This is a book I’ve always remembered reading with fascination as a youngster. I recently obtained “Entities, the Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell” on an interlibrary loan that included that novel. The book was written in 1957, the year I began my junior year in high school. A review on Amazon says it is probably Russell’s best known novel. It is the story of James Mowry who is asked to be an agent behind enemy lines in Earth’s war with the Sirian Combine. He is asked to be like the wasp in the car that stings the driver and causes the car to crash. The novel was nominated for the 1998 Prometheus Hall of Fame award.

Terry Pratchett said he couldn’t imagine “…a funnier terrorists’ handbook,” although I didn’t see that much humor in the book. The central theme is that an enemy can be greatly harmed by psychological and guerrilla warfare by a small, deadly protagonist. I think the book is pertinent because of the huge impact being made on the U.S. and the world by relatively small groups of terrorists dedicated and willing to die for a cause (which is why I’m breaking my usual habit of reviewing nonfiction books).

The introduction by Jack L. Chalker describes Russell as being a science fiction/fantasy writer preceding WWII. Russell worked in the British office of naval intelligence section call XX, or double cross. His group, which included the author of the future “James Bond” books, Ian Fleming, was to think of inexpensive ways to harm the Japanese and Germans and diminish their military capabilities. He put together the book as a blueprint for wartime terrorism. It is interesting that the Japanese secret police was called Temperikai and that the author named the secret police of the enemy planet Kaitemperi.

Much of what is in the book could be described as prescient about some of what would happen in the United States after 9/11. For example, the Wasp sent letter bombs and packages and issued threats resulting in reactions by the government under attack. Mail would be examined, and all suspicious parcels would be taken apart in a blast-proof room. There’d be a city-wide search with radiation-detectors for the component parts of a fission bomb. Civil defense would be alerted in readiness to cope with a mammoth explosion that might or might not take place. Anyone on the streets who walked with a secretive air and wore a slightly mad expression would be arrested and hauled in for questioning.

The main character of the book recounts being told of a prankster who created a panic by staring at the sky and shouting phrases such as “Blue flames!” The curious crowd that gathered disrupted everything. Two killers stole a car and twenty-seven thousand members of the police and military were tied up until were caught. The final description was how the driver of a car swiped at a wasp and crashed, destroying the car and killing the occupants.

Mowry had been born in the Sirian Empire, which had been at war with Terran humans for ten months. The Terrans had significant technology advantages that were holding the Sirians at bay, but the Sirians had a large advantage in numbers (twelve times the number of Terrans). Terran needed wasps to internally disrupt the Sirians. Mowry was offered to be conscripted and sent to the front as a soldier, or to become a wasp. He was described as being willing to do anything as long as the alternative was worse; so he accepted becoming a wasp. Mowry had to have his ears surgically pinned back, his wisdom teeth removed, and be dyed purple to be able to meld back into the Sirian population. He was extensively trained and landed on Jamiec, ninety-fourth planet of the Sirian Empire.

The beginning of Mowry’s campaign was quite clever. He was provided with stickers for the Dirac Angetum Gesept, or the Sirian Freedom Party, that had various propaganda messages directed at the oppression of the Sirian Empire. The stickers had adhesive that virtually resisted removal by scraping, and the words were impregnated with hydrofluoric acid that was activated and etched glass if someone tried to wash the stickers off with water.

The government requires all organizations to register, so Mowry registers that his group did glass etching. The fact that he actually completes the required registration for the Dirac Angestun Gespt and its purpose being “Destruction of the present government and termination of war against Terra,” is one source of humor found by Pratchett.

Mowry was successful at creating chaos and eluding capture, although sometimes I thought he was often too impetuous and too lucky. I didn’t enjoy the phases of his operations where he hired contract killers and began sending lethal packages with bombs. Mowry is eventually successful. Sirian defenses were weakened in part because of the massive government paranoia to the point that the plant falls to a human invasion force. Mowry is held as a prisoner by the invaders for a time, and is rewarded after he is identified by being told he is being assigned to a different planet in conflict with Terran.