Of Men and Monsters

Of Men and Monsters is a 1968 science fiction novel by William Tenn, an Expansion of his 1963 short story "The Men in the Walls", featuring a small amount of prehistoric content.

Plot
After the Earth has been taken over by giant aliens (called Monsters), humanity is reduced to living the manner of mice, burrowing into the walls of their dwellings and stealing food and supplies from the monsters. After hundreds of years, almost all knowledge of human history and science has been lost. In this milieu, a young man named Eric the Only is sent into the Monsters territory to steal something to prove his manhood. When he returns, however, he finds that he has been betrayed and branded an outlaw. Returning to Monster territory, he meets a group of foreigners and joins them. After being captured by Monsters, Eric is separated from the others and sent to a young woman, Rachel, from an even more foreign tribe, who have knowledge of human and Monster science. Her marries and impregnates her, and they, along with Roy, escape the monsters by playing dead and riding through a sewer pipe. They discover the monsters have invented a highly effective pesticide wiping out the front and back-burrowers. They flee to Rachel's tribe, the Aaron people, where they discover that their plan to strike back at the monsters is nearly complete. The plan is that the Aaron people will flee the Monster dwelling on a spaceship on the roof. They will hide in it, and when it stops off at a planet, a group of the Aaron people will disembark and settle themselves in a new house. In this way, humanity will be able to expand to many planets, and the monsters will never be entirely free of them.

Front-burrowers
Each front-burrow tribe (those living closest to Monster territory), generally less than 150 people, calls itself "Mankind", and considers themselves the only true people. Humans of other tribes are called "Strangers", and while they are traded with, they are considered lesser than Mankind, as only front-burrowers have the skills and knowledge of how to move effectively in Monster territory. Front-burrowers are the only humans capable of effectively thieving from the Monsters, which they use to trade food and raw materials with Strangers for finished products like spears. Like all humans, they are arranged in two parallel groups, the Female and Male societies. The members of the Male society steal and govern, and are the only ones who typically leave their own territory. The members of the Female society keep ancient knowledge and lore, including which Monster food is safe to eat. Women habitually go naked, and men wear only small "loin straps", and a few other leather straps to hold equipment when going into Monster territory. Both men and women are given a name during a religious ritual, in which they listen to ancient television broadcasts, upon initiation into their respective societies, which is supposed to represent their most salient quality. Front and back-burrowers now bear many more children than modern humans, with singleton births being considered a sign of bad luck. The primary religion of front and back-burrowers is "Ancestor-science", which posits that keeping and regaining the knowledge of ancient humanity will allow them to defeat the Monsters. It is opposed by a heretical minority religion of "Alien-science", which proposes that Ancestor-science failed to save humanity, and humans must learn the ways of the Monsters in order to defeat them.


 * Eric the Eye, the resourceful young protagonist, originally named Eric the Only on account of his singleton origin.
 * Roy the Runner, another member of Eric's warrior band, he is highly adaptable to social circumstance.
 * Thomas the Trap-Smasher, the leader of Eric's band, he is a highly capable leader, and a member of the Alien-science conspiracy.
 * Franklin the Father of Many Thieves, the fat chief of Eric's tribe.
 * Sarah the Sickness-Healer, the healer of Eric's tribe.

Back-burrowers
Back-burrowers have slightly more knowledge of science than front-burrowers, and consider them barely civilized. They are the "weaponsmiths, potters, tanners and artificers" of humanity, but are otherwise fairly similar to the front-burrowers, following the same religion, and differing in their clothing only in holding their hair back with a leather strap.


 * Arthur the Organizer, a band leader who proves effective at managing arguing men but inept at keeping them out of danger.
 * Walter the Weapon-seeker, a hardy man with knowledge of Monster weapons.

Aaron People
The Aaron people are a group of humanity living even further from Monster territory than the back-burrowers. They wear more clothing than other groups, with men wearing utility belt-like skirts, and women large cloaks with many pockets. They follow neither Ancestor-science nor Alien-science, having "invented and discarded both", and instead create new technology to combat the monsters. They have retained a great deal of human, science, history and philosophy. They are extremely numerous, being organized into many sections (at least 16), each the size of a front-burrower tribe. The Aaron people consider both front and back-burrowers to be very primitive, barely better than wild men. The names of parents form the surnames of their children, in the manner of Iceland, but the names themselves derive from Hebrew, such as Rachel, Daniel, etc. Their leader is also called the Aaron, who was the original high priest of the Israelites, with his descendants inheriting that priesthood. This suggests that the Aaron people may be descended from Jews, though how much of their religion and customs were retained is not explored.


 * Rachel Esthersdaughter, a highly knowledgeable member of their female society, in charge of testing out a weapon meant to neutralize Monster technology. She marries Eric and bears his child.
 * The Aaron, the leader of the Aaron people, a wise old man overseeing an entirely new plan to combat the monsters.

Wild Men
Humans who live outside the houses of Monsters, they have reverted to a more primitive, hairy form, walking on their knuckles and wandering in mixed groups of males and females. They do not speak, and eat the flesh of other humans. They are never encountered by front-burrowers, who invoke them as a boogeyman to their children.

Men from other houses
The above groups live within and around a single house, being descended from a single founder population. The Monsters bring men from an entirely different house into their laboratory, who are described as being short, brown-skinned, and very strong for their size, and wielding clubs and slingshots rather than spears. They have names of the form Nicky Five and Harry Twelve, and have differing ideas on almost every single aspect of human life to the people of the house the back is set in, leading to violence between the two groups.

Prehistoric Content
The technological level of humanity is generally extremely low, with front-burrowers not even having the knowledge to make their own weapons and tools. Almost all knowledge of the human past among the front-burrowers and back-burrowers has been lost, and what has been retained has been distorted and misinterpreted. History and writing, as such, is unknown among them. Additionally, since humans hide in burrows dug into Monster walls, they are quite literally cavemen.