Hellstrom's Hive
by Frank Herbert
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America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects.When the Agency discovered that Dr. Hellstrom's Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses-it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise.First published in Galaxy magazine in show more 1973 as "Project 40," Frank Herbert's vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction. show lessTags
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What does it mean to be "human"? In the pursuit of Utopia how far is too far? Are Free Will and Individuality all they're cracked up to be? Alternately compelling and infuriating, Herbert's rumination on mankind's possible evolutionary path combines a bit of Cold War paranoia (the enemy amongst us!) with a satirical nod aimed at 1960's counterculturalism...or more precisely, the rising interest in Ecology and socialism. And it's all wrapped up as a sci-fi horror show! An emotionally exhausting novel (he manipulates his readers like a true literary sadist) but to fully appreciate what he's done you really must follow up by watching the Oscar-winning 1971 pseudo-documentary "The Hellstrom Chronicle" on which the book is based. It's free show more on Youtube. show less
A shadowy, paranoid intelligence organization known simply as The Agency intercepts documents related to Project 40. Fearing a doomsday weapon, they send operatives to investigate Dr. Nils Hellstrom's seemingly innocuous insect documentary studio in Oregon.
Beneath the farm lies a subterranean complex of tens of thousands of people. Through generations of eugenics and mental conditioning, the Hive-dwellers have been bred into specialized castes: drones and workers similar to bees or ants.
As agents infiltrate the maze of tunnels to destroy the Hive, they realize Hellstrom's society is terrifyingly effective. The Hive operates with zero illness, racism, or unemployment, sacrificing individual free will for the survival of the show more collective.
The Agency and the Hive operate as mirror images of each other: secretive, authoritarian, and hierarchical, forcing the reader to evaluate the morality of both sides show less
Beneath the farm lies a subterranean complex of tens of thousands of people. Through generations of eugenics and mental conditioning, the Hive-dwellers have been bred into specialized castes: drones and workers similar to bees or ants.
As agents infiltrate the maze of tunnels to destroy the Hive, they realize Hellstrom's society is terrifyingly effective. The Hive operates with zero illness, racism, or unemployment, sacrificing individual free will for the survival of the show more collective.
The Agency and the Hive operate as mirror images of each other: secretive, authoritarian, and hierarchical, forcing the reader to evaluate the morality of both sides show less
There's a nice (and particularly horrifying) science fiction concept behind it. But everything else about the book - the plot, the characters, even most of the prose - is straight out of a B movie. It is actually based on a movie, which is now out of print, so I can't tell what's being faithful to a bad source and what's just bad, but I guess it doesn't matter much. Still, it's certainly a unique and memorable book.
This would be one of my more favorite of Frank Herbert's oneshot novels, though I do wish that he could have expanded a bit more on Hive-life. This book was a fun and thought-provoking read, and a bold foray into various issues. Overall I felt the story was believable, though the story would definitely have benefited from more background on the Hive and just how these Hive-people came to be.
I also found myself cheesed-off by the ending. It had a 'The Lady or the Tiger' feeling to it, and ended rather abruptly, though I suppose Mr. Herbert wanted to leave the ending to us.
I also found myself cheesed-off by the ending. It had a 'The Lady or the Tiger' feeling to it, and ended rather abruptly, though I suppose Mr. Herbert wanted to leave the ending to us.
Not the world's greatest book, but an interesting premise. And while the ending was slightly underwhelming, I really enjoyed the fact that the way he wrote it, even though you'd think there ought to be a pretty clear "good guys" and "bad guys" divide here, you're left a bit conflicted on who you'd actually want to come out on top. Or maybe the answer is neither? In any case, while it certainly is no Dune, his aim is still clearly on bringing some attention to ecology and how humans interact with the planet and everything on it, and I think he did that fairly well. Recommended to those who are Herbert fans, and those who are curious and have open minds.
