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The Ant Men
"There's a feeling about this desert which frankly suggests ... impossible things. That's the only way I can put it." The feeling that Professor Silas Orcutt, an American geologist, refers to early in this story, is one that every reader of this rugged and thrilling science fiction novel will share with him after the very first page. The professor, head of a party of five studying geological formations in the Central Australian desert, thought back on the nightmare of shifting sand and crackling electrical charges that had wrecked the truck in which his party was traveling. He thought, too, of the skeleton of a freshly killed crocodile-found hundreds of miles from the nearest river-and the stench of formic acid that remained around its picked-clean bones. The professor's intrepid little group was prepared to find fossils in the Australian rock strata-but not the living kind that shocked them into believing the impossible of the burnt-out lands of the continent down under. Trapped in a desert valley under the pitiless sun, the five found themselves face to face with six-foot-tall ants and deadly giant mantises: survivors from before the dawn of history.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
5 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Eric North
8 books2 followers"Eric North" was the pen-name of the Australian novelist Bernard Cronin under which he wrote five detective novels and Science Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 27, 2016
I am not sure how I feel about this book. I would say it is more of an 'alternate reality - parallel dimension' kind of story as opposed to the intrepid travelers moving either forward or backward through time. It is a lot of exposition and very little action. In fact, even though it took me less than a day to read it, it still felt like it moved slow and nothing really important happened. Some of the phrasings in the book were interesting, coming from an Australian/British mix/viewpoint [as it were] as opposed to having been written by an American with American vernacular.
The team of five individuals [two teenage boys, two older scientists, and a grizzled guide] are traveling through the Australian wilderness/desert for some reason when they encounter some unnatural phenomenon that sends them across time and space to somewhen else.
I am not sure what I want to say about this novel! I don't believe it; this may be a first for me. It was as if literally nothing of import happened! [Well, nothing important happened to the 'main' characters.] The blurb I read about the book implied that three of the five characters died [which I found hard to believe,which encouraged me to read it to find out if it was true]; the blurb lied to me! hahahah They wander around the desert, discover a type of jungle, get chased around a bit, one is captured by the Ant Men and the others come to his rescue. We discover the one captured was a part of some ESP experiment at Duke and could communicate with the Ant Men. His life is spared by the Frog God; there are three or four species of Ant Men in this society [red, black. green, and I think gold]. The Red Ant Men want to maintain power and keep everybody 'repressed' as well as to kill the humans because they [the Red Ant Men] believe the humans are a rapid advancement in the evolutionary pace of the Ant People and the Red Ant leaders are not happy about this change. Hence, the humans are slotted for extinction. The Mantises and the Ant Men are mortal enemies. The Frog God is killed by some angry Black Ant Men who want to overthrow the rule of the Red Ant Men. The humans find each other and escape the Ant Men society and experience another phenomenon that sends them back to 'their' time/reality.
At this point, the title of this chapter is "Time Reversal" [or something like that], which implies they return to their own time and place. Personally, to me, it felt more like they had slipped into a parallel universe as opposed to going either backward in time [which made no sense at all] or forward in time [which would have made more sense, on the one hand, to give time for the insects to grow in size and intelligence].
The giant Ant Men are fairly anthropomorphic; I could not decide if the giant Mantises were equally anthropomorphic. It was a disappointing read.
Speaking of which, some of the book did get a bit irritating. The guide, Nugget, kept saying, "Momma, momma!" over and over and over and over. I do not know if that is an Australian thing from the 1950s or what, but I wish I had some cultural context for why he kept saying this. Maybe it was like how Americans used to say, "Man, oh, man!" when excited?
The other 'major' irritant for me were the two young boys. They kept saying, "Hello, Aussie!" "Hello, Pommy!" to each other throughout the book! I could see if they had been separated for a day or so between each chapter or every-other chapter, but not every chapter or even several times in a chapter! Perhaps this is a common thing teenage friends did in Australia? Again, some cultural context [or some kind of context] would have helped make this ritual less of an irritant.
So, anyway, even though I was a bit disappointed reading the book, I am still glad I read it. It was not written by an American author, so I was able to experience Australian idioms and perspectives [at least, I think I was] in reading this book.
The team of five individuals [two teenage boys, two older scientists, and a grizzled guide] are traveling through the Australian wilderness/desert for some reason when they encounter some unnatural phenomenon that sends them across time and space to somewhen else.
I am not sure what I want to say about this novel! I don't believe it; this may be a first for me. It was as if literally nothing of import happened! [Well, nothing important happened to the 'main' characters.] The blurb I read about the book implied that three of the five characters died [which I found hard to believe,which encouraged me to read it to find out if it was true]; the blurb lied to me! hahahah They wander around the desert, discover a type of jungle, get chased around a bit, one is captured by the Ant Men and the others come to his rescue. We discover the one captured was a part of some ESP experiment at Duke and could communicate with the Ant Men. His life is spared by the Frog God; there are three or four species of Ant Men in this society [red, black. green, and I think gold]. The Red Ant Men want to maintain power and keep everybody 'repressed' as well as to kill the humans because they [the Red Ant Men] believe the humans are a rapid advancement in the evolutionary pace of the Ant People and the Red Ant leaders are not happy about this change. Hence, the humans are slotted for extinction. The Mantises and the Ant Men are mortal enemies. The Frog God is killed by some angry Black Ant Men who want to overthrow the rule of the Red Ant Men. The humans find each other and escape the Ant Men society and experience another phenomenon that sends them back to 'their' time/reality.
