Turtledove
Register
Advertisement
"Vermin"  
FSFMarch93
Author Harry Turtledove
First Appearance The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Collected Counting Up, Counting Down
Genre(s) Science fiction
Publication date March, 1993

"Vermin" is a short story by Harry Turtledove. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1993 and in Counting Up, Counting Down, Del Rey, 2002. It is a science fiction story set in the distant future, on a foreign planet colonized by a human religious order, the Holy Mission Church, a fundamentalist Protestant sect. The colony, called New Zion, is based on Church principles: adherence to God and Jesus Christ, an aversion to technology, strict patriarchy, and a generally repressive attitude toward sexuality.

The story's protagonist, Victoria Griffin, a devout woman, hits on the idea of eliminating the jungle planet's prodigious vermin in the hope of improving the quality of life of the planet's native sentient life, the Haldols. She enlists an unlikely ally in the form of Dr. Janice, an agent of the "Federation" which is considered the cultural enemy of the Church. This idea threatens to bring about the Haldols' extinction.

See also[]

Advertisement