The Chanur Novels

The series of five science fiction novels (forming three separate stories) by C. J. Cherryh. The novels in chronologic order are: The Pride of Chanur, followed by the Chanur's Venture trilogy (Chanur's Venture,The Kif Strike Back,Chanur's Homecoming) and Chanur's Legacy.

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The series is set in the same universe as "Downbelow Station", but in a different location of space, occupied by a number of spacefaring civilizations bound by a set of trade treaties into a so-called Compact. The Compact is not a political organization, and has no government; it regulates only the open trade and accessibility of space stations to all civilizations, leaving them to resolve their conflicts and politics between themselves. The races forming the Compact are:

• Mahendo'sat (singular mahe), black or brown primate-like creatures, human-size, very curious and political. Mahendo'sat political system is based on the concept of Personage, a charismatic figure with a lot of social credit; a Personage's power is decided only by the amount of followers, but the follower's actions could destroy the Personages as well as promote them, if the follower's action in Personage's name proves to have bad consequences. To the outsider, this looks like the mahen agents promote multiple mutually contradicting policies at once. Mahendo'sat are the "glue" of the Compact, always trying to balance powers so peace is kept and no race prevails. They are in constant search of new powers, recently including humans.

• Stsho, minute, fragile, crested white beings (even their eyes are pearly white), xenophobic and non-aggressive. Stsho rely on wealth, trade, and alliances to keep their independence; they have devised the trade and legal procedures of the Compact. They relish in delicate pleasures and pastel colors, their speech is exceedingly ceremonial and politically correct; they do not fight themselves and their personalities are prone to change ("Phasing") under stress, which has many legal implications. They have three sexes, which can change with Phasing, and only one of which is dealing with other aliens. They permit no other oxygen-breathing races in their territory.

• Tc'a, methane-breathing yellow five-eyed snakelike beings, and chi, yellow arthropod-like creatures, which are related in a way none of oxygen breathers are sure of. They are very technologically advanced and powerful; understanding them is tricky at best, though, since their brains are multi-part and their speech decodes as complex matrices of intertwined meanings. They run the methane side of most space stations.

• Kif, bare-skinned, ash-black, long-snouted bipedal hunters. They are the tallest race in the Compact, slender but fast and deadly. They are strict predators, requiring live prey; they have twin set of teeth, outer for biting and inner for chewing, and retractable claws. Their social and political [dis]organization winds about a value called sfik, which is face, authority, ferociousness - a kif that loses sfik is instantly demoted, and the followers either defect it or just kill it. Sfik is gained through combat victory, or possession of items valuable to the other side, or just respect of others: followers of strong sfik give more sfik to their leader. The side effect is that the kif are prone to change sides in any conflict at the first sign of weakness from their leader. They seem to have no other moral values; they are pirates and cannibals, and generally deemed a trouble. Occasionally, the sfik games wash a leader to considerable power of commanding a whole fleet of pirate ships; such pirate prince is called hakkikt and is a big annoyance to the mahendo'sat who view hakkiktun as destabilizing factors.

• Hani, feline-like race, maned, bearded, usually of red or tawny fur. Females are smaller than human size, males are much bigger. They were discovered by manehdo'sat and helped into space; most of their technology is mahen style. They live in autonomous clans, which are united into amphictionies for control over scarce resources; the biggest one being their homeworld itself, governed by mahen-inspired council of clans called the han. Each clan would consist of related females and juveniles, and a single male - the male ascends to clan lordship by defeating the old lord in personal combat. (Many more males live and die in exile.) Only females come into space. Hani politics are traditionalistic, based on such concepts as allegiance, honor, blood feud, parole, and such.

• Knnn, the third methane breathing race, multi-legged tangles of wiry black hair, the most technologically advanced of all Compact: they can maneuver in hyperspace and carry other ships with them. Only tc'a can communicate with them (or claim they can); the knnn are incomprehensible and therefore deemed dangerous by all other races, not to be provoked. They trade by snatching whatever they want and leaving whatever they deem a payment behind; it is an improvement over their prior habit of just taking trader ships apart.

Human space borders the kif and knnn space, which is why there has been no contact between the Compact and the human powers. When the contact ensues, it is in the form of an ambitious hakkikt capturing a human scouting party. One last surviving crew member, Tully, escapes the kif in dock and winds up on The Pride of Chanur, hani trader vessel, which sets off the events of the first novel in the series and its three-part sequel.