The Screwfly Solution

"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. The story is about a misogynistic cult.

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 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.

The title refers to the sterile insect technique, a technique of eradicating the population of 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.