As I was saying (1), in the mists of prehistory there arose the monster insects. This precipitated something of a mass extinction amongst the vertebrates. Once you’ve unlocked the shackles of the square-cube rule (2) you’re likely to find that, especially as the bigger insects get commensurably brighter (3). So: whither our poor stone-age humanity?

 

Really, there would be not a jot of complaint if I had done the whole thing out as a Clan of the Cave Bear with the wolf people and the mammoth people and what have you, but what do you have left for your ancient prehistoric tribes to admire and emulate, when the wolves have been run down by beetles and your mammoths carved up by ants? So it was that the insect tribes were born. Instead of strong as the buffalo and wise as the owl, these far-off neoliths held themselves cunning as the spider, fierce as the wasp, deadly as the mantis (4).

 

So were born the insect tribes. In fact “Insect Tribes” was originally the working title for the series (6), although I wasn’t happy with it, and after brainstorming with my editor and my agent, the latter has happily come up with something more dramatic.

 

Of course, it takes more than carving a grasshopper totem pole to survive in a world like that, just as wearing a wolfskin doesn’t allow you to run all night and track by scent. Mankind totters on the brink of extinction at the claws of the mandibled horde. This is where it gets mystical. Some bright spark, some antediluvian Prometheus, forges a link. He reaches out, to the totem of his tribe, and finds something that reaches back. A diplomatic channel is established. Part communion, part meditation, part domestication. Soon the tribe that will become the Ant-kinden are living within the hive, from tolerated trespassers to workers, from workers to rulers (7). The Spider-kinden live unmolested amongst the webs of their patrons. The Wasps break in the nest’s new drones and ride them to war on their neighbours.

 

It does not end there, however, for from this initial link, from this matter of life and death, in establishing a détente with the powers of the world, springs the Art.

 

(1)   What? What’s this? An entry that actually follows on from the last one? Unheard of! Imposter!

 

(2)   It’s simple: if you double the length of something, you square its surface area and cube its volume. This may seem inconsequential, but it means that, for example, an insect above a certain size could not have sufficient surface area within its breathing apparatus to supply its volume with oxygen (having a much simpler breathing apparatus than a vertebrate’s lungs). In the Carboniferous, when invertebrates were at their largest, it is believed that the oxygen content of the earth was significantly higher than it is now, allowing arthropods to grow as large as a man, in some cases.

 

(3)   Because it’s my world and I say so: the last logical refuge of the fantasy author.

 

(4)   The Deadly Mantis, 1957, not one of the world’s most inspired giant monster movies. When investigated at imdb we are cheerfully told, under “plot synopsis”, “the plot synopsis is empty.” Oh true, how true. (5)

 

(5)   Another peculiarity of computerese, completely irrelevant but I want to put it in before I forget: in a previous entry I decided to put in something for the “current location” entry. I put in “at my computer, writing my blog.” Later, mousing over that, I got a speech-bubble-shaped pop-up from Google maps offering to sell me a map of it. Big Brother or what?

 

(6)   The eventual working title. A long, long time ago it was shelved in a folder called “Bugworld.” I didn’t need an agent to tell me to junk that one.

 

(7)   Human beings, after all, being smarter than even quite large insects. Well, most of them (8)

 

(8)   Most of the insects. And most of the human beings