retrotrash: the ant men by eric north

i'll read any book with giant bugs on the cover. it's a sickness.

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unfortunately this paperback reprint goes to some lengths (including a totally fallacious synopsis on the back cover) to conceal the novel's origin as hardcover "juvenile fiction." the ant men turn out to be pretty decent chaps who communicate using telepathy and fight giant mantises. now the red ant men worship a giant frog but the black ant men worship fire, so it is immediately obvious to the scientist that the black ant men are evolving forward into men whereas the red ant men are evolving backward into, um, ants.

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that's why he's a scientist and you're not.