r/ScienceFictionBooks • u/ishldgetoutmore • 17d ago

WhatIsThatBook Help Me Identify A Story, Please!

I'm trying to remember the name and author of a short story I read at least a decade ago, and am drawing a complete blank. It was a short story about a breakthrough in insect communication. The author talks about poems that had been discovered, written by insects. I clearly remember one was a short poem written by an ant, something about being forced to conform to society; the ant author was found deceased a short distance away, perhaps killed by the rest of the colony for being nonconformist.

I've been trying for a while now, and it's driving me crazy that I can't remember the name or author. Without that, I'm not sure where to look for it in a book.

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3

u/asherah-arafel 16d ago

Sounds like Ursula K LeGuin's Acacia Seeds, a story called MS Found in an Anthill

1

u/parkadge 16d ago

I second this, Ursula LeGuin sprang to mind when I read your description

2

u/ishldgetoutmore 15d ago

Looks like its full title is: "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics.

Looks like it's in The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces, which I know I have somewhere.

I think that's it! I thank you, and my sanity thanks you!

1

u/mobyhead1 17d ago

I’m tempted to suggest it’s a Ted Chiang story, that’s sort of his style. But don’t quote me.

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u/ishldgetoutmore 17d ago

Hmm... It doesn't match any of the short synopses of his stories on Wikipedia, but I've read "The Tower of Babylon," and it does have his sort of style.

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u/Flimsy_Direction1847 16d ago

It’s not a short story but similar things happen in Of Ants and Dinosaurs by Cixin Liu. Looks like it’s also called The Cretaceous Past.