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Like the peeps are such a good parody of the hypocrisy of socialism in one country kind of stuff that they seem like a scathing critique of the USSR from the left Meanwhile, the decadent sole superpower that hadn't seen peer level conflict in generations with a paper tiger military that sees itself as the world police is somehow NOT supposed to be America?
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Jul 11, 2019 18:33
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shovelbum posted:Like the peeps are such a good parody of the hypocrisy of socialism in one country kind of stuff that they seem like a scathing critique of the USSR from the left From what I've seen of Weber talking, the Solarian League is pretty much suppose to be the United Nations, which... Okay, if that's what you say, Weber.
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Jul 11, 2019 18:37
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im pretty sure UN troops have seen more real combat than American troops in the last 30 years lol. We've been drone striking insurgents one at a time and doing commando raids into houses to secure a handful of rifles at a time and they've been like, doing peacekeeping ops in the middle of civil wars. that was true even when he wrote these lovely novels so basically its astounding how stupid this man is
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Jul 11, 2019 20:01
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Larry Parrish posted:One thing that never made sense to me is Manticore was settled by STL sleeper ships, and once they had arrived, wormholes and Alcubierre drives had been invented. So why didnt anyone just invade Manticore and take this supposedly very valuable system that has a ton of wormholes and three habitable planets? What, did weapons technology not evolve in 500 years so those ancient sleeper ships were competitive? Manticore was settled for a couple centuries before wormholes were discovered to actually be a thing. There's a series in progress which focuses on that part of Manticoran history. It's about on par with everything else he's written, as you would expect.
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Jul 11, 2019 20:09
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Larry Parrish posted:im pretty sure UN troops have seen more real combat than American troops in the last 30 years lol. We've been drone striking insurgents one at a time and doing commando raids into houses to secure a handful of rifles at a time and they've been like, doing peacekeeping ops in the middle of civil wars. that was true even when he wrote these lovely novels so basically its astounding how stupid this man is I don't think he got anything right. Like Manticore is Space Britain except Britain's strength wasn't purely on trade, but on a host of things whereas Manticore's fallback for everything is "Wormhole trade".
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Jul 11, 2019 20:15
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Kchama posted:
the solarian league has so many superdreadnoughts that they ought to be able to build a pod-laying turbodreadnought whose pods launch superdreadnoughts like yo Manticore, you thought the SD(P) was badass? well feast your eyes on the SD(SD(P))
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Jul 11, 2019 20:58
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Larry Parrish posted:We've been drone striking insurgents That's what I like about America. Always ready to recognise your potential. For example, that 14 year old Yemeni shepherd boy sure had the potential to carry a rifle, so gently caress him. And his family. And the ambulance that came for them.
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Jul 11, 2019 21:06
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Welcome friend. My favorite wasn't written by Weber himself, it was in More than Honor, his first(of many) collaberations where he let other authors play in his universe. It's "Whiff of Grapeshot" by SM Stirling, where the not-France has it's version of 13 Vendémiaire. Only with Super Dreadnoughts. The not-Napoleon is then killed off screen before the next book in the series.
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Jul 11, 2019 22:25
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PupsOfWar posted:the solarian league has so many superdreadnoughts that they ought to be able to build a pod-laying turbodreadnought whose pods launch superdreadnoughts Apparently it's too expensive for them to actually reactive any ships, because despite apparently dwarfing Manticore's economy with just the Sol system alone, the Solarian League has literally 0 taxes so they can't pay for anything at all.
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Jul 11, 2019 22:44
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Didn't they also shut down all r&d for embezzlement reasons a century ago or something stupid like that? Best character in the entire series is the pirate admiral lady who appears in one scene and is then killed while attempting to surrender. It's not a war crime when Harrington does it!
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Jul 11, 2019 22:52
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Space Butler posted:Didn't they also shut down all r&d for embezzlement reasons a century ago or something stupid like that? I don't remember this lady at all, but perhaps unsurprisingly. And it's kind of more or less. Like they seem to entirely rely on corporations to do everything for them. Not that they've ever had money to do R&D apparently, because, as stated, despite just ONE of their 1800 star systems outclasses Manticore alone by a rather hefty amount, the Solarian League is perpetually broke.
