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{{Infobox short story | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name             = The Screwfly Solution
| image            = <!-- include the [[File:]] and size -->
| caption          = 
| author           = [[James Tiptree Jr.]]
| country          = [[United States]]
| language         = [[English language|English]]
| genre            = [[Science fiction]], [[horror fiction|horror]]
| published_in     = ''[[Analog Science Fiction and Fact|Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact]]''
| publication_type = [[Anthology]]
| publisher        = [[Condé Nast Publications|Condé Nast]]
| media_type       = Print ([[Magazine]])
| pub_date         = June 1977
}}
"'''The Screwfly Solution'''" is a 1977 [[science fiction]] novella by Raccoona Sheldon, a [[pen name]] for American psychologist Alice Sheldon, who also wrote as [[James Tiptree Jr]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Kung |first=Michelle |date=February 20, 2006 |title=Hollywood Reader |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=19861222&lang=en-gb&site=eds-live&scope=site |access-date=2025-02-16 |work=[[Publishers Weekly]] |via=[[EBSCOhost]]}}</ref> The story is about a misogynistic cult.<ref name=":0" />  

When the story was first published in June 1977, the identity of Alice Sheldon as both Tiptree and Raccoona Sheldon was unknown to the public or anyone in the science fiction community; the identity behind the pen-names was revealed by the end of the same year.  

"The Screwfly Solution" received the [[Nebula Award]] for Best [[Novella|Novelette]] in 1978, and has been adapted into a [[television film]]. It is included in Tiptree's anthology ''[[Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions]]''.<ref name=call>{{cite journal | journal=Science Fiction Studies | last=Call | first=Lewis | title="This Wondrous Death": Erotic Power in the Science Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. | volume=34 | number=1 | date=March 2007 | pages=59–86}}</ref>

The title refers to the [[sterile insect technique]], a technique of eradicating the population of [[screwfly|screwflies]] by the release of large amounts of sterilized males that would compete with fertile males, thus reducing the native population more with each generation this is done. This story concerns a similar distortion of human sexuality with disastrous results.

==Plot summary== 
The story begins with an exchange of letters and news clippings between Alan, a scientist working on parasite eradication by [[sterile insect technique|releasing sterile insects]] in Colombia, and his wife, Anne Alstein, at home in the U.S., concerning an epidemic of organized murder of women by men.

The murderers feel that their killings are driven by natural instincts and have constructed elaborate, [[Misogyny|misogynistic]] rationalizations for their acts. For example, a [[new religious movement]], the Sons of [[Adam]], is spreading along with the murders. The Sons of [[Adam]] believe that women are evil, that the [[Garden of Eden]] was a paradise before women were created, that God is telling them to get rid of all of the women, and that once women are eliminated, God will either make everyone live forever or reveal a better way to reproduce (the movement is unclear about what exactly would happen). When the religion initially arises, prior to the organized murders, little is done to stop the ideology's spread, nor is the movement's actions of evicting women from the areas the men control prevented.

Initially, some women fight back, such as three women who steal an Air Force plane and bomb Dallas, but organized resistance fails to materialize. There is extensive censoring of the news, as the government believes that it is a case of mass psychological hysteria that can be snuffed out by suppressing the news. However, a minority of scientists figure out the truth: Some kind of infectious agent is spreading in the atmosphere, turning human male sexual impulses into violent ones.

Alan, a sensitive, kindly man, realizes that he is succumbing to the infection and tries to resist the impulses and isolate himself from women. While he does this, his wife and teenage daughter argue: the daughter, faithful to her father, refuses to believe her mother's warnings about him. She sneaks off to visit her father, and he murders her, then kills himself in horror over his actions.

Anne flees north, to Canada, since the disease had begun in the tropical zones and is spreading toward temperate zones. In the end, Anne, pursued by an entire society bent on [[femicide]], discovers the source and motivation behind the plague: an alien species is intentionally causing the human race to destroy itself so that the aliens can have Earth for themselves.

