OT : Reading Suggestions - Military SF

[deccan]

Okay, the title speaks for itself. And I already know about Honor Harrington. And please don't mention franchised stuff like Star Trek, Battletech etc.

I've found an apparently new one: "Marque and Reprisal" by Elizabeth Moon. Anyone know anything about this one? It seems to be selling quite well...

Fictionwise also sells Empire from the Ashes which supposedly bundles three books by David Weber, "Mutineers' Moon", "The Arageddon Inheritance" and "Heirs of Empire". Anyone read those?

[Randallw]

There's "The Shiva Option". prety close to being a spaceemepires novel.

[deccan]

Hmm, more David Weber. David Weber is good and entertaining, but sometimes one feels like something a little different. For reference, I also greatly enjoyed books by Vernor Vinge and would highly recommend them, "The Peace War", "A Deepness in the Sky", "A Fire Upon the Deep". Completely unlike Weber, but still quite cool SF with plenty of high-tech conflict, with an emphasis on information warfare and intrigue.

[deccan]

Hey, someone is developing a Honor Harrington campaign setting for the Traveller RPG:

Honor Harrington Campaign Setting

[Randallw]

it may not be military per se (or at least not to the same intensity as Weber) but Peter F Hamilton writes good books I believe and they tend to have wars in them by by which I refer to the "NightsDawn Trilogy" and "Pandoras Star". As a speed reader I appreciate Trilogies where each volume is 1000 pages.

Edit: however having said that I now recall one problem I once heard on Weber was characters being killed off, which does happen in Hamiltons book albeit they tend to be cloned and the braintape put back in.

[Ed Kolis]

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, anyone?

[expinger]

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman. Can't beat it, still - but don't bother with all the sequels.

[Randallw]

What I find intriguing is the difference between modern military sci-fi and 50s to 70s classics. Todays Weber and Drake are mass-market paperbacks that are churned out full of action to appeal to fans, and theres nothing wrong with that if the fans are entertained and happy. Compare them however to stuff like "Starship Troopers", "Forever War" and "The Man in the High Castle" (ok that Last one isn't really military but its a sci-fi classic). They don't have non-stop action and are devoted to the evolution of an idea (Totalitarianism, Vietnam era sentiment, and the clash between Third Reich ideals and Japanese culture). They are different from modern literature because what the "main" characters are doing doesn't have much effect on the larger picture, the larger picture is there as a backdrop to what these "little" charcaters are doing.

oh and I agree with expinger, don't read "Forever Peace" expecting it to be the same as "Forever War". Same Author but hardly anything in common, plus it just loses it at the end. I get the impression Haldeman expressed his ideas in his first book and then had to make something up to fill a cash-in.

[dogscoff]

Anything by Iain M Banks. Not "military" per se, but you do get lots of 10km-long ships blowing the crap out of one another/ destroying planets/ meddling with history.

Everyone should read these.

[Randallw]

From my miniscule familiarity of his work I wasn't aware that his novels contained such things. I had the impression they were hard Sci-Fi. Sure such novels are scientifically accurate, but when it takes a million years for anything to actually happen on a galactic scale there's not much excitement. I base such assumptions on once reading "The Time Ships"(and I'm not saying he wrote it for all I know) and some series (the name of which elludes me) where the aliens took something like a few million years to convert a galaxy to create a portal to another dimension.