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.

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. 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.

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.

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.