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"The Empire of the Ants" | |
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Short story by H. G. Wells | |
Country | United Kingdom |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication |
"The Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells about the littleness of humanity and the tenuousness of the dominion Homo sapiens enjoys on Earth. A 1977 film, Empire of the Ants , was loosely based on Wells' story.
"The Empire of the Ants" features a Brazilian captain, Gerilleau, who is ordered to take his gunboat, the Benjamin Constant, to assist the inhabitants of the town of Badama, in the "Upper Amazon", "against a plague of ants". [1]
A Lancashire engineer named Holroyd, from whose point of view the story is, for the most part, told, accompanies him. They find a species of large black ant that has evolved advanced intelligence and has used it to make tools and organize aggression. Before arriving in Badama, Captain Gerilleau encounters a cuberta [2] which has been taken over by the ants, which have killed and mutilated two sailors. After Capt. Gerilleau sends his second in command, Lieutenant da Cunha, aboard the vessel, the ants attack him and he dies painfully, apparently poisoned.
The next day, after burning the cuberta, the Benjamin Constant arrives off Badama. The town is deserted and all its inhabitants dead or dispersed. Fearing the ants and their poison, Capt. Gerilleau contents himself with firing "de big gun" at the town twice, with minimal effect. He then demands "what else was there to do?" (variants of this phrase are used throughout the story when discussing the ants) and returns downstream for orders. [3] A final section reports that Holroyd has returned to England to warn the authorities about the ants "before it is too late".
"The Empire of the Ants" was first published in 1905 in The Strand Magazine .
H. G. Wells had befriended Joseph Conrad in 1898 and admired his work. [4]
HMS Audacity was a British escort carrier of the Second World War and the first of her kind to serve in the Royal Navy. She was originally the German merchant ship Hannover, which the British captured in the West Indies in March 1940 and renamed Sinbad, then Empire Audacity. She was converted and commissioned as HMS Empire Audacity, then as HMS Audacity. She was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in late 1941.
Proas are various types of multi-hull outrigger sailboats of the Austronesian peoples. The terms were used for native Austronesian ships in European records during the Colonial era indiscriminately, and thus can confusingly refer to the double-ended single-outrigger boats of Oceania, the double-outrigger boats of Island Southeast Asia, and sometimes ships with no outriggers or sails at all.
"The Land Ironclads" is a short story by British writer H. G. Wells, which originally appeared in the December 1903 issue of the Strand Magazine. It features tank-like "land ironclads," 80-to-100-foot-long armoured fighting vehicles that carry riflemen, engineers, and a captain, and are armed with semi-automatic rifles.
Empire of the Ants is a 1977 science fiction horror film co-written and directed by Bert I. Gordon. Based very loosely on the 1905 short story "Empire of the Ants" by H. G. Wells, the film involves a group of prospective land buyers led by a land developer, pitted against large mutated ants.
A smack was a traditional fishing boat used off the coast of Britain and the Atlantic coast of America for most of the 19th century and, in small numbers, up to the Second World War. Many larger smacks were originally cutter-rigged sailing boats until about 1865, when smacks had become so large that cutter main booms were unhandy. The smaller smacks retained the gaff cutter rig. The larger smacks were lengthened and re-rigged and new ketch-rigged smacks were built, but boats varied from port to port. Some boats had a topsail on the mizzen mast, while others had a bowsprit carrying a jib.
Written in the late 19th century by H. G. Wells and first published in The Butterfly, and collected in The Obliterated Man and Other Stories, "A Vision of Judgment" is a short story in 9 sections. It portrays a Last Judgment in which God and the archangel Gabriel laugh at sinners and saints alike, embarrassing them until they flee "up the sleeve of God." After every human soul has taken shelter there, all of humanity, "enlightened" and "in new clean bodies," is given a second chance. God shakes them—or rather us—"out of his sleeve upon the planet he had given us to live upon, the planet that whirled about green Sirius for a sun," saying "now that you understand me and each other a little better. . . . try again."
H. G. Wells was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His writing career spanned more than sixty years, and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of "The Father of Science Fiction".
"Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells.
"Triumphs of a Taxidermist" is an 1894 short story by British writer H. G. Wells. The story was originally published anonymously in the March 3 and 15, 1894 issues of the Pall Mall Gazette and later published in the 1895 short story collection The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents.
"A Deal in Ostriches" is a short story by the British writer H. G. Wells. It is a cautionary tale about simple human greed. The taxidermist of Wells’ story "Triumphs of a Taxidermist" (1894) makes a return appearance as the narrator of the story.
"The Pearl of Love" is a 1925 short story about devotion by H. G. Wells.
The Way the World Is Going is a 1928 nonfiction book written by British author H. G. Wells.
The Memnon was the first clipper ship to arrive in San Francisco after the Gold Rush, and the only clipper to arrive in San Francisco before 1850. Built in 1848, she made record passages to San Francisco and to China, and sailed in the first clipper race around Cape Horn.
Forces on sails result from movement of air that interacts with sails and gives them motive power for sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and sail-powered land vehicles. Similar principles in a rotating frame of reference apply to windmill sails and wind turbine blades, which are also wind-driven. They are differentiated from forces on wings, and propeller blades, the actions of which are not adjusted to the wind. Kites also power certain sailing craft, but do not employ a mast to support the airfoil and are beyond the scope of this article.
Ernest Benn Limited was a British publishing house.
"The Beautiful Suit" is a short story by H. G. Wells, originally published under the title "A Moonlight Fable" in the April 10, 1909, number of Collier's Weekly. Written in the manner of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, the story features but two characters: an unnamed "little man", and his mother. The mother has made "a beautiful suit of clothes" for the man, who takes inordinate delight in this possession.
"The Lord of the Dynamos" is a British short story by H. G. Wells. It was originally published in the Pall Mall Budget, and then included in the collection The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, published by Methuen & Co. in 1895, and subsequently in his Complete Short Stories. It deals with what Wells describes as "certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation" and the narration displays racist attitudes common among British society of the time, in addition to the overt thuggish racism of the character Holroyd.
Joan and Peter, a 1918 novel by H. G. Wells, is at once a satirical portrait of late-Victorian and Edwardian England, a critique of the English educational system on the eve of World War I, a study of the impact of that war on English society, and a general reflection on the purposes of education. Wells regarded it as "one of the most ambitious" of his novels.
Insects have appeared in literature from classical times to the present day, an aspect of their role in culture more generally. Insects represent both positive qualities like cooperation and hard work, and negative ones like greed.
The lug sail, or lugsail, is a fore-and-aft, four-cornered sail that is suspended from a spar, called a yard. When raised, the sail area overlaps the mast. For "standing lug" rigs, the sail may remain on the same side of the mast on both the port and starboard tacks. For "dipping lug" rigs, the sail is lowered partially or totally to be brought around to the leeward side of the mast in order to optimize the efficiency of the sail on both tacks.