The real beauty of Bill the Galactic Hero was the
scathing social commentary. Despite the very non-serious nature of this series, it ranks right up there with
Starship Troopers and
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted as one of the best
sci-fi/
military/
social commentary books of all time.
Central to this scathing commentary was the never-ending war with the Chingers, a lizardlike race portrayed as being enormous, endowed with venom-dripping fangs and motivated only by the desire to do bad things to humans. In actuality, the Chingers were tiny lizards, perhaps the size of a small domestic cat, and they were in fact rather intelligent and peaceful.