In Charles-Étienne Ferland’s Dévorés, wasps are at the top of the food chain
In our current time of food insecurity, insects have entered the spotlight as an undervalued and promising food source. However, in Charles-Étienne Ferland’s new post-apocalyptic novel, Dévorés, published by Ottawa publishing house Les Éditions L’Interligne, this prospect is ironically reversed, and humans themselves are the ones being devoured as enormous mutant wasps go through the human food supply.
Ferland is currently completing a master’s in insect ecology at the University of Guelph. He studies a parasitic wasp, the Synopeas myles, that completes a part of its reproductive cycle in the body of a pest fly of the canola plant, the swede midge.
“Have you seen the movie Alien?” he asked me. “There’s a scene in which an alien lays an embryo inside one of the explorers, and a couple hours later the alien bursts out of the chest of the passenger, and that’s exactly what’s happening with the wasps.”
Evidently, as Ferland explained to me, the leap from science to science fiction is sometimes a simple one: “You just tweak their size or reproductive cycle… change the proportions,” he said.
Ferland’s novel was a creative way to play with the species he saw under a microscope every day and magnify these creatures for his readers, literally: the fantastical wasps featured in Dévorés are 10 centimetres long if male, or 10 times bigger if female, accentuating their intricate, predatory bodies and making them seem like monsters as opposed to brown specks. In one passage, the main characters lead an investigation into one of the hives, the size of which is compared to a 12-story building. These wasps use humans, rather than pest flies, as part of their reproductive cycle.
(Photo courtesy of Charles-Etienne Ferland)
When I asked Ferland about the appeal of the post-apocalyptic genre, he said, “I like how the freedom of the genre allows the characters to evolve. They don’t have a nine-to-five job… so it opens many doors. There’s a lot of potential for action. I certainly had fun writing it.” He cracked a grin at this point as if to backup the sentiment.
While the novel is currently published in French, there are hopes for an English translation to come. Readers can also look forward to two future sequels in which the action will travel beyond Montreal, the initial setting, to an island off the shore of Kingston, Ont., that could serve as a safe haven for the otherwise trapped protagonists.
Although the insects in his book are depicted as monsters, Ferland sees real-life insects as “amazing little creatures that don’t always get the attention they deserve.” He hopes his novel will open more eyes to the stories these creatures have to tell.
Feature image by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion