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Worker Iroedh was confused. Though she was a lover of antiquity, she really could put no faith in the Oracle's prophecy. It was true that strange being, Terrans, had come from beyond the heavens. But these "men" were no gods. Had not she seen them making fools of themselves over a silly thing called "love"? Was this the action of gods?

Certainly no god of the Avtini would carry on like this. Avtini gods would "love" only a Community, with its self-respecting groups of workers and drones and its highly productive Queen.

And as for Queens, why no Avtini Queen would go rogue. Only a few mad drones had ever been known to desert the Community. And their lives were the price of the antisocial action.

No, Iroedh could not understand the prophecy and so it must be false.

But Iroedh was soon to learn that prophecy has a way of coming true, and that even the most unassuming antiquarian Worker might be born to rule.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

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About the author

L. Sprague de Camp

758 books312 followers
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
Profile Image for Gwendolynpatrick.
14 reviews9 followers
April 7, 2009
A guilty pleasure. This is really B movie material.
Humans land on a planet where bee-like beings reign. They screw up the society (Jim Kirk says the hell with the prime directive!) by introducing the idea that you can have a monogamous (or at least SERIALLY monogamous) society where each female can get her guy...not just the queen bee.

Kinda trashy and has some interesting insect sex...

I have a signed copy from Sprague. He laughed when I told him this book was a lot of fun.
Profile Image for Ira (SF Words of Wonder).
274 reviews72 followers
August 8, 2023
Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE. Sci-Fi adventure story that was way ahead of it's time concerning gender themes. Very interesting concept of aliens in a bee/hive like culture as they make first contact with Earthmen.
Profile Image for Derek.
1,382 reviews8 followers
May 22, 2016
I can't claim to be entirely satisfied with any de Camp novel (okay, maybe The Fallible Fiend). There's some aspect to his lightly comic tone or its application that comes off as though he thinks he's more witty than he really is. At best it is wry, and at worst, it is grating.

It does not help that both the gender politics on display and the barely-transgressive skirting of sexuality have aged poorly. Though, this has a side effect that I now wonder if it were intentional: seen from the frank Avtini perspective, humans with their weird sexual hangups (nudity taboos, childishly avoiding discussion of sexual topics, committing violence in the name of ill-considered romance) are the weird ones, especially when those hangups allow a clever Avtini worker to blackmail a member of the human vessel. The Avtini look like the mature ones, despite their low technology.

Of course, it wouldn't be de Camp science fiction without playing games around societal development and the introduction of cataclysmically revolutionary technology. This trend argues poorly with the realized Avtini civilization--vaguely hivelike, with fertile queens, male drones, and female-neuter workers--which was far more interesting than anything else that de Camp had to say.
Profile Image for Ron.
Author 2 books170 followers
August 8, 2013
In 1951 this was cutting edge science fiction, addressing, however obliquely, sexual mores. Today it's pretty tame.

In fact, as science fiction, it larger isn't. Though it details the landing of humans on another planet from the point of view of the alien inhabitants, the aliens are simply humans with a few cosmetic changes and different breeding patterns. (Think: Star Trek at its worst.)

Sprague de Camp was a pioneer of SF but he obviously struck out occasionally too. This was a no-hitter.

Only okay.
Profile Image for John.
265 reviews13 followers
August 29, 2013
Rogue Queen was written like an exciting adventure story, which kept the reader attentive. In addition, he mixed with the adventure his impressions of how an alien civilization would be affected if it was transformed from a communal/hive existence to a conjugal married lifestyle. Although de Camp's dialogues between "Terrans" (i.e. space travelers from earth) and aliens regarding various philosophies is probably unrealistice being too relaxed or familiar as they talked to each other like they were old neighbors, the concept was very interesting. In addition, the story was engrossing and entertaining without being too vulgar or overly descriptive when talking about intimate concerns. Overall I recommend the book as a good read.
Profile Image for Simon Mcleish.
Author 2 books142 followers
February 26, 2022
Much though I have liked other Sprague de Camp stories in the past, this early (and very short) novel has some extremely dated sexual politics. It has a fairly interesting scenario, where humans land on a planet which is home to aliens whose society is similar to earthly honeybees, the main character being a worker, female but not sexually developed. This leads to the laughable cover blurb on the edition I read, "She learned about sex from an Earth-man!", but more accurately, she learns to be subservient to her man when she becomes sexually active.... Perhaps excusable in the early fifties, but hard to ignore seventy years on. Moderately entertaining otherwise, however.
Profile Image for Charl.
1,507 reviews7 followers
August 19, 2019
An otherwise humanoid species that lays eggs, forms "communities" with a single fertile female, multiple male "drones" to fertilize her, and all other females are neuter workers (think bees or termites) that de Camp makes surprisingly empathetic. And then humans show up.