At this point, the title of this chapter is "Time Reversal" [or something like that], which implies they return to their own time and place. Personally, to me, it felt more like they had slipped into a parallel universe as opposed to going either backward in time [which made no sense at all] or forward in time [which would have made more sense, on the one hand, to give time for the insects to grow in size and intelligence].
The giant Ant Men are fairly anthropomorphic; I could not decide if the giant Mantises were equally anthropomorphic. It was a disappointing read.
Speaking of which, some of the book did get a bit irritating. The guide, Nugget, kept saying, "Momma, momma!" over and over and over and over. I do not know if that is an Australian thing from the 1950s or what, but I wish I had some cultural context for why he kept saying this. Maybe it was like how Americans used to say, "Man, oh, man!" when excited?
The other 'major' irritant for me were the two young boys. They kept saying, "Hello, Aussie!" "Hello, Pommy!" to each other throughout the book! I could see if they had been separated for a day or so between each chapter or every-other chapter, but not every chapter or even several times in a chapter! Perhaps this is a common thing teenage friends did in Australia? Again, some cultural context [or some kind of context] would have helped make this ritual less of an irritant.
So, anyway, even though I was a bit disappointed reading the book, I am still glad I read it. It was not written by an American author, so I was able to experience Australian idioms and perspectives [at least, I think I was] in reading this book.
July 9, 2015
Die fünf Mitgleider einer geologischen Expedition in Australien, die durch ein wundersames Naturspektakel in eine "Lost World" a la Burroughs eingeschlossen werden, begegnen in der extrem lebensfeindlichen Urwelt des Kraters, aus dem kein Entkommen scheint, allerbedrohlichsten Ameisenmenschen und riesigen Gottesanbeterinnen.
Schon diese Zutaten allein könnten, was meinen Geschmack angeht, für einen fünf Sterne SF-Pulp-Roman stehen, der thematisch den Charme der 50er Jahre B-Movies wie z.B. THEM (1954) aufgreift; überhaupt waren Rieseninsekten groß in Mode, siehe Varga Stattens mega abgedrehtes The Red Insects.
Im Gegensatz zu Statten läßt Eric North, ein Pseudonym des australischen Schriftstellers Bernard Cronin, die Sache aber sehr viel ruhiger angehen. Viele Naturbeschreibungen, an denen North sehr gelegen ist, drosseln das erzählerische Tempo enorm. North ist es an einem gewissen Maß an Akuratesse und Glaubwürdigkeit gelegen, so dass er immer wieder genaue Beobachtungen und Erklärungsversuche in den Text einstreut.
Auch auf überdrehte inhaltliche Effekte verzichtet er, stattdessen setzt er auf sprachliche; der alte Nugget, bildungsfern, aber aufgrund seiner Erfahrungen mit der australischen Wüste als Guide und Fahrer eingesetzt, ist immer mal wieder für einen Lacher gut. Wenn der Professor hofft, dass die Ameisenmenschen keine Menschenfresser sind und die Bezeichnung "anthropophagi" benutzt, ist Nugget ratlos:
"You sure do tickle the dickshunry, Prof."
Überhaupt erfreut North den Leser mit Nuggets eigenwilliger Aussprache des Englischen:
"Now you menshunt it..."
Aber auch wenn es gelegentlich etwas zum Schmunzeln gibt, kommt doch keine rechte Freude auf. Der Vorteil der Pulps war die schnelle Unterhaltung, bei der im Idealfall der Spannungsbogen nie abriß, immer Zug im Kamin war und alles möglichst grell daher kam.
Bestimmte Themen und Motive sind am Besten mit eben dieser Form zu bedienen und ein Roman über Rieseninsekten schreit nach Tempo und Action. Dass North genau diese Elemente verweigert und stattdessen einen im direkten Vergleich zu den Pulps eher anspruchsvolleren, klassischeren Abenteuerroman schreibt, ehrt ihn, wird aber dem Thema nicht gerecht. Das arg gedrosselte Tempo und die bedächtigen Dialoge passen einfach nicht und haben mich zur Romanmitte hin schließlich so wenig mitgerissen, dass ich das Buch - zunächst erst einmal - beiseite gelegt habe.
Aber wer es neben dem Spaß am Genre gerne etwas sinniger hat, dem wird THE ANT MEN vermutlich gefallen.
Schon diese Zutaten allein könnten, was meinen Geschmack angeht, für einen fünf Sterne SF-Pulp-Roman stehen, der thematisch den Charme der 50er Jahre B-Movies wie z.B. THEM (1954) aufgreift; überhaupt waren Rieseninsekten groß in Mode, siehe Varga Stattens mega abgedrehtes The Red Insects.
