Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Ninurta posted:

If you want Mi-SciFi war crimes you have alot more of Baen's library to choose from. There's the aforementioned John Ringo, Tom Kratman, and of course Michael Z. Williamson's Freehold where they justifiably kill billions of people on Earth while the protagonist writes off rape as an after thought. This really should be the Baen and things like it thread.

pmchem posted:

Do any of the posters in this thread actually like the genre the thread was made to talk about, and can recommend good books/series? or is the purpose of this thread just to say how bad books in the genre are?

I feel we should hash this out further since it is likely to keep coming up.

Part of the issue with having a thread like this is that nobody is real sure what MilSF is. Defining genre is always an ambiguous, subjective thing that people can argue about eternally, but I think most of the regulars here have come to associate the term with a certain small subset of divisive SF authors, mostly if not universally associated with the publisher Baen Books. The thread was, i think, mostly created as an outlet for derails about those authors, as well as a place to discuss other work that may be read in dialog with theirs, or which improves upon the themes and devices they use. Other, better writers will probably be discussed, but the thread will probably never escape its origins of being a spork/rant depository about this clique of awful men (weber, ringo, kratman, williamson etc) we love to hate.

I think the people who've read a lot of Mil-SF basically have a consensus idea of what it is, in sort of a potter-stewart-esque way. This will always create trouble for people coming in looking for recs, since they might not share that consensus. The consensus is not universal (for instance, some people in this thread have already recommended Machineries of Empire, which imo is not Mil-SF), but imho it exists and mostly holds together.

For my part...yeah I could recommend things, but most of what I'd recommend as good Mil-SF, or good SF with military content, already gets discussed in the regular sci-fi thread.

Mil-SF clearly isn't just SF about military characters, situations and topics, since those things are abundant throughout all of SF. If that were all MilSF was, it wouldn't need to be its own subgenre. This is in part the reason why I propose that MilSF is not really a genre or subgenre so much as a Movement - a particular set of authors who are ideologically interrelated and mostly personally acquainted, writing books that share a certain canon of tropes, driven by a shared set of preoccupations. It is not unified by device, aesthetic or topic, but by ideology and theme.

Those preoccupations being: the intrinsic virtue of service, military leadership's distrust of civilian oversight, contradictions between the military's sacrifice on behalf of civilians and the military's contempt of civilians, harsh utilitarian decision-making in zero-sum worlds, the fragility of civil society, and the necessity of protecting said fragile society with a robust program of unfettered ultraviolence.

Notably, these preoccupations overlap heavily with the preoccupations of fascism as a political ideology, which is probably why people particularly want to rant about this type of book now that like half the world is fascist irl again.

TL;DR: we can discuss good books here, but i do think this thread was created largely so we could gripe and complain about a few specific best-selling assholes without disturbing the people in the regular SF thread that are trying to talk about and recommend better books.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 06:48

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 13:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

PupsOfWar posted:

Mil-SF clearly isn't just SF about military characters, situations and topics, since those things are abundant throughout all of SF. If that were all MilSF was, it wouldn't need to be its own subgenre. This is in part the reason why I propose that MilSF is not really a genre or subgenre so much as a Movement - a particular set of authors who are ideologically interrelated and mostly personally acquainted, writing books that share a certain canon of tropes, driven by a shared set of preoccupations. It is not unified by device, aesthetic or topic, but by ideology and theme.

Those preoccupations being: the intrinsic virtue of service, military leadership's distrust of civilian oversight, contradictions between the military's sacrifice on behalf of civilians and the military's contempt of civilians, harsh utilitarian decision-making in zero-sum worlds, the fragility of civil society, and the necessity of protecting said fragile society with a robust program of unfettered ultraviolence.

Notably, these preoccupations overlap heavily with the preoccupations of fascism as a political ideology, which is probably why people particularly want to rant about this type of book now that like half the world is fascist irl again.

TL;DR: we can discuss good books here, but i do think this thread was created largely so we could gripe and complain about a few specific best-selling assholes without disturbing the people in the regular SF thread that are trying to talk about and recommend better books.

Yeah, pretty much. If you want to talk about good authors or books, then you're prolly not talking about the topic of this thread.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 06:59

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Guessing it took David Weber 6 months to enter all the ship names/ship loadouts into his copy of Gratuitous Space Battles, 4 years for GSB to process the trillions of missile-spam strikes, 3 months to transcribe the results, 1 week getting the latest version of Honor Harrington potrait properly Photoshopped in without losing the qualities of oversized bolded fonts and glossiness of cover-art that defines Baen Books cover-art, 3 days to write the story framing the battles, 2 days to write the dialogue, and 1 day of editing.

Weber claims he "writes" at something absurd like 150 words per minute because he actually uses a speech recognition program, so I'd cut down the actual writing time to a weekend at most.

