Book One of 'The War Against the Chtorr'
‘A Matter for Men’ first was published in paperback in 1983 under the Timescape imprint; this version (368 pp) was issued by Pocket Books in July 1984. Boris Vallejo provided the cover art.
[The word ‘Chtorr’ is pronounced Kuh-TORR]
‘Matter’ is the first volume in ‘The War Against the Chtorr’ series, which, as of the end of 2019, consisted of ‘A Day for Damnation’ (1984), ‘A Rage for Revenge’ (1989), and ‘A Season for Slaughter’ (1993).
I remember seeing ‘Matter’ on the bookstore shelves in the early 80s and passing on it with the awareness that David Gerrold’s novels could be good……….or bad.
And ‘Matter’ is bad.
The premise is worthy enough: the novel is set in the early 21st century, after a series of plagues has decimated the Earth’s population and left the U.S. with very little of its former status as a world power. Barely has civilization had a chance to restart when a new threat arises: a slow-motion invasion of alien species, one of which is a race of bug-eyed monsters known as the Chtorr.
Jim McCarthy is a young soldier in the United States Armed Services, Special Forces Operation, Exobiologist. As the novel opens he is a member of a team assigned to destroy a Chtorran nest in the wilderness of Colorado. There he learns firsthand of the danger the aliens pose to mankind.
Subsequent events lead McCarthy to the High Command center in Denver, where he finds himself – against his will – drawn into an unfolding series of intrigues and conspiracies, directed by agents unknown. And unless Jim McCarthy can figure out who his real allies are, he’s going to find that he is just another expendable grunt…….. in a war that the U.S. is coming ominously close to losing…………
Why is ‘Matter’ a dud ?
Well, for one thing, actual combat with the Chtorr takes up only about 30 of the book’s 368 pages. The remaining text is laboriously devoted to all manner of exposition, with the life-or-death struggle against the aliens reduced to the backstory.
The reader is going to find himself or herself plodding through successive segments of empty dialogue……….internal monologues designed to reveal lead character McCarthy’s self-doubts and torments……cryptic visits from a cast of operatives who watch from the shadows…flashbacks to role-playing in a Poly Sci class (?!) taught by a grizzled veteran named Whitlaw…….and even, in a particularly turgid chapter, a session of psychoanalysis ?!
To give you a sense of what ‘Matter’ is all about, here’s an excerpt:
Hm.
Did I think like a duck ? Was that it ? Did I keep on doing ducklike things because I didn’t know how to do anything else ? Was it that obvious to the people around me ?
Maybe I should stop being me for a while and start being someone else – someone who didn’t have so much trouble being me.
I wasn’t hungry anymore. I got up, took my tray to the bus window and left the commissary.
I wondered if I walked funny. I mean, I was short and a little pudgy around the bottom. Did I look like a duck ? Maybe I could learn to walk differently – if I stood a little taller and carried my weight in my chest instead of in my gut – “Oof ! I’m sorry.” I had been so busy walking, I hadn’t been looking and had plowed straight into a young woman. Quack. Old synapses never die, they just fire away. “I’m really sorry - oh!”
Yep, Earth is in deadly danger, and our hero is preoccupied with the psychological impact of a past taunt that he is a duck………?!
I finished ‘Matter’ confident that I am not going to spend any time with the remaining volumes in the series. Take my advice and avoid ‘The War Against the Chtorr’.
I actually did read this and the sequels when this came out. I was young and kind of liked it.. and then the series ended on a major cliffhanger... which is still unresolved. So yes, do not recommend.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand... If you already know what you are in for - perhaps you are familiar with the style of David Gerrold and maybe are interested in his take on "Starship Troopers"... And that is what you have here; like Heinlein's book, this is mostly not about the actual fighting.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I appreciate the series and wish Gerrold would finish it, but I'm not put off by the lack of resolution.
Oddly, I first encountered this novel in 1975, long before it was published. At Westercon in Oakland CA a guy I didn't even recognize read the first chapter of a work in progress and got some feedback from a roomful of SF fans... (I recall some guy correcting him on the operation of a sniper rifle). I only figured out who I had heard ten years later when I read the book and recognized the, mostly unchanged, first chapter.