Im Gegensatz zu Statten läßt Eric North, ein Pseudonym des australischen Schriftstellers Bernard Cronin, die Sache aber sehr viel ruhiger angehen. Viele Naturbeschreibungen, an denen North sehr gelegen ist, drosseln das erzählerische Tempo enorm. North ist es an einem gewissen Maß an Akuratesse und Glaubwürdigkeit gelegen, so dass er immer wieder genaue Beobachtungen und Erklärungsversuche in den Text einstreut.
Auch auf überdrehte inhaltliche Effekte verzichtet er, stattdessen setzt er auf sprachliche; der alte Nugget, bildungsfern, aber aufgrund seiner Erfahrungen mit der australischen Wüste als Guide und Fahrer eingesetzt, ist immer mal wieder für einen Lacher gut. Wenn der Professor hofft, dass die Ameisenmenschen keine Menschenfresser sind und die Bezeichnung "anthropophagi" benutzt, ist Nugget ratlos:
"You sure do tickle the dickshunry, Prof."
Überhaupt erfreut North den Leser mit Nuggets eigenwilliger Aussprache des Englischen:
"Now you menshunt it..."
Aber auch wenn es gelegentlich etwas zum Schmunzeln gibt, kommt doch keine rechte Freude auf. Der Vorteil der Pulps war die schnelle Unterhaltung, bei der im Idealfall der Spannungsbogen nie abriß, immer Zug im Kamin war und alles möglichst grell daher kam.
Bestimmte Themen und Motive sind am Besten mit eben dieser Form zu bedienen und ein Roman über Rieseninsekten schreit nach Tempo und Action. Dass North genau diese Elemente verweigert und stattdessen einen im direkten Vergleich zu den Pulps eher anspruchsvolleren, klassischeren Abenteuerroman schreibt, ehrt ihn, wird aber dem Thema nicht gerecht. Das arg gedrosselte Tempo und die bedächtigen Dialoge passen einfach nicht und haben mich zur Romanmitte hin schließlich so wenig mitgerissen, dass ich das Buch - zunächst erst einmal - beiseite gelegt habe.
Aber wer es neben dem Spaß am Genre gerne etwas sinniger hat, dem wird THE ANT MEN vermutlich gefallen.
February 14, 2015
Take one part Selenites from H.G. Wells' wonderful book, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, add the underground adventure from Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, and liberally sprinkle with a topping of JONNY QUEST (the original television series), and you have the basic ingredients for THE ANT MEN, a beloved book from my youth that still holds up well.
The situations are pure adventure told in a breathless language with dialogue that is part scientific and part hokey. This is pulp fiction cut from the DOC SAVAGE style of writing. (If you are not a fan of Doc Savage, I doubt this will appeal to you at all. If you finish a Doc Savage novel and are eagerly searching for the next one, this one is for you.)
The purpose of pulp fiction like THE ANT MEN was to take the reader on a mental vacation to thrilling adventures not entirely grounded in reality. In fact, THE ANT MEN would have made an ideal offering in installments with other old time radio adventures. And not unlike a number of the John Carter novels, we find a civilization at war not only with others but also with itself, offering a none-too-subtle commentary on the state of the world.
The writer begins by assuring the reader that the setting and numerous discoveries in the book are based on scientific fact. That may well be, yet I doubt readers particularly cared if it had solid scientific roots or was entirely the fabrication of the writer's mind. They wanted to be taken away on an adventure, and THE ANT MAN does that...although in a style that is very much at home in the 1950's. I had a lot of fun with it.
The situations are pure adventure told in a breathless language with dialogue that is part scientific and part hokey. This is pulp fiction cut from the DOC SAVAGE style of writing. (If you are not a fan of Doc Savage, I doubt this will appeal to you at all. If you finish a Doc Savage novel and are eagerly searching for the next one, this one is for you.)
The purpose of pulp fiction like THE ANT MEN was to take the reader on a mental vacation to thrilling adventures not entirely grounded in reality. In fact, THE ANT MEN would have made an ideal offering in installments with other old time radio adventures. And not unlike a number of the John Carter novels, we find a civilization at war not only with others but also with itself, offering a none-too-subtle commentary on the state of the world.
The writer begins by assuring the reader that the setting and numerous discoveries in the book are based on scientific fact. That may well be, yet I doubt readers particularly cared if it had solid scientific roots or was entirely the fabrication of the writer's mind. They wanted to be taken away on an adventure, and THE ANT MAN does that...although in a style that is very much at home in the 1950's. I had a lot of fun with it.
December 11, 2017
Got this one at a book sale and read it for nostalgia's sake. I read several of these Winston Science Fiction novels (aimed at the YA audience of the early 1950s) when I was a lad. This one featured two spunky male teenagers, two scholarly professors and a crusty outback guide, all of whom are trapped in something of a box canyon in the imaginary wilds of Australia which happen to be populated by man sized ants and very large Praying Mantis. They go through various trials and tribulations and, of course, emerge triumphant. I can imagine I would have liked this one even better if I had read it at the age of 10 or 12, as I did several of the others.
And what boy from the 1950s could have resisted any book with those Alex Schomburg end papers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_...