Larry Parrish posted:

Eh. Some of them do. But a lot of authors just shrug and go 'this is all powered by a fusion reactor that will go critical if the containment vessel is cracked' so ships mostly just blow up horrifically. The infantry sci fi war books are usually insanely bloody though, like the Warp Marine Corps for example straight up has most cultures using genocide bombs as their preferred doctrine (mostly because the elder races love to keep planets habitable so they just give everyone the plans for super effective space napalm, basically). For some reason it's mostly former infantry guys who are the ones going 'yeah a war on a interplanetary scale would make WW2 or the Taiping Rebellion look like a bar fight'

In the Spiral Wars series Humans are (IIRC) either the only or one of a couple non-AI races that were successfully able to carry out a complete genocide of another race, and were themselves almost wiped out after leaving Earth, with Earth itself being reduced to a near uninhabitable husk. This resulted in everybody else destroying their census records.

A demographic survey of milSF written by enlisted/conscripts vs NCOs vs officers vs civilians would probably be interesting.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 09:32

Aerdan: Apr 14, 2012; Not Dennis NEDry

C.M. Kruger posted:

Weber claims he "writes" at something absurd like 150 words per minute because he actually uses a speech recognition program, so I'd cut down the actual writing time to a weekend at most.

Maybe three days�he has to program in new names with drat near every book he dictates, and given that some of those names are spelled differently based on the series he's working on I bet he's done some dictation and then only noticed he was in the wrong mode several paragraphs (or chapters) later.

Don't gently caress up your hands, folks.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 09:44

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

PupsOfWar posted:

I feel we should hash this out further since it is likely to keep coming up.

Part of the issue with having a thread like this is that nobody is real sure what MilSF is. Defining genre is always an ambiguous, subjective thing that people can argue about eternally, but I think most of the regulars here have come to associate the term with a certain small subset of divisive SF authors, mostly if not universally associated with the publisher Baen Books. The thread was, i think, mostly created as an outlet for derails about those authors, as well as a place to discuss other work that may be read in dialog with theirs, or which improves upon the themes and devices they use. Other, better writers will probably be discussed, but the thread will probably never escape its origins of being a spork/rant depository about this clique of awful men (weber, ringo, kratman, williamson etc) we love to hate.

I think the people who've read a lot of Mil-SF basically have a consensus idea of what it is, in sort of a potter-stewart-esque way. This will always create trouble for people coming in looking for recs, since they might not share that consensus. The consensus is not universal (for instance, some people in this thread have already recommended Machineries of Empire, which imo is not Mil-SF), but imho it exists and mostly holds together.

For my part...yeah I could recommend things, but most of what I'd recommend as good Mil-SF, or good SF with military content, already gets discussed in the regular sci-fi thread.

Mil-SF clearly isn't just SF about military characters, situations and topics, since those things are abundant throughout all of SF. If that were all MilSF was, it wouldn't need to be its own subgenre. This is in part the reason why I propose that MilSF is not really a genre or subgenre so much as a Movement - a particular set of authors who are ideologically interrelated and mostly personally acquainted, writing books that share a certain canon of tropes, driven by a shared set of preoccupations. It is not unified by device, aesthetic or topic, but by ideology and theme.

Those preoccupations being: the intrinsic virtue of service, military leadership's distrust of civilian oversight, contradictions between the military's sacrifice on behalf of civilians and the military's contempt of civilians, harsh utilitarian decision-making in zero-sum worlds, the fragility of civil society, and the necessity of protecting said fragile society with a robust program of unfettered ultraviolence.

Notably, these preoccupations overlap heavily with the preoccupations of fascism as a political ideology, which is probably why people particularly want to rant about this type of book now that like half the world is fascist irl again.

TL;DR: we can discuss good books here, but i do think this thread was created largely so we could gripe and complain about a few specific best-selling assholes without disturbing the people in the regular SF thread that are trying to talk about and recommend better books.

I feel like this sort of gatekeeping is bad for the thread and bad for the quality of discussion. People should be welcome to talk about cool stuff they like, not just the extrusions of a small band of fascists with crappy prose. The thread should be inclusive, not exclusive, and if that means it crosses over in content with other threads, then who gives a poo poo?

On that note, I feel I should bring up T.C. McCarthy's Subterrene War trilogy. They're definitely not without their flaws (the first one uncomfortably fetishises the resident sexy tragic all-female supersoldiers, while the last two are uncomfortably sympathetic to the macho warrior culture the first book spent so much time tearing down) but they've got the raw, authentic feel of semi-autobiographical war novels like Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds despite McCarthy never serving on the front lines. Definitely worth a read if you're into the more surreal, apocalyptic flavour of milSF.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 10:27

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Arcsquad12 posted:

On the topic of "good" MilSF is there any title out there with a particularly interesting take on space combat? I was watching a trailer for that new FPS game where astronauts have guns and they fight in zero G and all I could think was "this would be a bloodbath in real life" because no ACS could move an astronaut fast enough to dodge a bullet without also killing or crippling the user due to the forces at play.
The big issue I find with a lot of SF space warfare in the MilSF subgenre is that it is really easy to come up with caveats that make your proposed method of combat appear suicidal, and the only solution is to continually move away from micro scale conflict to macro scale where you have tens of thousands of remote operated drone ships fighting across millions of kilometers in pre-planned maneuvers that have taken years to position properly. The vastness of space and the difference of fighting in a vacuum compared to terrestrial or atmospheric engagements is so overwhelming at times I have trouble comprehending how we would actually do it in a way that isn't completely insane or predetermined to be genocidal.

