Out of the brimstone and hellfire of the North Carolina sandhills comes a simple, deadly challenge to man's supremacy on earth: The Hephaestus Plague. Blind, black, armoured and unstoppable-a fire making beetle with an amazing scientific secret. A secret that the reclusive, monomaniacal Professor Parmiter is obsessed with sharing and an insect whose biological destiny he is determined to fulfill, without regard for the human consequences.

With a preface by Jeannot Szwarc, director of the motion picture based on the novel, BUG (1975).