And what boy from the 1950s could have resisted any book with those Alex Schomburg end papers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_...
August 8, 2015
This was perhaps the first scifi novel that I actually read, probably when I was about 11 years old. As such, it has a sentimental value in that it started me on a life long journey through scifi, ...most of it infinitely better than this particular volume. It has a warm spot in my memories, but I can't really vouch much for its quality. I must have seen something in it because it immediately led me to Dune. Or was it the school librarian taking pity on me and wanting to recommend something that better represented the genre.
March 16, 2016
This was a decent adventure book. I think the book is from the 50's, and like many of the science fiction or adventure films of the time, it seems to take awhile to get into the meat of the story. But, once it does start, it's pretty entertaining. I would've liked to have seen the lead characters interact with the Ant Men society a bit more, but in the end it was a pretty good read.
February 4, 2020
American scientist Professor Silas Orcutt of the Smithsonian Institution and his Australian colleague Dr. Gregory Wise have mounted an expedition deep into what the book refers to as "the Central Australian Desert." For what, we don't know. We're told that Orcutt and Wise have been planning the trip for months in advance and have hired a local man, Nugget Smith, to act as their guide and to go ahead of them a few weeks prior to the group setting out to plant caches of food and supplies every few miles or so, but I can't remember exactly what it is Orcutt is doing out here. It's even described as "informal" and "semiscientific," as if Orcutt thinks he's off on some jaunt into one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
It won't matter anyway considering the manner in which the expedition is rudely interrupted and sidetracked. But that doesn't come until a little later.
Besides Professor Orcutt, Dr. Wise and Nugget, there are also two grad students from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories, Bill Carey and Tod Gray. Carey is English (that's him on the cover using a rifle the wrong way) and (I think) Gray is Australian. He and Carey often greet one another by going "Hi, Pommy" and "Hi, Aussie," respectively, hence my suspicions that Gray is meant to be Australian. Aside from his introduction scene, he's never referred to by his actual name; he has rather big ears and so he has earned the nickname "Jugs." Regarding the fifth member of the team, the aforementioned Nugget Smith, he has the unfortunate habit of exclaiming "Mamma, mamma!" about every other sentence, something many reviewers of this book have latched onto. In fact, "Mamma, mamma!" is his very first line. I don't know if this was a particular phrase used by rural Australians at the time, but I kept misreading it as "Mama mia!" half the time, as if Nugget were an Italian stereotype instead of an Australian one.
Anyway, the five of them are crammed into "a big utility vehicle" (What? it isn't a "ute?" I thought author Bernard Cronin - writing here as "Eric North" - was an Australian!) driving through the desert. They drive through a cave entrance with no earthly idea of where they're going (for such a meticulously planned expedition, they sure have no set goal or path in mind). Suddenly, there's a steep incline and the truck roars downhill inside the cave and... then, well, Cronin is a little vague about what happens, but things get swirly and it appears as though the truck drives straight through some kind of shifting rift in the rocks (rather like the one in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie), which shuts after them. They promptly crash, wrecking the truck beyond repair, and decide to just... sort of continue the expedition. No real thought of going back. Onward! Professors Challenger and von Hardwigg (or Lidenbrock, depending) would be proud of Orcutt.
Exiting the cave, the five idiots find the skeleton of a crocodile completely stripped clean of flesh, smelling strongly of formic acid. Ahead they see a jungle and several lines of what they at first take to be emus as well as "mast things." In short order, they learn that it isn't a line of emus but a line of humanoid ant creatures which they decide to call Ant Men, who dwell underground in another cave near the jungle. Despite being capable of spitting formic acid, the Ant Men are not evil; just not especially trusting of outsiders, and so they pretty much avoid the human interlopers initially. The jungle itself is home to various lost world type horrors including carnivorous toad-fungus things, but the main threat are the "mast things," which it turns out are giant praying mantises, and which the explorers infuriatingly keep referring to by the name "Big Sticks," which I'm sure Cronin thought was very clever.
The group gets separated during a battle between the Ant Men's soldiers and some of the mantises. Carey and Gray (I refuse to call him Jugs) witness the mantises eat a huge rock python and hypothesize that the Ant Men killed the crocodile whose skeleton they found earlier, but were interrupted in their meal by the mantises and driven away. The Ant Men the explorers encountered were a war party sent out to fight the "Big Sticks." Anyway, after an encounter with one of the toad-fungus creatures, Pommy and Aussie find a note from Dr. Wise explaining that Professor Orcutt got kidnapped by the Ant Men and taken into their underground realm. Reuniting with Wise and Nugget, the four men head off to try and rescue him, only to discover he doesn't necessarily need rescuing at all, for the Ant Men are treating him quite fairly.
The humanoid ants' society is very caste oriented and the Ant Men are all telepathic. The soldiers, who are black, only have a single antenna, while the civilians are green and have two antennae. The men meet and befriend one such Ant Man who they nickname "Bracelet" on account of the fact he wears a bracelet. Then there's the priest caste of the ants, who are red, and worship a giant prehistoric frog monster called the Frog God. They aren't very nice, and a civil war is brewing in which the black and green ants would very much like to throw off the yoke of the red priests so they don't have to fear the Frog God anymore. In the meantime, the human explorers agree to help Bracelet and his friends in their battle against the giant mantises, and much adventure is had.
