The first colonists from Earth named the planet Wunderland. Generations later, the felinoid alien invaders called Kzin came and turned it into a hell for humans. Touched on in other accounts of the Man-Kzin wars, here for the first time is the decades-long saga of Wunderland: how the Wunderlanders first learned of the Kzin attacks on Earth by slower-than-light communications, barely in time to prepare to fight back. How the valiant human defenders turned to guerilla warfare in the Wunderland jungles and caves after the feline warrior race had destroyed or seized the cities. How, after the war ended in an ignominous defeat for the Kzin, some humans and Kzin worked for good will between the two species-their work complicated by humans wanting revenge and Kzin who still saw humans as a somewhat annoying food source. And how a human-Kzin team was sent to investigate a mysterious asteroid and found a threat not only to both species, but to the entire galaxy. The humans wanted to destroy it, but the Kzin wanted to exploit it, and the only hope was a Kzin telepath raised by humans from a cub. Which side would he choose, monkey or warcat?
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About the Author
Hal Colebatch has had stories in previous volumes of the Man-Kzin Wars series. His recent book, Blair's Britain, was selected by the London Spectator's Taki as a book of the year. He has also written mainstream fiction, biographies, plays, poetry, and several hundred articles. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has been an advisor to two Australian Federal Ministers. He practices law in a suburb of Perth, Australia, where he lives with his wife and two stepchildren.
Customer Reviews
I read this long - 140,000 words - book in a single enthralled sitting, and was not distracted by any spelling or other errors. After reading the review printed below I went through it again carefully, and found no substantial errors - one or two, like a paragraph not fully indented somewhere, that was about it. I'm a free-lance writer and I'm used to looking for such things.
What I did find was a number of subtle jokes and linkages between the stories that I'd missed the first time around. This is a book that re-pays re-reading because re-reading reveals new depths to both the stories and the characters.
The previous reviewer's complaint may be because the author, Hal Colebatch, is Australian and there are some Australian spellings. These are very minor variations, not errors.
What matters is that the stories are excellent - fast-paced, exciting and in some cases moving.
I was near a tear at the very end of "The Corporal in the Caves" when the meaning of the last word sank in, and laughed out loud at the end of "Music Box," with its wonderful relaxation of tension after the nail-biting drama and tragedy of the preceding chapters, and the transformation of Nils Rykermann from the bitter guerrilla (did i spell that right?) warrior and exterminationist into the kindly professor.
More very soon, please!
"One War for Wunderland", the first and longest, is the "War and Peace" of the series, with something that's not been wrtiiten about earlier - a big Man-Kzin set-piece battle. The story is narrated by Nils Rykermann, a biologist, who features also is two of the other stories.
"The Corporal in the Caves" is set years later, with the Kzin rooting out the human resistance in the great caves of Wunderland. Like one or two scenes in "One War for Wunderland", the last word in this one, when I read it and realised what had actually happened, moved me to tears, the first time a book has one that for a long while.
"Music Box" is set near the end of the war. There is also a cross-conflict between the humans and kzin who want peace and those on both sides who want the war fought to the bitter end. Also some humans -and kzin - are beginning to change sides. There is a good bit of humor in this one too, as when a terrible-looking but actually relatively kindly old Kzin warrior, Raargh, wakes up a sleeping woman to whom he must deliver a message and to spare her modesty as she wakes and sits up tells her: "No need to cover teets. Raargh has seen before." The last scene is quite hilarious and a relief from a lot of the tension and tragedy earlier. These are real characters whose fates you care about.
"Peter Robinson" is set many years later, in the time of Ringworld, and is a sort of Gothic horror-story in space.
Incidentally, "His Sergeant's Honour" in Man-Kzin IX, seems to occurr between the first two and the last two stories in this volume, which are otherwise in chronological order.
I'm really drawn into the saga now and can't wait to see what happens next!
What I did know in 1981 was that he was quite articulate and logical; no surprise since he is a lawyer. Quite skilled at analysing political issues. In this book, he shows these qualities, along with a polished writing flair. The book is a gathering of short stories set at the start and end of the Man-Kzin Wars. They mesh smoothly into the framework set by the 9 other volumes in this series. No impedance mismatch.
The first story is the most interesting; set when the Kzin invade Wunderland at the beginning of the first war. Earlier volumes have episodes set on Wunderland during and at the end of the occupation. Those contain brief allusions to the invasion. This story fleshes it out. The battle scenes are quite well done, with the requisite gore and minor human victories. The humans cannot actually WIN in the story, you see, because they have to endure a 50 year occupation, as depicted in the previous volumes.
Subsequent stories are set after the war. Not badly done, either. But for me, I found the first to be the most compelling. Its depictions of the social structure of the human world and the underlying tensions made it seem more credible. There is an analogy here with David Drake's well received Honor Harrington series. While those are military science fiction, he has also expanded on the intricacies of the warring societies, and in doing so, made it more than just a cardboard space opera. Something similar seems to be happening here.
Let us hope Colepatch keeps writing!
