Alien by Roger Luckhurst

Author:Roger Luckhurst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

'A Linnean nightmare'

In Van Vogt's source stories for the film, particularly 'Discord in Scarlet', the creature owes much to the life cycle of parasitic wasps. We tend to highlight nasty social wasps like hornets and yellow jackets, but the majority of the thousands of species of wasp are solitary and parasitic. Predatory parasitoid wasps have some evil tricks: the adult female uses its sting to paralyse prey such as caterpillars, which are then dragged to a nest, where the wasp uses its ovipositor to plant its eggs. The parasitic larvae grow by eating the caterpillar from the inside out, keeping the host alive for as long as possible by avoiding any vital organs. The Ichneumonidae species of wasp, one entomological guide explains, prepares the caterpillar 'by chewing it with their mandibles, working from one end to another without breaking the skin'. The larva then breaks out of the host with 'sets of lateral thoracic and abdominal teeth'.36 Although the creature in Alien is an imaginary animal, a chimera like a manticore, the moment when the larva bursts out of Kane's chest (and the way this creature cocoons its prey) is meant to echo the life cycle of the wasp.

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