My copy of the book (by Dover) is somewhat misleading on the back cover. It says "one of the fossil hunters" (is that what they were doing?) is captured by the Ant Men, and "Professor Orcutt must lead a dangerous rescue mission." Uh, Mr. Dover Copy Writer? How can Orcutt lead a mission to rescue himself? Said copy writer also discusses how the book "builds on a basis of scientific fact to create an authentic background for its pulp-fiction thrills." Well, sure, if you mean the preface to the book where Cronin basically says "fuck your scientific accuracy, but here's some dated-even-by-1955 pseudoscientific gobbledygook about living fossils, because if Coelacanths exist, so too must telepathic humanoid ants, giant mantises, fungus monsters and huge frogs worshiped as gods," even though it's intimated that the explorers pass through some kind of dimensional rift to enter the realm of the Ant Men, meaning Cronin's rambling at the beginning has nothing to do with anything; living fossils and creatures from alternate dimensions are apples and oranges, Bernie.
Not that the front cover is any better, depicting red ants fighting the mantises, even though Cronin is clear that the reds are the priest class, with blacks as the soldiers, and I can't recall a scene where a mantis attacks red Ant Men while being bonked repeatedly with a rifle by Bill Carey. Oh well.
Anyway, all that aside, I loved this goofy book.
It won't matter anyway considering the manner in which the expedition is rudely interrupted and sidetracked. But that doesn't come until a little later.
Besides Professor Orcutt, Dr. Wise and Nugget, there are also two grad students from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories, Bill Carey and Tod Gray. Carey is English (that's him on the cover using a rifle the wrong way) and (I think) Gray is Australian. He and Carey often greet one another by going "Hi, Pommy" and "Hi, Aussie," respectively, hence my suspicions that Gray is meant to be Australian. Aside from his introduction scene, he's never referred to by his actual name; he has rather big ears and so he has earned the nickname "Jugs." Regarding the fifth member of the team, the aforementioned Nugget Smith, he has the unfortunate habit of exclaiming "Mamma, mamma!" about every other sentence, something many reviewers of this book have latched onto. In fact, "Mamma, mamma!" is his very first line. I don't know if this was a particular phrase used by rural Australians at the time, but I kept misreading it as "Mama mia!" half the time, as if Nugget were an Italian stereotype instead of an Australian one.
Anyway, the five of them are crammed into "a big utility vehicle" (What? it isn't a "ute?" I thought author Bernard Cronin - writing here as "Eric North" - was an Australian!) driving through the desert. They drive through a cave entrance with no earthly idea of where they're going (for such a meticulously planned expedition, they sure have no set goal or path in mind). Suddenly, there's a steep incline and the truck roars downhill inside the cave and... then, well, Cronin is a little vague about what happens, but things get swirly and it appears as though the truck drives straight through some kind of shifting rift in the rocks (rather like the one in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie), which shuts after them. They promptly crash, wrecking the truck beyond repair, and decide to just... sort of continue the expedition. No real thought of going back. Onward! Professors Challenger and von Hardwigg (or Lidenbrock, depending) would be proud of Orcutt.
Exiting the cave, the five idiots find the skeleton of a crocodile completely stripped clean of flesh, smelling strongly of formic acid. Ahead they see a jungle and several lines of what they at first take to be emus as well as "mast things." In short order, they learn that it isn't a line of emus but a line of humanoid ant creatures which they decide to call Ant Men, who dwell underground in another cave near the jungle. Despite being capable of spitting formic acid, the Ant Men are not evil; just not especially trusting of outsiders, and so they pretty much avoid the human interlopers initially. The jungle itself is home to various lost world type horrors including carnivorous toad-fungus things, but the main threat are the "mast things," which it turns out are giant praying mantises, and which the explorers infuriatingly keep referring to by the name "Big Sticks," which I'm sure Cronin thought was very clever.
The group gets separated during a battle between the Ant Men's soldiers and some of the mantises. Carey and Gray (I refuse to call him Jugs) witness the mantises eat a huge rock python and hypothesize that the Ant Men killed the crocodile whose skeleton they found earlier, but were interrupted in their meal by the mantises and driven away. The Ant Men the explorers encountered were a war party sent out to fight the "Big Sticks." Anyway, after an encounter with one of the toad-fungus creatures, Pommy and Aussie find a note from Dr. Wise explaining that Professor Orcutt got kidnapped by the Ant Men and taken into their underground realm. Reuniting with Wise and Nugget, the four men head off to try and rescue him, only to discover he doesn't necessarily need rescuing at all, for the Ant Men are treating him quite fairly.
The humanoid ants' society is very caste oriented and the Ant Men are all telepathic. The soldiers, who are black, only have a single antenna, while the civilians are green and have two antennae. The men meet and befriend one such Ant Man who they nickname "Bracelet" on account of the fact he wears a bracelet. Then there's the priest caste of the ants, who are red, and worship a giant prehistoric frog monster called the Frog God. They aren't very nice, and a civil war is brewing in which the black and green ants would very much like to throw off the yoke of the red priests so they don't have to fear the Frog God anymore. In the meantime, the human explorers agree to help Bracelet and his friends in their battle against the giant mantises, and much adventure is had.