So if realism is out the window, what are some interesting ways that MilSF books deputy space warfare? Better yet, is there a book that takes my issues above with the troubles of fighting in space and proposes the solution "we fight really, really poorly"? Like the people within the book admit they do t know how to fight in space, and the solutions they fall upon are acknowledged to be terrible and costly and a driving factor is finding better ways to fight that aren't horrendous disasters.

Realism isn't out the window yet!

Nightrider by David Lance contained incredible orbital combat between two starships, and then a great sequence for the astronauts on the ground in big bulky suits meant for combat...kind of. It was a great subversion of space marine powerarmor, actually, and I loved how intricate combat in space was.

It's not technically military sci-fi as that's not the primary focus, and it's really well written, but hey - it's good, go look at it.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 11:07

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Darth Walrus posted:

I feel like this sort of gatekeeping is bad for the thread and bad for the quality of discussion. People should be welcome to talk about cool stuff they like, not just the extrusions of a small band of fascists with crappy prose. The thread should be inclusive, not exclusive, and if that means it crosses over in content with other threads, then who gives a poo poo?

i don't think i was gatekeeping - if that's how it came off then i apologize

i was more trying to explain like..."if you're wondering why we made a thread with a weird negative OP that immediately attracted a lot of weird negative posters, Here's Why"

PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Jul 6, 2019

# ? Jul 6, 2019 12:59

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Arcsquad12 posted:

On the topic of "good" MilSF is there any title out there with a particularly interesting take on space combat? I was watching a trailer for that new FPS game where astronauts have guns and they fight in zero G and all I could think was "this would be a bloodbath in real life" because no ACS could move an astronaut fast enough to dodge a bullet without also killing or crippling the user due to the forces at play.
The big issue I find with a lot of SF space warfare in the MilSF subgenre is that it is really easy to come up with caveats that make your proposed method of combat appear suicidal, and the only solution is to continually move away from micro scale conflict to macro scale where you have tens of thousands of remote operated drone ships fighting across millions of kilometers in pre-planned maneuvers that have taken years to position properly. The vastness of space and the difference of fighting in a vacuum compared to terrestrial or atmospheric engagements is so overwhelming at times I have trouble comprehending how we would actually do it in a way that isn't completely insane or predetermined to be genocidal.

So if realism is out the window, what are some interesting ways that MilSF books deputy space warfare? Better yet, is there a book that takes my issues above with the troubles of fighting in space and proposes the solution "we fight really, really poorly"? Like the people within the book admit they do t know how to fight in space, and the solutions they fall upon are acknowledged to be terrible and costly and a driving factor is finding better ways to fight that aren't horrendous disasters.

Harry Harrison had a particularly interesting take on space combat in his 1985 One Step from Earth collection of "if teleportation technology was real" stories.
One of the stories in OSFE was micro scale deep-space ship 2 ship space-INFANTRY COMBAT. Specialized self-propelled melee weapons that were aimed/hung onto, dedicated machine guns that could safely be fired when bolted down to something massive (preferably the hull or corridors of a enemy spaceship for example), with the usual H.H., deeply-subversive at the time, take "war = terrible dehumanizing costs". The rest of the stories in that collection don't suck either, and thanks for making me check the spelling of the title and finding out it's available as an e-book too.

Darth Walrus posted:

I feel like this sort of gatekeeping is bad for the thread and bad for the quality of discussion. People should be welcome to talk about cool stuff they like, not just the extrusions of a small band of fascists with crappy prose. The thread should be inclusive, not exclusive, and if that means it crosses over in content with other threads, then who gives a poo poo?

As thread OP, the re-bolded text in the quote is what I am 100% aiming for regarding this thread, and the only thing as thread creator I will attempt to "gate-keep" towards.
Any kind of chat about quasi military fiction literature or quasi military science fiction literature or even quasi mil-themed manga is fine.
Key words being quasi-Military themed LITERATURE chat aka written/drawn works.

If people don't like that, fine. Feel free to create your own threads or talk the SA mods/admins into getting this thread's title text changed or the thread itself closed.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 14:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

As thread OP, the re-bolded text in the quote is what I am 100% aiming for regarding this thread, and the only thing as thread creator I will attempt to "gate-keep" towards.
Any kind of chat about quasi military fiction literature or quasi military science fiction literature or even quasi mil-themed manga is fine.
Key words being quasi-Military themed LITERATURE chat aka written/drawn works.

If people don't like that, fine. Feel free to create your own threads or talk the SA mods/admins into getting this thread's title text changed or the thread itself closed.

I mean, I don't mind but the OP is pretty much about how we're talking about the lovely authors who somehow have some popularity despite being medicore hacks, yaknow? That kind of sets the tone that we're not talking about the good examples of the military fiction genre. It's the entire reason why I told that guy that he's in the wrong thread if he expected this to be a thread about good authors.