==Themes==
"The Screwfly Solution" explores the link between sex and death. [[Sarah LeFanu]] wrote that Tiptree associates the male sexual drive with violence. [[Veronica Hollinger]] wrote that "The Screwfly Solution" demonstrates "Tiptree's determination to follow the implications of gender difference to their grimly logical conclusions".{{r|call}}

[[Lewis Call]] points out that the story establishes the link between sex and violence as a characteristic of the species, not of a single sex. Call also draws attention to the fact the women and girls were not the only victims in the story; young boys and other men were also killed. He concludes: "But heterosexuality is not the problem in 'Screwfly'. The problem is power; more specifically, it is the basic, fundamental connection between violence and the erotic that is to be found in ''every'' sexual relationship, whether the relationship in question is heterosexual, homosexual, or transhuman." Call speculates that proposing the idea that sex and violence are linked for everyone had to be written by Raccoona because it would not have been accepted coming from the male persona of Tiptree.{{r|call}}

Analyzing Tiptree's writings in the context of postcolonialism versus sociobiology, [[David Galef]] compares the aliens' interference with human biological drives in "The Screwfly Solution" to the Army giving Indians [[Pontiac's War|blankets that had been exposed to smallpox]].<ref>{{cite journal | journal=Science Fiction Studies | volume=28 | number=2 | date=July 2001 | pages=201–222 | last=Galef | first=David | title=Tiptree and the Problem of the Other | jstor=4240978 }}</ref>

==Background==
Sheldon wrote "The Screwfly Solution" over the period of a week, shortly after her mother's death. She chose the [[Epistolary novel|epistolary]] approach, couching the story in the form of "reports, interviews, diary entries, and letters". She submitted it to ''[[Analog Science Fiction and Fact]]'' in November, 1976.<ref>{{cite book | pages=356–357 | last=Phillips | first=Julie | title=James Tiptree, Jr. |publisher=St. Martin's Press | year=2006 | isbn=9780312203856}}</ref> Sheldon considered "The Screwfly Solution" to be one of her "really feminist tales".<ref>{{cite journal | journal=Women's Studies Quarterly | volume=34 | number=3/4 | date=Fall 2015 | pages=223–239 | last=Evans | first=Rebecca | title=James Tiptree Jr.: Rereading Essentialism and Ecofeminism in the 1970s | id={{ProQuest|1722249471}}}}</ref>

==Other media==
"The Screwfly Solution" was [[The Screwfly Solution (Masters of Horror episode)|adapted into a television film]] by screenwriter [[Sam Hamm]] and director [[Joe Dante]] for the [[Showtime (TV network)|Showtime]] network's ''[[Masters of Horror]]'' series, premiering December 8, 2006. A reviewer in ''The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies'' considered it one of the "gems" of the series.<ref>{{cite journal | journal=The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies | issue=4 | date=June 8, 2008 | pages=137–138 | last=Simmons | first=David | title=Masters of Horror: Series 2 | id={{ProQuest|1834039311}}}}</ref>

In 1998, director Jeff Meyers adapted "The Screwfly Solution" to a stageplay that was performed at the [[Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center|Firehouse Theatre]] in Portland, Oregon.<ref>{{cite news | newspaper=The Oregonian | location=Portland, Oregon | date=June 9, 1998 | page=36 | last=Johnson | first=Barry | title=Checking up on the human condition | url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-oregonian-screwflyplay/170162962/}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Lordosis behavior]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
*{{cite journal | journal=Biography | last=Kirkpatrick | first=Kim | volume=30 | number=1 | date=Winter 2007 | pages=61–73 | title=Begin Again: James Tiptree, Jr.'s Opossum Tricks | jstor=23540598 | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23540598}}

==External links==
* {{isfdb title|40964}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080702220517/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheldon/ ''The Screwfly Solution''] on [[Sci Fiction]]
* {{IMDb title|qid=Q7762714|id=tt0833098|title=The Screwfly Solution}}
* [http://sideshow.me.uk/sdec06.htm#12021906 Interview with Sam Hamm] by [[Avedon Carol]] about  [[The Screwfly Solution (Masters of Horror episode)|the ''Masters of Horror'' adaptation]]

{{Nebula Award Best Novelette}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Screwfly Solution, The}}
[[Category:1977 short stories]]
[[Category:Feminist science fiction]]
[[Category:Nebula Award for Best Novelette–winning works]]
[[Category:Science fiction short stories]]
[[Category:Sterilization (medicine)]]
[[Category:Works by James Tiptree Jr.]]
[[Category:Works originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact]]