The Terrans aren't there to deliberately disrupt the local society (they have rules not unlike Star Trek's Prime Directive), but their very existence can't help changing things, and de Camp makes exploring those changes intriguing.

Worth reading.
Profile Image for Dave Peticolas.
1,377 reviews45 followers
October 8, 2014

This looks like it was a very interesting book. It also has the distinction of a misspelled title on the spine, "Rouge Queen", which sounds like a very different work.

Profile Image for Josephine Draper.
302 reviews1 follower
October 27, 2019
Very readable bit of 1950s-style pulp fiction. Concerns a group of humans in some futuristic time (yet, suspiciously, despite having invented manned space flight, not having progressed beyond boxed radio communications, hand-held compasses or helicopter transport, inventions which were the height of sophistication in 1951...) who are exploring a new planet and get embroiled in local politics despite supposedly not wanting to interfere.

Let's ignore the inconvenient plot holes, like the ability of the group to speak each other's language despite the humans never having visited the planet before, and the convenient physical similarities of the humans and the Avtini. This is, after all, pulp science fiction, and very enjoyable it is too.

The plot barrels along at a great pace, concerning mainly the societal structure of the Avtini who are modelled on a bee colony, centring around a dominant breeding female, and the profound influence which supposed neutral observers have in challenging this culture through befriending Iroedh, a sexless female, and her friend Antic, a male.

Much strife ensues, involving skirmishes, battles, coups and romantic dalliances. The bee-like culture is easy to understand. It is all very silly and could have done with inventing some futuristic technology rather than leaving the space travellers mired in 1950s tech. The concept of earth travellers selling their society to a primitive alien culture is all a bit uncomfortable. Nonetheless, still a good read 70 years later.
32 reviews
February 25, 2024
It was a short read, but it took me a while to get through. Found out after finishing that there is a glossary of Ormazdian names and words that would have been very helpful whilst reading.

My main concern is the gender politics of it all. I thought that this was a fascinating look at "alien" sexuality and offered insight into many a queer dynamic. There are definitely things that I need to mull over, like the gender-explanding metamorphosis that comes via diet (the idea of what goes into you making you fertile) or the concept of uniting a divided people with the promise of bisexual relationships.

I could go on and on about this one, as it is short but very dense and conceptually heavy, but I am very tired after finishing this book.

As always, my favorite characters were Vardh and Bloch and maybe Gildakk. I like the sweetness and the Sapphic-ness of Vardh and her undying loyalty to the Rogue Queen. I enjoyed Bloch for his earthly humor and humanity (sometimes humanity tropes annoy me, but he was very well written). And I thought Gildakk was an interesting answer to a momentary consideration from earlier in the book that also fulfilled a major plot point and enlarged the story's world.

I hated Rhodh. Bootlicker. And the former queens of Elham were pretty insufferable (great battle scene, but otherwise, a big no from me).

Great read! Not profane, but not for kids.
Profile Image for carey lina.
54 reviews10 followers
April 23, 2024
Science fiction that doesn't stand up the test of time.

A matriarchal, female dominant society is introduced. Interesting. Unfortunately, the author's central question: What would it be like these in-charge ladies to meet some Earth Men? isn't. Further, his posit that a female run society, borrowing hierarchy from that of bees, would stop progressing when its members no longer exercise their sexuality (bisexual in this case means cis het male and cis het female sexuality) is offensive.

Silliness about diets and oracles and poor dude doesn't know how to end it.

Also idk about y'all but my paperback 1951 copy had 30 pages taken out and 30 pages of Three Against the Witch World by Andre Norton added in.
54 reviews
August 2, 2019
I am not sure if I enjoyed the book or not, but it was interesting. In general, science fiction does not travel across time very well, but I would not really call this science fiction so much as fantasy. The basic premise was interesting, the action was pretty standard, the social commentary that 20th century human values are superior to alien ones was already a cliche when the book was written, and the plot was pretty b-movieish. But still, it had its charm and was a bit of a window on fantasy fiction of the time.
Profile Image for Martha.
146 reviews5 followers
March 13, 2018
This was the very first SciFi novel I ever read, probably around 1954or 1955. I was a kid and an avid reader and the book was discovered on a bookshelf on a boring day. It made a big impression at the time and lead me to years of reading SciFi and then SciFi/Fantasy. It re-read it this week on a nostalgia trip and found that it hasn't aged all that well with the changes in social attitudes in the past half century. But perhaps newer readers will find it a useful "period piece?"
Profile Image for Martin.
1,181 reviews24 followers
July 25, 2022
Took me forever to get through it because de Camp is just not much of a wordsmith. 222 pages without a single memorable turn of a phrase. While cutting edge at the time for its open acceptance of both lesbianism and polyamory, it's not that good a book.

