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Jan. 21st, 2005 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyTerrible dreams.
Colonists on an alien planet (I know, I know, bear with me, okay?) the indigenous lifeform of which was a sort of a cross between soldier ants (the really bad South American ones in the short story that everyone and their dog has to read in junior high and then can never remember author or title of ever again) and jellyfish (stinging-tentacle style jellyfish, like in the Sherlock Holmes story) each about the size of a small car and with a hive-mind. I'm not sure whether they were just not sapient or whether they were as Lovecraftian as they seemed and therefore Evil. But anyway, swarms of them. Each batch of colonists got set down with a handwavium generator that produced a forcefield that would keep the aliens off, but the generators weren't very big, and each batch of colonists only got one. So one of the older colonies, which had degenerated, politically and socially, into a sort of reverse-Handmaid's Tale matriarchy, would wait until a new colony had landed and then lay siege. You could surrender, in which case all the women would be killed and the men enslaved and all the books burned, or you could fight, in which case they'd just bash a hole in your forcefield, and the aliens would come pouring in and you and everyone you loved would die terribly as the aliens' secretions ate the flesh off your bones.
The colonists in my dream were trying to fight back, but they were outgunned and outnumbered and they knew they were going to die.
Not a great way to start a Friday, in case you were wondering.
But hey! The L. A. zoo has a baby pangolin.
Colonists on an alien planet (I know, I know, bear with me, okay?) the indigenous lifeform of which was a sort of a cross between soldier ants (the really bad South American ones in the short story that everyone and their dog has to read in junior high and then can never remember author or title of ever again) and jellyfish (stinging-tentacle style jellyfish, like in the Sherlock Holmes story) each about the size of a small car and with a hive-mind. I'm not sure whether they were just not sapient or whether they were as Lovecraftian as they seemed and therefore Evil. But anyway, swarms of them. Each batch of colonists got set down with a handwavium generator that produced a forcefield that would keep the aliens off, but the generators weren't very big, and each batch of colonists only got one. So one of the older colonies, which had degenerated, politically and socially, into a sort of reverse-Handmaid's Tale matriarchy, would wait until a new colony had landed and then lay siege. You could surrender, in which case all the women would be killed and the men enslaved and all the books burned, or you could fight, in which case they'd just bash a hole in your forcefield, and the aliens would come pouring in and you and everyone you loved would die terribly as the aliens' secretions ate the flesh off your bones.
The colonists in my dream were trying to fight back, but they were outgunned and outnumbered and they knew they were going to die.
Not a great way to start a Friday, in case you were wondering.
But hey! The L. A. zoo has a baby pangolin.
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Date: 2005-01-21 05:32 pm (UTC)Do you mean George R.R. Martin's "Sandkings"?
And baby animals, gwa!
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Date: 2005-01-21 05:46 pm (UTC)It's one of those stories like "The Most Dangerous Game" that you only ever see in textbook anthologies of a certain vintage. Hadn't thought of it in years.
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Date: 2005-01-21 05:48 pm (UTC)I think your mention of hive mind made me think of Sandkings.
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Date: 2005-01-21 05:50 pm (UTC)Is the story "Leinengen vs. the ants?"
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Date: 2005-01-21 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-21 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-21 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-21 06:00 pm (UTC)Now, I know the story I read was not a radio play; however, a quick Google on Carl Stephenson brings up the text of "Leinengen vs. the Ants (http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/shorts/lvta.html)." Which I did not reread, but a very quick eyes-half-averted skim disclosed a couple of the plot points I remembered. So, yes. Answer found. Thank you!
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Date: 2005-01-21 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-21 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-21 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-24 07:02 pm (UTC)That's the one about the guy who's a lepidopterist who offers money for new breeds of butterflies, and someone offers him cocoons instead in exchange for meat and it turns out that soldier ants are a hive mind and are collecting the cocoons for the someone and it ends up with them (the ants, that is) all being poisoned?
Yeah, I read that story in some SF anthology. But all my books are unpacked except for the anthologies, so I can't try to find the title.