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<div>[[John Wyndham]]'s 1957 novel ''[[The Midwich Cuckoos]]'' sees the women of an English village give birth to and then bring up a group of alien children, the natural model being the [[brood parasitism]] of birds such as the [[European cuckoo]].<ref name=Westfahl2005/>
[[John Wyndham]]'s 1957 novel ''[[The Midwich Cuckoos]]'' sees the women of an English village give birth to and then bring up a group of alien children, the natural model being the [[brood parasitism]] of birds such as the [[European cuckoo]].<ref name=Westfahl2005/>
===Parasitic castrator===
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</div><div>===Parasitic castrator===
{{further|Parasitic castrator}}
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Philip Fracassi's 2017 horror novella ''Sacculina'' is named for [[Sacculina|a genus of barnacle-like crustaceans]] that castrate their crab hosts. It tells the tale of a chartered fishing boat, far from home, that is overrun by parasites from the deep. The horror publishing house Gehenna and Hinnom state that "such a vile and frightening name fits perfectly as the title of this novella."<ref>{{cite web |title=Sacculina by Philip Fracassi: A Gehenna Post Review |url=https://gehennaandhinnom.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/sacculina-by-philip-fracassi-a-gehenna-post-review/ |publisher=Gehenna and Hinnom Publishers |accessdate=16 June 2018}}</ref></div><div>{{-}}</div>
</div><div>{{further|Parasitic castrator}}</div><div>
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</div><div>Philip Fracassi's 2017 horror novella ''Sacculina'' is named for [[Sacculina|a genus of barnacle-like crustaceans]] that castrate their crab hosts. It tells the tale of a chartered fishing boat, far from home, that is overrun by parasites from the deep. The horror publishing house Gehenna and Hinnom state that "such a vile and frightening name fits perfectly as the title of this novella."<ref>{{cite web |title=Sacculina by Philip Fracassi: A Gehenna Post Review |url=https://gehennaandhinnom.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/sacculina-by-philip-fracassi-a-gehenna-post-review/ |publisher=Gehenna and Hinnom Publishers |accessdate=16 June 2018}}</ref></div><div>{{-}}</div>


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 14:20, 16 June 2018

Parasites by Katrin Alvarez. Oil on canvas, 2011

Parasites appear frequently in fiction, from ancient times onwards as seen in mythical figures like the blood-drinking Lilith, with a flowering in the nineteenth century.[1] These include intentionally disgusting alien monsters in science fiction films, though these are sometimes less "horrible" than real examples in nature. Authors and scriptwriters have to some extent exploited parasite biology: lifestyles including parasitoid, behaviour-altering parasite, brood parasite, parasitic castrator, and many forms of vampire are found in books and films.[2][3][4][5]

Some fictional parasites, like those in Alien, have become well known in their own right.

Literary parasites

Further information: Parasite
A modern gargoyle at Paisley Abbey resembling a Xenomorph parasitoid from Alien

Context

In evolutionary biology, parasitism is a relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life.[6] The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one".[7] Parasitism has a derogatory sense in popular usage. According to the immunologist John Playfair, "In everyday speech, the term 'parasite' is loaded with derogatory meaning. A parasite is a sponger, a lazy profiteer, a drain on society."[8] The idea is however much older. In the classical era, calling someone a parasite was not strictly pejorative: the parasitus was an accepted role in Roman society, in which a person could live off the hospitality of others, in return for "flattery, simple services, and a willingness to endure humiliation".[9][10]

Motifs

Nineteenth century novels

Bela Lugosi as the vampire Count Dracula, 1931

Parasitism as a literary motif became important in the nineteenth century, though with somewhat vague biology. The eponymous Beetle in The Beetle by Richard Marsh, 1897, is clearly parasitic and symbolically castrates the human protagonist, though it is not explicitly identified as a parasitic castrator.[11] Bram Stoker's Count Dracula starts out as an apparently human host, welcoming guests to his home, before revealing his parasitic vampire nature. Conan Doyle's Parasite, in his book The Parasite, makes use of a form of mind control similar to the mesmerism of the Victorian era; it works on some hosts but not others.[12]

Science fiction

Parasites are seen in science fiction as distasteful and sometimes horrible, and are "invariably" extraterrestrial or unnatural.[13] For example, Mira Grant's 2013 novel Parasite envisages a world where people's immune systems are maintained by genetically engineered tapeworms.[14] They form readily understood characters, since, as Gary Westfahl explains, "all parasites have a common urge to propagate their species."[13]

