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 being recruited by 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 phenomenon 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.
A Rage for Revenge (1989) The third book in the series alternates between two stories, as Jim McCarthy experiences Mode Training and flashbacks to his time in a cult. On a routine mission, McCarthy is taken prisoner and slowly brainwashed into the lifestyle of the cult of human renegades and their leader, Jason Delandro. The cult believes in serving the Chtorr and have several worms on their campgrounds, although only a 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 a looting 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 late mother used to live, called Family, and adopts three orphans. When Family's leaders ignore his urgent requests to install 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 and his surviving followers. Jim again wanders into the wilderness and after a hallucinatory experience brought on by the Chtorran ecology, he is picked up in a helicopter by Lizard. She leads McCarthy to testify in a meeting with the unnamed 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. Lizard drops the bomb, and she and Jim admit they truly love each other, even as they try to keep each other sane. Moving to Hawaii, the new US Capitol, Jim undergoes Mode Training to learn to overcome and direct basic human psychology; following this, he and Lizard resume their anti-Chtorran duties.
A Season for Slaughter (1993) Leading a routine patrol in Mexico, McCarthy is saddled with a senior officer from Quebec, who is both unqualified and unprepared. McCarthy tricks him into thinking that the two of them have walked into the sensory network of a live shambler grove (a type of mobile Chtorran "tree") and are likely to be eaten alive by the grove's residents. In reality, the grove is dormant, but the officer does not know this and agrees on publicly-broadcast record to resign his commission. This leads to a diplomatic and military upheaval, which in turn gets Jim booted as the science advisor from an upcoming expedition to Brazil, and replaced with Dwan Grodin, a woman with Down syndrome who has been intellectually enhanced with numerous brain implants. An enraged Jim immediately mounts a spontaneous expedition to examine the shambler grove, and discovers a massive womb-like structure beneath it that he theorizes is the place where all the Chtorran life forms were formed after they fell to Earth. The expedition gets left to die in another pink Chtorran blizzard by a vengeful General and his aide, but is rescued by an unknown benefactor, probably due to the important new information uncovered. After getting chewed out in person by Uncle Ira, McCarthy is still sent on the mission to the Amazon rainforest, which is home to some of the heaviest Chtorran infestations on the planet; to deal with the political problems, Jim resigns his commission and is re-hired as an "Indian Scout." The mission has commandeered a massive dirigible originally built as a pleasure craft before the invasion, and paint it to resemble a worm. Aboard the ship, McCarthy and Tirelli finally marry. Arriving at the target "mandala", the expedition beams the song of a different mandala into the witnessing mass of worms, which set off a horrific slaughter that destroys the entire colony; they also learn that captive humans in the Brazilian mandalas are being grotesquely transformed into (essentially) Chtorran cattle. Attempting to rescue some of these captives from another mandala, the crew realizes too late that Chtorran stingflys have chewed countless tiny holes into the "giant worm's" helium chambers in a futile attempt to lay eggs, causing a massive loss of lift gases. Frantically dumping cargo, the ship heads back to civilization as fast as possible but crashes while still deep in Chtorran territory. Separated from Liz, Jim hears her voice on a radio briefly. To rescue her, he uses Dwan, who McCarthy correctly surmises is an unwitting victim of the Telepathy Corps, and utilizes their communications network to mount a search for Tirelli. Liz is eventually found, and as the book ends, she and Jim are evacuated in a helicopter.
A Nest for Nightmares In June 2015, the fifth book (called A Method for Madness at that time) was reportedly slated for release September 2015 but according to the author, at the end of August 2015 only the first draft was finished and given to beta readers.
On March 14, 2017, Gerrold announced that the fifth book would be titled A Nest for Nightmares, and A Method for Madness would be the sixth book, with both books nearing completion. As of October 2025, neither the 5th nor 6th books has been published.
A Method for Madness On March 14, 2017, Gerrold announced A Method for Madness would be the sixth book.
Plot 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 xenoforming the ecosystem.
The United States has suffered serious political and social upheavals. These have come from unintended consequences of US government choices regarding geopolitical crises and interventionism. In the timeline of the books, there had been another US/Eastern Bloc proxy war—between the State of Israel and certain other Middle Eastern nations—in the recent past. This had been similar to a larger, higher-technology version of the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, and others. The books do not explain the detailed conduct of the fictional new war, neither do they state which countries fought Israel.
In the summer of 1997, Israel had deployed a nuclear weapon — and the world's perception was that Israel had done so at the instructions of the United States. In a case rather like a reversal of the Cuban Missile Crisis, America had been placed under an explicit nuclear ultimatum from the Soviet Union. Modern printings of the books, however, state that the ultimatum came from Russia.
The unnamed President of the United States had refused to accept that a nuclear World War III was inevitable, so he had decided to travel to Moscow, where in the year 2000 “the Millennium Treaties” had been signed. The United States had been substantially hobbled by the Millennium Treaties. Years later there had been subsequent treaties after the United States entered a bitter war in Pakistan. The US failed in its objectives there, and it was given another nuclear ultimatum. The second ultimatum came from the People's Republic of China. As a result, the United States was required to greatly weaken its armed forces, to comply with new bans on certain weapon systems, to make official statements of culpability for warmongering, and to undertake new programs of civic education for the young that were supposed to establish precautions against the possibility of Americans making choices to start future wars. Also, the United States was made to pay heavy reparations to the international community. America's network of allies continues to realign and break apart. Other countries continue to become more hostile, even though it is not always in a military sense of hostility.