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Mil-SciFi + Mililtary Fiction genres are defined by lovely to mediocre writing, main characters doing horrific WarCrimes, cartoonishly evil villains/threats, and near immediate plot justification for any WarCrimes the main characters have done or about to do in the books.
Therefore each main character of a Mil-SciFi (and Military-Fiction) book series is usually Schr�dinger's WarCriminal by at least the end of book two. Some authors overachieve though and hit that mark mid-Book 1.
Expect to see lots of David Weber, possibly John Ringo, definitely Tom Kratman, and other 'visionary' Baen Book Mil-SciFi + Military Fiction authors mentioned in this thread.

So maybe add in something about "Yeah also talk about all the good stuff if you want" but this seemed like it was going to focus on the bad authors. Though it kind of feels wrong, since the entire reason why this was split off from the Scifi thread was so our poo poo-talking wouldn't clutter up the Scifi thread which is more about positive recs.

Also just going by the OP rules I could totally work in Bujold as a joke because she's the only good Baen author, anyways.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Jul 6, 2019

# ? Jul 6, 2019 15:08

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Added three lines and a "The" to the opening text of OP, as Kchama kindly suggested.
Bolded text shows the changes

quote:

Doing this thread because others have failed to do so. Thread is about Mil-SciFi Fiction + Military Fiction in general.
Any kind of chat about quasi military fiction literature or quasi military science fiction literature or even quasi mil-themed manga is fine.
Key words being quasi-Military themed LITERATURE chat aka written/drawn works.

The Mil-SciFi + Mililtary Fiction genres are defined by lovely to mediocre writing, main characters doing horrific WarCrimes, cartoonishly evil villains/threats, and near immediate plot justification for any WarCrimes the main characters have done or about to do in the books. Even the best written and least formulaic Mil-fiction/Mil-SciFi book series have cartoonishly evil villains/threats, WarCrime escalation events going off because otherwise everything would be resolved in 50 pages.

Bulk of the OP text remains unchanged, because even the best written and least formulaic Mil-fiction/Mil-SciFi book series have cartoonishly evil villains/threats, WarCrime escalation events going off because otherwise everything would be resolved in 50 pages.

The first re-quote in this thread was me saying "no idea how everyone else is remembering all these random Weber things if they also all read any Ambercrombie/Hamilton/Asher/Erikson/Brust/Scalzi/Bujold/Sanderson/LeGuin/Drake/Vinge, etc."
:tbear:

quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jul 6, 2019

# ? Jul 6, 2019 15:58

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Added two lines and a "The" to the opening text of OP, as Kchama kindly suggested.
Bolded text shows the changes

Bulk of the OP text remains unchanged, because even the best written and least formulaic Mil-fiction/Mil-SciFi book series have cartoonishly evil villains/threats, WarCrime escalation events going off because otherwise everything would be resolved in 50 pages.

The first re-quote in this thread was me saying "no idea how everyone else is remembering all these random Weber things if they also all read any Ambercrombie/Hamilton/Asher/Erikson/Brust/Scalzi/Bujold/Sanderson/LeGuin/Drake/Vinge, etc."

That works. Also, to be fair, I never read any of those people but Bujold.

I blame getting recommended Honor and my self-requirement to finish all books I start draining all desire to read anything, much less good books.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 16:01

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

The first re-quote in this thread was me saying "no idea how everyone else is remembering all these random Weber things if they also all read any Ambercrombie/Hamilton/Asher/Erikson/Brust/Scalzi/Bujold/Sanderson/LeGuin/Drake/Vinge, etc."

95% of the text of any weber book is missile logistics and the phrase "of course,", so it's easy to tune all that out and remember whatever threadbare plot twists and characterization beats exist

its not exactly like committing a le guin book to memory

# ? Jul 6, 2019 16:36

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

PupsOfWar posted:

95% of the text of any weber book is missile logistics and the phrase "of course,", so it's easy to tune all that out and remember whatever threadbare plot twists and characterization beats exist

its not exactly like committing a le guin book to memory

You forgot "As you already know".

# ? Jul 6, 2019 16:55

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

Pizza Delivery Person Third Class Alonzo Gomez smoothly turned his control wheel counterclockwise, with the skill of a man who'd practiced this maneuver for years.

Military fantasy is good as well. I like The March North by Graydon Saunders. I also like the sequels which switch genre from MilF to wizard students, but a lot of people wanted more military stuff and weren't as happy. The setting is neat and socialist, the writing style is a bit weird and you have to get used to it, and the world is the kind of hosed-up hellscape any random D&D setting would turn into with a background of unfathomably powerful wizards ruining poo poo and ruling slave empires and making horrifying creatures in vats for a hundred thousand years. The Commonweal doesn't like that sort of thing and they try very hard to keep the bad old days in the past and outside their borders.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 17:33

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Kchama posted:

That works. Also, to be fair, I never read any of those people but Bujold.

I blame getting recommended Honor and my self-requirement to finish all books I start draining all desire to read anything, much less good books.

Of the authors I listed, "if they also all read any Ambercrombie/Hamilton/Asher/Erikson/Brust/Scalzi/Bujold/Sanderson/LeGuin/Drake/Vinge, etc", a good portion of them I just couldn't get into, or didn't give a gently caress about the personal passion subjects they wrote about, or even extremely rarely, was actively repelled by their writing style. Steven Brust hit that trifecta with me, no other author came close. However personal tastes vary, and most people in the SF + Fantasy thread like/enjoy/love the authors I listed.

