The Qu (or Quhanim) are an ancient, god-like race of intergalactic nomads and the primary antagonists in the book *All Tomorrows*. For nearly a billion years, they have wandered the cosmos, subjugating and genetically altering other life forms. Biologically, they are immortal, soft-bodied invertebrates — reaching up to eight meters in length — that resemble giant dragonflies; they possess an aquatic larval stage, wing-like appendages, eyes on mobile stalks, and a prehensile tail that serves in place of arms. Bound by a hive-mind collective consciousness and driven by a fanatical religious conviction that they alone are destined to reshape the Universe, the Qu wield advanced nano- and biotechnologies that blur the line between living flesh and machinery. Having visited Earth as early as the age of the dinosaurs, they later arrived in the Milky Way; in less than a thousand years, they crushed humanity — which had by then spread throughout the galaxy — viewing its terraforming of planets as a form of sacrilege. As punishment for this audacity and resistance, the Qu transformed the surviving humans into dozens of grotesque post-human species — ranging from mute beasts to sentient, living waste-filtration organisms — and ruled the galaxy for some forty million years before moving on. Half a billion years later, however, the evolved descendants of humans who had escaped into space (the Asteromorphs), in alliance with another extraterrestrial civilization, caught up with the Qu, defeated them, and brought them under complete subjugation. #alltomorrows #qu #scary #book - @holvek