"The Screwfly Solution" | |
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Short story by Raccoona Sheldon | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Science fiction, horror |
Publication | |
Published in | Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact |
Publication type | Anthology |
Publisher | Condé Nast |
Media type | Print (Magazine) |
Publication date | June 1977 |
"The Screwfly Solution" is a 1977 science fiction short story by Raccoona Sheldon, a pen name for American psychologist Alice Sheldon, who was better known by her other nom de plume James Tiptree Jr. When the story was first published in June 1977, the identity of Alice Sheldon as both Tiptree and "Raccoona" Sheldon was unknown to the public or anyone in the science fiction community; a series of events triggered by the death of Sheldon's mother Mary Hastings Bradley in October 1977 resulted in the identity behind the pen-names being revealed by the end of the same year.
"The Screwfly Solution" received the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1978, and has been adapted into a television film.
The title refers to the sterile insect technique, a technique of eradicating the population of screwflies by the release of large amounts of sterilized males that would compete with fertile males, thus reducing the native population more with each generation this is done. This story concerns a similar distortion of human sexuality with disastrous results.
The story begins with an exchange of letters and news clippings between Alan, a scientist working on parasite eradication using sterile insect technique in Colombia, and his wife Anne Alstein at home in the U.S., concerning an epidemic of organized murder of women by men.
The murderers feel it is a natural instinct and have constructed elaborate misogynistic rationalizations for it. For example, a new religious movement is spreading along with the murders: the Sons of Adam, who believe that women are evil, that the Garden of Eden was a paradise before women were introduced, and that God is telling them to get rid of all of the women, and after that, God will either make everyone live forever or reveal a better way to reproduce (they were unclear about what exactly would happen). When the religion initially arises, prior to the organized murders, little is done to stop the ideology's spread, nor are their actions of evicting women from the areas the men control prevented.
Some women fought back, such as three women who stole an Air Force plane and bombed Dallas, but there was no organized resistance.
Initially, there was extensive censoring of the news, as the government believed that it was a case of mass psychological hysteria, and could be snuffed out by suppressing the news, thus preventing its spread.
However, a minority of scientists figured out the truth: Some kind of infective agent is spread in the atmosphere, turning human male sexual impulses into violent ones.
Alan, a sensitive, kindly man, realizes that he himself is succumbing and tries to resist the impulses, as well as isolate himself from women. While this occurs, his wife and teenaged daughter have a number of mother–daughter conflicts: the daughter, faithful to her father, refuses to believe her mother's warnings about him. She sneaks off to visit her father, and he murders her, killing himself after the horrific realization of his action.
Anne flees north, to Canada, since the disease began in the tropical zones and spread outward. In the end, Anne, pursued by an entire society bent on femicide, discovers the source and motivation behind the plague: an alien species is intentionally causing the human race to destroy itself so that the aliens can have Earth for themselves.
"The Screwfly Solution" was adapted into a television film by screenwriter Sam Hamm and director Joe Dante for the Showtime network's Masters of Horror series, premiering December 8, 2006. It has also been referenced in Mark Danielewski's project, The Familiar vol. 3. In the June 1955 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine the subject of screwflies and their eradication through this method is mentioned as a basis for alien invasion in the editorial by H. L. Gold.
Alice Bradley Sheldon was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 until her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1985 she also occasionally used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Tiptree was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.
The Otherwise Award, originally known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award, is an American annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. It was initiated in February 1991 by science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler, subsequent to a discussion at WisCon.
A pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavior of the receiving individuals. There are alarm pheromones, food trail pheromones, sex pheromones, and many others that affect behavior or physiology. Pheromones are used by many organisms, from basic unicellular prokaryotes to complex multicellular eukaryotes. Their use among insects has been particularly well documented. In addition, some vertebrates, plants and ciliates communicate by using pheromones. The ecological functions and evolution of pheromones are a major topic of research in the field of chemical ecology.
Sexual themes are frequently used in science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a protagonist with an alternative sexuality, a sexual encounter between a human and a fictional extraterrestrial, or exploration of the varieties of sexual experience that deviate from the conventional.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" is a science fiction novella by American writer James Tiptree, Jr. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974.
The sterile insect technique (SIT) is a method of biological insect control, whereby overwhelming numbers of sterile insects are released into the wild. The released insects are preferably male, as this is more cost-effective and the females may in some situations cause damage by laying eggs in the crop, or, in the case of mosquitoes, taking blood from humans. The sterile males compete with fertile males to mate with the females. Females that mate with a sterile male produce no offspring, thus reducing the next generation's population. Sterile insects are not self-replicating and, therefore, cannot become established in the environment. Repeated release of sterile males over low population densities can further reduce and in cases of isolation eliminate pest populations, although cost-effective control with dense target populations is subjected to population suppression prior to the release of the sterile males.
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" is a short story by James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name used by American writer Alice Sheldon. It won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1974. It first appeared in the anthology The Alien Condition, edited by Stephen Goldin, published by Ballantine Books in April 1973.