My copy of the book (by Dover) is somewhat misleading on the back cover. It says "one of the fossil hunters" (is that what they were doing?) is captured by the Ant Men, and "Professor Orcutt must lead a dangerous rescue mission." Uh, Mr. Dover Copy Writer? How can Orcutt lead a mission to rescue himself? Said copy writer also discusses how the book "builds on a basis of scientific fact to create an authentic background for its pulp-fiction thrills." Well, sure, if you mean the preface to the book where Cronin basically says "fuck your scientific accuracy, but here's some dated-even-by-1955 pseudoscientific gobbledygook about living fossils, because if Coelacanths exist, so too must telepathic humanoid ants, giant mantises, fungus monsters and huge frogs worshiped as gods," even though it's intimated that the explorers pass through some kind of dimensional rift to enter the realm of the Ant Men, meaning Cronin's rambling at the beginning has nothing to do with anything; living fossils and creatures from alternate dimensions are apples and oranges, Bernie.
Not that the front cover is any better, depicting red ants fighting the mantises, even though Cronin is clear that the reds are the priest class, with blacks as the soldiers, and I can't recall a scene where a mantis attacks red Ant Men while being bonked repeatedly with a rifle by Bill Carey. Oh well.
Anyway, all that aside, I loved this goofy book.
November 3, 2019
American scientist Professor Silas Orcutt of the Smithsonian Institution and his Australian colleague Dr. Gregory Wise have mounted an expedition deep into what the book refers to as "the Central Australian Desert." For what, we don't know. We're told that Orcutt and Wise have been planning the trip for months in advance and have hired a local man, Nugget Smith, to act as their guide and to go ahead of them a few weeks prior to the group setting out to plant caches of food and supplies every few miles or so, but I can't remember exactly what it is Orcutt is doing out here. It's even described as "informal" and "semiscientific," as if Orcutt thinks he's off on some jaunt into one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
It won't matter anyway considering the manner in which the expedition is rudely interrupted and sidetracked. But that doesn't come until a little later.
Besides Professor Orcutt, Dr. Wise and Nugget, there are also two grad students from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories, Bill Carey and Tod Gray. Carey is English (that's him on the cover using a rifle the wrong way) and (I think) Gray is Australian. He and Carey often greet one another by going "Hi, Pommy" and "Hi, Aussie," respectively, hence my suspicions that Gray is meant to be Australian. Aside from his introduction scene, he's never referred to by his actual name; he has rather big ears and so he has earned the nickname "Jugs." Regarding the fifth member of the team, the aforementioned Nugget Smith, he has the unfortunate habit of exclaiming "Mamma, mamma!" about every other sentence, something many reviewers of this book have latched onto. In fact, "Mamma, mamma!" is his very first line. I don't know if this was a particular phrase used by rural Australians at the time, but I kept misreading it as "Mama mia!" half the time, as if Nugget were an Italian stereotype instead of an Australian one.
Anyway, the five of them are crammed into "a big utility vehicle" (What? it isn't a "ute?" I thought author Bernard Cronin - writing here as "Eric North" - was an Australian!) driving through the desert. They drive through a cave entrance with no earthly idea of where they're going (for such a meticulously planned expedition, they sure have no set goal or path in mind). Suddenly, there's a steep incline and the truck roars downhill inside the cave and... then, well, Cronin is a little vague about what happens, but things get swirly and it appears as though the truck drives straight through some kind of shifting rift in the rocks (rather like the one in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie), which shuts after them. They promptly crash, wrecking the truck beyond repair, and decide to just... sort of continue the expedition. No real thought of going back. Onward! Professors Challenger and von Hardwigg (or Lidenbrock, depending) would be proud of Orcutt.
Exiting the cave, the five idiots find the skeleton of a crocodile completely stripped clean of flesh, smelling strongly of formic acid. Ahead they see a jungle and several lines of what they at first take to be emus as well as "mast things." In short order, they learn that it isn't a line of emus but a line of humanoid ant creatures which they decide to call Ant Men, who dwell underground in another cave near the jungle. Despite being capable of spitting formic acid, the Ant Men are not evil; just not especially trusting of outsiders, and so they pretty much avoid the human interlopers initially. The jungle itself is home to various lost world type horrors including carnivorous toad-fungus things, but the main threat are the "mast things," which it turns out are giant praying mantises, and which the explorers infuriatingly keep referring to by the name "Big Sticks," which I'm sure Cronin thought was very clever.
The group gets separated during a battle between the Ant Men's soldiers and some of the mantises. Carey and Gray (I refuse to call him Jugs) witness the mantises eat a huge rock python and hypothesize that the Ant Men killed the crocodile whose skeleton they found earlier, but were interrupted in their meal by the mantises and driven away. The Ant Men the explorers encountered were a war party sent out to fight the "Big Sticks." Anyway, after an encounter with one of the toad-fungus creatures, Pommy and Aussie find a note from Dr. Wise explaining that Professor Orcutt got kidnapped by the Ant Men and taken into their underground realm. Reuniting with Wise and Nugget, the four men head off to try and rescue him, only to discover he doesn't necessarily need rescuing at all, for the Ant Men are treating him quite fairly.
