History Literature / DerSchwarm

** Discussed in-universe: how much intelligence and/or sentience do the yrr really have? It's ostensible that their brainpower and knowledge is massive, as they essentially form a giant, living computer that has been around for millions of years, but their attacks go from brilliant and cunning to erratic and contradictory. Is it because of some unknown course of thinking? Because they are actually automatic in nature and their actions depend heavily on stimulus? Or just becase they are simply that alien?
** At the end of the day, just [[spoiler:why does Weaver's plan make the yrr stop their destruction of humanity? Was it because it showed the yrr that humanity is intelligent and diplomatic enough to reproduce the yrr's means of communion? Was it because it fooled the yrr into thinking that humans and yrr are the same? Or because it caused such a LogicBomb on them that they essentially noped out?]]
* AmericaSavesTheDay: Defied. [[spoiler: US government, through General Li, would rather attempt extermination of the Yrr to preserve American primacy even if it risks destroying mankind.]]

* {{Eagleland}}: Boorish, as all the Americans in charge are negative stereotypes in some way of another. The president is the typical, self-righteous Christian conservative; Li is the classical Asian-American overachiever; Vanderbilt is the fat, greasy douchebag; and Peak is the brutal, AngryBlackManStereotype who climbed his way up from a ghetto. Even Frost, who is American too despite not being in charge, is still a cowboy with NoIndoorVoice.

* {{Eagleland}}: Boorish, as all the Americans in charge are negative stereotypes in some way of another. The president is the typical, self-righteous Christian conservative; Li is the classical Asian-American overachiever; Vanderbilt is the fat, greasy douchebag; and Peak is the brutal, AngryBlackMan who climbed his way up from a ghetto. Even Frost, who is American too despite not being in charge, is still a cowboy with NoIndoorVoice.

** And not only in the "scientific accuracy" department either: Schätzing has also done a fairly good job on the depiction of how science as a field/discipline "works" in general [[labelnote: note]]things like falsifiability, logical reasoning, gradual formulation of hypotheses, doing research mostly in small, successive steps but also acknowledging the much more seldom, but arguably more important intuitive leaps, realistic timescales for experiments etc.[[/labelnote]] and on the mundane details of academic life (well, before the plot really takes off) - something few authors outside hard science fiction or the "technothriller" genre manage to do. It's fairly authentic. Of course, the [[{{LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters}} loads and loads of real-world scientists]] whom he thanks in the acknowledgments might have contributed a fair bit to both.

** And not only in the "scientific accuracy" department either: Schätzing has also done a fairly good job on the depiction of how science as a field/discipline "works" in general [[labelnote: note]]things like falsifiability, logical reasoning, gradual formulation of hypotheses, doing research mostly in small, successive steps but also acknowledging the much more seldom, but arguably more important intuitive leaps, realistic timescales for experiments etc.[[/labelnote]] and on the mundane details of academic life (well, before the plot really takes off) - something few authors outside HardScienceFiction or the "technothriller" genre manage to do. It's fairly authentic. Of course, the [[{{LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters}} loads and loads of real-world scientists]] whom he thanks in the acknowledgments might have contributed a fair bit to both.

* OrganicTechnology: [[spoiler: Seems to be how the yrr achieve all their strikes against humanity.]]
* PuppeteerParasite: [[spoiler: An interesting take on this trope: The yrr apparently can only possess sea creatures, and thus have to do pretty creative stuff in order to fight the land-dwelling humans.]]

* ShownTheirWork: Many scientists in the cast = many {{Mister Exposition}}s. And Schätzing did so much research that he was even able to publish a second (non-fiction) book about the themes dealt with in ''Der Schwarm''.

* TooSoon: If you happened to read the novel ''after'' the 2004 tsunami.

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Contains examples of:

* [[spoiler: AnyoneCanDie: And most characters ''do''.]]

* [[spoiler:HeroicSacrifice: Johanson, though he was already lethally wounded when blowing up the submarine including him, Judith Li and the poisoned torpedo which was meant to destroy the yrr.]]
* [[spoiler:HiveMind: The yrr.]]

* [[spoiler: OrganicTechnology: Seems to be how the yrr achieve all their strikes against humanity.]]
* [[spoiler: PuppeteerParasite: An interesting take on this trope: The yrr apparently can only possess sea creatures, and thus have to do pretty creative stuff in order to fight the land-dwelling humans.]]

