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Episode 454 - The Screwfly Solution (Patreon)

Published:
2019-06-10 02:12:17
Edited:
2019-06-10 17:23:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Listen in as we discuss The Screwfly Solution by Raccoona Sheldon!

Special thanks to our reader Heather Klinke!

This author is actually Alice B. Sheldon, also known as James Tiptree, Jr. Check out her story on NPR. 

Attack of the Crab Monsters by Lawrence Raab.

Cute Aggression! 

Comments

Ethan Cordray

If you *really* want some politically-charged sci fi, read the sequel to this story, in which the human extermination project fails because the aliens forget why they're doing it and prematurely defund the program. (comment written in June 2026)

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

If memory serves, there was a detail you guys brushed over. When the grubs mating with the females' heads came up, Barney wasn't able to explain it at all. She badgered him but he just got flustered and refused to say, so she had to look it up on her own. This and a throw away detail or two established that Barney was extremely shy around women. I've always interpreted *that* as the reason he could still help her. Even after making the turn, he still didn't have the confidence to actually do anything physical. The most he could manage was verbally abusing her and treating her like garbage--even while he actively tried to help her escape with her life.

H P Lovecraft's Cat

A story written by a woman under the pen name of a man that includes organized murder of women by men when the author who is a woman turns out to organize and carefully plan the homicide of her husband, take a deep breath and dive in.

Cacodaemoniacal

First of all, this may be Science Fiction, it's also straight up Horror--especially for pubescent me. Second of all, JAMES TIPTREE WAS A WOMAN?!? Yeah, I can see why people thought he couldn't possibly be a woman to be able write like she did. I think you must have to live through what you write, As tough as this was to read, I cannot imagine creating it (honestly can't imagine it, as in, I can't get past the explosion colors in my mind).Thanks scary story, you've given me synesthesia. I'm trying to judge the level of scare I feel now, compared to when I first read it, and...I honestly think it's scarier to me now. Then, I felt sick, but there was also a strong element of intellectual appreciation to distract. It's a worthy challenge to my core. It just feels rawer to me now.

Devin Morse

This story should have been called The Trigger Warning Solution. Anyhow, [Fishhead was a human monstrosity] I would assume some of the sexually charged description of women found in the writing — that which isn't horrific — is actually a reflection of the author's own attraction to women.

Andrew M. Reichart

A misogynist death-cult sweeping across the land? A propos of current events indeed.

Tomas Rawlings

Great episode. Couple of thoughts - the idea of an issue so big people don't react even though its killing people - Climate Change! Also the descriptions of descent into a war, akin toe the excellent but scary podcast 'It Could Happen Here'. https://www.itcouldhappenherepod.com/

Erin G.

Quite frankly I needed to take a break mid episode. I appreciate that you didn’t ignore how relevant that this story is today, speaking about the way people ignore events that are really happening. I understand that you guys try to stay “fairly neutral” on your podcast, but I don’t have to. Women’s rights are being systematically stripped away in the U.S. The lack of safe access to abortion kills women, these behaviors and laws damage everyone.

Erin G.

One word answers? Ok. 🙄

Darth Pseudonym

I never interpreted Barney as being just-infected. She says, "I never thought of you as those horrible words you said" -- so Barney was referring to himself with "horrible words", and that makes me think he's homosexual. He's "immune" to the infection because he feels no sexual attraction to women, so there's nothing there to convert into violent response, and he was explaining that to her while using slurs towards his own orientation.

Michele Stuart

This story was so disturbing, and I mean that as a Good Thing. I was terrified from the moment she mentioned the Sons. I also did not see the end coming, even though, in hindsight, it was signaled by the references to angels. Yet, that could also have been part of the psychosis. On the subject of Barney, I initially interpreted the "saying terrible things" passage as his attempt to fight against the contagion, but I can see Shoggoth Lord's interpretation as well.

Shaddizar

A lot of podcasts have become bogged down in social commentary and are less enjoyable because of it. Please avoid that pitfall.

H P Lovecraft's Cat

The last "Real Estate Agent " line reminds me of a Batman Story, sorry a Bateman story. It's hip to be square, da da dada da.