Range

The variety of types of fictional parasite, and along with this the range of media used to describe them, has greatly increased since the nineteenth century, spanning among other things literary novels, science fiction novels and films, horror films, and video games.[11][3][5][15] For example, David Cronenberg's 1975 film Shivers (also called The Parasite Murders and They Came from Within) updated the fictional tradition, imagining a parasite engineered to assist in organ transplants, but then modified by a "deranged scientist" to become both sexually transmitted and an aphrodisiac.[16] The Metroid video game's X Parasite causes a deadly infection, but when a person is vaccinated against it, the parasite confers useful energy and powers.[15][17] The pharmacologist Hideaki Sena's 1995 science fiction horror novel Parasite Eve innovates with a tale of mitochondria, the power-generating organelles in eukaryotic cells (including all animals and plants), that cut free from their mutualistic existence to become parasites.[18]

Truth stranger than fiction

Emerald cockroach wasp "walking" a paralyzed cockroach to its burrow

Kyle Munkittrick, on the Discover magazine website, writes that the great majority of aliens, far from being as strange as possible, are humanoid.[19] Ben Guarino, in The Washington Post, observes that despite all the "cinematic aliens' gravid grotesquerie",[2] earthly parasites have more horrible ways of life. Guarino cites parasitic wasps that lay their eggs inside living caterpillars, inspiring A. E. Van Vogt's 1939 story Discord in Scarlet, Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, and Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien.[2] The eponymous Alien has a "dramatic" life-cycle. Giant eggs hatch into face-huggers that grasp the host's mouth, forcing him to swallow an embryo. It rapidly grows in his intestines, soon afterwards erupting from his chest and growing into a gigantic predatory animal resembling an insect. Guarino cites the parasitologist Michael J. Smout as saying that the "massive changes" are feasible, giving the example of flatworms that transform from an egg to a tadpole-like form to an infective worm. Other biologists agree, too, that parasites can acquire genes from their hosts; Claude dePamphilis gives as example a broomrape plant that had taken up genes from its host on 52 occasions, having thoroughly overcome the host plant's defences. They suggest further themes for future science fiction films, including emerald jewel wasps that turn cockroaches into subservient puppets, able to crawl but unable to act independently; or the barnacle-like crustaceans that castrate their crab hosts, or grow into their brains, altering their behaviour to care for the young barnacles.[2] All the same, a 2013 poll of scientists and engineers by Popular Mechanics magazine revealed that the parasite-based science fiction films The War of the Worlds and Alien were among their top ten favourites.[20]

Types of parasite

Robert A. Heinlein's behaviour-altering The Puppet Masters on the cover of the September 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction

Several types of parasite, corresponding more or less accurately to those known in biology, are found in literature.[21] These include vampires, parasitoids, behaviour-altering parasites, brood parasites, and parasitic castrators as detailed below.

Vampire

Further information: Vampire

In ancient times, myths of blood-drinking demons were widespread, including Lilith who feasted on the blood of babies.[22]

Vampires—haematophagic parasites—began in the modern era with Count Dracula, and have since appeared in many books and films ranging from horror to science fiction. Along with the shift in genres went a diversification of life-forms and life-cycles, including blood-drinking plants like the "Strange orchid" in The Thing from Another World, aliens like H. G. Wells's Martians in The War of the Worlds, "cyber-vamps" like "The Stainless Steel Leech" and "Marid and the Trail of Blood", and psychic bloodsuckers, as in The Parasite and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.[12][23]

Parasitoid

Further information: Parasitoid

The Xenomorph in Alien is a parasitoid, inevitably fatal to its human host. It has a life-cycle stage that grows inside the person's body; when mature, the predatory adult Xenomorph bursts out, killing the host. This behaviour was inspired by parasitoid wasps which have just such a life-cycle.[21][24][25][26]

Behaviour-altering parasite

Brood parasites lay their eggs in other birds' nests for them to raise, inspiring the science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoos.
Further information: Behaviour-altering parasite

The idea of mind controlling parasites has appealed to some scriptwriters. In Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 The Puppet Masters, slug-like parasites from outer space arrive on Earth, fasten to people's backs and seize control of their nervous systems, making their hosts the eponymous puppets.[1] In Star Trek, the Ceti eel tunnels into the ear of its human host until it reaches the brain. This is a behaviour-altering parasite analogous to Toxoplasma gondii, which causes infected mice to become unafraid of cats; that makes them easy to catch, and the parasite then infects the cat, its definitive host, where it can reproduce sexually.[21] The Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1 enters through the host's neck and coils around the host's spine, assuming control.[21][27] The Slug/Squid alien in The Hidden similarly enters via the host's mouth before taking over its body.[27]

Brood parasite

Further information: Brood parasite

John Wyndham's 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos sees the women of an English village give birth to and then bring up a group of alien children, the natural model being the brood parasitism of birds such as the European cuckoo.[13]

Parasitic castrator

Further information: Parasitic castrator

Philip Fracassi's 2017 horror novella Sacculina is named for a genus of barnacle-like crustaceans that castrate their crab hosts. It tells the tale of a chartered fishing boat, far from home, that is overrun by parasites from the deep. The horror publishing house Gehenna and Hinnom state that "such a vile and frightening name fits perfectly as the title of this novella."[28]

