Skip to main content

story identification - SciFi book series about a collection of humans who get taken by a lightning quick alien race


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 I think the books where relatively new (no older then 10-15 years) as the tech in the books where not outdated scifi.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.



Answer



This sounds remarkably like the Koban series by Stephen W Bennett



We colonized seven hundred planets. Humankind enjoyed the benefits of expansion room and the end of wars. We even disbanded our military.


Then the Krall found us.


The Krall have used thousands of years of combat to select the genes of the strongest and fastest warriors. They are a species determined to dominate the entire galaxy, through destruction and annihilation of every opponent.


Koban is an uninhabited high gravity planet with impossibly fast savage animals, which employ organic superconducting nerves. This deadly world is where the Krall tested humans for war capability. We are useful only if we can fight well. If not, they will destroy us swiftly, as they have others. They already have slave races, and we are poor tasting meat animals. The Krall will use us, if worthy, to seek physical perfection using the attrition of war, one planet at a time.


Growing weary of human physical weakness, the ruthless Krall are on the verge of a decision to eliminate our race quickly. A ship containing bio-scientists is captured for combat testing on Koban. The urgent choice for Captain Mirikami and the scientists is simple: Prove we can produce better, smarter fighters, or humanity is doomed to rapid extermination, rather than the slow eradication the Krall prefer.




There are 7 books in the primary series as it happens



  1. Koban (2012)

  2. The Mark of Koban (2013)

  3. Rise of the Kobani (2013)

  4. Shattered Worlds (2014)

  5. A Federation Forged in Fire (2015)

  6. Conflict and Empire (2016)

  7. When Empires Collide (2017)



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.