Steve

Wow, that's the bleakest story you've ever covered, much more so than HPL. And yeah, given what's happening at the moment makes it feel much more real. I wonder what prompted such thoughts, the Doomsday clock was at 9 minutes, on a slow slide forwards, but nothing like it is now (2 minutes). I guess she had already started talking about suicide by then, and even written a note which she didn't use until years later. Perhaps this was written in response to that.

Jason Thompson

Thank you for reading this insanely awesome & disturbing story! "Great story... wish it was fiction"

Jason Thompson

(SPOILERS) Incidentally, I liked the "Masters of Horror" adaptation, even though it hugely suffers from a low budget. They make a couple of interesting changes: (1) Barney is explicitly gay and this is explicitly why he's 'safe' (2) they acknowledge 'chemical castration' as a potential way to prevent men from killing women, but basically, men are too uptight about their masculinity to implement this. One thing that's disturbing about the live-action adaptation, which doesn't come across so much in the original epistolary story, is that there's countless little interactions where you can't be sure if a man is infected, or if they're expressing just casual sexism and dismissal of women's concerns. Everyday misogyny blends seamlessly into femicide.

Eldritch Scerry

An absolute gut punch that brings cosmic horror down to the routine of disaffection. In line with John Carpenter's They Live. We'll make great pets.

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

In spite of weird fiction more or less mostly being about existential dread, I never actually felt any existential dread reading them... Until this one.

William Rieder

The recent Twilight Zone episode "Not All Men" was pretty close in content to this, even if not a declared adaptation (though one of the more disappointing episodes of the Peele reboot). Also, as to why the women in the story weren't more proactive, there's no reason not to assume they were being manipulated by the angels as well.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Oh, one thing I neglected to mention that I always liked about this story is that the afflicted aren't just a threat to women. Boys, other men--presumably those who seem feminine or gay--are also victimized, and it's quite easy to assume the same would go for those who are gender non-conforming. Women are victimized the MOST, of course, but they're also the most numerous. I'm sure there's someone who could articulate it better here, but I think it fits into something the Sons of Adam allude to themselves with their version of the Adam and Eve tale. In a toxic, patriarchical world society is divided into two categories, but it isn't so much "men" and "women" as it is "men" and "not-men." Those who don't fall into the rigid and arbitrary characteristics of what the society deems to be "masculine" are all trod underfoot by it and subjected to things like discrimination, oppression, violence, and sexual assault. And even the "real men" are denied the capacity to have healthy relationships or express vulnerability or weakness, and are often treated as expendable since they're supposed to bear sole responsibility for labor and combat in that absurd schema. The patriarchy hurts everyone, which is most certainly true in this tale.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Oh, and while it's quite possible that "femicide" is also an existing term, I had always heard "gynocide" as the term for the mass opression and eradication of women.

Markus Lauerer

The blood on the mayor's crotch combined with the comment about the bugs having resorted to mating with the females' heads makes for some deeply disturbing imagery.

Josh Decker

I know not everyone agrees but every so often I like a story that will challenge the way I think or at least cause me to think deeper on something I agree with superficially. Excellent and powerful story.

Richard Horsman

Amazing story, and I didn't even realize it was Tiptree until you published the episode. Would love to see you cover more by her. It was a hard read with where we are right now, especially when you can go online and pretty easily find men venerating scum like Elliot Rodgers. It's almost comforting to imagine them in the throes of some alien plague, instead of just being evil.

Evlyn Moreau

Yeah this was deeply disturbing. Still thinking about it.

Shana Carter

I think this might beat out Michael Shea's "Tsathoggua" as the most disturbing thing I've heard on the podcast. Phew! I was taken aback when Chris and Chad said they were surprised by the ending — as soon we got the explanation of what the screwfly solution was, I had a pretty good idea what the punchline was going to be. That said, I didn't foresee just how awful things would get, though as has already been noted, there's nothing that happens in this story that doesn't have a real-world analogue without the excuse of "alien pheromones made me do it."

Alan Ricks

One of my favorite episodes you have ever done. Powerful stuff.

