The Ant Men (Macfadden SF, 75-443) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you happen to find a Winston juvenile science fiction book in a used bookstore, or if you order one online, the first thing that you should do is to look inside the front cover. If it is a later printing, the endpapers will be white. But if you are lucky enough to get an early printing, you will be treated to a marvelous endpaper illustration by Alex Schomburg. There is a giant robot on the leftwith a raygun eye that is zapping some skyscrapers on the right. Hords of people are fleeing from the burning city. In the foreground is a one-eyed, six-armed alien with a fiendish smile, twisting dials and pulling levers on mysterious machines. Next to him is a deep sea diver wading past some ferocious fish. There is also a fleet of flying saucers, a rocket blasting off, a spaceman with a rocket backpack, assorted planets, a bank of computers, and a wild-eyed bearded man who looks up to no good. When I was an adolescent, these endpapers captured the thrill of science fiction for me. They are on my copy of Eric North's _The Ant Men_ (1955).

Eric North was the pseudonym of Charles Bernard Cronin (1888-1968), an Australian novelist who wrote in a variety of genres. _The Ant Men_ was not the only piece of science fiction that North wrote, but most of his other science fiction never made it into book form. Many times, I have had the experience of rereading a work of science fiction that I read when I was young and being forced to tone down my childhood enthusiasms. I had the opposite experience with _The Ant Men_. I read it hastily in my youth. After all, I had read lost world stories before, and I had read giant insect stories before. (Alex Schomburg could have included a giant insect as part of his endpaper design had he chosen to do so.) But in fact, the book is much better than I remembered. North's description of the Australian desert is magnificent, and his information on the tricks for survival in the Outback are fascinating. The realism of the real-world setting makes the lost world setting seem more credible.

North does well with his characters, also. My favorite is the Aussie driver, Nugget Smith, who might be considered a forerunner of Crocodile Dundee. His opening line is: "Mamma, mamma... In a place like this, you got to be as careful as a fat man on a diet" (1). There are two scientists who deduce the existence of the giant ants before they are actually encountered. This is a refreshing change from characters who are totally mystified by all the clues until the initial encounter. And that encounter is nicely dramatised:

The shapes on the plateau were solid and convincing enough. They were not the substance of dreams, but living, moving, three-dimensional creatures. And presently, their outline took on a more definate appearance. They appeared now to be enormous ants reared on hind feet-- man-sized insects, each with a slender feeler or antenna jutting from the shining black dome which was evidently the head of the creature. What shocked the watchers the most was the uncanny touch of the human about them. They appeared to be half ant, half man. There was no sign of the four membranous wings distinguishing the order of Hymenoptera to which they-- if ants they were-- rightly belonged; nor could Professor Orcutt, studying them intently, discover any signs of the usual six legs. The middle pair of legs was missing. (57-58)

Sharp-eyed observers of Paul Blaisdell's original cover who noted that the ants did not have six legs could now be assured that it was not an example of artistic carelessness. I do not want to reveal too much of North's plot, but I believe that it is fair to say that he delivers a few surprises along the way.

Think of this novel as analagous to a 1950s science fiction movie. Most of the films at that time were cheap, unimaginative, badly acted "monster movies"-- what Hollywood producers thought the public wanted. But every so often, there would be a movie like _Forbidden Planet_, _The Thing_, _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_, or _This Island Earth_ that was done with a certain amount of style and intelligence. _The Ant Men_ is like one of those relatively classy movies. It takes some stock conventions and does something special with them. I believe that there was a paperback edition published by MacFadden Books. But if you can, get the Winston hardback. It is worth the investment.

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Product Description:
Third Macfadden printing. Contains the entire text of the Winston hardcover, including the author's one-page introduction *Living Fossils*