The Enemy Papers

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Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear was published as a novella in IASFM, September, 1979. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards in the novella category in 1980.

Then there was the movie.

The sequels The Tomorrow Testament and The Last Enemy followed, and later the whole trilogy - along with bonus material related to the setting - was published as The Enemy Papers book.

The main plot is driven by implications of a big war between Humans and Dracs, its consequences and the true cause behind it.

Tropes used in The Enemy Papers include:

• Bilingual Backfire - A couple Dracs on the way back to their homeworld don't expect the human protagonist to be able to understand them. He lets them know with a few choice words in Drac that they picked entirely the wrong human to insult behind his back.
• Cycle of Revenge: The Tomorrow Testament, and particularly The Last Enemy, wrestle with this problem. How to stop a war which is counterproductive for both Humans and Dracs, but whose populations will still fight because of this?
• Dead-Man Switch: Through an almost- Irrevocable Order. When cornering people more forward-looking than even Dracs, it's good to have a Deadman Fleet Command. "Blow me up and your planet will be blown up".
• Death World: Amadeen. Once it was just one more boring mining colony, but no more -- a courtesy of War Is Hell trope.
• Enemy Mine: Not the Trope Namer, but helped popularize it.
• I Am X, Son of Y: Dracs use Master Apprentice Chain in this way. Which (added to actually caring about one of them) makes Davidge a honorary member of Zammis' clan.
• Irrevocable Order: If the station where peace negotiations are conducted will be blown up, this will also take out the only officer capable of stopping in time the fleet sent to bomb the guilty party's homeworld. Joanne Nicole isn't nice.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: A number of characters, but principally Davidge.
• Rubber Forehead Aliens: The difference between humans and Drac (save the very fact that the latter are hermaphrodite lizards) is not so great and more cultural than biological in nature. Much the same for other aliens.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: A "solution" of the Amadeen problem.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Part of Davidge's solution in The Last Enemy.
• Summon Bigger Fish: There's a whole species who has the "Let's You and Him Fight" approach ingrained in their culture. They're not warlike, but quite dangerous.
• Sword of Damocles: The whole point of the Navi Di, although they do have to establish that they're fully willing and capable of using the power they have.
• War Is Hell: The first book is mostly about two stranded pilots, but second and third deals with it more closely.
• Xanatos Gambit: One of the main messages of Talman (Drac "Bible") is "look what your true goal is, then start looking for the ways to reach it" . Realpolitik is just one pattern in a tapestry for them. No wonder that in this society the renowned teachers of Talma are given a wide berth, the way Asskicking Equals Authority works in more primitive cultures. They lead powerful clans, and even when one is disgraced and sent to Penal Colony, the convoying soldier doesn't want to contradict him.
  • And then it turned out that even Dracs were duped and used by other schemers.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Human pilots are taught to insult one of renowned Drac philosophers to taunt cold-blooded enemy pilots into more rash actions. Drac pilots are taught that Mickey Mouse was a renowned human philosopher, so they answer accordingly. It's not hard to guess which one incapacitates better.