References

  1. ^ a b "Parasitism and Symbiosis". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 10 January 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Guarino, Ben (19 May 2017). "Disgusting 'Alien' movie monster not as horrible as real things in nature". The Washington Post.
  3. ^ a b Glassy, Mark C. (2005). The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema. McFarland. pp. 186 ff. ISBN 978-1-4766-0822-8.
  4. ^ Moisseeff, Marika (23 January 2014). "Aliens as an Invasive Reproductive Power in Science Fiction". HAL Archives-Ouvertes.
  5. ^ a b Williams, Robyn; Field, Scott (27 September 1997). "Behaviour, Evolutionary Games and .... Aliens". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  6. ^ Poulin, Robert (2007). Evolutionary Ecology of Parasites. Princeton University Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-691-12085-0.
  7. ^ Wilson, Edward O. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-87140-480-0. Parasites, in a phrase, are predators that eat prey in units of less than one. Tolerable parasites are those that have evolved to ensure their own survival and reproduction but at the same time with minimum pain and cost to the host.
  8. ^ Playfair, John (2007). Living with Germs: In health and disease. Oxford University Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-19-157934-9. Playfair is comparing the popular usage to a biologist's view of parasitism, which he calls (heading the same page) "an ancient and respectable view of life".
  9. ^ Matyszak, Philip (2017). 24 Hours in Ancient Rome: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There. Michael O'Mara. p. 252. ISBN 978-1-78243-857-1.
  10. ^ Damon, Cynthia (1997). "5". The Mask of the Parasite: A Pathology of Roman Patronage. University of Michigan Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-0472107605. A satirist seeking to portray client misery naturally focuses on the relationship with the greatest dependency, that in which a client gets his food from his patron, and for this the prefabricated persona of the parasite proved itself extremely useful.
  11. ^ a b Jajszczok, Justyna (2017). The Parasite and Parasitism in Victorian Science and Literature (PDF). University of Silesia (dissertation). Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  12. ^ a b Hutchison, Sharla; Brown, Rebecca A. (2015). Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siècle to the Millennium: New Essays. McFarland. pp. 2–12. ISBN 978-1-4766-2271-2.
  13. ^ a b c Westfahl, Gary (2005). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 586–588. ISBN 978-0-313-32952-4.
  14. ^ Valentine, Genevieve (30 October 2013). "Medical Magic Leads To Terror In 'Parasite'". National Public Radio. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
  15. ^ a b Loguidice, Bill; Matt Barton (2014). Vintage Game Consoles: An Inside Look at Apple, Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, and the Greatest Gaming Platforms of All Time. CRC Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-135-00651-8.
  16. ^ Tate, Karl (24 May 2012). "Invasion of the Alien Space Parasites". LiveScience. Retrieved 16 June 2018.
  17. ^ Hughes, Rob (3 April 2014). "SA-Xcellent". IGN. Archived from the original on August 17, 2014. Retrieved June 13, 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Lynch, Lisa (5 September 2001). "Tech Flesh 4: Mitochodrial Combustion at Club Parasite | An Interview With Hideaki Sena". Ctheory journal. p. tf011. Retrieved 16 June 2018. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  19. ^ Munkittrick, Kyle (12 July 2011). "The Only Sci-Fi Explanation of Hominid Aliens that Makes Scientific Sense". Discover Magazine. Retrieved 16 June 2018. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  20. ^ Pappalardo, Joe (31 December 2013). "The 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies—As Chosen By Scientists". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 16 June 2018. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  21. ^ a b c d Pappas, Stephanie (29 May 2012). "5 Alien Parasites and Their Real-World Counterparts". LiveScience.
  22. ^ Hurwitz, Siegmund (1992) [1980]. Gela Jacobson (trans.) (ed.). Lilith, the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine. Daimon Verlag. ISBN 3-85630-522-X.
  23. ^ Meehan, Paul (2014). The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature. McFarland. pp. 209–. ISBN 978-1-4766-1654-4.
  24. ^ Sercel, Alex (19 May 2017). "Parasitism in the Alien Movies". Signal to Noise Magazine.
  25. ^ "The Making of Alien's Chestburster Scene". The Guardian. 13 October 2009. Archived from the original on 30 April 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  26. ^ Dove, Alistair (9 May 2011). "This is clearly an important species we're dealing with". Deep Sea News.
  27. ^ a b Elrod, P. N.; Conrad, Roxanne; Terry, Fran (2015). Help! The aliens have landed and taken over my brain. BenBella Books. pp. 59–72. ISBN 978-1-941631-51-5. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  28. ^ "Sacculina by Philip Fracassi: A Gehenna Post Review". Gehenna and Hinnom Publishers. Retrieved 16 June 2018.

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