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Tellus, issue 2, November 1941
Page 11
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TELLUS PAGE ELEVEN Tain't So! Illustration Leer McSneer glanced furtively around the room then avidly pounced on the poor unsuspecting guinea-pig, and injected a shot of enlarge-serum. Soon, he thought, if it worked, the pig would be the size of an elephant. Here you pause to snicker at the hack-plot, but more than that is hacked. Most fans know today that giant insects and living things in general are impossible. If the creature grows very large, the cross-sectional area of the bones would have to be increased according to the law of inverse square. What I mean is, the bones would have to grow way out of proportion to the rest of the animal, or the legs would collapse under the tremendous weight. A story involving an insect terror of terrestrial origin is even worse. Insects were never large. Fossil remains show that the largest wing-spread of all time was only a foot or so. The remains, some perfectly preserved, show the master plan for insects hasn't changed one iota in millions of years. Why? Simply because a small item like an insect's breathing apparatus is different from any other species. Fish range greatly in size as we all know. Their gills connect directly with the blood stream. With that satisfactory arrangement their size is practically unlimited. No need to mention lungs save for the fact that they are fairly efficient, as attested by the size of the elephant. The insect, who never had a chance to bid for the supremacy of the planet from the beginning, will always be small. The six-legged terrors have merely a row of holes piercing the chitin around the abdomen. The holes are entrances to a labyrinth of tubes far finer than hairs. They carry the vital air directly to every cell. They are wonderfully efficient, too. More so than ours, I would venture to say. If you noticed, I said an insect terror of terrestrial origin was impossible. Now given another world, nature might not have entered that blind alley of evolution. Ants, for instance might have lungs, or some other method of breathing without limiting their size. Evolution goes on, Antdom builds an interplanetary fleet to invade us. Even given that, intelligent insects are not very probably either. Inside that wonderful mechanism is no room for brains. One might say truthfully enough, that ants are robots, born with a complex set of reflexes. I might get an argument, but what new say of doing things have they found in the last million years? Pardon me. I'm way off the beam: I confess to sidetracking the defenseless reader. Here is the meat of the thing (arrived at finally). Leer McSneer (we're back to him again) dreams of conquering the world with an inexhaustible supply of million upon million of deadly insects made formidable by a dab of enlarge-serum. Beetles as armored tanks. Bees the size of wolves, and just as voracious, roaming the countryside. His blitz divisions of a fast air fleet: the wasps. Under the influence of the enlarge-serum, the wasp grows larger before his eyes. He can envision waves of them diving on a column of soldiers armed Flit rifles. Ah! Wait! What's this? His dreams fade. The wasp keels over deader than the proverbial doornail. The increased weight; neven an ounce or so, then the body presses on that wonderful system of tubes.The wasp doesn't get enough air so it dies. Just like that. So fan, if you ever write an "Insect" story, remember these flaws--and dodge them, some way....
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TELLUS PAGE ELEVEN Tain't So! Illustration Leer McSneer glanced furtively around the room then avidly pounced on the poor unsuspecting guinea-pig, and injected a shot of enlarge-serum. Soon, he thought, if it worked, the pig would be the size of an elephant. Here you pause to snicker at the hack-plot, but more than that is hacked. Most fans know today that giant insects and living things in general are impossible. If the creature grows very large, the cross-sectional area of the bones would have to be increased according to the law of inverse square. What I mean is, the bones would have to grow way out of proportion to the rest of the animal, or the legs would collapse under the tremendous weight. A story involving an insect terror of terrestrial origin is even worse. Insects were never large. Fossil remains show that the largest wing-spread of all time was only a foot or so. The remains, some perfectly preserved, show the master plan for insects hasn't changed one iota in millions of years. Why? Simply because a small item like an insect's breathing apparatus is different from any other species. Fish range greatly in size as we all know. Their gills connect directly with the blood stream. With that satisfactory arrangement their size is practically unlimited. No need to mention lungs save for the fact that they are fairly efficient, as attested by the size of the elephant. The insect, who never had a chance to bid for the supremacy of the planet from the beginning, will always be small. The six-legged terrors have merely a row of holes piercing the chitin around the abdomen. The holes are entrances to a labyrinth of tubes far finer than hairs. They carry the vital air directly to every cell. They are wonderfully efficient, too. More so than ours, I would venture to say. If you noticed, I said an insect terror of terrestrial origin was impossible. Now given another world, nature might not have entered that blind alley of evolution. Ants, for instance might have lungs, or some other method of breathing without limiting their size. Evolution goes on, Antdom builds an interplanetary fleet to invade us. Even given that, intelligent insects are not very probably either. Inside that wonderful mechanism is no room for brains. One might say truthfully enough, that ants are robots, born with a complex set of reflexes. I might get an argument, but what new say of doing things have they found in the last million years? Pardon me. I'm way off the beam: I confess to sidetracking the defenseless reader. Here is the meat of the thing (arrived at finally). Leer McSneer (we're back to him again) dreams of conquering the world with an inexhaustible supply of million upon million of deadly insects made formidable by a dab of enlarge-serum. Beetles as armored tanks. Bees the size of wolves, and just as voracious, roaming the countryside. His blitz divisions of a fast air fleet: the wasps. Under the influence of the enlarge-serum, the wasp grows larger before his eyes. He can envision waves of them diving on a column of soldiers armed Flit rifles. Ah! Wait! What's this? His dreams fade. The wasp keels over deader than the proverbial doornail. The increased weight; neven an ounce or so, then the body presses on that wonderful system of tubes.The wasp doesn't get enough air so it dies. Just like that. So fan, if you ever write an "Insect" story, remember these flaws--and dodge them, some way....
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