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Spiders' War
In the far future, a woman must fight for her life and honor against two foes: the men who control society, and the giant spiders that inhabit a neighboring land. The third novel in the Marguerite Cranleigh Series.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published February 8, 2009
5 people want to read
About the author
S. Fowler Wright
116 books12 followersSydney Fowler Wright (January 6, 1874 – February 25, 1965) was a prolific British editor, poet, science fiction author, writer of screenplays, mystery fiction and works in other genres. Most of his work is published as by "S. Fowler Wright", and he also wrote as Sydney Fowler and Anthony Wingrave.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 18, 2025
Wow! This book wastes no time, delivering one of the most horrific and unsettling scenes I've read from a mid-Century novel in just the first two short chapters. I won't spoil what it is, because, judging by the fact that nobody has left any reviews at the time I'm posting this, more people need to read this thing.
Don't let the fact that this is the third book of a trilogy deter you. All of these Marguerite Cranleigh novels are stand-alone science fiction fantasies. What ties them together is that they are dream adventures through space-time of a young woman (Marguerite) under hypnosis. This one takes place in a distant, post-apocalyptic future. As you may know, I am not the biggest fan of post-apocalyptic stories, but this one is exceptionally interesting.
Humans are back to primitive living, but there wasn't just one event that led to some great world-shattering event. In fact, the reasons for the fall of civilization is largely kept a mystery, but two big contributing factors remain which plague the survivors of this world. First, a great famine has resulted from a plague that wiped out many of the world's animals except for pigs, a few bird species, insects--and spiders. And unfortunately, the second problem is that one particular species of spider, namely the green huntsman spider, has grown to enormous proportions due to one reckless scientist's attempts to solve the food shortage.
So what we have here is a sci-fi horror of people vs. giant spiders. But that's just on the surface. Humans no longer have anything but primitive weapons to fight against the spiders, who functionally are much more fit for survival than we are. The main limitation of spiders that prevented them being the apex predator was their size, and now that's no longer an issue. And without our technology, we don't stand a chance against the eight-legged freaks.
But what's really interesting is how humans have reacted to their downfall. Not only have they resorted to cannibalism to eat, but they have purposely rejected civilization. They have a system for collecting the history of knowledge from the past. All surviving books from civilization are circulated through a sophisticated loan system among people dedicated to reading everything they can on one subject, since there are too many books for any one person to read. And their conclusion? A primitve cannibalistic life among the spiders is actually kind of a paradise compared to how we used to live. Not only were we poisoning ourselves with the consequences of our own technology, but we enslaved ourselves with laws. In this future society, people have rejected laws and government.
Now here is where S. Fowler Wright's libertarian philosophy really starts to show. Whether or not you ascribe to libertarian politics, you will likely find this part of his world-building fascinating.
This book is essentially a sci-fi companion piece to Wright's early non-fiction book "Police and Public", which was a rant about Britain's legal and legislative process. Though laws are meant to deter crime, too many laws that are constantly trying to micromanage every aspect of human behavior becomes ridiculous. Laws that might have been appropriate for one period in time might have a detrimental effect in another. Laws become antiquated, outdated. As we keep building more and more laws, they become so complicated that people inadvertently end up breaking laws. This means that law enforcement has to be selective, and when you have selective law enforcement, then you have a system that can be used for political control.
If Wright were alive today, he would certainly have written "Police and Public", and he would probably have a YouTube channel bitching about U.K. hate speech laws. He would have a field day about middle-aged women posting comments about mass deportation getting three years in prison while labor party officials stalking and exposing themselves to thirteen-year-old girls get a fine. According to Wright, this is the unfortunate consequence of a public that lazily gives power to mediocre lawmakers to decide what is best for the public, writing so many laws that the Law becomes meaningless except as a tool to selectively attack political dissidents and protect their own power.
In "Spiders' War", Wright suggests that Law becomes almost an unnecessary god. If a criminal kills someone you love, and then only if the true perpetrator is caught and prosecuted successfully, does the Law then set about punishing the act, but the Law is then being applied by people who have no particular qualm with the perpetrator. In the world of the Spiders, there is no law. If someone kills a man's wife, there are natural consequences. Nothing would stop the man from killing the person who took away his wife. And in such a society, people are more likely to be on their best behavior.
I don't agree with much of this, but there are points that I do find land home and make sense. And I don't think Wright agreed with everything he was saying either. Throughout this novel, Wright is playing devil's advocate and examining both sides of the coin, showing the unintended consequences of a lawless society as well as the results of a civilization under the yoke of a corrupt system of laws. So the world that Wright weaves in this novel is as complicated as a spider's web.
