Hellstroms Hive

There are science-fiction novels that ask, “What if humanity reached the stars?” Frank Herbert, never one to waste a perfectly good unease, asks something closer to: “What if humanity decided the insects had been right all along?”

Hellstrom’s Hive is a magnificent little unpleasantness from the author of Dune, and it comes with that special Herbert flavour: ecology, power, secrecy, survival, social engineering, sex, instinct, bureaucracy and the terrible suspicion that individual freedom may be just another luxury species enjoy before something more efficient turns up with a breeding programme. It is not a cosy book. It is a book that looks at ants, termites and human society, then begins taking notes in a way that makes one very uncomfortable about basements.

Dr Nils Hellstrom appears to the world as a filmmaker of nature documentaries, which is already suspicious, because anyone spending that much time studying insects is either a scientist, a genius, or someone planning something with ventilation shafts. Beneath the surface, quite literally, lies the Hive: an underground human society organised along insect lines, disciplined, secretive, reproductive, collective and very clear indeed that the individual is not the main event. Above ground, civilisation carries on with its cars, committees, sandwiches and national security agencies. Below ground, something much older in spirit and much newer in method has been quietly preparing itself.

The result is part thriller, part biological nightmare, part social satire and part extremely stern letter to the concept of privacy. Government agents start sniffing around Hellstrom’s operation, as government agents must, because secret underground societies are exactly the sort of thing that gives departments a sense of purpose. But the Hive is not merely hiding. It is adapting. It has technology, patience, numbers and a social structure that makes ordinary authoritarianism look amateurish, like a scout hut with delusions.

Herbert’s great trick is that the Hive is horrifying and persuasive at the same time. He does not simply point at it and say “bad.” He lets you see the appeal of efficiency, coordination, purpose, ecological toughness and communal survival, then allows the cost to creep in under the door. Personality thins. Desire becomes function. Family becomes system. Language itself begins to smell faintly of disinfectant. The individual, that noisy little mammal with opinions and inconvenient trousers, is gradually demoted to a component.

There is black comedy here too, if one’s sense of humour has been properly damaged. Human beings have spent centuries congratulating themselves on being the crown of creation, and Herbert imagines a faction that has looked at the crown, found it impractical, and replaced it with a hive structure. Democracy? Messy. Romance? Inefficient. Personal ambition? Wasteful. Pants? Probably negotiable. It is the future as designed by a committee that has abolished committees.

This Bantam paperback is in Good condition, which is honestly the safest condition for it. An immaculate copy of Hellstrom’s Hive might suggest it had never left the breeding chamber. This one has lived a bit, survived normal handling, and remains ready to unsettle a new reader from the respectable safety of a shelf. Crappy Old Books offers it for Frank Herbert readers, insect-society worriers, biological-thriller enthusiasts, and anyone who has ever looked at an anthill and thought, “Well, at least they’ve got management sorted.”

Keep browsing: See more Science-Fiction books Other books by Frank Herbert