Re: [OT] Bug history was: Starship Troopers

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard and Emily Bell" <rlbell@sympatico.ca>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] Bug history was: Starship Troopers

> I suspect that the earliest entry into the genre was the short story
"Linengen
> and the ants" (?) which was later padded out into a feature length
movie,
> starring Charleton Heston (?).  The ants are normal army (driver?)
ants
that
> completely overrun the hero's plantation, and eat everything that
fails to
> escape.  It is the archetypical tale of Man against Nature, with the
hero
ending
> up beaten, but unbowed, by an implacable, irresistable force.

They were closest to army ants.  Although the scale in which they were
described (a good twenty square miles of pretty much solid ants, IIRC)
is
considerably greater than I've ever heard of from any naturally occuring
troop of army ants.  The story, I believe, ends with him more or less
making
it no longer worth the ants' while to try to eat him and they move on
without doing so.

E