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Jul 12, 2019 00:11
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As insane as John Ringo is in general, he honestly might be better than Weber when it comes to political analysis lol. His books do a lot of liberal blaming, but its mostly stuff that even his fearless protagonists understand, like the US Government in the Posleen Wars books blowing a lot of money on the underground arcologies instead of dumping it all into the military or conscripting everyone. Whereas with Weber anyone who doesn't line up with his bizarre understanding of the world is a secret Nazi that might actually be a KGB plant to bring back Bolshevism or something.
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Jul 12, 2019 00:41
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Larry Parrish posted:As insane as John Ringo is in general, he honestly might be better than Weber when it comes to political analysis lol. His books do a lot of liberal blaming, but its mostly stuff that even his fearless protagonists understand, like the US Government in the Posleen Wars books blowing a lot of money on the underground arcologies instead of dumping it all into the military or conscripting everyone. Whereas with Weber anyone who doesn't line up with his bizarre understanding of the world is a secret Nazi that might actually be a KGB plant to bring back Bolshevism or something. ringo's the one who literally stuck an essay in the back of a book about how everyone in the U.N. or any center-left political party is a secret KGB plant to bring back Bolshevism, though
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Jul 12, 2019 01:56
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:This one. It really just comes down to keywords and elbow grease. Main problem was the large number of "doctor who killed patient" news articles. For the sound file I'd suggest seeing if you can try to make a 8 second long "movie" that's just a random image with the audio attached, is Windows Movie Maker still a thing? or export a 8 second long PowerPoint slide to a MP4? On the topic of Space Hornblower knockoffs though, I read most of the Alexis Carew series by J.A. Sutherland a while back and while it gets somewhat silly at times in both writing (a self-published male author writing a strong female character(TM) leads to the amount of cringe you'd expect, like her falling for the Handsome and Dashing French Captain, and the Privateer Costume) and in worldbuilding (the ship guns are literally loaded with cannonballs that shoot lasers) it hews much closer to to the "junior officer/sailing captain" setup than Harrington, and the protag isn't Totally Perfect like Harrington. Entertaining enough though some of the books verge on being too hokey. As a contrast to Grayson, she's from a planet where a political faction conspired to strip women of most suffrage because Settler LARP and this is presented as a bad thing, with the conspirators turning out to be supporting space pirates. There's also the Angel in the Whirlwind series by Christopher G. Nuttall which is on the decent side of average. Junior officer gets a command thanks to her daddy's political clout but she's not happy because she wants to ~prove~ herself, and neither is her XO who's been repeatedly passed over for promotion due to racism against the Space Scottish. Wasn't impressed with the Generic Evil Theocrats turning into Space Jihadists complete with their capital planet being Space Fallujah halfway through the series but whatever, at least it felt more like it was just anti-religious instead of what you'd expect from the average self-published/Baen author. Larry Parrish posted:im pretty sure UN troops have seen more real combat than American troops in the last 30 years lol. We've been drone striking insurgents one at a time and doing commando raids into houses to secure a handful of rifles at a time and they've been like, doing peacekeeping ops in the middle of civil wars. that was true even when he wrote these lovely novels so basically its astounding how stupid this man is Nah UN peacekeepers mainly do stuff like sex trafficking and watching war crimes get committed while not doing anything. And 30 years is far back enough to still include Desert Storm.
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Jul 12, 2019 02:25
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John Ringo wrote a few mil-scifi series, two of which I half-remember. One was humans vs lizardmen/sharkteeth elve alliance, the other one I remember had alien confederacy in the julian may configuration vs a updated version of the dude from 'a yankee in king arthurs court' (that built his powerbase over cornering the world maple syrup output) whose superpower was pretty much remembering + implementing ideas from golden age scifi stories (space mirrors to focus sunlight into mining tools or deathrays, propelling literal asteroid fortresses with nuke explosions, eugenics of the ee smith kind version 2.0, etc) to wreck the alien invasion attempts.
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Jul 12, 2019 02:28
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PupsOfWar posted:ringo's the one who literally stuck an essay in the back of a book about how everyone in the U.N. or any center-left political party is a secret KGB plant to bring back Bolshevism, though Ringo + Kratman is a potent combination of insanity. Kratman's a Nazi and Ringo likes him some Nazis by virtue of being buddies with Kratman and well, writing insane Nazi-loving stuff.
