I recall there were two warring alien empires, one of which was led by a race that could telepathically inflict pain on others, but when they tried to do it to humans, it would backfire. something about human's animal instincts being much closer to the surface than the other species.  Humans made the most aggressive and dangerous fighters, so both empires tried to reruit humanity, since the other races involved in the war were fairly monolithic and sided all with one empire or the other. Humanity was all splintered though.  The empire led by the telepathic race claimed that everyone in it was equal but in reality the telepathic race was in charge.
34381
The series involves two groups of aliens who have been fighting an interstellar war for many years before the first book.  The war is started by a race of jellyfish-like telepaths who have used their powers to control several species which they use as soldiers.  The jellyfish aliens have declared a holy war against all sapient vertebrates.  The only species on their side that aren't being actively controlled through their telepathy are invertebrate species who have joined the holy war.  In this series, humans are immune to telepathy--what's more, a completely unconscious reflex tends to destroy the mind of anything even attempting to affect their minds.  One of the central themes of the series is how well suited humanity is to warfare, and all the sacrifices forced on humanity as they become nothing but soldiers fighting against the jellyfish, losing almost all culture not in some way related to being soldiers, as the other races in their alliance take over the other roles.  Other species I recall include a bird race that is gifted at linguistics but can be sent into shock by even seeing a low quality recording of a human walking around a room.  They just cannot handle the hide or flee reflexes triggered by seeing such an obvious predator.  Another race is a crab like group that is so antisocial they all keep suicide buttons at hand when working with other races, and only work to help the human alliance's side because the jellyfish won't leave them alone.  There is a race that bears a faint resemblance to large rats who were previously the best soldiers on their side, and another renowned for their intellect.
34536
Looking for the name of a series of novels I read a two or three years ago. I think the books where relatively new (no older then 10-15 years) as the tech in the books where not outdated scifi.  The series was at least 3 books, but I think there may have been more.  A brutal species of alien determined to be the quickest, strongest, most brutal... individuals possible, takes a group of humans from their colony ship(?) and places them on the aliens "sacred" planet. "Sacred" because of the local fauna being the only threat the aliens have found in the galaxy that surpasses their own prowess.   After a period of time the aliens leave and forget about the weak humans, thinking they will die anyways. The humans do not die, but instead take genes and inspiration from the local fauna (carbon nano tube bones, superhuman reactions, speed, strength and so on).  Think one of the books are named the same as the aliens named the planet.
86284
Unique short SF story where aliens being invaded by other aliens, went looking for allies (to help save their galactic empire).  While being chased by the antagonistic aliens, they encountered a barrier surrounding a solar system. They somehow managed to disable it and found a solar system where the third planet from the Sun showed signs of life. When they landed, they were received by a human girl who greeted them. The enemy ship which followed them also landed, but were destroyed by the humans easily.  Upon learning of the aliens request, the humans decided to help the aliens, and moved their entire world to follow the aliens' ship. Too late the aliens realized that these humans were the ancient war mongering race which was sealed up eons ago and they had accidentally released them.  Could someone please help to identify this title for me. Thanks.
105013
I read two (maybe three) books about a protagonist who communicates with an alien who provides the instructions on how to create a device to teleport. The device is flawed in that it purposefully uses more energy (much more) by taking it from the rotation of the Earth.  The main character and two others continue to fight, commit intrigue, etc. The alien then uses them to recruit other races to do the same thing.
50902
I am trying to find a short story involving an alien race of 'Intellectuals.' They possess no opposable thumbs or other limbs to control their world.  I think the basis of the story is their discovery of a way to influence another unintelligent species that can manipulate objects.  This leads to a new start for them.  They may have been at risk of breeding beyond available resources.  The story ends with explorers returning from sea. They may have discovered a new land into which they can expand. The last few scenes have a darker flavor where one character has been presented with a rock that glows in the dark. He considers it for a period before being called away to greet the explorers. The author then takes over and makes some comments about most species passing one crossroads only to meet another.  The story could have been written at any time from the Golden Age though to the 1970's.
40852
I remember that the main character is trying to find the group that destroyed his home planet while he was on a mission. His planet was very difficult to live on and the people became expert in martial arts and were the best soldiers in the galaxy. They were mercenaries and often helped against tyrants. There was a very memorable section in at least one book about an initiation task that the main character had to do in that he had to survive in their wilderness for days. He was at some point surrounded in a old building by thousands of poisonous worm/snake creatures that he managed to survive until rescued by the leaders.
84281
This was a trilogy about a future earth where double clones were made to fight wars and they nearly destroyed the earth. They were good fighters because they were mentally linked. All were supposedly destroyed but a few were found by this reporter type.  I believe the USA version were called Jeeks.  In the second book a space ship containing a bunch of them returned.  In the final book one clone of a command 3 person clone fought them (the other 2 in the triad were killed and somehow this one did not go insane).  I have looked for this book for 30 years.
