Aantz!
(1917, Formicidae Press)

The year was 1916, and Emily Chesley, like much of the world, was appalled by the slaughter in Europe. Following the disastrous Battle of the Somme (July 1- Nov. 13, 1916) Chesley started an ill-fated peace movement in which she used her "Whistling Auxiliary" to stage excruciating atonal protests.(1)  They were a failure, and caused nearly as much deafness as Flannigan’s Vibratory Earwax Remover had in the previous century. After this disaster, Chesley was convinced that she could only affect change through writing on the important subject. But how to avoid the censor’s knife?

Enter the humble ant. Chesley who was, as we now know, fascinated by nature as much as she was interested in the pecs of most male Norsemen under twenty, undertook a study of ant behavior – the basis for her novel, Aantz!.

The story centres around, predictably, a strong central female character – Queen Mobooba. But Mobooba does not start out as an aant. She begins the narrative as a wide-eyed and innocent young woman, who is foully deflowered by a potchin-soaked Irish priest, Father O’Shameus. The indelicate encounter transforms her into an aant – half-woman, half-ant. Feeding on strapping young Norwegians (2), Mobooba becomes a fertile phenomena, and starts spitting out army aantz. Her plan – destroy the world. (It is not coincidental that the army aantz dress like generals and feed almost exclusively on young men as well.)

Chesley was most fascinated by the phenomenon of ant-following, in which other species follow the enormous columns of army ants that denuded entire forests. The ant-followers tend to be scavengers, and predators of the most opportunistic type. In her novel, they are clearly the gleaners, sellers of special arms and sundry goods that the army of aantz need to complete its diabolical mission.

As in a regular ant colony, the action centres around the queen.

The hero of the story is Mobooba’s virginal young daughter (who is unaccountably fully human. She falls in love with the cunning Lingus, an immigrant farmer from Uppsala, Sweden. Unfortunately, Lingus is held in what is essentially Mobooba’s pantry. The results are predictably tragic.

As in many of her other later works, Aantz! is quite bleak, though the intention of this novel is to serve as a cautionary tale. It did indeed escape the censor’s knife, but the message was so obscured by Chesley’s imaginative prose, that it had about as much chance of changing minds about the war as one of her Auxiliary did of whistling a Mozart concerto. (3)

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Notes

1. Later in her life Emily Chesley dedicated herself to several worthy causes such as the Society for Young Men Who Can't Whistle. Whistling was considered an indispensable skill for able young men, and from the successfully rehabilitated, Chesley formed the 'Whistling Auxiliary'. The image on the right depicts some of the young men forever stigmatized by their inability to produce the whistling sound. (back)

2. Damn the Norwegians! (back)

3.  Though he would never admit it, Gordon Douglas, director of the huge Warner Brother's classic b-movie hit, Them! , based the movie on Chesley's Aantz!   Though they were effective on screen, one of the stars of the film, Joan Weldon, never thought the mechanical ants would work: "They were very hairy; they were very big, probably like six feet high and six feet wide. (That doesn't include the legs that dangled out here and there.) They were on wires, motivated by a panel in back. And they were cheesy."