Spectacular description of the initiation of the conquest of Wunderland with a follow-up of the salvation of the galaxy from the Thrint. Another Colebatch masterpiece! ( )

This is my review of ‘The Man – Kzin Wars: The Wunder Wars’ by Hal Colebatch. As you might gather from that rather frightening X in the title, this is part of a larger series of books that detail the on-going conflicts between Mankind and the Kzin. The idea for the series as a whole came from the short story ‘Angel’s Pencil’ by Larry Niven, hence his co-author credit here. Most of the other books in this universe are anthologies, with little in common between stories. While technically, this could be defined as military science fiction, as there is plenty of combat in it, much of the focus of the stories relate to interactions between the humans of Wunder land, and the Kzin invaders.

The book itself is from Baen Books and was published in 2003 with the cover by Stephen Hickman.

To begin with, though, let’s take a brief look at the background to the stories in the collection. The overarching background is Larry Niven’s Known Space books where Earth had come under the control of the UN and the ARM (Amalgamated Regional Militias – essentially, the World’s combined military) and had pretty much banished war under what is a pretty oppressive regime, controlling technologies that could lead to open (and not so open) war, which is pretty much all technology when you come right down to it. The Wunderlanders, amongst other things set up their colony to be as far out of the range of ARM control as possible with the sub-light technology of the day, but even so, they were a relatively peaceful society

On the other hand, the kzinti are anything but peaceful, and a bit like the Klingons from Star Trek, the best thing a kzin could have is death in battle, the next best thing is to earn a Name and, ah, mates. The kzin were originally found by the jokoti while in the equivalent of their iron age and genetically modified to act as bodyguards for the jokoti before they rebelled and enslaved their former masters. Then going on to enslave as many other species as they could reach, everything in their path, until they found the monkeys of Terra and Wunderland, and while the former was able to fight off the invaders, Wunderland was too underdeveloped and unprepared to hold out… The kzinti themselves are tigroid in form, that is to say, they are basically bipedal felinoids that are coloured similarly to Terran tigers, though they can hunt very successfully on four legs as well

The first section of the book deals with the invasion, and from the point of view of Nils Rykermann, a biology professor at Niue München University, the threat of the Kzinti is presented as a potential problem, with details from the Angel’s Pencil showing what they could be up against. Rykermann is rather more worried about the rather grainy pictures – they’d been on their way for almost a decade by this point - for they bore an uncanny resemblance to sightings he’d been investigating at the nearby monastery. But his concerns are buried under the details of resurrecting a martial tradition buried under centuries of neglect, as the Mayor of München calls together a committee of the great and good of Wunderland to determine how to defend their world from a threat most of them thought was still impending.
Nils’s friend Dimity is a highly intelligent mathematical whiz and had already worked out that this was basically a load of rubbish, though not being fully in the picture, she didn’t know about the imminent invasion. As the chair of Biology and Zoology at München University, Rykermann had been called in to visit the local monastery where some of the Brothers had encountered an unclassified creature – not that surprising on a planet that even a few hundred years exploration had barely scratched the surface of. The Brothers were adamant that this creature didn’t fit into the taxonomy that they understood it. Unfortunately, Rykermann was as much in the dark as they were at this point so after a few hours hiking around the area and finding nothing except for some scuffed up grassland, Rykermann has to call it a day and it’s after this that he gets called onto the Mayor’s Council, and its various committees. To be honest, this is probably the weakest part of the whole book, so while I struggled to get through the politicking, it was worth it as the action begins to heat up.
Dimitry isn’t involved in these discussions but, like I said she’s super intelligent and as Nils and his colleagues argue about the meaning of ancient texts on warfare (those that escaped ARM’s gentle oversight, anyway!) she’s been noticing and analysing the activity at the local spaceport. She persuades Nils to clue her in on what’s going on – who’s she going to tell? After all, virtually the only person Dimitry ever spoke to was Nils! As Nils and Dimitry go back to the area round the Monastery to see if they could find out anything more now that they know what they’re looking for. They find a dearth of local marshmen, though plenty of evidence at to what had happened to them… they hole up, quite literally, for the night at the field station Rykermann uses as his HQ in the exploration of the underground ecosystem of the Grossedrache caverns, and it’s here they have their first encounter with living kzinti. This went surprisingly well for the Terrans – they survived! And gained a kzinti airsled. Back in civilisation, things are going to pot as the war in space had been definitively lost by the Wunderlanders. We’re then treated to the humans’ last stand in which the couple take part with distinction, getting away just before the kzin change tactics from hum... er, kzinti wave attacks to something more, um, nuclear. In an attempt to stop Dimitry (and her brain) falling into the hands of the kzin, they head back to München where they are running shuttles up to the long abandoned slow boats back to Terra and it’s here that they suffer their worst casualty when Dimitry suffers damage to her brain. The official slowboats being out of reach, Rykermann recalls that rather suspiciously shaped tower at the heart of the Monastery and Dimitry is soon on her way to… who knows where? She’s in an autodoc and doesn’t care. Rykermann is heading out to the Grossedrache caverns, where he was about to take up a new career as a resistance fighter.
The second story opens several decades after the invasion, with the kzinti firmly embedded into Wunderland, and increasingly taking over the open spaces but the monkeys are still fighting, particularly around the caves of the Grossedrache. In a determined attempt to destroy this locus of resistance, a major kzinti invasion of the caverns is mounted. By now, the kzin had vast experience of the dastardly ways of the monkeys from Sol, but they were, well, kzin, and caution is still an alien concept… So, when Platoon-Officer orders his troops forward, everyone rushes in, except for Corporal, who’d been assigned rear guard, leaving him to hear the screams of kzin in surprised shock. When he, cautiously, moves forward in turn, he finds a horror show. After asking for a volunteer (still, all his surviving command volunteered), Corporal send him forward, ordering the kzin not to keep moving into danger. What was discovered was that those despicable monkeys had strung monofilament microwire across a section of tunnel that would have the kzin rushing downhill – maybe ARM’s anti-tech laws may have had something going for them after all? Gradually Corporal (well, effectively Sergeant now, the kzin are great believers in the dead men’s shoes school of promotion) and what remain of his troopers work their way through the tunnels in their sector. But it’s not just the pesky Terrans the kzin are fighting, the local wildlife decides that both sides are fair game, and they don’t particularly care if their targets are dead before attempting to eat them… This tale evolves into the isolated kzin and the survivors of the humans’ resistance cell having to co-operate to survive, which comes as a culture shock to both Sergeant, and his human foes. Most of the humans manage to get away though Rykermann is severely injured and fights back-to-back with Sergeant before they’re rescued by another prong of the Kzin invasion. Rykermann is accorded a rare honour by the kzin and is allowed a special boon by them – he asked that Sergeant be allowed to choose a name! That most coveted honour for a kzin!
The final tale to feature Rykermann and others from the previous two stories is ‘Music Box’. This is set a few years after the liberation of Wunderland, and if you want to read more about the liberation, other stories in the series cover the actual fighting – there should be a generic link to the Man-Kzin books in the description below. This tale, though, is a confused mess (in my opinion!), dealing with the political manoeuvring amongst the victorious humans as they deal with the kzin remaining on Wunderland. Rykermann is still alive and married to his lab assistant from pre-invasion days – anti aging drugs were available on rare occasions to Rykermann and even rarer for his wife, so they’re pretty much of a physical age by now. Also, in the background there’s a delegation from We Made It, where the human implementation of an FTL drive came from, allowing the humans to win this round of the wars against the kzin, and amongst the We Made It delegation is Dimity Carmody, late of Wunderland. Like I say, I found all the political shenanigans messy and confusing, though the meeting between Dimity and Rykermann was touching
The final story is set far into the future, where humans and the kzin have come to a sort of accommodation even as they are jockeying for advantage in the next war. In ‘Peter Robinson’, a group of humans and a pair of kzin, one from the Patriarchy and the other from Wunderland, and seen as a freak have been called in to investigate the presence of a device that looks like it belonged to the ancient Slavers. Extreme caution is required here as the most dangerous thing that could be found in such a location are revived Slavers, beings of terrifying mental powers to compensate for their relative physical lack of strength. What the party thinks is a rogue planet turned out to be a supersized stasis field, containing a series of smaller stasis boxes inside, along with others that have already opened. Fearing that the ‘moon’ is a trap, the party try and run, but they’re already too late, and a new set of slaves look like they’ll be joining the Thrint (species name for the Slaver, except that the despised Wunderland kzin is a telepath and is able to resist long enough to launch himself at the big stasis field and destroy it, and it’s presumed himself. It’s quite funny to see how this action makes the others re-assess the eponymous kzin’s abilities.
For the most part the stories in this collection hang together quite well, and while the final story is most out of place in terms of story continuity, it’s the third story, ‘Music Box’ that feels most out of place, though the politicking bits of the first story are also a bit of a slog to start with. ( )

"The Wunder War" tells of the occupation of the human colony on Wunderland in the Alpha Centauri system by the carnivorous, super-aggressive kzinti. ( )

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