37964
I am looking for identification of a short story I read as part of an anthology around twenty years ago, and I think it might have been written by Harry Harrison but I am not certain.   Plot line goes like this: evil alien empire invade earth. They've done this many times, they know the routine. The populace resists, is crushed and turned into slaves/subjects of the empire, leader of the invasion retires to a life of luxury as colonial governor. I think the aliens look like humanoid snakes.   But Earth is different. When the invading force arrives, they spot no defenses, no military. When the ships land, the earthlings welcome them with open arms. The aliens are nonplussed and ask if the earthlings realize just what is going on.   Oh yes, the earthlings reply. But they point out that Earth doesn't have FTL technology and clearly the aliens do and could crush them if they resist. But by the same token they must have value, and other out there (whether pirates or other empires) may seek to take their planet by force and kill the populace. And if that happened, the empire would be forced to defend Earth as a valuable colony. Therefore it is in the Earthlings' best interests to be as valuable to their new masters as possible, not fight them.   The aliens point out that they could conceivably be defeated by this hypothetical threat. The humans shrug and agree, then point out that this would simply show that their new masters were even more capable of defending Earth.   Fast forward and the new planetary governor finds himself bored. He is chatting with his second in command who has just come in excitedly for having earned a black belt in human martial arts (I don't remember which one in particular, if it is even mentioned).   The governor is mystified, why didn't his lieutenant simply take this black belt? The lieutenant explains that without earning the belt, it would be meaningless. Instead, it required him to train and master the skill of human martial arts, which are curiously different from the aliens' own form. He explains via example:   In the alien martial arts, if one person shoves against the other, the second person seeks to shove back harder, thereby establishing might and dominance.   In human martial arts, however, the second person would instead seek to grab the first persons arm and guide them in the direction they are already going. By doing so, the first person is thrown completely off balance and at the mercy of the second person.   The governor thinks this sounds insane, ridiculous, and says a lot about a cowardly people like the humans.   Toward the end of the story, this comes back to haunt him. He suddenly finds that none of his men will respond to his command. A coup has occurred and the humans have slaughtered every alien on the planet except him. The humans simply bided their time until they had learned the secret of FTL, how to build and maintain a space navy, and in the meantime the occupying force had become soft and were easily dispatched. Now the humans are taking the navy back to the alien empire and aim to take it down. To replace it or to free the enslaved planets, I don't really remember.
31954
There's a book that I read several years ago that I'd like to find.  However, I cannot remember enough about it to find it myself.  Neither the title nor author remain in my mind, nor any keyword or phrase that's unique enough for the Grand Google to nail for me.  Hence my desperate plea here.  In the book, there is an interstellar civilization composed of several power blocks.  The entire civilization did not fill the galaxy, but it did span several stellar systems.  Maybe 10s or 100s.  I seem to remember that one of the civilizations was a decentralized group referred to as the Brotherhood and they seemed to have been keen on preserving old learning and political ideals.  A derelict alien spacecraft from outside all of this had been discovered and at least two of the power blocks sent ships to recover it.  I don't recall if they knew at the time about the power the alien ship had, but they must have had some clue since there was some urgency in capturing this ship.  One of the ships sent to capture the Alien craft was commanded by somebody who was rather shaken up, to say the least.  He had had some big trauma in his past (like... the last ship he captained was annihilated with all hands.) so he was kinda bummed out about things and wasn't really putting his heart into getting this done.  He was assisted by the ship's AI who had a lot of soul-to-soul chats with the captain, and at one point almost relieved him of command because he was just not getting the job done.  I think the ship's name was Boaz.  These were the "good guys".  There was at least one other ship sent from the "bad guys."  The alien craft had some remarkable powers.  The interior volume was apparently infinite and the operators could see and manipulate anything in the universe.  There might have been some example given where all the rats somewhere were found and disposed of.  Whoever had control was tempted by the ole absolute power corrupts absolutely problem, but nobody but nobody could stop them because of their power.  They could eat and multiply within the ship and become real bad-asses.  But alas... (or hurray, depending upon which side you're one) everything fails eventually, and whoever controlled the ship would eventually succumb to some horrible end.  Whereupon the ship became derelict again until some other lucky race found it and repeated the cycle.  The ship had an AI that was real interested in taking the power for itself, but there was some mechanical, spring-loaded, mechanism outside of its control that needed to be worked in order to execute power.  The AI apparently never figured out how to "work the spring" and this made him crazy angry.  The ending is equally foggy for me.  I'm pretty sure the good guys got the ship.  They agonized over what to do with it.  Apparently it was indestructable and nobody wanted to taste the temptation of all that power.  In the end they dumped it on the surface of a neutron star.  There it sat forever more, probably with the crazy AI really pissed off about being there.  If you've read this book, you'll recognize it immediately from these clues.  I'm looking forward to finding out the name of this book.  Thanks!
25057
I am looking for help to point me out at a very old novel (likely from the '60s) about two empires at interstellar war. When it comes to starships, one is technologically very advanced, and the other has very low and inefficient technology.  The highly advanced empire has apparently strong chances to win the war, in particular considering a new technology they were developing. I remember the technology to work like this: consider the space as a flat surface, and on this surface, a disk around the spaceship. When the technology was turned on, this disk was stretched out, as made of rubber, so that it produced a cone, with the tip being the spaceship. The spaceship was therefore teleported 10 parsec away (if I remember correctly), but retained all the connections to the original position. If the spaceship moved, the cone moved as well. This allowed to move in position among enemy ships completely unnoticed, by stretching while afar, then moving in the proper position 10 parsecs away, then destretching.  Despite this technology, the empire lost the war because of delays. It's a perfect example of how having a disruptive technology does not guarantee to win against the competitors.  I am trying to find out the author and name of this novel, hopefully with the date of publication and in which journal/magazine.
