Let the Ants Try

Pohl, Frederik (as James MacCreigh). "Let the Ants Try." Planet Stories Winter 1949. Collected Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories. New York City: Tom Doherty Associates ("A TOR Book"), 2005. As of 26 March 2022, on line as a Project Gutenberg eBook "by James MacCreigh," at link here.[1] Erlich recalls reading this story as a child or teenager, as does Philip Friel, in a post at link here.[2] So "Let the Ants Try" may have appeared in an anthology in the 1950s or early 1960s, or in a comic book version.

After an atomic war, two scientists go back in time in a time machine — some 40 million years — to drop off mutant ants with lungs, ants that evolve into large, intelligent creatures wot a high-tech civilization: for a mutant-ant/machine interface, and a world in which Homo sapiens will not evolve.

Cf. and contrast Clifford Simak's "Census," from 1944.

RDE, finishing, 26Mar22