearing their way up through throats that leaked blood. Always men. Never women.
And then it was all so fantastically clear. Men were being exterminated, and a master race of haploid women were going to rule the world. And nobody could stop them."

Genres: Science Fiction

191 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Gerald Allan Sohl Sr. (December 2, 1913 - November 4, 2002) was a scriptwriter for The Twilight Zone (as a ghostwriter for Charles Beaumont), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and other shows . He also wrote novels, feature film scripts, and the nonfiction works Underhanded Chess and Underhanded Bridge in 1973.

His 1955 Point Ultimate is a piece of Cold War invasion literature: in 1999, a faraway future history at the time of writing, the US lies under a cruel Soviet occupation, reinforced by a deadly artificial disease which makes conquered Americans dependent on the conquerors for the injections which keep them alive. But a dashing Illinois farm boy breaks out in revolt, killing a degenerate soviet governor and his "Commie" American collaborators. Eventually, he becomes a leading member of a very formidable resistance organization which is capable of breaking at will into the occupiers' security headquarters and springing prisoners out, and which had already established a clandestine space program under the Soviets' noses and established a sizeable colony on Mars.

In the far more low-key The Time Dissolver (1957) Sohl tells the story of a man and a woman who wake up one morning to find that, inexplicably, they had lost all memory of the past eleven years including any memory of how they ever came to meet and become married to each other, and who embark on a quest to find what happened and to trace back these eleven lost years. Aside from the science fiction aspects, the book captures the atmosphere of late 1950s America.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerry Sohl is best remembered for his screenplays, including the film Frankenstein Conquers the World, and episodes of television series including Star Trek, The Man from Atlantis, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Invaders, and many others, including, of course, The Twilight Zone. He also wrote a good amount of prose science fiction, and The Haploids was his first novel, appearing from Rinehart in 1952. It's a mad scientist version of a war-between-the-sexes, as a newspaper reporter discovers that a group of women are set on exterminating the males. All of them, in a kind of grotesque manner... It's a good, fast-paced thriller, though of course it's dated in several ways now. Readers who enjoyed Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife would probably like this one, which has more of a medical/scientific slant, too. Lion Books released the first mass market edition in 1953 with a gloriously pulpish cover by Rafael DeSoto, who produced a lot of great pulp covers for a couple of decades starting in 1933, for magazines like The Phantom Detective, The Spider, Captain Zero, etc. A blonde elf-eared lady wearing a towel is next to the Moon over a zombie-looking man's head that has a hand stabbing it in the eye with a hypodermic... tasty stuff all around!

[limo · Rating 1 out of 5]

CUIDADO CON EL TUBITO DE LA MUERTE

No, en serio.

Realmente no esperaba mucho de este libro, lo compré en un local de usados por 4 pesos (que para esta fecha son... no sé, como 70 centavos de dolar xD). Me llamó por su longitud y por la idea que planteaba, quería ver si me encontraba con algún tipo de debate u opinión interesante, y más que nada leerme algo en uno o dos días, aunque verán que no fue así xD

Al principio parecía interesante, pero luego se me volvió malo, malo... Personajes sin desarrollar o con trucos que sacan de la nada (?), una narración mala y en la que el 70% del texto es diálogo... Los capítulos están mal separados y los saltos de espacio y de tiempo entre ORACIONES a veces son demasiado enormes o abruptos. Además, esta edición te cuenta casi todo con su sinopsis -_- O al menos lo principal o aquello que nuestro protagonista y sus amiguitos(?)les preocupa e interesa.
Es muuuuuuy Cs. Ficción barata de los 50 (fue escrito por esa época, así que...). Al principio dije, "bueno, de última me entretengo un poco", meh, me aburrí enormemente y todo me pareció tan tonto que agradecí terminarlo.

[Ptjerónimo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bruscamente, provinda do nada, surge uma pandemia mortal que se expande rapidamente mas que curiosamente só atinge os homens enquanto que as mulheres parecem ser imunes. Na realidade, a pandemia foi provocada intencionalmente por algumas mulheres que, graças à partenogénese não são afectadas. Ora, essas mulheres como não necessitam dos homens para se reproduzirem querem livrar-se deles e depois conquistar a Terra, ou então vice-versa. A ordem é arbitrária. Mas, claro, não conseguem porque há homens (e algumas mulheres...) que se a isso se opõem! Pouco aliciante como leitura e muito básico literariamente.

[Mkittysamom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was a pretty great “what if women took over the world” type of story, and it’s a first to see evil women as a group for me! Not necessarily evil women, but hell bent on making a certain point of view reality. Led by a crazy Matriarch, who has some secrets of her own, the women are plotting an apocalypse. Although it is not easily apparent in the beginning, when men dying turn grey or even later black I guess.. with purple splotches. I immediately thought of zombies, being gray or green in color, and then I thought of the movie “Alien”. lol I think it also stood up against passage of time, it was readable cover to cover! The end was abrupt though, but I think it’s to make the reader guess what happens.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this many years ago, and recall it being OK. I've read pretty much all of Sohl's novels, and he did better (Costigan's Needle, Point Ultimate).