Leo Frankowski's last Science Fiction Series. Although 6 books were planned 3 were published before Leo Frankowski passed away: the first A Boy and His Tank (1999) set up the series, the second The War with Earth (2003) defined it, the third Kren of the Mitchegai (2005) introduced the universes Big Bad, the next was planned to be their first major conflict, followed by the long hard war, ending in a epic resolution.
It should be noted that two thirds of the series were coauthored by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.
The series contains examples of:
- Author Appeal: A lot of characters have chauvinistic attitudes.
- BFS: Armed tanks with big fancy kukris.
- Cannibalism Superpower: Aliens eat babies for eternal youth and learning.
- Cold Sniper: This series weapons are so powerful that one needs armor to protect against ones own guns One-Hit Kill for everything else.
- Cool Tank: Overlaps with Hover Tank, although with the proper add-ons the "tanks" could fly in space.
- Cyberspace: How your tank is run ... it generates problems later.
- Distant Finale: The interspaced narration by humanities successors Uplifted Animals
- Hover Mecha: Humanity's tanks find arms to be incredibly useful and since they levitate on magnetic bars the net result is this trope.
- I Know You Know I Know:
Lawful Evil life on a Michegai "Grass Planet" can get complicated. - Inertial Damping: Via inertial dampening fluid.
- Mitchegai ships can turn inertia off leading to some nifty maneuvering, not quite a Reactionless Drive but used as an alternative to Deflector Shields.
- Lensman Arms Race: The series starts of pretty spectacular, and then gets more impressive with sequential books.
- Multipurpose Monocultured Crop: Mitchegai "Grass Planets" can synthesize anything they need artificially and/or by using their "grass" or their peoples.
- Mundane Utility: A number of examples throughout the series hyper-advanced thought controlled tanks with strong AI lead to massive reduction of training and logistical footprints with some off the shelf software, having built in full time Auto-Doc systems lead to a holistic cure for cancer, having advanced spacesuits gathering dust lead to the reinvention of armored warfare, etc.
- Our Wormholes Are Different: Similar to Stargate there needs to be two points to travel, however if you have good enough computers one of those points can be moving, and since your rockets don't need to carry their own fuel anymore you can go quite fast.
- Power Floats: Via intense magnetism the tanks even have little bars that act as treads.
- Remote Body: The hero spends most of the second book as the controller for a telepresence human-ish robot.
- Rocket Jump: The RC humanoid drones have this built into their legs.
- Sapient Tank: Commanded by an Old Soldier.
- Single-Biome Planet: The Mitchegai absolutely sterilize planets having just one animal (themselves) and one plant leading them to form several thousand "Grass Planets" via Terraforming.
- New Kashubia itself used to be a gas giant, after a local supernova however, it has been rendered into a concentric sphere of different metals, which was great for manufacturing but sucky for anything else.
- Starfish Aliens: Two types Shapeshifting Crabs and Explosive Breeder lizards.
- Spaceship Girl: Tank girls and boys IN SPACE! thank you very much.
- Super-Reflexes: Combat Speed is a new development on the VR front, it makes for very neat tanks.
- Terraform: Several human planets and all Mitchegai planets.
- Tank-Tread Mecha: Aggressor Mark XIX tanks appear to be large-ish slabs of armored metal unless they need magnetic bars to act as treads which they store within themselves and arms which are add-ons but are so useful they are quickly becoming standard In-Universe.
- Weaponized Exhaust: Mentioned in passing.