There's a secret under Oregon. A group of people have decided to model a society on insects. They have secretly built a hive beneath a farm in Oregon. It is now fifty-thousand strong. A shadowy government organization has taken an interest in this odd farm. Will they discover the horrors of Hellstrom's hive?
Hellstrom's Hive takes a different and quirky idea and runs with it. Inspired by the '70's quasi-documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle, Frank Herbert decided to write a book examining the concept of humans adapted to a hive-like society.
The book starts out strong, with the eerie atmosphere of a horror novel. The first bunch of pages fly by as we follow an intrepid investigator who is keeping an eye on the farm. There's no real activity show more to speak of, but the situation is unsettling nonetheless.
Unfortunately, after that strong opening, the book settles down into a much more stable pace. There are no chapters in the book. Rather there are continuous sections, each representing one of the several viewpoints we follow through the course of the story. It is all interesting and there's always something happening. But the sense of urgency and tension the book starts with aren't present, making the rest of the book seem almost sedate in comparison.
Still, Hellstrom's Hive isn't meant to be a potboiler. Frank Herbert is unique among the sci-fi that I read in that he focuses on ecology and society rather than the technology and futurism that is the focus of most of the science fiction I prefer.
Here, Herbert does a very good job of explaining in detail how his imagined society would work. His characters are pretty flat (though still better and more lifelike than the characters in most contemporaneous sci-fi), but his hive-society is richly imagined and detailed. It would have been easy to make the hive-society a stand-in for communism, even inadvertently. But Herbert never even comes close. While several aspects of the hive society are horrific to us, he never paints them as villains. The 'heroic' side is shown to be much more evil as an organization, though they aren't presented as the bad guys either.
Several different agents from the never-named government agency are followed, along with Nils Hellstrom, the current leader of the hive, who passes himself off as a maker of entomological documentaries. The sections are also peppered with quotes from agency reports, a hive manual, the words of the former hive brood-mother and other sources that add color and depth to the story.
I'm not clear why the the government agency he created is so shadowy. I suppose he wanted to use their back-stabbing as a juxtaposition to his hive people, but he could have accomplished the same thing using a real agency. Why not the FBI? Maybe he just wanted his characters not to be bound by the rules and laws a real agency has to follow. But all of the mystery surrounding this agency seemed to act as a distraction and it never really goes anywhere.
I have a few complaints. The book is dated, the pacing is off and I feel like the book maybe didn't live up to its idea's potential. But what it set out to do is well done. If you've never read Frank Herbert, read Dune. But he deserves to be remembered for more than the series that over-shadowed him. If you enjoyed Dune and would like to see what else he's written, either Hellstrom's Hive or The White Plague are good places to look. show less
Hellstrom's Hive takes a different and quirky idea and runs with it. Inspired by the '70's quasi-documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle, Frank Herbert decided to write a book examining the concept of humans adapted to a hive-like society.
The book starts out strong, with the eerie atmosphere of a horror novel. The first bunch of pages fly by as we follow an intrepid investigator who is keeping an eye on the farm. There's no real activity show more to speak of, but the situation is unsettling nonetheless.
Unfortunately, after that strong opening, the book settles down into a much more stable pace. There are no chapters in the book. Rather there are continuous sections, each representing one of the several viewpoints we follow through the course of the story. It is all interesting and there's always something happening. But the sense of urgency and tension the book starts with aren't present, making the rest of the book seem almost sedate in comparison.
Still, Hellstrom's Hive isn't meant to be a potboiler. Frank Herbert is unique among the sci-fi that I read in that he focuses on ecology and society rather than the technology and futurism that is the focus of most of the science fiction I prefer.
Here, Herbert does a very good job of explaining in detail how his imagined society would work. His characters are pretty flat (though still better and more lifelike than the characters in most contemporaneous sci-fi), but his hive-society is richly imagined and detailed. It would have been easy to make the hive-society a stand-in for communism, even inadvertently. But Herbert never even comes close. While several aspects of the hive society are horrific to us, he never paints them as villains. The 'heroic' side is shown to be much more evil as an organization, though they aren't presented as the bad guys either.