* [[spoiler: StarfishAliens: The yrr, although they evolved on Earth. But they are so alien that the humans have to rely on someone from the SETI project in order to establish contact with them.]]

* [[spoiler: {{Synchronization}}: The quirk of the Yrr.]]

** And not only in the "scientific accuracy" department either: Schätzing has also done a fairly good job on the depiction of how science "works" in general and on the mundane details of academic life (well, before the plot really takes off) - something few authors outside HardScienceFiction or the "technothriller" genre manage to do. It's fairly authentic. Of course, the [[{{LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters}} loads and loads of real-world scientists]] whom he thanks in the acknowledgments might have contributed a fair bit to both.

* NukeEm: [[spoiler:Judith Li, Jack Vanderbilt, Mike Rubin and others secretly plan to annihilate the yrr, with poison instead of nuclear weapons, but the general idea is the same.]]

* StopBeingStereotypical: It irks Leon Anawak to no end that Jack Greywolf intentionally [[{{Flanderization}} Flanderizes]] his Native American heritage.

* AmericaSavesTheDay: Defied. [[spoiler: US government, through General Li, would rather risk attempting extermination of the Yrr to preserve American primacy even if it risks destroying mankind.]]

* AssassinOutclassin: [[spoiler:Vanderbilt attempted to kill Johanson, but Greywolf and Anawak prevented it.]]

* EverythingIsEvenWorseWithSharks and whales and lobsters and worms and jellyfish and ...

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Averted, although the persons involved are not that famous. They are scientists who helped Schätzing [[ShownTheirWork do his research]]. Mostly minor roles, although one of them even [[BadassBookworm fights]] a [[EverythingIsEvenWorseWithSharks shark]]!

The plot: Sea life has gone crazy! [[ItmakesSenseInContext Marine worms cause devastating tsunamis]], whales attack ships, and crustaceans invade the coasts in order to infect everyone with deadly micro-organisms. All in all, the creatures of the ocean seem to be [[GaiasVengeance hell-bent on exterminating mankind]]. Scientists all around the world try to determine the reason for all these events, and of course hope to find a way to stop them. The main characters are maritime biologist Sigur Johanson and whale researcher Leon Anawak, who have to deal with human opposition and the maritime threat at the same time... [[spoiler: In the end, a fringe theory by Johanson turns out to be true: Behind all this are the [[StarfishAliens yrr]], a hitherto unknown sentient species living in the depths of the ocean]]...

The plot: Sea life has gone crazy! [[ItmakesSenseInContext Marine worms cause devastating tsunamis]], [[DolphinsDolphinsEverywhere whales]] attack ships, and crustaceans invade the coasts in order to infect everyone with deadly micro-organisms. All in all, the creatures of the ocean seem to be [[GaiasVengeance hell-bent on exterminating mankind]]. Scientists all around the world try to determine the reason for all these events, and of course hope to find a way to stop them. The main characters are maritime biologist Sigur Johanson and whale researcher Leon Anawak, who have to deal with human opposition and the maritime threat at the same time... [[spoiler: In the end, a fringe theory by Johanson turns out to be true: Behind all this are the [[StarfishAliens yrr]], a hitherto unknown sentient species living in the depths of the ocean]]...

* BerserkButton: Anawak has THREE of them: Greywolf flanderizing his native american heritage, interrupting him while explaining his research, and saying the 'indian' word in front of him.

* EverythingIsEvenWorseWithSharks and whales and lobsters and worms and jellyfish and...

* [[spoiler:HiveMind: The yrr]]

* [[spoiler: PuppeteerParasite: An interesting take on this trope: The yrr apparently can only possess sea creatures, and thus have to do quite creative stuff in order to fight the land-dwelling humans.]]
* PungeonMaster: The author's acknowledgement is FULL of puns related to the word "yrr", at least in the original German version.

* SouthernFriedGenius: Stan Frost is a quite cliched Texan, boisterous and plucky. And a very capable scientist.

* StopBeingStereotypical: It irks Leon Anawak to no end, that Jack Greywolf is intentionally [[{{Flanderization}} Flanderizing]] his Native American heritage.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: the discussions between Anawak and Greywolf is entirely made by these.

* AuthorTract: Like all of Schätzing's books, it devolves into this [[YourMileageMayVary somewhere around the middle]] of the book.