* AngstAversion: The odds are stacked so ''incredibly'' high against the human race that [[OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow any way for humanity to win would feel like cheating]].
* ExecutiveMeddling: Gerrold has a tendency to stray from the story of the war against the Chtorran gastropedes to write long, meandering {{Author Tract}}s about lawyers, video games, [[MostWritersAreWriters people who take advantage of writers]], etc. Editors, in turn, remorselessly chopped them out. When his fandom became better established, the books were re-published [[ProtectionFromEditors with these passages restored]]. Thus the fandom discovered such [[SugarWiki/GushingAboutWritingYouLike wonders]] as how [=McCarthy=] designed a best-selling video game as a teenager, the rise and fall of scheming producer Lester Barnstorm, and the [[http://mrmyu.tumblr.com/post/144157788113/one-of-the-most-glorious-passages-ive-ever-read Baby Cooper Dollar Bill.]]
** Though admittedly, the removal of the Baby Cooper Dollar Bill story might have something to do with it being smack dab in the middle of a plotline where [=McCarthy=] engages in a vitriolic legal battle with his mother over his fortune in worm bounties -- ''after'' she's spent several hours straight disparaging his military career killing worms. [[spoiler:Which ends in his mother not only [[IHaveNoSon disowning]] him, but getting a restraining order so extreme [=McCarthy=] wasn't even informed when she ''died''.]] [[EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas Even Editors Love Their Mamas]].
** They also removed [[HideYourGays most of the homosexual context]].
* NightmareFuel: Some of the aliens and the stuff that they do is really unsettling.
** Some of the ''[[HumansAreBastards people]]'' and the stuff that they do is really unsettling.
* ValuesResonance: The Moscow Treaties -- an alliance of third-world countries forcing the US to spend billions upon billions of dollars on foreign aid through ''[[NukeEm nuclear brinksmanship]]'' -- seems downright prescient in TheNewTens and [[SlobsVersusSnobs "The One Percent"]].
----