Several different agents from the never-named government agency are followed, along with Nils Hellstrom, the current leader of the hive, who passes himself off as a maker of entomological documentaries. The sections are also peppered with quotes from agency reports, a hive manual, the words of the former hive brood-mother and other sources that add color and depth to the story.
I'm not clear why the the government agency he created is so shadowy. I suppose he wanted to use their back-stabbing as a juxtaposition to his hive people, but he could have accomplished the same thing using a real agency. Why not the FBI? Maybe he just wanted his characters not to be bound by the rules and laws a real agency has to follow. But all of the mystery surrounding this agency seemed to act as a distraction and it never really goes anywhere.
I have a few complaints. The book is dated, the pacing is off and I feel like the book maybe didn't live up to its idea's potential. But what it set out to do is well done. If you've never read Frank Herbert, read Dune. But he deserves to be remembered for more than the series that over-shadowed him. If you enjoyed Dune and would like to see what else he's written, either Hellstrom's Hive or The White Plague are good places to look. show less
This was a really good read; I'd give it a 4.5 if I could. The tension mounts as the story builds and you cross your fingers that it can't be real. The small sub sections that are fit into the main storyline give interesting insight into the Hive's history and are reminiscent Dune.
I watched the related 1971 drama/documentary, "The Hellstrom Chronicle", when I was about halfway through to get a feeling for where Frank Herbert was coming from in regards to Nils Hellstrom, his movie making business and his warnings to the world. While the film was just interesting, how Herbert expanded on it is exceptional.
I watched the related 1971 drama/documentary, "The Hellstrom Chronicle", when I was about halfway through to get a feeling for where Frank Herbert was coming from in regards to Nils Hellstrom, his movie making business and his warnings to the world. While the film was just interesting, how Herbert expanded on it is exceptional.
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Frank Herbert's Hellstrom's Hive reviewed by jseger9000 in Reviews reviewed (May 2011)
Author Information
256+ Works 147,531 Members
Frank Herbert was born Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. in Tacoma, Washington on October 8, 1920. He worked originally as a journalist, but then turned to science fiction. His Dune series has had a major impact on that genre. Some critics assert that Herbert is responsible for bringing in a new branch of ecological science fiction. He had a personal show more interest in world ecology, and consulted with the governments of Vietnam and Pakistan about ecological issues. The length of some of Herbert's novels also helped make it acceptable for science fiction authors to write longer books. It is clear that, if the reader is engaged by the story---and Herbert certainly has the ability to engage his readers---length is not important. As is usually the case with popular fiction, it comes down to whether or not the reader is entertained, and Herbert is, above all, an entertaining and often compelling writer. His greatest talent is his ability to create new worlds that are plausible to readers, in spite of their alien nature, such as the planet Arrakis in the Dune series. Frank Herbert died of complications from pancreatic cancer on February, 11, 1986, in Madison, Wisconsin. He was 65. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Hellstrom's Hive
- Original title
- Hellstrom's Hive
- Alternate titles
- Project 40
- Original publication date
- 1973-11
- People/Characters
- Nils Hellstrom
- Important places*
- Fosterville, Oregon, USA
- Epigraph*
- Worte der Brutmutter Trova Hellstrøm:
"Mit freudiger Gewißheit
erwarte ich den Tag, da ich in die
Bottiche eingehen werde,
um mit unserem ganzen Volk
eins zu werden."
26. Oktober 1896 - First words
- The man with the binoculars squirmed forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass.
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Zugleich Beginn eines massiven Sofortprogramms mit dem Ziel einer risikolosen Vernichtung dessen, was in amtlichen Kreisen neuerdings ›der Hellstrøm-Greuel‹ genannt wird.
- Publisher's editor*
- Jeschke, Wolfgang
- Original language
- English
- Disambiguation notice
- This work was originally published under the title PROJECT 40 in GALAXY MAGAZINE.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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