For example, the male "hero", Lemno, is part of a society that has become very pragmatic about their lawlessness. The living conditions of the famine and the constant threat of the spiders are reflected in his attitude and behavior which border on sociopathic. He calmly and willfully commits horrible acts of violence, including to his own wife, and fully embraces it as part of the current living situation of the era. In fact, he exhibits a kind of healthy mindfulness. He doesn't rage and despair that there is no food to eat, or that he iives like a caveman, or that his life could get cut short violently any second. He actually thinks that the current era of human society is one of the best there is! He enjoys what he has. At the same time, Wright portrays him and his gang as gradually increasing in barbarity, because they are becoming callous, the violence no longer shocking for them, and so he tries to draw the otherwise invisible line between freedom and a lack of human empathy that we call evil. When Lemno is put in a position of leadership during the war with the spiders, he must face the reality of his philosophy. Can he build a nation without violence and thus no need for laws, even if every last spider were killed? Wouldn't there always be people who are as ruthless as the spiders, with minds equally as alien?
Wright's point seems to be that there is nothing new under the sun. It doesn't matter if you are looking at humans in the past, the present, or a 100,000 years hence. People are, and will always be, like the spiders which bring so many of us the creepy-crawlies. Wright must have been a fan of Dickens, especially "Bleak House". In that classic novel, people who are left an inheritance must go to chancery court. The courts are set up in such a way that almost always drains the inheritance in question, tying it up in bureaucracy that is paid for by the estate, thus enriching the courts and lawyers, and leaving the rightful heir with nothing. That is Wright's struggle with the law. We expect justice from the law, but the law does not bring justice. So what does?
My main complaint is that I don't quite buy the whole idea of a famine that drives humans to cannibalism. Sure, I can understand that these circumstances would have drastically reduced the population of a crowded earth, but now that humans are back to the hunting and gathering phase, there seems to be plenty of opportunities for food. For example, nothing affected the plant life of earth, but the characters all act like their only source of nutrition is from tree nuts or wild pigs. Why can't they eat any other plant? Hell, most of the weeds in my own backyard are edible. And the pigs are nice and healthy, so they must be living on something! Also, it appears there are still birds around, so why not hunt a few of them? I'm sure they are plentiful with not as many predators around. And there are still lots of bugs. Any society in this situation would use insects as a source of protein. But the biggest question is: why can't the people farm? What is preventing them from growing their own vegetables and raising their own pigs? I don't even buy that the threat of the spiders keeps them from farming, because Wright establishes that the spiders were largely limited to one section of land. The only reason they attack is because the humans decide they need to conquer the land of the spiders in order to have better hunting grounds. Why? In summary, Wright didn't seem to plan this whole "famine" thing out too well. He has people starving in a new garden of Eden.
So you really have to almost ignore the whole famine thing, or just assume that there are other circumstances we don't know about, or imagine that everyone in this story is just plain stupid, and then the book makes more sense. But despite this flaw, this is a fascinating novel--even if it is about giant spiders! Creating a deeply philosophical masterpiece out of an action-packed adventure is S. Fowler Wright's trademark. This novel came late in his career, but it shows he hadn't lost his touch, and I highly recommend it.
SCORE: 4 pairs of hairy green legs out of 5
Don't let the fact that this is the third book of a trilogy deter you. All of these Marguerite Cranleigh novels are stand-alone science fiction fantasies. What ties them together is that they are dream adventures through space-time of a young woman (Marguerite) under hypnosis. This one takes place in a distant, post-apocalyptic future. As you may know, I am not the biggest fan of post-apocalyptic stories, but this one is exceptionally interesting.
Humans are back to primitive living, but there wasn't just one event that led to some great world-shattering event. In fact, the reasons for the fall of civilization is largely kept a mystery, but two big contributing factors remain which plague the survivors of this world. First, a great famine has resulted from a plague that wiped out many of the world's animals except for pigs, a few bird species, insects--and spiders. And unfortunately, the second problem is that one particular species of spider, namely the green huntsman spider, has grown to enormous proportions due to one reckless scientist's attempts to solve the food shortage.
So what we have here is a sci-fi horror of people vs. giant spiders. But that's just on the surface. Humans no longer have anything but primitive weapons to fight against the spiders, who functionally are much more fit for survival than we are. The main limitation of spiders that prevented them being the apex predator was their size, and now that's no longer an issue. And without our technology, we don't stand a chance against the eight-legged freaks.
But what's really interesting is how humans have reacted to their downfall. Not only have they resorted to cannibalism to eat, but they have purposely rejected civilization. They have a system for collecting the history of knowledge from the past. All surviving books from civilization are circulated through a sophisticated loan system among people dedicated to reading everything they can on one subject, since there are too many books for any one person to read. And their conclusion? A primitve cannibalistic life among the spiders is actually kind of a paradise compared to how we used to live. Not only were we poisoning ourselves with the consequences of our own technology, but we enslaved ourselves with laws. In this future society, people have rejected laws and government.
Now here is where S. Fowler Wright's libertarian philosophy really starts to show. Whether or not you ascribe to libertarian politics, you will likely find this part of his world-building fascinating.