If you try out John Scalzi, search for his pre multi-million dollar book contract stories, not his post multi-million dollar book contract stuff. Trust me + everyone else in the main SF + Fantasy thread on this.
Steven Erikson: skip his Willful cHild eries, maybe look into the 2nd book of his low-fantasy/mil-fantasy Malazan series (1st malazan book is very disjointed and even as a Kruppe fan, Kruppe is way too over-the-top annoying as gently caress in the 1st malazan book) .
Vernor Vinge: tends to have technology as the cause of, solution to, running story frustration in his stories. Vinge was also a futurist who kicked off the whole Singularity meme that certain scifi authors + technology buffs are obsessed with.
David Drake: mentioned before in this thread + SF/Fantasy thread how Drake is working out his Vietnam War issues on paper, one story at a time, ever since he started writing professionally. Nothing in that last sentence was an exaggeration.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 19:28

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

I like almost all of Scalzi's stuff, both before and after he made it big.

I'd also recommend, if you like military scifi, Timothy Zahn's stuff. Zahn sort of gets well known for his Star Wars novels, but he's written a lot of other things as well. Specific military science fiction of his include his "Conquerer's Trilogy", where earth runs into an alien species that attacks it on sight and is stuck in the middle of a war, his "Blackcollar" books, about resistance forces on an earth that's been taken over by alien invaders, and his "Cobra" series, which is about these cybernetically enhanced supersoldiers. In a lot of ways, the first Cobra book is the best, because it asks the question, "Now that you've built a bunch of cybernetic supersoldiers, what do you do with them now that the war's over and you don't need them anymore?"

# ? Jul 6, 2019 20:05

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

mllaneza posted:

Some mil-sf I like and you will probably like too:

James Doohan's "The Flight Engineer"

Yeah, that James Doohan. It's about a former fighter pilot (in space), medically disqualified from combat ops gets reposted as a squadron, and then ship's engineer. Yes, still in space. They're upbeat, have characters with personalities, and good space combat. The good guys get saved by a bit of a deus ex machine later in the series, but it was fun read so I'll allow it.

I enjoyed these, although they're also Wing Commander as gently caress, to the extent that if you've played WC2 you will probably be able to predict large chunks of the plot a long ways off. I don't know if this is because they're both drawing heavily on the same sources of inspiration or if Doohan was a Wing Commander fan.

Larry Parrish posted:

I kind of like Glynn Stewart but hes not a good author. Like I love the concept of the Duchy of Terra series but its yet another 'humans are the best at everything so once they beg, borrow, and steal some technology from the elder races they become nearly unstoppable except we dont have the population or territory to just dominate the rest of the universe'

Stewart is my go-to when I want something kind of in the same wheelhouse as Weber, but without the laughable mary-sue protagonists, endlessly escalating power levels, inability to bring the story to any sort of a conclusion, or political brainworms. They're not good books, and can get kind of repetitious, but they are fun ones if you want to spend an afternoon watching a lot of poo poo explode in deep space.

That said, I do think there's not much reason to read Castle Federation when the Flight Engineer trilogy mentioned above exists. Duchy of Terra and Starship's Mage are both better.

Larry Parrish posted:

All of Jack Campbell's books are really good sci fi, although only Lost Fleet really counts as mil sci fi in the traditional sense. I really liked Marko Kloos's Frontlines, Poor Man's War is great, Elizabeth Moon's series is real good, and finally if you count the Barrayar novels Bujold is a good author for it too.

If you weren't also recommending Moon and Bujold in this post I'd assume you were trolling. :psyduck:

The Lost Fleet books were pretty bad. Not politically odious (that I recall), unlike a lot of books discussed here, just supremely dumb. All the ink that would have been spilled on the evils of the welfare state in the pen of another author is instead spent explaining the difference between heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (sometimes multiple times per book); the rest is spent with the protagonist kicking the poo poo out of everything because he's the only person in the entire setting who comprehends basic tactics (seriously, that's the explicit premise of the series) and on a head-trauma-inducingly stupid love triangle subplot that requires everyone involved to be shockingly childish and petty.

To the extent that these books fill a niche, it's one that Stewart fills much better.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 21:52

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ToxicFrog posted:

If you weren't also recommending Moon and Bujold in this post I'd assume you were trolling. The Lost Fleet books were pretty bad. Not politically odious (that I recall), unlike a lot of books discussed here, just supremely dumb. All the ink that would have been spilled on the evils of the welfare state in the pen of another author is instead spent explaining the difference between heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (sometimes multiple times per book); the rest is spent with the protagonist kicking the poo poo out of everything because he's the only person in the entire setting who comprehends basic tactics (seriously, that's the explicit premise of the series) and on a head-trauma-inducingly stupid love triangle subplot that requires everyone involved to be shockingly childish and petty.

I thought you were talking about Lost Fleet books and not Honorverse.