While the crew of a ship visiting a primitive culture claims they never choose sides, they immediately choose sides. There is no momentary pause to consider the implications of such a choice.
364 reviews2 followers
May 5, 2025
A very lightweight planetary romance that imagines a society of very humanoid aliens with a hive society including workers, drones, and a queen. Each community is largely self sufficient, and it is common for wars to break out between communities. A Terran ship appears on the planet and inadvertently throws the alien society out of balance. A very minor work.
Profile Image for Petrikore.
24 reviews
November 9, 2018
L. Sprague de Camp you fucked up by writing this, and I fucked up by reading it.
55 reviews1 follower
February 1, 2020
Have loved this book for years.

Came across this book when I was in 6th grade in the early 70's. It is still one that I reread at least a couple times a year.
Profile Image for Christopher.
13 reviews1 follower
May 18, 2018
A space communism of beelike-people find cultural freedom by rejecting veganism to grow tits and reproductive organs, adopting human marriage to redistribute sex to incels, and making machetes.
449 reviews5 followers
December 13, 2013
This was a fun book, even though it did not hold too many surprises. The heroine of the story is a worker (asexual) female of an egg-laying humanoid species with a social structure similar to Earthly ants or bees: in each community there is one egg-laying queen serviced by a number of drones, and all work and warfare is done by the neuter female workers.This system is described as rigid and stagnant: the inhabitants of each hive have very little knowledge or interest in the wider world, and such things as diplomacy and cooperation outside one's own kin seem to be alien to them. The heroine, Iroedh, is a nonconformist with her unusual interest in antiquity and friendship with one of the queen's drones.

The status quo is disrupted by the arrival of a spaceship from Earth. Iroedh is exposed to the humans, their technology, ideas, and their somewhat oap-operatic and stereotypical relationships. More than that, during a perilous journey to see an Oracle, she stumbles on a secret about her own physiology - and turns into the titular rogue queen that will turn the whole world around - again.

Although communism on Earth is mentioned in passing as a harmful collectivist ideology that had to be destroyed, I don't really see this book as aimed against any ideology in particular. Rather it seems to want to play with the idea of a humanlike species living like social insects. I am not sure how well it manages that. The hive system turns out to be rather easily disrupted, but the way this works raises an interesting point about the interplay between genes and environment.

It is undeniable that the humans and their gender roles are painted in a rather conservative way, but not without humour. In any case, one could argue that they are viewed through the eyes of an alien whose cultural knowledge is based on a popular romance novel one of the humans loans her. In any case, this was written in 1951 by one of the big names in science fiction. According to WIkipedia, this was one of the first science fiction novels to deal with sexual themes. In a way it is a rather simple story with few surprises, but as a window into the genre's past it is enjoyable.
Profile Image for Tina.
1,000 reviews37 followers
September 13, 2019
You have a matriarchal world with colonies set up like beehives. Then humans come down and mess everything up. Prime Directive be damned!

In truth, I don't believe the intention was to warp the society to meet human gender roles of 1951, but that's how it plays out. It's as if to solve a couple of minor problems in the Matriarchy, you have to dismantle the entire thing. It's quite annoying because you have a female-dominated cast, a human female character who manages to be fairly strong and less stereotypical for the year of publication, but then, under the guise of "love", gender roles become linked to genitals. I'm not exaggerating - when one character starts developing breasts and being "fully functional", she grows more submissive and claims it's due to the change in her body. Sigh.

Yet, despite this whole arc, the book is a lot of fun - it's easy to read, it's hilarious when it comes to futuristic technology (they use microfiche as an e-reader!) and the society and how it functions is very detailed. The plot moves a fairly quick pace (the book is only 150 pages). There are some genuinely amusing moments and some bizarre ones, and a couple cool fight scenes. Overall it's a tightly-wrought sci-fi from 70 years ago.

