Analog SFF, June 2011 (28 page)

Military SF exploded (no pun intended) in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the arrival of Chris Bunch & Allan Cole's Sten series, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars anthologies, and the ascendancy of Baen Books (then and now a chief publisher of military SF). The next two decades brought more superstar names like Dan Cragg, John Dalmas, William C. Dietz, David Feintuch, Eric Flint, John Hemry (aka Jack Campbell), Elizabeth Moon, John Ringo, John Scalzi, and David Sherman.

Before diving into this month's books, I'd like to mention a few SF genres that are related to (and often confused with) military SF.

First is the venerable Space Opera, which I've defined as “grand, melodramatic SF stories with great scenery, anguish, death, and an occasional fat lady.” Space Opera often includes war and military elements, but it is properly a distinct type of SF. Readers who like one may not necessarily like the other—although publishers have a tendency to call any SF with military elements “Space Opera."

Similarly, stories of Galactic Empires often involve wars and the military, but are not necessarily military SF. (Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry novels are a great example.) Far Future and Hard SF stories might feature battles and wars, but aren't technically military SF. Many stories of aliens, either in space or visiting Earth, are cast as war books—and many military SF stories involve wars against aliens. While it's possible for a book to be both, a good rule of thumb is to look at the main focus of the story. Is it more concerned with the biology and culture of the aliens, or with the technology and tactics of the war?

Finally, there are stories of independent agents such as spies (Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat), diplomats (Keith Laumer's Retief), couriers (Robert A. Heinlein's Friday), and the like. These operatives may move through a landscape of war and deal with the military, but they are not necessarily examples of true military SF.

So what is this stuff called “military SF” that we've been talking about? I'd like to spend the rest of this column talking about some recent examples that demonstrate the variety of the genre.

Children No More

Mark L. Van Name

Baen, 393 pages, $22.00 (hardcover)

Baen Webscriptions: $6.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3365-1

Series: Jon Moore and Lobo 5

Genre: Military SF

C. S. Forester's Royal Navy officer Horatio Hornblower has had a tremendous influence on science fiction. In particular, he has inspired an entire subgenre of books that follow the developing career of an officer in a future space force.

Mark L. Van Name's hero Jon Moore is no Horatio Hornblower. The product of a horrific childhood, Jon learned to fight as a teenager and has been fighting ever since. With his best friend, a sapient warship called Lobo, Jon has fought the good fight through four previous novels. For Jon Moore is a soldier with a conscience, a man struggling to remain moral in a universe full of tainted and corrupted souls.

Jon's fifth adventure is based on a stunning premise: a former comrade enlists his help to free a group of children who have been turned into brutal killers in service of a rebel regime on a backwater planet. The fight to save the child soldiers is bad enough, but then Jon faces the challenge of what to do with this bunch of kids who have had their childhoods taken away.

Action, likable characters, and a genuine moral problem with real implications for today's world—who could ask for more?

In Fire Forged

edited by David Weber

Baen, 336 pages, $25.00 (hardcover)

Baen Webscriptions: $6.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3414-6

Series: Worlds of Honor 5

Genre: Military SF

David Weber's heroine Honor Harrington, of the Royal Manticoran Navy, is easily SF's most successful heir to the Horatio Hornblower legacy. In fact, her career parallels Hornblower's (with a large dash of the real-life Lord Nelson), and her universe is recognizably based on the Napoleonic period.

Honor became so popular that after eight novels, David Weber opened up her universe, inviting other writers to produce short fiction set in Honor's world(s). This current volume is the fifth in this “Worlds of Honor” series.

In Fire Forged contains novellas by Jane Lindskold and Timothy Zahn, as well as one by Weber himself that features Honor in a previously unpublished adventure. As if that's not enough, there's also a faux-nonfiction appendix on the design of starship armor.

Weber's books have always appealed to history buffs as well as readers who appreciate the hardcore nuts-and-bolts of military SF. If that's you, and if somehow you have not yet made the acquaintance of Honor Harrington, this book is an easy place to start.