Alternate joke: Weber spends just as much time explaining those differences and then forgetting them as he does whining about the evils of the Welfare State.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 23:46

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

ToxicFrog posted:

If you weren't also recommending Moon and Bujold in this post I'd assume you were trolling. The Lost Fleet books were pretty bad. Not politically odious (that I recall), unlike a lot of books discussed here, just supremely dumb. All the ink that would have been spilled on the evils of the welfare state in the pen of another author is instead spent explaining the difference between heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (sometimes multiple times per book); the rest is spent with the protagonist kicking the poo poo out of everything because he's the only person in the entire setting who comprehends basic tactics (seriously, that's the explicit premise of the series) and on a head-trauma-inducingly stupid love triangle subplot that requires everyone involved to be shockingly childish and petty.

Not trolling when I rec the Lost Fleet books. They're perfect military sci-fi schlock that I devoured like popcorn and intend to reread someday soon. I really enjoyed how he wrote the space battles? I mean, compared to Nightrider it's pure garbage but if you want to turn off your brain and enjoy cool space battles with tolerable human drama, it's a lot of fun.

# ? Jul 6, 2019 23:52

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

I'd recommend Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series to a mil-scifi fan recovering in a hospital suffering from short-term memory problems/or in the beginning stages of Alzheimers.
Anytime else I'd expect that person to pickup (fast) that the Lost Fleet books are the same drat book written slightly differently each time over and over.

Alternately, I wouldn't recommend Ken MacLeod's Company Wars mil-scifi series to anyone anymore.
The series starts off with interesting concepts + cool robot intelligences. However anything remotely interesting gets dropped fast narrative-wise, and MacLeod rewrites + expands out his favorite bits from the Stone Canal + the Star Fraction for the 10th time/reuses "all conflict is class conflict" for the 15th time of his writing career.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 01:44

SardonicTyrant: Feb 26, 2016; BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&

90s Cringe Rock posted:

I command, �Halt,� then, �Fire,� and my Tiger�s cannon blooms in flame and smoke. Half-stunned by my own vehicle�s concussion, I see a T-34 come to a stop, its turret askew and the first licks of flame sprouting from its violated hull.

My pleasure center tingles very strongly. I shiver in the command hatch. Again our gun belches and the pleasure I feel at seeing another hit grows accordingly. With our first five shots, three of the enemy vehicles are destroyed. The pleasure is overpowering, indescribable. I search my data banks for a word for what I am feeling. It is �orgasm.� I want more. I never want it to stop.

Big Boys Don't Cry, Tom Kratman's Hugo-nominated Bolo knock-off novella.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20882829-big-boys-don-t-cry

Never a better time to mention that Tom Kratman is a huge piece of poo poo. A few years ago back on the spacebattles forums a mod/former marine tanker named Thanatos did a hate-read of one of his books. Kratman did not take it well, and decided to add a character named Thanatos to a few of his books as a dumber version of him. Then Thanatos came out as trans, and Kratman went full turbo-chud and kept refering to her in the most disgusting and derogatory ways he could think of. I would not be surprised if Big Boys Don't Cry was meant to be a jab at Thanatos.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 02:10

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

SardonicTyrant posted:

Never a better time to mention that Tom Kratman is a huge piece of poo poo. A few years ago back on the spacebattles forums a mod/former marine tanker named Thanatos did a hate-read of one of his books. Kratman did not take it well, and decided to add a character named Thanatos to a few of his books as a dumber version of him. Then Thanatos came out as trans, and Kratman went full turbo-chud and kept refering to her in the most disgusting and derogatory ways he could think of. I would not be surprised if Big Boys Don't Cry was meant to be a jab at Thanatos.

That sounds about right for Kratman. He and John Ringo did release that insane screed about 'Tranzis'.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Jul 7, 2019

# ? Jul 7, 2019 02:24

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Kchama posted:

That sounds about right for Kratman. He and John Ringo did release that insane screen about 'Tranzis'.

Huh, guess we finally found a kind of Nazi that Kratman doesn't like.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 02:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Darth Walrus posted:

Huh, guess we finally found a kind of Nazi that Kratman doesn't like.

They're not Nazis is why he doesn't like them. It's some weird slurring of 'Transnationalists'. Which, of course, means 'globalists', and which well.. means the Jews.

So guess why he doesn't like them!!

# ? Jul 7, 2019 04:02

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

it is somehow darkly humorous that, out of all the groups he could have used as the sinister abschaum that betray earth to the aliens, kratman chose the German Green Party of all things

that fierce and powerful bloc of political insiders

# ? Jul 7, 2019 04:32

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

PupsOfWar posted:

it is somehow darkly humorous that, out of all the groups he could have used as the sinister abschaum that betray earth to the aliens, kratman chose the German Green Party of all things

that fierce and powerful bloc of political insiders

I'm 100% sure he just saw 'Green Party' and thought 'pure evil' because they are left of the Nazis, who Tom Kratman is a worshipper of.

Of course, he had to try and hide this worship a little so he he had his SS Troops be The Good Ones who would NEVER commit war crimes (though the exact squad he chose were.. known for having been caught committing war crimes on camera).

