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 plans on seven. , four books have been completed. , a fifth and sixth were in the works, 24 years after the publication of the fourth book.
Books in the series
A Matter for Men (1983) After mysterious and deadly viruses wipe out much of the world's population, an entire ecosystem of strange and violent alien creatures, dubbed the Chtorr, start to appear. Narrator and protagonist Jim McCarthy and his friend/colleague/occasional sex partner Ted Jackson are a young half-trained researchers attached to a squad of soldiers tasked with clearing the Colorado wilderness of nests of large and predatory "worms," one of the relatively better-known species of Chtorrans. Exploring a nest, Jim brings back both eggs and "millipedes" for further analysis. After a further unsettling encounter with a family of nesting worms, he and Ted and their samples are sent to Denver, now the US capitol, where Jim learns that political squabbling is getting in the way of making any real progress on countering the invasion. He ends up recruited a mysterious covert group led by "Uncle Ira" who dedicate themselves to clearing out both the Chtorr and human political opposition to this goal at any cost. In a presentation displaying a live Chtorran worm to a group of international dignitaries, the worm breaks loose and kills several people before it's stopped by McCarthy. Recovering in the hospital, he realizes that the massacre, and his death, were planned by Uncle Ira as a way of getting the international community to wake up to the Chtorran problem. Meanwhile, Ted decides to join the Telepathy Corps and disappears off into a larger hive mind. Now a real member of the Uncle Ira group, Jim returns to both wiping out and studying the expanding nests.
A Day for Damnation (1985) On a mission over Chtorran territory in northern California, McCarthy and his sometimes-lover Colonel Elizabeth 'Lizard' Tirelli crash Liz's army helicopter in a blizzard of strange pink fuzz. Awaiting rescue, the duo take the opportunity to observe previously unknown aspects of the Chtorran life cycles and ecology. Particularly interesting are the bunnymen, alien lifeforms who display clear signs of intelligence and resemble humanoid rabbits; they interact with the worms, though it is not clear who is the dominant partner in the relationship. Upon return to San Francisco, McCarthy spends some time studying a 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, unwittingly luring in others who get too close. Seeing a similarity between the herd-members and the bunnyman, McCarthy allows himself to join the 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 to communicate with the bunnymen. Although the experiment seems to work initially, it is finally revealed that the bunnymen are an obedient, even worshipful, food-source for the worms.