E.O. Wilson, native son of Mobile and Harvard professor emeritus, is at it again, this time in a new incarnation as a novelist.

Not content with two Pulitzer Prizes for scientific writing or the acclaim garnered by his memoir, "The Naturalist," the 80-year-old is publishing his first work of fiction, a novel titled "Anthill."

In the inner workings of an ant colony, Wilson sees shades of humanity. The various subdivisions of labor mirror our own, with garbage men, soldiers, carpenters, explorers, morticians, nurses and even laggards who must be forced to work. Wilson uses those similarities to his advantage, painting a picture of the human world as little more than ant society writ large.

"That's explicitly what I had in mind. This is the story of three independent worlds, which nevertheless coexist in time and space," Wilson said, referring to the ant world, the moneyed world of Mobile society and the blue-collar existence in small-town south Alabama.

"Ants are the most warlike of all creatures. They are constantly at war. Does that sound familiar?" Wilson said, chuckling. "I didn't have to stretch to find the similarities between humans and ants. There are immense differences, but the similarities are instructive."

As one of the pre-eminent scientists of the last 100 years, Wilson is credited with developing a new way of understanding the natural world called sociobiology. Essentially, it explains the strange evolutions of myriad creatures by looking at the advantages and repercussions of social interactions between animals.

His world view, he happily acknowledged, was borne out of a childhood spent in Evergreen, Pensacola, Bay St. Louis and Mobile, where he lived in his great-great-grandfather's house,

the first erected on Charleston Street.

The professor is a grand raconteur whose conversations wind from topic to topic at great speed.

"You have hit on a deadly combination," he warned midway through a phone call from his Massachusetts home. "I am a Southerner, a storyteller and a Harvard professor. That's a sure recipe for boredom if you are not careful."

The rollicking new novel opens with its protagonist on the wrong end of a shotgun wielded by a crazed hermit and later features pistol-packing evangelical Christians, who are more than a touch wicked.

Wilson said he fell in love with the "Godlike" power of the novelist as opposed to the scientific writer he has been all his life. He delighted in "creating and carrying this whole world around in my head" and bringing it to fruition. He also enjoyed describing "the magic forests of Alabama" to readers who have never known them.

Along the way, Wilson delivers some of the most rhapsodic nature writing of his career, particularly in a section devoted to the rise and fall of several ant empires within an area the size of a tennis court. Titled "The Anthill Chronicles," that section was excerpted in the New Yorker magazine.

"That's a novella within the novel, a break for the reader," said Wilson, who has studied ants since he was a teenager in Mobile. "I wanted the reader to know what it would be like to be an ant, how ants see the world, never mind how humans see ants."

Its overarching theme of survival is one that Wilson has turned to more often in recent years, suggesting again and again that many creatures are doomed to extinction unless humans change their ways.

"People don't realize that Alabama is one of the most amazing places in the world. There are 358 species of brackish and freshwater fish in Alabama. That's unparalleled. It leads in turtle species, in the number of mollusks, it has an amazing number of mammals," he said. "Dauphin Island is one of the 10 best birding sites in the world. The Mobile-Tensaw Delta, one day people will realize that it is one of the most pristine areas in the country."

Wilson, once a paperboy for the Press-Register, is at work on a book about Mobile. It will include recollections from his childhood and trace the city's history since the arrival of the earliest French explorers, he said, revealing connections between early settlers and the people here today.

Wilson said he spends much of his time these days writing. He has had 30 books published, with "about six more in the can ready to go."

What fuels his prolific output? "I'm 80 years old," he said. "I'm racing to get it all done before I go ga-ga."

"Anthill" will appear in local bookstores in late March, Wilson said. He plans to come to the area April 14-16 for several book signings.