Forrest Rush

A great story and a great episode guys. The best fiction should leave the reader more than a bit moved if not perturbed. And judging by how your comments have polarized some, I can only say you are more than doing your jobs. It can’t or shouldn’t be all fun and games all the time. The stories that we love (weird fiction) can and do say a lot about the world we live in. It should push us to consider our own time and very often serve as a warning. A warning all wrapped up in a not so tidy tentacly bow of horrific delight perhaps, but a warning none the less. As I’ve said before, I think we are in a kind of golden age of new weird fiction and weird fiction rediscovery. Right after reading this story and then listening to your podcast I followed it up with the latest eps of No Sleep and Escape Pod which in many ways connected to the themes of this story. It has been a very thought provoking few days. I also think that I really found a lot of similarities to themes here and Flannery O’Connor, especially to her story The Displaced Person. But regardless, thank you guys. You are doing amazing work.

alasinwonderland

"This Author's Life Story Is Fascinating But We Don't Have Time To—Oops, Here We Go" is my favorite recurring segment.

Graham Pilling

Well handled and discussed. I already knew this story so took a deep breath before seeing how you guys would cover it. Brutal and thought provoking.

H P Lovecraft's Cat

Laughable Spook story ,apparently Peter Levenda has predecessors

Saint Fu

Knowing about the story beforehand, I almost didn't listen to this episode. Having listened to it, I'm not sure that wouldn't have been better for me.

Wayne Durack

This is a favourite short story of mine, and I'm really glad you did something that was a little more science fiction than usual. Mix it up a bit! I'm not US based, so am generally happy that the podcast doesn't engage in political discussions, but enjoyed the discussion on this episode. The themes of the story inform the discussion, and I think with this being such a modern setting, with a specific example of an exaggerated patriarchy, it would be silly to cover the story and not think about the patriarchy, women's rights, and violence against women.

Ethan Cordray

There's something about Sheldon/Tiptree's restrained, relaxed, slightly humorous style (which Heather captures perfectly) which is far more disturbing than HPL's more histrionic cosmic sense. The old saw that we're "like insects" in relation to the Great Old Ones has become a really boring cliche -- but put a more serious scientific edge on it like she does, and the horror and despair comes rushing in.

Ethan Cordray

I was also wondering if the protagonist's rather casual, passive reaction to the rising violence might have also been a subtle result of alien bio-manipulation? Perhaps as they were transforming male sexual behavior into violence, they were transforming female behavior into passivity as well? That passage where she was describing Barney cutting her hair gave me that impression, that she was acting with irrational trust and submissiveness. Though the mention of reports of female revolts and bombings and such would seem to go contrary to that thesis.

Stewart

That was one of the scariest stories you've covered yet on this podcast, because, as you put it, the eerie plausibility of the whole thing. I think that final paragraph, especially the last line of the story, ties it most closely into the weird - it strikes me as very Lovecraftian the idea that the horror was potentially engineered by alien beings beyond our comprehension for reasons we can only guess at. That makes it an alien invasion story similar to The Colour out of Space, but because of the element of social commentary, and the chilling plausibility that all the aliens had to do was tweak some small facet of human behavior, this story takes on a far more urgent tone. I'm going to take this opportunity to suggest, if you're going to do another month of women in weird fiction, that you do one of Agatha Christie's weird tales. She was predominately known for her mysteries, earlier in her career she wrote some short stories which dabbled in the weird, particularly The Hound of Death, whose title is somewhat deceptive, and The Call of the Wings, which sees yet another incarnation of Pan, that favorite elder being of English weird fiction.

