Hellstrom's Hive
The significant evolutionary achievement of
the insects, more than a hundred million years ago, was the reproductive
neuter. This fixed the colony as the unit of natural selection and removed
all previous limits on the amount of specialization (expressed as caste
differences) that a colony could tolerate. It is clear that if we
vertebrates can take the same route, our individual members with their
vastly larger brains will become incomparably superior specialists. No other
species will be able to stand against us, ever-not even the old human
species from which we will evolve our new humans.
--Hellstrom's Hive Manual.
The time: The 1970's, Police State, U.S.A. The all-powerful secret
government agency wanted Dr. Hellstrom's Project 40. But it also knew that
Hellstrom was dangerous. Any move to investigate his hidden farm must be very
carefully made.
A team of operatives was sent to invade a world of insect-humans more
fearful than even the agency's chief suspected. A world where specially-bred
scientists with huge heads and stunted legs developed weapons that hummed
with deadly insect venom...chemically neutered workers with a sting that
could poison the world...hidden tunnels immune to atomic fission...hormones
for endless hyped-up sex orgies...and the vats in which everyone finally
ended to nourish future generations of human insects.1
David L. Wolper's award-winning2 film, The Hellstrom Chronicle3, inspired this chilling novel of a U.S. superagency designed to control our lives, and underground forces prepared to take over the world.1
Published in 1973 by Doubleday. Originally published in Galaxy, November 1972 - March 1973 under the title "Project 40." Tor edition released in 2007.
1From the Bantam
paperback version
2Academy Award for
Best Documentary Feature (1971); BAFTA for Best Documentary Feature (1972);
Cannes Film Festival's Technical Grand Prize (1971).
3Produced by David L. Wolper, directed by
Walon Green, written by David Seltzer, and released by Cinema 5.