Inventive, unique, and bizarre yet tumultuous (4/5)
T.J. Bass (penname of Thomas Joseph Bassler,
MD) is something of an enigma. He only wrote two novels—both of The Hive—which
were met with intrigue, yet he never published another novel, leaving the start
of his Hive series unfinished—fruit ripe for the picking; thus, he has left a
minor yet indelible legacy on science fiction. The Hive is a wonderfully witty
and unmistakably unique series that has little parallelism to any other novel
written before or written since—it’s wholly original.
Rear cover synopsis:
“Deep in the Shaft-cities lived three trillion
creatures, once human—and still calling themselves homo sapiens. But they were
small, bred to size in fact, as they were bred for various kinds of ‘work’—for even
in their almost totally automated culture they had to be kept busy. Like ants.
But things were going wrong. The machines weren’t
getting it all right any more—they were even breaking down sometimes. While Outside,
there were Others—who waited…”
------------
In a few thousand years, humans will have been
genetically tampered with so that they could adapt to crowding; this
adaptation, however, also deprived the Hive citizens of “immunoglobulin A, calcium
and collagen, neurohumoral axis, [and] melanoctye” (8), rendering them soft and
frail… they also live a full lifespan of twenty years and have a deeply set
default to obey. Being barely four-foot tall, these feeble citizens—named Nebishes—are
packed in underground spirals all across the globe, totally more than three
trillion Nebishes. Their food source: planet-wide agriculture in which machines
plant, pollinate, and pick the food to feed the ever dewindling supply of
calories to the Nebishes. At the helm of this massive so-called society is C.O.
or Computer One, who steers the course of the same society, governs all decisions,
and has very little toleration for the tangents of humans… or toleration for
any humans, really, as re-packaged cannibalism is common in order to meet
calorie quotas with a particular streak of disregard for well-being.
Just as their forced evolution was de-evolution
in regards to longevity, strength, and intelligence, the long-term stability of
The Hive has produced other atrocities: recurring Hunts on the surface to kill
and make trophies of the five-toed humans, the systematic destruction and
reprocessing of the weak in order to feed the strong, the balance of morals
based on calories rather than happiness, and the Nebish disregard for their heritage.
The four-toed Nebishes are surely the most
dominate species on the planet as nearly every other lifeform has been made
extinct. On the brink of extinction is the five-toes human, a smattering of
whom live on the surface where the Nebishes find conditions deadly. The
five-toes pillage the fields of calories and largely live a hand-to-mouth
existence, among them are five-toed outcasts and non-conformists from The Hive.
When one of these five-toes comes across an ancient piece of technology, the figurative
wheels are set in motion to begin the uprising against The Hive—but the
five-toes don’t understand their place in the upheaval and how are they
supposed to battle three trillion Nebishes with their just-as-obedient
machines?
The
Hive is much too stable—evolving in terms of millions of years, and then toward
death. It lives by the status quo—only becoming competitive when faced with
another hive. Then it does only what is necessary for survival—no more. It can
come into being wherever your species is too successful—a product of population
density. (272)
Continually inventive and written with
extensive medical English (i.e. edematous, seborrheic, edentulous, squamous),
diagnostic English, and acronyms, the whole package is a bizarre and intriguing
kaleidoscope of imagination. Ultimately, however, this strong current of
invention is too swift for the inexperienced author as the plot takes on too
much just prior to a mildly unsatisfying conclusion… but it was also ripe for
its sequel, The Godwhale (1974).
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