Fictional Worms - Literature

Literature

  • Beowulf slays a 50-foot serpentine creature. It is described variously as a 'wyrm' (18 instances) or as a dragon (11 instances).
  • "The Conqueror Worm", an 1845 poem by Edgar Allan Poe, concludes with the lines "The play is the tragedy, 'Man',/ and its hero the Conqueror Worm."
  • The Lair of the White Worm is a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, made into a 1988 film by director Ken Russell.
  • Fafnir, a beast slain during the course of the Völsungasaga, is a worm in William Morris's rendition.
  • The Worm Ouroboros, a 1922 fantasy novel by Eric Rücker Eddison, invokes an ancient myth of a legless creature that eats its own tail.
  • The Coming of the White Worm is a 1941 short story by Clark Ashton Smith.
  • J.R.R. Tolkien refers to his creation Glaurung as 'The Great Worm'. This term was adopted by hackers to describe the Morris Worm.
  • John Brunner's 1975 Shockwave Rider describes computer 'tapeworms' as capable of reproducing themselves as long as networked computers enable their survival.
  • In the House of the Worm is a 1976 short story by George R. R. Martin.
  • The Conqueror Worms is a 2006 novel by Brian Keene.
  • The .303 Bookworm in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
  • The Worm of the World's End, whose body underlies the lands and ocean and whose thrashings will destroy the world when it awakes, in The One Tree, the second book of the second trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever fantasy series written by Stephen R. Donaldson. According to the most recent book in the series the worm is not physically very large, but its hunger will nonetheless lead to global ruination.
  • Sandworms play a major role in the science fiction novel Dune and in its film and TV adaptations (Dune universe).
  • Diary of a Worm (2003), written by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Harry Bliss, is a journalistic account of a worm's daily life.
  • Lowly Worm is a fictional character that makes frequent appearances in Richard Scarry's children's books.
  • Flobberworms are dull wormlike magical creatures in the Harry Potter universe.
  • Gary Larson narrates the adventures of a nuclear worm family in his 1998 There's a Hair in My Dirt: A Worm's Story.
  • Molly Michon, aka Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland, worships a worm god known as Nigoth in several of Christopher Moore's novels, including The Stupidest Angel and the Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

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