Ceratitis capitata, commonly known as the Mediterranean fruit fly or medfly, is a yellow-and-brown fly native to sub-Saharan Africa. It has no near relatives in the Western Hemisphere and is considered to be one of the most destructive fruit pests in the world. There have been occasional medfly infestations in California, Florida, and Texas that require extensive eradication efforts to prevent the fly from establishing itself in the United States.
"The Screwfly Solution" is the seventh episode in the second season of Masters of Horror. It is based upon the 1977 science fiction short story of the same name by Alice Sheldon, credited in the film as James Tiptree, Jr. Many of the scenes in Sam Hamm's script are expansions of single lines in this epistolary story. Director Joe Dante read the story in the 1980s and had wanted to make a film version ever since. He presented the story as straight horror, eschewing his usual humor and without using his usual company of stock actors. Jason Priestley and Elliott Gould star.
Sex pheromones are pheromones released by an organism to attract an individual of the same species, encourage them to mate with them, or perform some other function closely related with sexual reproduction. Sex pheromones specifically focus on indicating females for breeding, attracting the opposite sex, and conveying information on species, age, sex and genotype. Non-volatile pheromones, or cuticular contact pheromones, are more closely related to social insects as they are usually detected by direct contact with chemoreceptors on the antennae or feet of insects.
Choristoneura fumiferana, the eastern spruce budworm, is a species of moth of the family Tortricidae native to the eastern United States and Canada. The caterpillars feed on the needles of spruce and fir trees. Eastern spruce budworm populations can experience significant oscillations, with large outbreaks sometimes resulting in wide scale tree mortality. The first recorded outbreaks of the spruce budworm in the United States occurred in about 1807, and since 1909 there have been waves of budworm outbreaks throughout the eastern United States and Canada. In Canada, the major outbreaks occurred in periods circa 1910–20, c. 1940–50, and c. 1970–80, each of which impacted millions of hectares of forest. Longer-term tree-ring studies suggest that spruce budworm outbreaks have been recurring approximately every three decades since the 16th century, and paleoecological studies suggest the spruce budworm has been breaking out in eastern North America for thousands of years.
Mating disruption (MD) is a pest management technique designed to control certain insect pests by introducing artificial stimuli that confuse the individuals and disrupt mate localization and/or courtship, thus preventing mating and blocking the reproductive cycle. It usually involves the use of synthetic sex pheromones, although other approaches, such as interfering with vibrational communication, are also being developed.
A pheromone trap is a type of insect trap that uses pheromones to lure insects. Sex pheromones and aggregating pheromones are the most common types used. A pheromone-impregnated lure is encased in a conventional trap such as a bottle trap, Delta trap, water-pan trap, or funnel trap. Pheromone traps are used both to count insect populations by sampling, and to trap pests such as clothes moths to destroy them.
A genetically modified (GM) insect is an insect that has been genetically modified, either through mutagenesis, or more precise processes of transgenesis, or cisgenesis. Motivations for using GM insects include biological research purposes and genetic pest management. Genetic pest management capitalizes on recent advances in biotechnology and the growing repertoire of sequenced genomes in order to control pest populations, including insects. Insect genomes can be found in genetic databases such as NCBI, and databases more specific to insects such as FlyBase, VectorBase, and BeetleBase. There is an ongoing initiative started in 2011 to sequence the genomes of 5,000 insects and other arthropods called the i5k. Some Lepidoptera have been genetically modified in nature by the wasp bracovirus.
Anastrepha ludens, the Mexican fruit fly or Mexfly, is a species of fly of the Anastrepha genus in the Tephritidae family. It is closely related to the Caribbean fruit fly Anastrepha suspensa, and the papaya fruit fly Anastrepha curvicauda.
"The Women Men Don't See" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Alice Bradley Sheldon, published under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr.
Invaders! is a themed anthology of science fiction short works edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in December 1993. It was reissued as an ebook by Baen Books in March 2013.
In zoology, copulation is animal sexual behavior in which a male introduces sperm into the female's body, especially directly into her reproductive tract. This is an aspect of mating. Many aquatic animals use external fertilization, whereas internal fertilization may have developed from a need to maintain gametes in a liquid medium in the Late Ordovician epoch. Internal fertilization with many vertebrates occurs via cloacal copulation, known as cloacal kiss, while most mammals copulate vaginally, and many basal vertebrates reproduce sexually with external fertilization.
Aurora: Beyond Equality is an anthology of feminist science fiction edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson and published in 1976.
"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" is a 1969 science fiction short story by James Tiptree Jr.. The story was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, but has since been reprinted at least 44 times in various anthologies and publications, earning a position as one of the most republished medical science fiction stories of all time. Nominated for a 1969 Nebula Award, the story, which itself serves as an example of the personified earth being a force for destruction, together with The Screwfly Solution by the same author, are prominent examples of human eradication by biological warfare in science fiction, and wider, the folly of mankind to destroy itself, either by ecological devastation, or by violence.