The War Against the Chtorr

The War Against the Chtorr

Cover of the first book in the series, A Matter For Men Second Edition.
Author David Gerrold
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction, book series
Publisher Timescape Books, et al.
Publication date
1983

The War Against the Chtorr is a series of science fiction novels by American writer David Gerrold.[1]

Books in the series

The Chtorr series was originally planned as a trilogy, but as the story became more intricate, Gerrold realized that three books would not be enough for him to tell the entire story. For a time, he was uncertain how many books there would be in the end, but finally settled on a heptalogy.[2] Currently, four books have been completed with a fifth in the works. The first draft of the fifth book, A Method for Madness, has been completed and is now being reviewed for editing.[3]

A Matter for Men (1983)

After mysterious and deadly viruses decimated the world's population, strange and violent alien creatures, dubbed the Chtorr, start to appear. Jim McCarthy is a military scientist tasked with clearing a nest of worms, one of the more well known types of Chtorr. He notices that they have a level of intelligence and brings back three eggs for further analysis. Back at base, he learns that political squabbling is getting in the way of making any real progress on understanding the invasion. He is soon recruited to a mysterious group known only as "Uncle Ira" who dedicate themselves to clearing out the Chtorr at any cost. In a presentation demonstrating a live Chtorran worm to a visiting group of dignitaries, the worm breaks loose and kills several people before it's stopped by McCarthy. He quickly realizes that the massacre (and his death) was planned by Uncle Ira as a way of getting the international community to wake up to the Chtorran problem. Along the way, Jim's best friend and sometimes lover, Ted, decides to join the Telepathy Corps, and to Jim's chagrin, seems to be losing himself to a larger hive mind.

A Day for Damnation (1985)

On a mission in deep Chtorran territory, Jim McCarthy and his crew crash their helicopter in a blizzard of strange pink fuzz. The crew takes this opportunity to observe previously unknown aspects of the Chtorran life cycles and ecology. Particularly interesting is an odd ritual observed between bunnymen and worms where they seem to play together in harmony. Upon return to San Francisco, McCarthy spends some time studying the zombie phenomena that surfaced soon after the invasion; massive groups of people seem to lose all but the most basic animal intelligence and wander aimlessly in herds, occasionally luring in others who get too close. Seeing a similarity between the zombies and the bunnyman/worm rituals, McCarthy briefly allows himself to join the zombie herd in order to study them, and only barely manages to be rescued and restored to his former self. Using what he learned, he leads a team near a nest of worms and attempts communication like the bunnymen. Although the experiment seems to work initially, the worms turn violent and attack the humans and other Chtorr.

A Rage for Revenge (1989)

The third book in the series alternates between two stories, Jim McCarthy experiences Mode Training and flashbacks to his time in a cult. On a routine mission, McCarthy's platoon is overwhelmed by a group of renegade humans. He is taken prisoner and slowly brainwashed into the lifestyle of the cult and their leader, Jason Delandro. The cult believes in serving the Chtorr and have several worms on their campgrounds, although only the few high up members are allowed to know the worms secrets. The cult also practices a type of hedonism, characterized by free love including pedophilia. On an expedition, Jim discovers a military base with a working radio. Snapping back to his senses, he calls in the renegades location, then wanders aimlessly in the wilderness while fighting an emotional internal battle over having betrayed the renegades. Jim heads to a peninsula on the California coast where his mother used to live, called Family, and adopts three orphans. When Family's leaders ignore his demands for anti-Chtorran defenses, a group of worms break into the grounds and slaughter many of the Family, including his adopted children. Jim realizes that the worms were led by Delandro and manages to capture and execute him. Jim flees Family and after a hallucinatory eperience brought on by the Chtorran ecology, he is picked up in a helicopter by Colonel Elizabeth 'Lizard' Tirelli. Jim is sent to Mode Training to learn to overcome basic human psychology. As a final test in the training, the group is forced to accept the death of one of their own, Jim, by the hand of the leader Daniel Foreman. The gun Foreman was using turns out to be loaded with blanks, and as the group accepted his death, they pass the course. Tirelli and McCarthy had previously been romantically involved, and they expand that relationship after Tirelli leads McCarthy to testify in a meeting with the President of the United States regarding the need to drop a nuclear bomb on the heavy Chtorran infestations in the Rockies, arguing that the people who live there are no longer human.

A Season for Slaughter (1993)

Leading a patrol, Jim McCarthy is annoyed by a senior officer from Montreal who insisted on coming along but does not understand the gravity of the situation. In order to get him out of the way, McCarthy tricks him into thinking that the two of them had walked into a live shambler grove sensory network and are likely to be eaten alive by the grove's residents. In reality, the grove looked dead, but the officer did not know this and agreed on record to cede all authority to McCarthy. While examining the grove, the scientists discover a massive womb-like structure beneath that they theorize is the place where all the Chtorran life forms were formed when they fell to Earth. After being reprimanded by his commanding officer, McCarthy is sent on a mission to an area of the Amazon rainforest with some of the heaviest infestations anywhere. The mission commandeers a massive dirigible originally built as a pleasure craft before the invasion. Aboard the ship, McCarthy and Tirelli finally marry. When trying to figure out a way of communication with the worms via flashing lights, the team accidentally sets off a Chtorran war where the worms battle each other in a massive slaughter. On the way home the flight crew realize too late that Chtorran stingbugs have created too many holes in the helium chambers, causing a massive loss of lift gases. Quickly dumping cargo, the ship heads back to civilization as fast as possible but crashes when it's still several miles in Chtorran territory. Fearing that Liz was dead, Jim hears her voice on a radio briefly. To rescue her he contacts a government official, a woman with Down Syndrome with brain implants who McCarthy (correctly) surmises is an unwitting member of the Telepathy Corps and utilizes their communications network to request a search for Tirelli. Although Liz is eventually found, the book ends with everyone still awaiting rescue.