This book is essentially a sci-fi companion piece to Wright's early non-fiction book "Police and Public", which was a rant about Britain's legal and legislative process. Though laws are meant to deter crime, too many laws that are constantly trying to micromanage every aspect of human behavior becomes ridiculous. Laws that might have been appropriate for one period in time might have a detrimental effect in another. Laws become antiquated, outdated. As we keep building more and more laws, they become so complicated that people inadvertently end up breaking laws. This means that law enforcement has to be selective, and when you have selective law enforcement, then you have a system that can be used for political control.
If Wright were alive today, he would certainly have written "Police and Public", and he would probably have a YouTube channel bitching about U.K. hate speech laws. He would have a field day about middle-aged women posting comments about mass deportation getting three years in prison while labor party officials stalking and exposing themselves to thirteen-year-old girls get a fine. According to Wright, this is the unfortunate consequence of a public that lazily gives power to mediocre lawmakers to decide what is best for the public, writing so many laws that the Law becomes meaningless except as a tool to selectively attack political dissidents and protect their own power.
In "Spiders' War", Wright suggests that Law becomes almost an unnecessary god. If a criminal kills someone you love, and then only if the true perpetrator is caught and prosecuted successfully, does the Law then set about punishing the act, but the Law is then being applied by people who have no particular qualm with the perpetrator. In the world of the Spiders, there is no law. If someone kills a man's wife, there are natural consequences. Nothing would stop the man from killing the person who took away his wife. And in such a society, people are more likely to be on their best behavior.
I don't agree with much of this, but there are points that I do find land home and make sense. And I don't think Wright agreed with everything he was saying either. Throughout this novel, Wright is playing devil's advocate and examining both sides of the coin, showing the unintended consequences of a lawless society as well as the results of a civilization under the yoke of a corrupt system of laws. So the world that Wright weaves in this novel is as complicated as a spider's web.
For example, the male "hero", Lemno, is part of a society that has become very pragmatic about their lawlessness. The living conditions of the famine and the constant threat of the spiders are reflected in his attitude and behavior which border on sociopathic. He calmly and willfully commits horrible acts of violence, including to his own wife, and fully embraces it as part of the current living situation of the era. In fact, he exhibits a kind of healthy mindfulness. He doesn't rage and despair that there is no food to eat, or that he iives like a caveman, or that his life could get cut short violently any second. He actually thinks that the current era of human society is one of the best there is! He enjoys what he has. At the same time, Wright portrays him and his gang as gradually increasing in barbarity, because they are becoming callous, the violence no longer shocking for them, and so he tries to draw the otherwise invisible line between freedom and a lack of human empathy that we call evil. When Lemno is put in a position of leadership during the war with the spiders, he must face the reality of his philosophy. Can he build a nation without violence and thus no need for laws, even if every last spider were killed? Wouldn't there always be people who are as ruthless as the spiders, with minds equally as alien?
Wright's point seems to be that there is nothing new under the sun. It doesn't matter if you are looking at humans in the past, the present, or a 100,000 years hence. People are, and will always be, like the spiders which bring so many of us the creepy-crawlies. Wright must have been a fan of Dickens, especially "Bleak House". In that classic novel, people who are left an inheritance must go to chancery court. The courts are set up in such a way that almost always drains the inheritance in question, tying it up in bureaucracy that is paid for by the estate, thus enriching the courts and lawyers, and leaving the rightful heir with nothing. That is Wright's struggle with the law. We expect justice from the law, but the law does not bring justice. So what does?
My main complaint is that I don't quite buy the whole idea of a famine that drives humans to cannibalism. Sure, I can understand that these circumstances would have drastically reduced the population of a crowded earth, but now that humans are back to the hunting and gathering phase, there seems to be plenty of opportunities for food. For example, nothing affected the plant life of earth, but the characters all act like their only source of nutrition is from tree nuts or wild pigs. Why can't they eat any other plant? Hell, most of the weeds in my own backyard are edible. And the pigs are nice and healthy, so they must be living on something! Also, it appears there are still birds around, so why not hunt a few of them? I'm sure they are plentiful with not as many predators around. And there are still lots of bugs. Any society in this situation would use insects as a source of protein. But the biggest question is: why can't the people farm? What is preventing them from growing their own vegetables and raising their own pigs? I don't even buy that the threat of the spiders keeps them from farming, because Wright establishes that the spiders were largely limited to one section of land. The only reason they attack is because the humans decide they need to conquer the land of the spiders in order to have better hunting grounds. Why? In summary, Wright didn't seem to plan this whole "famine" thing out too well. He has people starving in a new garden of Eden.
So you really have to almost ignore the whole famine thing, or just assume that there are other circumstances we don't know about, or imagine that everyone in this story is just plain stupid, and then the book makes more sense. But despite this flaw, this is a fascinating novel--even if it is about giant spiders! Creating a deeply philosophical masterpiece out of an action-packed adventure is S. Fowler Wright's trademark. This novel came late in his career, but it shows he hadn't lost his touch, and I highly recommend it.
SCORE: 4 pairs of hairy green legs out of 5
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