witchhousemedia

Hi guys- Chad here. I prefer to wait until we can discuss comments later, but just wanted to weigh in on this a bit since folks are getting a little upset. My operational definition of being “political” is to specifically advocate for groups, persons or issues. I don’t feel we did that here. I feel we merely pointed out that this story plays on gender discrimination and media issues that are currently causing fears and anxieties. No matter your position, these issues are in the news absolutely every day. That is objectively true. I’m personally afraid of flying, even though I know technically it’s much safer than when I get in my car every day. So when I watch the Twilight Zone “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode it connects to those fears and anxieties. A lot of people share these fears and that’s why the story works and has been remade a few times, because other folks share these fears. It would be weird to me if somebody told me I shouldn’t experience this fear or anxiety because there aren’t any monsters currently lurking on plane wings - know what I mean? It’d be even weirder to me if somebody were mad at me for being afraid of flying. The Screwfly Solution is playing on fears of sudden, scary and violent social change. “How did this happen? Fast - that’s how.” Many women are feeling threatened right now, and that is why the story connects for them. No matter if the events depicted are literally happening or not. It’s fiction - it’s a horror story - that’s how this stuff works. I don’t feel we handled this differently than any other story we cover, when I bring up dumb shit from my youth or an article I just happened to read the day prior. Reading is about making connections to our personal lives, recent experiences and the world outside the window. The writer provides the context of his or her life and the reader provides his or her context. That’s all that’s going on. We as podcasters are not trying to convince anybody of anything - we’re just trying to enjoy literature with y’all by being honest about our experiences with it. Possibly I was inarticulate in this episode or even now - but one thing I love about doing this show is that we have respectful and smart listeners. One thing I hate about the internet in general is that it often provides a forum for lots of condescension and one-upping to no real avail. Let’s discuss the stories and know that everybody will have a personal response that may be different from our own - and that’s really the fun of it, isn’t it? We keep the show free of current events for the most part because this should be a refuge from all that noise, but sometimes we’ll reference the actual world we live in because it’s perfectly okay to do so (we think). I hope this helps and just doesn’t cause more upset. Sorry for all the adverbs.

Mara Rhymes with Sara

Thanks for covering this story, guys. It's one that, as a woman, I've always found particularly frightening. Really good horror happens when the author captures something that's already in the air--the zeitgeist, if you want to be pretentious about it--and adds that little twist of perspective that brings the readers' context into focus. Without context, nothing is scary--demonic possession is probably less frightening if you have no religious background; houses built on burial grounds are less haunted without a sense of the wrongs of the past. "Screwfly" crystallizes the anxieties that many women have about the men around them, the feeling that at any moment we could move from being viewed as people to being treated as objects--and not very valued objects at that. Then it goes a step farther and points out that these patriarchal views might not serve the men who hold them, either--they may in fact be a tool of some other group or force to undermine the very people they seem to exalt.

Ravewolf

It was actually a bit of a scandal when the real gender of the author was revealed to the sci-fi community in her later years. Some were even pretty angry about it and claimed to feel betrayed. I have known since I was a kid that, when an author uses their first initial instead of their first name on the cover of the book, they are more likely to be a woman. It was deemed too much of a hassle in genre fiction to be one sometimes, it seems. And people wanted to be judged on an even scale. I have generally been pretty understanding of that, though I think times are changing and it's easier for female authors now. I guess I'm naive, cause I didn't see this episode causing so much controversy here as the only major difference I could see was how less humor was used than usual, which was understandable. But here we are. To be fair though, the story hits on primal urges and fears that people rarely address in society, as well as containing some very brutal scenes to drive home the discomfort. So perhaps it was bound to get strong reactions. It reminds me a little of Junji Ito's Tomie series, which considers the worst impulses of men and women leading to uncontrollable violent urges, as if we are slaves to pheromones etc. There's something almost taboo about even acknowledging this stuff, yet people seem to recognize it on some level when it comes up in fiction.

Runninghead

Thanks for covering such a dark and disturbing story. I don't imagine I'll choose to relisten to this one very often, as I do with a lot of the others, but that is actually a sign of it's great value. I've always been interested by the border where fascination with horror turns in to repulsion by it. I watched the Judge Dredd movie- the good one :), with a friend and we had very different reactions. The violence and horror excited and tested the limits of my tastes but he was like "this is just sick and disturbing. This one reminded me of that conversation. It fell on the far side of that divide for me, I found it uncomfortably disturbing, but the fact that you dare to cover such extreme content alongside the other pieces speaks to the importance of this podcast as an arena for the exploration of themes that would otherwise stay forever underground. I think facing our darker thoughts and exploring them is incredibly valuable and fiction is an ideal environment for this. Thank you. Now can you please cover some more Robert E Howard so I can sleep without the lights on again?!

Forrest Rush

Hey, everybody remember when we argued with one another in the nicest possible way about whether HP was gay or asexual? Yeah, those were the days.

