On Mongolian Deathworm

Here’s a short explanation for this blog’s title. When I was about twelve, I thought I had read all science fiction stories in local children’s library, many times over. Then, suddenly, I found an entire novel which I had never even heard about and which contained every single thing I loved: down-to-earth characters, believable technology, spaceships and a scientific expedition into a dangerous alien world.

The book was “Land of the Crimson Clouds” by Strugatsky brothers.

However, in this book was at one point mentioned a creature with unique name allergorhoi-horhoi. The astronauts spoke of it as the only terrestrial land-based creature that can kill with electricity, first described by Ivan Yefremov. Allergorhoi-horhoi was supposed to live in the Gobi desert on Earth.

The mystery of allergorhoi remained in the back of my mind for many years, like a many other questions to which I haven’t gotten an answer right away. Was it a real creature or not? On the one hand, it was mentioned in a science fiction novel. On the other, it was supposed to be an Earth creature. The man mentioned as the first one to describe it was a science fiction author; yet he was also a paleontologist. His short story where he described the thing was only available in Russian, which I didn’t understand.

In the meantime I found an use for allergorhoi, once I started to have access to computers and internet. Its name, modified in many different ways became the unique word which I used for my first e-mail address, paroles, user names, etc.

Once in a few years I remembered the question of its existence and
searched the Internet for it. But I never found it, for its name was westernization of an Mongolian word and I had no idea what exactly I should search for.

Then, one day about two years ago, I stumbled upon it: a Wikipedia article on Mongolian
Death Worm. Here was the answer to my question: MDW was indeed part of the real word as a legend, but no one had actually photographed or captured one.

I can’t say I really believe into existence of MDW, based on that article, but over the years the Worm has become a habit: whenever someone asked me to think quickly a password or user name, it leaped out again. Only now I started to call it Mongolian Death Worm. The reason is that I still don’t know what his name sounds like in Mongolian. Allergorhoi-horhoi? Olgoi-khorkhoi, like Yefremov’s story is called? Or Wiki’s allghoi khorkhoi?

When dukelupus, the guy I play squash with, asked me for my comment in his blog one day, MDW leaped out again, this time as an alias, and came with me into world of blogging.

In the meantime I have found out that in the year 1946 the original story was also translated to my own language, but I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet. Apparently it is also mentioned in Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Spook Country, which I also haven’t read.

And should I ever happen into Gobi desert, I will still keep an eye out for (potentially) real Mongolian Death Worm.