The humanoid ants' society is very caste oriented and the Ant Men are all telepathic. The soldiers, who are black, only have a single antenna, while the civilians are green and have two antennae. The men meet and befriend one such Ant Man who they nickname "Bracelet" on account of the fact he wears a bracelet. Then there's the priest caste of the ants, who are red, and worship a giant prehistoric frog monster called the Frog God. They aren't very nice, and a civil war is brewing in which the black and green ants would very much like to throw off the yoke of the red priests so they don't have to fear the Frog God anymore. In the meantime, the human explorers agree to help Bracelet and his friends in their battle against the giant mantises, and much adventure is had.
My copy of the book (by Dover) is somewhat misleading on the back cover. It says "one of the fossil hunters" (is that what they were doing?) is captured by the Ant Men, and "Professor Orcutt must lead a dangerous rescue mission." Uh, Mr. Dover Copy Writer? How can Orcutt lead a mission to rescue himself? Said copy writer also discusses how the book "builds on a basis of scientific fact to create an authentic background for its pulp-fiction thrills." Well, sure, if you mean the preface to the book where Cronin basically says "f*ck your scientific accuracy, but here's some dated-even-by-1955 pseudoscientific gobbledygook about living fossils, because if Coelacanths exist, so too must telepathic humanoid ants, giant mantises, fungus monsters and huge frogs worshiped as gods," even though it's intimated that the explorers pass through some kind of dimensional rift to enter the realm of the Ant Men, meaning Cronin's rambling at the beginning has nothing to do with anything; living fossils and creatures from alternate dimensions are apples and oranges, Bernie.
Not that the front cover is any better, depicting red ants fighting the mantises, even though Cronin is clear that the reds are the priest class, with blacks as the soldiers, and I can't recall a scene where a mantis attacks red Ant Men while being bonked repeatedly with a rifle by Bill Carey. Oh well.
Anyway, all that aside, I loved this goofy book.
It won't matter anyway considering the manner in which the expedition is rudely interrupted and sidetracked. But that doesn't come until a little later.
Besides Professor Orcutt, Dr. Wise and Nugget, there are also two grad students from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories, Bill Carey and Tod Gray. Carey is English (that's him on the cover using a rifle the wrong way) and (I think) Gray is Australian. He and Carey often greet one another by going "Hi, Pommy" and "Hi, Aussie," respectively, hence my suspicions that Gray is meant to be Australian. Aside from his introduction scene, he's never referred to by his actual name; he has rather big ears and so he has earned the nickname "Jugs." Regarding the fifth member of the team, the aforementioned Nugget Smith, he has the unfortunate habit of exclaiming "Mamma, mamma!" about every other sentence, something many reviewers of this book have latched onto. In fact, "Mamma, mamma!" is his very first line. I don't know if this was a particular phrase used by rural Australians at the time, but I kept misreading it as "Mama mia!" half the time, as if Nugget were an Italian stereotype instead of an Australian one.
Anyway, the five of them are crammed into "a big utility vehicle" (What? it isn't a "ute?" I thought author Bernard Cronin - writing here as "Eric North" - was an Australian!) driving through the desert. They drive through a cave entrance with no earthly idea of where they're going (for such a meticulously planned expedition, they sure have no set goal or path in mind). Suddenly, there's a steep incline and the truck roars downhill inside the cave and... then, well, Cronin is a little vague about what happens, but things get swirly and it appears as though the truck drives straight through some kind of shifting rift in the rocks (rather like the one in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie), which shuts after them. They promptly crash, wrecking the truck beyond repair, and decide to just... sort of continue the expedition. No real thought of going back. Onward! Professors Challenger and von Hardwigg (or Lidenbrock, depending) would be proud of Orcutt.
Exiting the cave, the five idiots find the skeleton of a crocodile completely stripped clean of flesh, smelling strongly of formic acid. Ahead they see a jungle and several lines of what they at first take to be emus as well as "mast things." In short order, they learn that it isn't a line of emus but a line of humanoid ant creatures which they decide to call Ant Men, who dwell underground in another cave near the jungle. Despite being capable of spitting formic acid, the Ant Men are not evil; just not especially trusting of outsiders, and so they pretty much avoid the human interlopers initially. The jungle itself is home to various lost world type horrors including carnivorous toad-fungus things, but the main threat are the "mast things," which it turns out are giant praying mantises, and which the explorers infuriatingly keep referring to by the name "Big Sticks," which I'm sure Cronin thought was very clever.