72060
I'm looking for a novel that I think was published before 2006; it was a great read.   From what I can remember there was an aggressor alien species that came to earth and put the human race into something like castes to control them. They gave black people power and made whites more like slaves. This alien race were like giant grasshoppers or bugs and could jump high.  There was another friendly alien race that befriended humans; they were very short and might have been a slave race. Humans taught them military tactics and tech, and both these friendly aliens and humans were able to defeat their mutual enemy.
29349
I may have encountered this short story in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Human explorers encounter an alien spacecraft. Aliens are cautiously friendly, but then tell the humans about an ancient, brilliant and cruel race of beings that conquered and destroyed every civilization they encountered. They were finally defeated and destroyed, or so it was thought, but their home world was never found. It turns out that this powerful, vicious race was in fact, Earthlings.
82162
I read this book in the early 2000's, but I can't for the life of me remember the title or author and it's driving me crazy!  The story is in the future. Earth and most of the galaxy has been conquered by a super-intelligent computer race who no one ever sees. The main character is a male soldier who fights as a collaborator for the occupiers. He wears armor similar to "Starship Troopers", and his main job is to suppress rebellions.  He has 2 or 3 girl servants as a reward for being an officer, whose job is to give him sex on demand. One is named Hanni (I think). His best friend is a large, hulking, lizard-like alien who is female and also a soldier. In the lizard race, only the females are intelligent. The males make a sound like "bok" when having sex. His female lizard friend isn't into males though. She likes other females.  He has another soldier friend who is female. She keeps a male servant / sex slave for her own use, who has a large nose.  He suppresses lots of rebellions, including ripping the arm off some intelligent insect species. At one planet he is on, humans are mixing with some weird bird-like species. And there is another species that is intelligent and tall, with four legs.  He goes home to Earth and back to his old room. There's a holographic picture on the ceiling which his parents kept for him. It shows a woman who masturbates when he gives it a signal. (Did I mention how much sex is in this book? LOL) There is a rebellion with his old friends back on Earth. He suppresses it, before they are killed. He thinks resistance is pointless and hopeless.  At the end, his lizard friend shows him a huge weapons cache and invites him to join a secret resistance among the soldiers. He decides to join them after all, and there is hope in his life again.  I can remember so much about this book it is amazing, but I can't find it! I would really like to re-read this book, and read some other books by this same author. If someone could help me out, I would really appreciate it! Thanks :)
67642
In which book did alien protagonists absorb and mutate humans, turning their flesh into biological weapons that they then used against other humans? I believe the book starts with a human encountering a lone member of the alien species, who promptly subsumes him and uses his flesh to make weapons that it can use. It then goes in search of more raw material.. I think the human discovered one of the aliens when he was atempting to salvage a small object adrift in space.  If I recall correctly, the human then crashed his ship on earth. I think the aliens were more insectile (lots of legs) and could control a human by inserting a proboscis into their spine. Once they didn't need the intact human, they injected them with something (nanotech?) that let them repurpose the flesh and bones into new forms. This could be done to dead humans too, as long as the body hadn't significantly decayed. The aliens had previously lost an interstellar war and were believed to be extinct. The species had different casts, with the one at the start of the story being an infiltrator/scout. I probably read the book between 1983 and 1999.
7593
In the book, humans were in a long war with an alien race that had a slight upper hand in numbers and technology, and so were slowly losing ground.  At the start of the war, Earth had cut itself off from all contact with the rest of humanity; I think this was hundreds of years before the events in the book.  As the book opens, a single spaceship from Earth arrives at the human's capital world, IIRC to pick up an ambassador to travel to the alien's home world for peace negotiations.  Some more plot points dredged from memory:    The Earth ship had a small crew, somewhere around 4 or 5. The Earth humans had psychic powers, but galactic humans didn't. Earth had gone through a lot of social upheaval during its isolation from the rest of the galaxy. I think the aliens were telepathic (the Earth humans didn't tell the galactic ambassador about all their plans because he couldn't shield his thoughts).   The ending went along these lines:      After the peace mission, the aliens invade Earth with a large part of their military and trigger a booby trap that destroys them along with Earth.  After that, the balance of power is in humanity's favor.   If it helps, I would have read the book in the late 1970s or early 1980s, but I believe it was published some time before that.
68168
Did all the humans in the Star Wars universe originate on a single planet some time in the distant past, or did they originate on different worlds and intermix into one species over millenia?  This is specifically about only humans, not humanoid aliens. I would prefer answers from the main canon or EU canon.
60051
I don't remember the title/author of a Sci-Fi novel, where the author demonstrated that in case of an encounter with a more advanced alien life form, they would consider most convenient for them to exterminate the human race instead of every other alternative...