Allison Albright

I think it's telling that a not insignificant number of people reacted to this story and its coverage as "political" when it is, in fact, a story about the very real, very warranted fears of half of the population. I wish I could say that the extremely emotional reaction by many of those people was a surprise, but this isn’t my first time on the internet (or, quite frankly, in the world). It's not relevant just because there are, right now, actual groups of people who advocate for and sometimes commit acts of violence against women. Violence at the hands of men is something all women think about and work to guard against. This is a huge part of the daily lives of women, girls and also of many others who, as someone else put it very well, count as "not-men" in the very restrictive, binary idea of gender and sexuality that some elements of our society are very attached to. This story deals in extremes, but like most well-done science fiction and horror, it just takes an issue that we live with daily and maybe take for granted, and makes it visible by taking it to an extreme. I haven't even finished listening to the episode yet, so I'll probably have more to say later, but I just popped on to see whether or not the comments on this episode had burned down to mere embers yet. I will say that though I was not surprised to see comments which were hostile to the story, its themes and the coverage, I was also really pleased to read the majority of the comments. I thought most of them were insightful and empathetic and made good points.

Background Noise Comic

Very interesting, different story. Great episode. You guys discuss whatever the hell you want to discuss.

Cacodaemoniacal

What happens if someone um, danced alone? Would they kill themselves? That's a serious question by the way.

Lucas Peacock

Wow! some mighty huge stones you have there touching on anything from a Dangerous Visions collection in this day and age. I will even forgive you for wearing your political affiliations on your sleeves as the collections are designed to hit political and religious buttons and foment outrage. Harlan Ellison is the OG Edgi Boi. I remember how hard these hit me when I found Dangerous Visions in paperback in my early 20's and how hard I scrabbled to find the other 3 paperback volumes. From Orangutans and #metoo, to living screaming Fleshlights , the collection is not for the squeamish. By the by, I always took the discussion of the daughter to be an extrapolation of the sexual revolution into the future, were sexuality was not denied the 'tween' demographic. If you lived through the sexual revolution and the resultant explosion of teenage sex, you might just assume it would keep going, Reductio Ad Absurdum.

Bret Kramer

(Peeking in to see if there’s a new episode...) I hope we didn’t break the show. :) For an internet debate, this has been mostly civil. I’d be very curious to hear what Heather thought about the story. Did she end up reading the whole thing or just the excerpts she performed so chillingly?

Allison Albright

PS - this is a really visceral story and Heather did an amazing job with the reading. Chris and Chad also did a great job covering this story and I'm really glad they decided to do it for the show. I think material like this can sometimes make people defensive. Everyone wants to be a good person and the idea that we might belong to a group which poses a threat to others in society, often just by accident of birth, can be an upsetting prospect for many people. Unfortunately, if we can't move past our defensiveness we won't be able to improve. Some people mentioned how passive the women seemed about it all, something which also occurred to me while listening to the episode. Others brought up some good theories to explain that. I think if the story were written now there would have been a lot about women fighting back. But in 1977, even though it doesn't seem so distant a time, women had a much different role in society than they do today. And it's difficult to fight back against the people with all the power and a greater share of the wealth and resources. That's true in reality as well.

The Call of Cassandra

I started reading Stephen King in my early teens, and moved on to Lovecraft a few years later (thanks to the roleplaying game, not the creepy uncle). Nothing they wrote ever truly frightened me. I read them because they wrote things that were interesting, original, neat ideas. But especially because they were things different from ordinary life. I never much liked ordinary life, because I am both a lesbian and trans. The 'normal' world is not a very pleasant place for me. So I look for escapes from it in science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural horror. This story really disturbed me. It scared me. Because it is my real life, but taken to eleven. I never know if the person next to me is going to read me, and decide they have to murder me. It has not happened yet. It might never happen. But OTOH, a year and a half ago a woman was murdered a few hundred feet away from where I was sleeping. I woke up to the gunshots. She was not trans. Just an ordinary woman. That is just the ordinary world. It is why I own several guns, and go to the range on a regular basis to keep my skills sharp. This story was really good. It pulled me in, and gave me a real emotional connection to the characters. The best writers do that. They pull at something inside you and make you feel, even if you don't particularly want to. I am glad you guys did this story, because otherwise I probably never would have read it. Keep up the good work!