Citadel

John Ringo

Baen, 400 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)

Baen Webscriptions: $6.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3400-9

Series: Troy Rising 2

Genre: Military SF

Some military SF focuses more on interstellar strategy, tactics, and action rather than the course of a single officer's career. One of the masters of this sort of story is John Ringo. His Legacy of the Aldenata series tells of Earth's long war with the alien Posleen. Live Free or Die, the first book of his new Troy Rising series, brings a near-future Earth into contact with the alien Galactic Federation. All goes well until the arrival of the Horvath, a nasty bunch of extraterrestrial extortionists after Earth's heavy metals. By the end of the first book, Earth had created the mighty battlestation Troy and defeated the bad guys.

But the adventure has just begun. The galaxy is a big, bad, dangerous place, with plenty of enemies and endless opportunity for war. With Troy, Earth has entered the galactic struggle; when the Rangora Empire defeats our only allies, there's nothing for it but to go in with all guns blazing. It's rollicking fun with scrappy Humanity against the rest, and you know who's going to win in the end.

The Battle for Commitment Planet

Graham Sharp Paul

Del Rey, 384 pages, $7.99 (paperback)

Kindle, Nook: $6.39 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-0-345-51371-7

Series: Helfort's War 4

Genre: Military SF

On a slightly less cosmic scale, Australian Graham Sharp Paul's Helfort's War series is no less action-filled. Here the focus is on a crew of multitalented individuals, in the mold of classic World War II movies (David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series is perhaps the most prominent example of this type). Michael Helfort serves the cause of the Federated Worlds, aka the Good Guys. He and his people fight against the tyrannical, despotic Hammer Worlds, aka the Bad Guys. In battle after battle, Helfort and his compatriots have triumphed over every challenge the Hammer Worlds have thrown at them . . . but this time might be different.

In The Battle for Commitment Planet, the Hammer Worlds are holding Helfort's old sweetheart, Anna Cheung, as prisoner on their stronghold known as Commitment Planet—and they're demanding Helfort's surrender. Well, that's not going to happen; instead Helfort and his crew fly right into the face of the enemy, on a bold mission to set Anna free (along with all the rest of the POWs on Commitment).

Against all odds, Helfort and his crew go in, guns blazing—and before you know it, 350 pages are gone, the story's over, and you're looking forward to Helfort's next exciting battle.

Written in Time

Jerry & Sharon Ahern

Baen, 644 pages, $7.99 (paperback)

Baen Webscriptions: $6.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3399-6

Genre: Alternate History, Military SF,

Time Travel

For an SF writer, the idea is irresistible: take a military force armed with modern weapons and throw them back in time. As mentioned above, Poul Anderson pulled the trick in “The Man Who Came Early,” and other writers have been doing it ever since. Among the notable examples are Leo Frankowski's Cross-Time Engineer series, John Birningham's Axis of Time series, and the 1980 movie The Final Countdown. By far the biggest name in this area, however, is Eric Flint, whose Ring of Fire series tells of the contemporary town of Grantville, West Virginia, which is somehow thrown back to Germany in the 1630s. The Ring of Fire series has spawned a vast number of follow-up books by Flint and various other writers.

Add Jerry & Sharon Ahern to the list.

In Written in Time, a present-day Nevada family is transplanted back to 1904 by unknown hostiles. But they come prepared with modern weapons, and battle rages between the Naile family and a time-traveling army intent on conquering the world. Things look bad, but the Nailes have some unexpected allies: the Seventh United States Cavalry and Teddy Roosevelt.

Part alternate history, part military SF, Written in Time is all fun.

Mass Effect: Retribution

Drew Karpyshyn

Del Rey, 368 pages, $7.99 (paperback)

Kindle, Nook: $5.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-0-345-52072-2

Series: Mass Effect 3

Genre: Games & Gaming, Military SF

We're used to novelizations of SF movies; a more recent phenomenon is novelizations of hit video games. With so many games based on fighting, it's not surprising that such novelizations would be a good fit for military SF.

Drew Karpyshyn was lead writer on the game Mass Effect, and he does a good job of translating a rather complex story to the novel form. In the previous two books, Humanity discovered ancient alien technology on Mars and joined the galactic community. Scientist Kahlee Saunders, working for the Ascension Project to help so-called “biotics"—children with exceptional abilities—survived several run-ins with a covert organization called Cerberus.

Now there's a new enemy on the horizon: Reapers, horrific aliens who harvest human organs for their own vile purposes. Only Paul Grayson, a human implanted with Reaper technology, holds the clues to help defeat the Reapers.

There's only one catch: Grayson is being held in a hidden Cerberus facility, and the Reaper tech is slowly taking over his mind. Kahlee enlists the aid of a former war hero to rescue Grayson.

If you know nothing about Mass Effect or video games, don't worry . . . just tell yourself that you're reading another military SF novel, and you'll be fine.

Galaxiki: A Fictional Galaxy That Anyone Can Edit

www.galaxiki.org

If you're sick and tired of battles, action, and endless destruction, why not take a vacation and build something up?

Galaxiki isn't a book, it isn't a game . . . but it is science fiction. Sort of.

Created by Joopita Research as a nonprofit project, Galaxiki is a cross between Wikipedia, Facebook, and your favorite Galactic Empire. It's a fictional galaxy that claims to have 1.1 million planetary systems open for exploration—all of them generated according to some principles of astronomy and astrophysics.

Just looking around would be interesting enough, but there's more: users can edit those planetary systems, giving the planets names, inhabitants, whole ecologies. Many systems are community property that anyone can edit, a la Wikipedia. For a nominal charge ($1 as I write this), one can purchase a planetary system for one's exclusive use.

There are all the usual social media accouterments: one can communicate with other members; share lists of your favorite books, movies, music, etc.; or discuss topics (including science fiction, of course) in forums. There are also options to buy a planetary system as a gift for someone else, or to “liberate” one for use by the community.

Currently Galaxiki has over 5,000 members and over 15,000 registered stars (only 1,085,000 left!), and seems to be a fairly lively place. It seems to be a place that any SF reader would appreciate; certainly worth a look.

That's about it for this month. Take it easy, and may all your battles be successful ones.

Don Sakers is the author of All Roads Lead to Terra and The Leaves of October. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.

Copyright © 2011 Don Sakers

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Dear Stan,

"Enigma,” by Sean McMullen in the January-February issue, had me a bit concerned. First, there was the crew from Earth who had DNA from rats and wolves—who would want to do this?

But the almost pure oxygen atmosphere had me scratching my head. The crew descended in a parasol filled with hydrogen! One spark and the hydrogen and oxygen would explode! Then samples were sent up to the orbiting mothership by rocket. Flames from rockets, in an oxygen atmosphere?

Then there was “shots from a plasma weapon” and one of the crew shooting himself with a “beacon mortar.” All they had to do was light a match. To be sure, there has to be fuel present for the oxygen to burn, but a human body would be just fine.

And remember the Apollo I capsule disaster in 1967, when Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in a pure oxygen atmosphere due to a spark.

Frank Coulter

Pauanui Beach

New Zealand

The author responds:

I do understand that pure oxygen is a risky environment to be in, but humans have a tendency to get their engineering as good as can be managed, then wear the risk. I commute to work precariously balanced on two wheels with 15 liters of petrol between my legs. It's called a motorbike. Even though my brother's motorbike caught fire some years ago, I wear the risk. NASA astronauts climb up beside a couple of enormous tanks of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, then light a fire underneath. Even after the
Challenger
disaster showed that this is not entirely safe, they continue to do so. A flame in a pure oxygen atmosphere is fine as long as it is kept away from combustibles. Pure oxygen and combustibles co-existed fine in the Apollo capsule until some worn electrical insulation provided a spark within range of both. A hydrogen-filled parasail is fine unless you mix some oxygen with it and provide a spark. That happened with the
Hindenburg,
but before that airships were circling the world without catching fire. My premise with Enigma is that exploring it would indeed be a risky business, but that we would do our best and then wear the residual risk. There would certainly be a vastly increased scope for corrosion in Enigma's atmosphere, but I assumed that the engineers of the future took this into account in their choice of materials.