# ? Jul 7, 2019 05:15

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

I gather the various European far-right movements actually have a fair number of granola eaters who combine organic food and sustainability with fascism and ethno-nationalism.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 09:35

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

SardonicTyrant posted:

Never a better time to mention that Tom Kratman is a huge piece of poo poo. A few years ago back on the spacebattles forums a mod/former marine tanker named Thanatos did a hate-read of one of his books. Kratman did not take it well, and decided to add a character named Thanatos to a few of his books as a dumber version of him. Then Thanatos came out as trans, and Kratman went full turbo-chud and kept refering to her in the most disgusting and derogatory ways he could think of. I would not be surprised if Big Boys Don't Cry was meant to be a jab at Thanatos.

She's mentioned in the story. It's not good.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 10:01

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Honestly glad the Kratman chat is being contained here, with 95% of the most-active thread posters already ~~infected by touching the Kratman poop~~ haven hate-read Kratman ironically to tear apart everything Kratman has written. I however will remain free of the Kratman taint, by only drinking rain-water and pure grain alcohol and never following any posted links that may lead to contact with the contamination.

On a more serious note, just about anyone could write a mil-fiction story unlike 99% of current modern military fiction just by using The Jungle is Neutral and Small Wars 1940 as reference guides or just by stealing some of the more interesting scenarios + tactics in them. Both those references guides are copyright-expired and exist in e-book/pdf form.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 12:48

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

ToxicFrog posted:

If you weren't also recommending Moon and Bujold in this post I'd assume you were trolling. The Lost Fleet books were pretty bad. Not politically odious (that I recall), unlike a lot of books discussed here, just supremely dumb. All the ink that would have been spilled on the evils of the welfare state in the pen of another author is instead spent explaining the difference between heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (sometimes multiple times per book); the rest is spent with the protagonist kicking the poo poo out of everything because he's the only person in the entire setting who comprehends basic tactics (seriously, that's the explicit premise of the series) and on a head-trauma-inducingly stupid love triangle subplot that requires everyone involved to be shockingly childish and petty.

To the extent that these books fill a niche, it's one that Stewart fills much better.

I mostly liked the syndicate spin off tbh.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 16:55

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

ToxicFrog posted:

.

If you weren't also recommending Moon and Bujold in this post I'd assume you were trolling. The Lost Fleet books were pretty bad. Not politically odious (that I recall), unlike a lot of books discussed here, just supremely dumb. All the ink that would have been spilled on the evils of the welfare state in the pen of another author is instead spent explaining the difference between heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships (sometimes multiple times per book); the rest is spent with the protagonist kicking the poo poo out of everything because he's the only person in the entire setting who comprehends basic tactics (seriously, that's the explicit premise of the series) and on a head-trauma-inducingly stupid love triangle subplot that requires everyone involved to be shockingly childish and petty.

This is a fair critique but by the standards of history that isn't that crazy a premise. Wellington defeated all of Napoleon's generals by virtue of being the only dude who figured out how to use terrain.

Lots of idiot generals throughout history.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 17:20

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Welcome friend.

What's your favorite mil-scifi/military series or author? And what are the worse mil-scifi/military fiction genre authors/books you've encountered?

You know, I haven't been too impressed by much of the genre. I remember bouncing off Moon. I also remember Weber and Ringo sucking as they jerked me out of the action to masturbate to their depictions of imaginary space weaponry, which is fine, but they never seem to realize that conflict is between characters and nations - not which ship has the plasma launchers that give a +5 bonus to hit - and that conflict is only interesting as much as we care about the result. We care about the Trojan War because it's a tale of a bunch of epic heroes who deserve better clashing over Paris' desire to get his dick wet. We don't care about Honor's Missile Storm #25 because Haven is an uninteresting political entity filled with Evil Rapists OR Men Of Honor Who Are Trapped By Patriotism. I could not tell you anything about the antagonists of the Kylara Vatta series because they are uninteresting.

If we include Forever War, I'd nominate that as one of the better ones because it focuses on the characters rather than jerking it to fictional technologies.

That said, I don't have much respect for most genre fiction and I'm here for people mocking Weber and co.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 17:50

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

That said, I don't have much respect for most genre fiction and I'm here for people mocking Weber and co.

Cool, cool, cool. Firebomb away, no cows are sacred in here.
I've read so much terrible genre fiction that everything has merged together regarding awfulness and stupidity. This has benefits and drawbacks.
Wish I could remember the name of the mil-scifi series whose book 1 had child soldiers on a 5 year parabolic orbit to the moons of Jupiter?/Saturn? inside refurbished Boeing 747 hulls, and for plot reasons the child soldiers were going to spend the bulk of those 5 years training for combat with Vietnam War era weapons......so the rest of this thread could find and mock the gently caress out of it.

Anyone else in this thread read the Vernor Vinge Peace War book? Hydraulic despotism taken to extreme measures with half-understood technology that bites the enemy in the rear end and allows for lots of intriguing ideas/setups.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 18:22

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

You know, I haven't been too impressed by much of the genre. I remember bouncing off Moon. I also remember Weber and Ringo sucking as they jerked me out of the action to masturbate to their depictions of imaginary space weaponry, which is fine, but they never seem to realize that conflict is between characters and nations - not which ship has the plasma launchers that give a +5 bonus to hit - and that conflict is only interesting as much as we care about the result. We care about the Trojan War because it's a tale of a bunch of epic heroes who deserve better clashing over Paris' desire to get his dick wet. We don't care about Honor's Missile Storm #25 because Haven is an uninteresting political entity filled with Evil Rapists OR Men Of Honor Who Are Trapped By Patriotism. I could not tell you anything about the antagonists of the Kylara Vatta series because they are uninteresting.