James Pekoll

I always listen to old episodes to fall asleep at night. Two nights ago I tried listening to this one... kept me up all night contemplating. Totally worth it!

Anthony Crowley

Great show, I remember seeing a screen adaptation of this story in the "Masters of Horror" series. I did not like it. It really falls short of the source material. The author does a beautiful job projecting the internal thoughts of the main male character, I really was able to lose myself in the writing and be immersed in the character's experience. Her use of letter writing as a story telling tool is a great way to lay out a lot of events and give exposition in an efficient and engaging way. Also this is true cosmic horror. We are nothing more than a minor pest to be controlled and eliminated. We don't even realize that we've been conquered, and our world now belongs to someone or something else. Simply winked out of existence, forced not only to destroy ourselves, but to enjoy the act. Chilling.

Cthulhu 2 Electric Boogaloo

Its always bothered me that we view a man murdering a women any worse then the other way around. Obviously Chivalry is not dead.

Father of Beagles

I don’t understand how this episode got people’s knickers in a twist. I thought it was a good story and a great amount of horror. It seems like some people read into this story something they wanted to see or picked a fight they wanted to fight.

Brandon Basil

Not sure if this will be seen at all, but I’m going back through the whole catalogue, and the 2 stories by Octavia Butler and this one may be some of my favorite stories to date. they all scratch my itch for extremely dark fiction, and I’m curious if anyone else feels that these more modern stories bring out these feelings because they tend to be more graphic? Cause the stories I’ve mentioned left a real profound effect on me after reading them, and it’s one that I rarely feel from some of the older texts we dive into. And I can’t help but feel like it’s due to the real desensitization to violence and horror that our society has gone through.

RebeccaR

That was the most disturbing story HPpod has ever covered, IMO

Moonflight Dancer

Are you guys going to return to Sheldon again sometime? Her work is fantastic.

Ricardo Madrid

I wonder if this story is a bit of a Rorschach test. A lot of commenters as well as our hosts were caught off guard by the twist ending, but I felt like this is obviously not normal human behaviour. Something supernatural or mad science-y is up. My initial theory was that these scientists working on eliminating screwfly/caneflys/budworms accidentally came up with a compound that affected humans and released it into the world. Sure we got rid of budworms, but we also destroyed ourselves. Which, to me echoes the Corona Virus lab leak theory. We were experimenting with deadly viruses and released a plague on the world. Would I have had that theory if I had read this story pre- the pandemic? Maybe not. Similarly, our hosts and commenters were caught off guard by the idea that an alien entity did this to us in the story because the idea of men harming women seemed so plausible to them. To me, that seemed very implausible, maybe because the number of times humanity has gone extinct because of male-on-female violence is roughly zero, seeing as we are all still here. Furthermore, males have historically been the expendable gender. There is a reason that people say women and children first when it comes to limited resources to save people. In Ukraine, women and children are fleeing the war to safety, but young men are being turned around and armed to go fight the Russians because that is the traditional gender role for young men; they are expected to go fight and die. You could argue that men do most of the violence in the world, that has been brought up on the show before, but I wonder how much of that was culturally impressed onto men. Since prehistoric days men were forced by necessity to engage in the violence of hunting to sustain tribal populations when gathering plant-based food was not enough to feed the village. Throughout history, a majority of warfare was forced on young men, and even to this day, when women proudly serve in Western Armies, we still have hesitation in having the Draft apply to young women. I would rather we didn't have the Draft at all since it is a form of slavery, but if we are going to have it, it should be gender neutral. Long story short, I felt like this story really lets people delve into their preconceived biases before hitting you with the idea that this is a supernatural attack on the human race. Which, in a way, is male-positive. If the story didn't have the angel/real-state being at the end, it would have come off as a misandrist fever dream. Still, the supernatural element establishes that men are not actually on the verge of femicide and destroying the human race, which I find refreshing since a lot of modern sci-fi seems to focus on nihilism and doom instead of the actual historic trend of humanity continually improving over time through scientific discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship.