Harry Turtledove Colonization Series

So the next series by Harry Turtledove is called Colonization. It is twenty years later and most of our favorite characters are still alive and causing trouble still. The world is in essence at peace but things can only get crazy when the colonization fleet starts to approach.

In the twenty years since the initial invasion, humans have branched out to space and increased the knowledge of nuclear weapons. They are no longer huge 10 ton bombs that are impossible to move around. Now they are smaller and fit on the end of rockets that sit unmanned in space just waiting to be used. The aliens are still much stronger than the 3 independent nations and their allies in Britain, Japan, and Canada.

As the colonization fleet makes orbit an unthinkable act is committed. An orbiting platform that has been hidden from observation opens up and launches and attack on one of the defenseless ships and in a nuclear blast kills 12 million aliens who were still in frozen sleep. The aliens are beside themselves and declare there will be all out war once they find out who committed this heinous act. Knowing that only 3 nations posses the know how to do something they each are quick to say it was not them. But there must be retribution, so the aliens are allowed to attack some place in each country for symbolisms sake.

As the colonization fleet settles in new difficulties arise especially as it relates to ginger. To us humans it is just a spice, but to the aliens it is like PCP or LCD would be to a human for the first time. Except they get this high, this rush every time they take a taste of ginger. After one taste they are hooked. But no one, not even the aliens were prepared for what would happen when the females of the colonization fleet tasted ginger. Being that the aliens are like lizards, they mate for a season and any other time don’t engage in mating. In the conquest fleet there were no females so there was not a way to study what it would do to females. Once a female alien tastes ginger she instantly went into season and started producing pheromones that sent males into a mating rage. Thus males who were supposed to be on patrol would forget themselves and fight amongst each other over a female.

A lot of this second series focuses on the ginger trade and how humans use it to confound the aliens and make their lives difficult. But we would not be humans if we did not think of fighting and that is exactly what the Germans are doing. Himmler is now Fuhrer and he is power mad, he intends on fighting the aliens again. After his sudden death the world has hope that the war will not come, but Ernst Kaltenbrunner replaced him and decided to take on the aliens. As Germany launches an offensive war against the aliens the rest of the world braces. The aliens pound them flat and nearly destroy all of Germany. At the behest of Russia and the U.S. they pull back from utter and total destruction and occupy the rest of Germany, leaving a flimsy independence.

We finally find out who committed the attack on the colonization fleet. It was the United States by direct order of the president. The aliens want blood and give and ultimatum of vaporizing a U.S. city or the U.S. giving up its positions in space and return its spaceship to Earth. And face continued inspections by the race to reduce its arms. Left with no good options the president makes two monumental decisions, that leave a reader shocked to his/her core. Knowing that we one day want to visit their home planet you can guess one decision he made.

Thus we have the opportunity to be Homeward Bound.