Book Review: The Empire of the Ants by H.G. Wells
In addition to his famous longer works like The War of the Worlds, Herbert George Wells also wrote a number of speculative fiction short stories. What I’m reviewing today is a collection published by Scholastic Book Services (and mostly sold at school book fairs) which has the subtitle “and Other Stories”.
“The Empire of the Ants” itself leads off the volume. A Brazilian gunboat manufactured in Britain (and sent with a British engineer to keep it running until locals are trained) is making a patrol up the Amazon River. Captain Gerilleau is told to investigate reports that an unusually aggressive species of ants is causing trouble upriver. Holroyd, the engineer, is initially skeptical that this is a real problem.
But unlike army ants, that eat everything in their path and then leave, these new ants seem to deliberately target humans, and don’t leave a place once it’s infested. As the gunboat gets closer to the site in question, more information is learned that advises that these ants are unusually well-organized and the tension mounts.
This story is basically the first third of a horror movie. But after the first onscreen death of one of the sailors, and confirming that the village they’ve come to investigate is silent and crawling with ants, Captain Gerilleau decides not to send his men ashore to die horribly. He fires the ship’s gun in a pointless formality, then turns the boat around to go report to headquarters. It’s a little disappointing as a climax, but the smart thing to do.
Holroyd closes by noting that at their current state of expansion, the Empire of the Ants should reach England about 1950. This story was turned into a movie in 1977, but very loosely adapted due to the needs of the screen.
“The Country of the Blind” is set in a remote valley of the Ecuadorian Andes. Centuries ago, refugees from a particularly cruel Spanish governor stumbled across the valley, which at first seemed paradisical. But over the following decades, the inhabitants slowly lost their sight, and their children and grandchildren were born blind. One of the inhabitants who was still able to see some managed to escape to seek help, but while he was gone an earthquake sealed off the already difficult approach, and the valley receded into myth.
Fifteen generations later, a mountaineer named Núñez fell from a nearby peak, thought dead by his companions, but somehow he survived the bouncing and sliding until he came to the lost valley. He is surprised to discover a blind civilization, and they’re surprised that their old legends about people spontaneously generated from the rocky slopes are “true.”
While Núñez initially remembers the proverb, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”, he is soon disabused of this notion. The locals are quite competent at everything they need to do without the use of sight, and all words related to that concept have vanished from their version of Spanish. The mountaineer lost his outside technology in the fall, and repeatedly fails to prove that his so-called “sight” is anything but a delusion. Indeed, because he doesn’t share the keen hearing and spacial sense of the locals, they consider him clumsy and ill-formed. He’s relegated to the most menial of tasks.
Núñez falls in love with a local girl, as one does, one who enjoys his wild tales of the supposed “outside world.” But alas, because of his insanity they cannot marry. Then the valley’s most brilliant doctor realizes that the problem is the newcomer’s malformed eyes. If those are surgically removed, he should be restored to sanity. Will Núñez accept this solution?
I get the feeling that Mr. Wells started with the old saying, asked “but would he be king, actually?” then built the story’s world around the question. It works well with his habit of asking, “and just how would that work?”
“The Crystal Egg” is an artifact that allows someone who gazes into to see visions, probably of an area on the surface of Mars. Mr. Cave runs a curiosity store and stumbles on the crystal’s secret. Due to his wife learning there’s a potential customer for the egg, and insisting that he sell it, Mr. Cave stores it at a scientist’s apartment, and they explore the visions together. Most of the story is dedicated to describing the visions. The terminally ill Cave takes the crystal home with him, dies, and his wife promptly sells the item along with most of the other stock, with the egg then being sold to an untraceable third party. It’s suggested that the Martians may have sent other such crystals to Earth.
Two-way video connections are a thing in real life now, though at this time we still couldn’t watch things happening on Mars in “real time.”
“The Man Who Could Work Miracles” starts in a pub, when Mr. Fotheringay is having an argument on the nature of miracles, attempts a hypothetical example, and has it become real. At first, he doesn’t fully grasp what’s happening, but after a good night’s rest and some experimentation, learns that he can in fact perform miracles. The laws of physics still apply if he isn’t directly willing them not to, but other than that, if he can will a result, it will happen. Hilarity ensues, shortly followed by disaster. There’s a reset button at the end of the story, so it’s not clear how the narrator knows any of this happened.
“The Magic Shop” is a more hopeful story. The narrator and his young son Gip are out for a stroll when they come across a little shop that wasn’t there yesterday. Gip is entranced by the strange items in the window, and the pair enter. The shop is bigger on the inside, and the proprietor shows them many magic tricks. Or are they tricks? Certainly things seem to go more towards the impossible the deeper into the shop you are.
It’s noted that Gip is “the right sort of boy”, a spoiled brat finds the door locked for him, and it’s suggested that Gip may have a gift for magic himself. Several wondrous items are sold on credit.
When father and son arrive home, the boxes contain seemingly ordinary toy soldiers and a seemingly ordinary kitten, but Gip is not disappointed. After some time, after the father has searched for the magic shop and not finding it, he asks Gip about the soldiers. Gip affirms that the toy soldiers are magical, but the father never sees them move. He’s still waiting for the bill.
Of these, the strongest story is “The Country of the Blind” but I think I like “The Magic Shop” best for its lack of cynicism.
All of these stories are in the public domain, and often anthologized–this particular collection most recommended to people of a certain age who saw or bought it at a book fair once.