The group gets separated during a battle between the Ant Men's soldiers and some of the mantises. Carey and Gray (I refuse to call him Jugs) witness the mantises eat a huge rock python and hypothesize that the Ant Men killed the crocodile whose skeleton they found earlier, but were interrupted in their meal by the mantises and driven away. The Ant Men the explorers encountered were a war party sent out to fight the "Big Sticks." Anyway, after an encounter with one of the toad-fungus creatures, Pommy and Aussie find a note from Dr. Wise explaining that Professor Orcutt got kidnapped by the Ant Men and taken into their underground realm. Reuniting with Wise and Nugget, the four men head off to try and rescue him, only to discover he doesn't necessarily need rescuing at all, for the Ant Men are treating him quite fairly.
The humanoid ants' society is very caste oriented and the Ant Men are all telepathic. The soldiers, who are black, only have a single antenna, while the civilians are green and have two antennae. The men meet and befriend one such Ant Man who they nickname "Bracelet" on account of the fact he wears a bracelet. Then there's the priest caste of the ants, who are red, and worship a giant prehistoric frog monster called the Frog God. They aren't very nice, and a civil war is brewing in which the black and green ants would very much like to throw off the yoke of the red priests so they don't have to fear the Frog God anymore. In the meantime, the human explorers agree to help Bracelet and his friends in their battle against the giant mantises, and much adventure is had.
My copy of the book (by Dover) is somewhat misleading on the back cover. It says "one of the fossil hunters" (is that what they were doing?) is captured by the Ant Men, and "Professor Orcutt must lead a dangerous rescue mission." Uh, Mr. Dover Copy Writer? How can Orcutt lead a mission to rescue himself? Said copy writer also discusses how the book "builds on a basis of scientific fact to create an authentic background for its pulp-fiction thrills." Well, sure, if you mean the preface to the book where Cronin basically says "f*ck your scientific accuracy, but here's some dated-even-by-1955 pseudoscientific gobbledygook about living fossils, because if Coelacanths exist, so too must telepathic humanoid ants, giant mantises, fungus monsters and huge frogs worshiped as gods," even though it's intimated that the explorers pass through some kind of dimensional rift to enter the realm of the Ant Men, meaning Cronin's rambling at the beginning has nothing to do with anything; living fossils and creatures from alternate dimensions are apples and oranges, Bernie.
Not that the front cover is any better, depicting red ants fighting the mantises, even though Cronin is clear that the reds are the priest class, with blacks as the soldiers, and I can't recall a scene where a mantis attacks red Ant Men while being bonked repeatedly with a rifle by Bill Carey. Oh well.
Anyway, all that aside, I loved this goofy book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 23, 2022
These early sci-fi quickies are a 50/50 proposition. Some good ideas and fast-paced action OR a dated slog through recycled ideas and bad writing. This one falls into the latter category. How do you screw up a battle between a society of man-ants and giant praying mantises? North manages to do it with a boring group of scientists (whose dialogue is nothing but incessant catchphrases and jokey male-bonding) stuck in an underground ant city. Bland and poorly choreographed adventures follow. Great title, great cover, boring book.
August 14, 2019
I believe that I first read this book in 1955 or 56, around the same time that I saw the movie THIS ISLAND EARTH. They were my first exposure to Science Fiction.
I read that book many times, it was one of the few Science Fiction books that my public library had in those days. I still have fond memories of sitting under a tree and reading that book while eating an ice cream bar.
I read that book many times, it was one of the few Science Fiction books that my public library had in those days. I still have fond memories of sitting under a tree and reading that book while eating an ice cream bar.
February 13, 2022
This book was not good and I'm too tired to explain why. However, it did start out strong, and I saw it through to the end because it was not a difficult read and I hope that something interesting would happen (it didn't) and it kept me from thinking about my problems for a while.
February 10, 2018
Fun trip includes underground ant men city,giant praying mantis,even white water rafting!
March 11, 2015
I read this 1953 paperback as a kid in the 1960s. Written by Aussie author Bernard Cronin, I read it while replaying over and over my favorite Grassroots album, "Let's Live For Today", which I still love and like much better than any of the songs that later made them famous.
I found it an interesting read as I'd never read a story like this. I was deep into the space\rocket type sci fi at the time and this was definitely a change of pace in the Australian outback if I remember correctly.
I especially liked the part about the one helpful ant who must be female as there was a kind of "mental perfume" about her. And I hated the preying mantises.
Overall I found it a fun read. But then, I was a kid.
I found it an interesting read as I'd never read a story like this. I was deep into the space\rocket type sci fi at the time and this was definitely a change of pace in the Australian outback if I remember correctly.
I especially liked the part about the one helpful ant who must be female as there was a kind of "mental perfume" about her. And I hated the preying mantises.
Overall I found it a fun read. But then, I was a kid.
Read
August 3, 2012I haven't read this in almost 40 years, so I can't give a review, except to say that I remember liking it as a pre-teen boy. I must read it again! I was looking for it earlier today, but couldn't remember the title or the author. Almost giggling with maniacal glee right now.
December 11, 2017
A good piece of pulp fiction. A good storyline, good characters, although slightly garbled and confusing at times. Steer clear if you're at all offended by racial stereotypes and colonialism. Just remember it was written in the 50s.
August 3, 2009
This time we have giant intelligent ants. OK but I didn't find it all that compelling a read.
July 30, 2013
This was the first Sci Fi book I read at the age of nine, it brought back a lot of memories.
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