If we include Forever War, I'd nominate that as one of the better ones because it focuses on the characters rather than jerking it to fictional technologies.

That said, I don't have much respect for most genre fiction and I'm here for people mocking Weber and co.

I think cool toys are good but you're 100% correct about how there also needs to be character to it, which is where Weber and co fail. I mean, among other failures.

It's kind of crazy that we actually have a much better idea of what Grayson, Haven, the Solarian League or Mesa were like as countries more than we do of Manticore itself. We know about how the military of Manticore works, mostly its higher echelons, and we know how the highest echelons of its government works. But I can't tell you a drat thing about anything else about Manticore, except that its so rich that your bum has more pocket change than the GDP of most nations. By contrast, we actually get to see a lot more civilian life of Grayson (cuz Weber really loves Mormon-style polygamy and lots and lots of chauvinism).

# ? Jul 7, 2019 18:40

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Kchama posted:

It's kind of crazy that we actually have a much better idea of what Grayson, Haven, the Solarian League or Mesa were like as countries more than we do of Manticore itself. We know about how the military of Manticore works, mostly its higher echelons, and we know how the highest echelons of its government works. But I can't tell you a drat thing about anything else about Manticore, except that its so rich that your bum has more pocket change than the GDP of most nations. By contrast, we actually get to see a lot more civilian life of Grayson (cuz Weber really loves Mormon-style polygamy and lots and lots of chauvinism).

tbf im not sure we know much about the domestic interiors of those other countries either

Honor's grayson associates are as rarified, aristocratic and non-representative as her manticoran ones, if not moreso, and w/ the solarian league we mostly see naval officers and the wealthy mesan-aligned conspirators

closest you'd get to a street-level view is i guess the Torch books

one thing you can say about ringo is he does write about protagonists from other walks of life, even if he does so in the fashion of a man who hasn't talked to another human being in person since being dis-invited from all family reunions 30 years ago for excessive racism

PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 7, 2019

# ? Jul 7, 2019 19:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

PupsOfWar posted:

tbf im not sure we know much about the domestic interiors of those other countries either

Honor's grayson associates are as rarified, aristocratic and non-representative as her manticoran ones, if not moreso, and w/ the solarian league we mostly see naval officers and the wealthy mesan-aligned conspirators

closest you'd get to a street-level view is i guess the Torch books

one thing you can say about ringo is he does write about protagonists from other walks of life, even if he does so in the fashion of a man who hasn't talked to another human being in person since being dis-invited from all family reunions 30 years ago for excessive racism

We really don't, no. We just actually sometimes see non-aristocrats of Grayson, unlike... every other faction in the entire setting.

And it's true we don't know much about the domestic interior views of them, we know slightly more than nothing at all. And it's quite a shame because treating them like RTS factions (though for gently caress's sake I think a lot of games manage to give a better view of society than Weber does) means that the various factions have very little character. For villians it's largely Their Evil Hat and for the good guys its Why They're So Awesome And Everyone Should Love Them.

As for Ringo, I'm not sure it's quite an accomplishment because of what you say. MAD MIKE is basically just as much a Mary Sue as Honor is.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 19:47

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

I think every non-mil/gov Grayson citizen we meet is either Honor's employee or is plotting against her somehow

# ? Jul 7, 2019 21:32

Aerdan: Apr 14, 2012; Not Dennis NEDry

The only real glimpses we see of non-political civilian life in the Honorverse are in the short story anthologies (and the YA trilogy with Jane Lindskold). In one, we get to see what a lovely place Masada is to its women. Most of the rest are significantly prior to the main series, so they don't really count.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 21:39

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Cool, cool, cool. Firebomb away, no cows are sacred in here.
I've read so much terrible genre fiction that everything has merged together regarding awfulness and stupidity. This has benefits and drawbacks.
Wish I could remember the name of the mil-scifi series whose book 1 had child soldiers on a 5 year parabolic orbit to the moons of Jupiter?/Saturn? inside refurbished Boeing 747 hulls, and for plot reasons the child soldiers were going to spend the bulk of those 5 years training for combat with Vietnam War era weapons......so the rest of this thread could find and mock the gently caress out of it.

Messing around with keywords in Google and site:goodreads.com and it looks like that's probably Orphanage by Robert Buettner.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 21:47

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 13:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

I think every non-mil/gov Grayson citizen we meet is either Honor's employee or is plotting against her somehow

That's basically every non-mil person in Honorverse, too. And nearly every mil person too.

Aerdan posted:

The only real glimpses we see of non-political civilian life in the Honorverse are in the short story anthologies (and the YA trilogy with Jane Lindskold). In one, we get to see what a lovely place Masada is to its women. Most of the rest are significantly prior to the main series, so they don't really count.

Sooo basically everything Weber DIDN'T write, you're saying.

# ? Jul 7, 2019 22:10

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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