Abstract
What an eye-opener to see writers use the small form of flash to focus on some of our smallest, most overlooked neighbours. There are several million species in the class Insecta, so we’d expect variety. And there is. In these stories, insects appear as friends, victims of human carelessness, agents of historical change, and as three-dimensional characters with motives and feelings of their own.
The creatures fly, yes, as many insects famously do, but they also scuttle, creep, slink and burrow. Most vitally, we get to see that the dramas that play out on tiny stages are no less intense than the ones that play out on bigger ones, which is a neat analogy for the subtle operations of flash itself.