A Method For Madness

In this as yet unpublished novel, Jim McCarthy must cope with the fact that humanity will need to change if they ever want to continue living.

It was reportedly slated for release September 2015[4][5] but according to the author, at the end of August 2015 only the first draft was finished and given to beta readers.[3]

Story line

Set in a devastated early 21st century United States with logical expected advances in current technology such as a fledgling moon base, this series of science-fiction novels describe the invasion of Earth by an alien ecology. The story is unusual in that the tactics used by the aliens eschew the usual direct attack in favor of terraforming the ecosystem.

The United States has just lost a harsh war in Pakistan, after which they were required to greatly weaken their armed forces. The U.S. decided to increase weapon exports in order to make other countries reliant on them. Secretly, they continued researching and developing weapons, which is illegal according to the treaty.

Soon afterwards, a series of devastating plagues sweeps the world, killing 60% of humanity. As the survivors struggle to rebuild civilization, they discover that hundreds of alien plant and animal species have begun establishing themselves. They are almost universally far superior to the native organisms which occupy the same ecological niches. As a result, Earth's entire ecology is being rapidly supplanted (or "chtorraformed"). The invaders are called Chtorrans after the sound made by the most deadly predator encountered so far.

There is no sign of sentient aliens, but humans presume the invasion to be deliberate, either "seeded" from space or brought by undetected spacecraft. Many of the Chtorran organisms (see below) exhibit behaviors that are quasi-sentient (building structures, creating and using tools, farming/herding, setting traps, singing), yet the central question of whether they are doing so out of sentience or collective and programmed behavior is unanswered. With each new layer of organisms, a bit more hierarchy to the Chtorran "societal" structure is revealed, allowing the possibility that all these organisms will transform the Earth in support of some worse, higher form of Chtorran life. The presumed goal of these off-stage aliens appears to be nothing less than the complete replacement of Earth's entire ecology and the resultant extinction of all native life, at which time they can claim the planet without a single shot needing to be fired. Another possibility is that collectively the Chtorr are the alien, the invasion has begun and gained major footholds, and humanity has yet to figure out who the true enemy is (let alone how to successfully fight it).

The books largely follow the adventures of Jim McCarthy, a scientist and soldier in the U.S. Army, who attempts to understand the Chtorran ecology even as he engages in combat to destroy it. His early efforts primarily focus on the "Worms", a particularly large and dangerous carnivorous Chtorran species whose prey includes humans. McCarthy and other scientists investigate the rapidly expanding Chtorran ecosystem and attempt to unravel the ecological relationships between the various species.

In addition to descriptions of alien ecology, the Chtorr series includes lengthy expositions on various aspects of human psychology, particularly under wartime and survival conditions.

Characters

Groups, technology and other concepts

Chtorran ecology

Chtorran ecology was designed in large part by British reproductive biologist Jack Cohen. It is quite complete and consistent, making it hard science fiction.

If there are two things that all Chtorran life forms have in common, it is that they are hungry, and are normally a bright shade of red. Some of the most notable plants/animals that are encountered are:

First and second editions

There are two distinctly different editions of the first two books in this series. The first edition was released in 1983 by Timescape Books. This edition was edited by the publisher and removed several items which they objected to. All of the chapter introductions (the "Solomon Short" quotations) and several pages of homosexual content were removed. The same thing was done to the 1984 release of A Day for Damnation.

In 1989, David Gerrold made a new publishing contract with Bantam Books. This time, both A Matter for Men and A Day for Damnation were released with all redacted content restored.

Connections to other Gerrold works

Many characters and ideas from other works by David Gerrold have made appearances in this series. Amongst them are H.A.R.L.I.E. (from the book When HARLIE Was One), tribbles (from Star Trek, disguised as Meeps), and the Space Elevator (from the book Bouncing Off the Moon).

The reverse is also true—there are references to the series in other Gerrold novels. In Bouncing Off the Moon, there is a mention of a woman in Oregon claiming that a giant worm ate her horse, along with numerous passages about plagues spreading across the Earth, also suggesting that the two stories take place in the same story universe. References to the series also appear in the Star Wolf novels, such as Chtorrans proper and a self-help guru named Daniel Jeffrey Foreman, suggesting the two series exist in the same universe. In Gerrold's 1977 novel Moonstar Odyssey, there is a reference to "Chtorr-plants" "...named for the legendary place of child-eating demons from which they were supposed to have come" and having an alternate form of photosynthesis. Reference to the Chtorr or Chtorr-like species and situations also pop-up in Gerrold's 1993 book Under the Eye of God and its 1994 sequel A Covenant of Justice.

Naming of characters

For Season for Slaughter, Gerrold named several characters after actual people, who donated handsomely to Gerrold's favorite charities for the privilege ("tuckerization"). Gerrold had not thought to repeat the effort, but as work on Method for Madness progressed, he received so many fan inquiries about "buying a character" that he decided to do it again. Prior to that, In A Rage For Revenge, Gerrold included several characters, particularly children who were fated to be eaten by worms, named after friends he had made when attending his first UK Star Trek conventions.

References

External links

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