Shameless Plug!
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Profile Image for James.
3,956 reviews31 followers
June 16, 2020
Here we have a female protagonist Iroedh in an early 50s SF story, I guess that was allowed because she was an alien :) To be fair, other important characters include a Terran woman Barbe Dulac, who is competent and not one of the bad SF pulp stereotypes, this book even passes the Bechtel Test. The Terran crew also is not all of Northern European extraction which is unusual for many pulp SF stories of the period.

On Iroedh's world most people reside in Communities that are led by a queen, who bears the children of the male drones while labor is performed by the sterile female workers. Iroedh the nerdy historian knows that things were somehow different in the past but doesn't question the current setup. She's friends with a drone who is going to be executed during the next 'cleanup', but through a clever ploy based on a prime directive(deCamp didn't call it that) violation, forces the Terrans to aid her in his rescue.

This is one of DeCamp's Viagens Interplanetarias series that he wrote from the 40s thru the 90s. They have aged better than many of his contemporaries, he avoided many of the hideous tropes used by early SF. Most, if not all are fun reads.
Profile Image for Julie  Capell.
1,218 reviews33 followers
June 29, 2016
This 1951 novel is part of the author's "Viagens Interplanetarias" series which was, according to Wikipedia, his "most extended work." I have not read the other books in this series, but apparently "Rogue Queen" was the author's "most influential" Viagens novel and "one of the earliest science fiction novels to deal with sexual themes" (also via Wikipedia). A review on the back of the paperback edition I own (1951 edition) says "Mr. de Camp instills a lot of subtlety in his story" of the conversion of an entire planet of asexual, bee-like beings to good, old-fashioned Earth values. "Subtle" this novel may have seemed in 1951, but to the eyes of this post-sexual revolution female reader, it was a laughably heavy-handed ode to male dominance. In addition, the book espouses, albeit in a breezy and somewhat unconscious manner, anti-communist, pro-imperialist sentiments throughout. Such beliefs were de rigueur in the early fifties but produce in the modern reader a different reaction than the author undoubtedly wished: one finds oneself disliking the Earthmen and hoping against hope that the native queen would resist the invaders and their patriarchal--and patronizing--beliefs.
Profile Image for Kamas Kirian.
408 reviews19 followers
September 19, 2013
In all, a decent book, rather more like a novella in length. But, the hype over it being such a ground breaking venture on sex in SF just seems silly and overblown. Of course, reading it half a century after it came out is a vastly different experience than if I had read it in the '50's. The discourse on sex seems so tame by today's standards.

The story starts out rather dull and somewhat slow. Told from the point of view of the aliens was a little different, and even though it was somewhat annoying at times it was still interesting. Once the blackmail hit things picked up nicely and progressed at a pretty quick pace. Overall, well written. I just don't think it lived up to the hype, which is probably simply just an artifact of a different era.

The eBook was formatted well with only one noticeable spelling error.
Profile Image for Lisa (Harmonybites).
1,834 reviews410 followers
April 21, 2010
This is actually the third book in a series but I had no idea that was the case when I bought the book and it stands on its own. Terrans come to a planet Ormazd where the humanoid Avtini are organized along the lines of a bee hive, with a fertile queen bee reigning over the clan with its harem of male drones and neuter female workers. When a drone and worker are drawn to each other, with the help of the Terrans among them, they spark a social revolution. This is counted as groundbreaking; published in 1951, this broke the taboo on sexual themes and was among the first to treat anthropological and gender issues. The book is a very slim volume and a quick, entertaining read, and though I wouldn't put it up there with one of the classics of the genre, I found it tremendous fun.
Profile Image for Nicholas Whyte.
5,343 reviews209 followers
August 24, 2014
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2331338.html[return][return]A planet where human beings, for some reason, have started to behave like bees (as far as this is convenient for what the author wants to do with the plot): rival queens duel to the death in naked single combat, non-working males are brutally killed off, and the female workers who really keep things going are kept on a low-protein diet to prevent them from becoming fertile. Our subversive and intelligent heroine meets an expedition from Earth, eats meat for the first time and thus becomes a Real Woman; and society collapses into monogamy and nuclear families. I think there is some great analysis waiting to be done here.
17 reviews
June 9, 2013
Awesome read. Classic science fiction with just a hint of a pulpy sword and planet bent.

I think that this book was to a certain extent (like burroughs and many others before) a reflection of cold-war anti-communist paranoia, and this element of the book is hilariously bad.

The plot driven story, full of interesting sci-fi weirdness and action however, is just awesome.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews

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