The Human Ant

Han Ryner (1861-1938) was a French anarchist, a philosopher and a startlingly original science fiction writer in pre-Wellsian, French scientific romance; he was once voted the Prince of Storytellers by a popular magazine. In The Human Ant (1901), a man is miraculously transformed into an ant by a fairy. Trapped into the universe of the ants for a year, he discovers the beauty, intelligence and heroism of this tiny species which, in turn, forces him to reflect upon the sad world of men. In The Pacifists (1914), a small band of men shipwrecked in the Sargasso Sea encounter a peaceful utopian Atlantean civilization who have domesticated a universal form of energy. The Human Ant is a relatively mild admonition to humans to broaden their minds and become more sensitively aware of their limitations; The Pacifists is a full-frontal assault on human vanity and so-called civilization.