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Jul 12, 2019 02:44
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C.M. Kruger posted:
I much prefer the Jessica Keller series by blaze Ward, as far as the female Hornblower in space genre goes. Unlike either Sutherland or Weber or whoever wrote Kris longknife. It's generic at the beginning but it's a much more enjoyable read with more humanity in the writing than most of this microgenre.
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Jul 12, 2019 03:45
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I have discovered that the Mandarins of the Solarian League is actually the ruling council and not a bureaucracy. And they never actually show ANY bureaucracy, as the ruling council makes all the decisions. Good writing, Weber. Almost as good as this chapter ending on Honor getting 50000 surprise missiles fired right at her face and then it cuts to not explaining anything that happened and just saying that Honor won flawlessly. Also Honor having 25 million missiles for a single battle despite all of their missiles factories and stores being blown up literally a month or two before the battle.
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Jul 12, 2019 05:47
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Blaze Ward is really good yeah. The Science Officer series is ftw.
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Jul 12, 2019 08:59
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Kchama posted:I have discovered that the Mandarins of the Solarian League is actually the ruling council and not a bureaucracy. And they never actually show ANY bureaucracy, as the ruling council makes all the decisions. IIRC, it's an unofficial ruling council whose members are all unelected members of that bureaucracy.
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Jul 12, 2019 10:05
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so I peeked in the back of the Seer, an actually cool and good fantasy novel recently published by Baen, and it had a semi-decent "if you liked x, try y" section...followed by a page about Robert Conroy. A few gems from his bibliography: 1862 (2006), ISBN 978-0345482372, is based on what might have happened had the United Kingdom entered into the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy after an actual international incident in which that did not happen. Himmler's War (2011), ISBN 978-1451637618, deals with what might have happened if Hitler had been killed in 1944, and leadership of Nazi Germany had passed to Himmler, who then adopts a considerably different strategy. North Reich (2012) ASIN B008BVXZXO (e-book only), considers if Britain had surrendered to Nazi Germany, and had a fascist regime installed across the Commonwealth and Empire, with Canada becoming a base from which Germany prepares to launch a war against the United States. 1882: Custer in Chains (2015), ISBN 978-1476780511, depicts George Armstrong Custer surviving and winning the Battle of Little Big Horn. As a result, he is elected President in 1880 and two years later provokes a war with Spain and its decaying empire after an incident involving an American ship being massacred near Cuba. Germanica (2015), ISBN 978-1476780566, Joseph Goebbels prolongs World War II by building a German redoubt in the Alps. dude really liked Nazis
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Jul 12, 2019 11:14
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Larry Parrish posted:im pretty sure UN troops have seen more real combat than American troops in the last 30 years lol. UN troops have included American troops, my dude. It's not like there's a separate UN army, whatever the black helicopter militia types might think.
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Jul 12, 2019 11:32
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feedmegin posted:UN troops have included American troops, my dude. It's not like there's a separate UN army, whatever the black helicopter militia types might think.  code:
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Jul 12, 2019 13:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:so I peeked in the back of the Seer, an actually cool and good fantasy novel recently published by Baen, and it had a semi-decent "if you liked x, try y" section...followed by a page about Robert Conroy. I read a bunch of his stuff, until I realized he had written one book multiple times. 1. Some alt-history historical event happens that means the bad guys attack the US (imperial Germany attacks, Victorian Britain attacks. Canada goes Nazi and the Germans attack through Canada, the Japanese take over Hawaii, the Nazis and the Soviets team up and attack, etc) 2. It looks bad for the US, because we're outnumbered and caught off guard. How can we survive? 3. American pluck and can-do-itness wins in the end, and the world is saved. Hurrah!
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Jul 12, 2019 14:12
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Epicurius posted:I read a bunch of his stuff, until I realized he had written one book multiple times. That's actually not as bad as I was afraid of, huh! That's...actually kind of adorable. Retired dude writes America "ooh-rah!" stories up until he passes.
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Jul 12, 2019 14:23
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Khizan posted:IIRC, it's an unofficial ruling council whose members are all unelected members of that bureaucracy. They were the dudes who were in charge of all policy that actually mattered, which actually gave them pretty much official ruling power. So I looked it up and was amused that Weber apparently thought Mandarin was the Chinese word for bureaucrat (because the character who dubs them the Mandarins goes to length to explain that it's an Ancient Chinese Word for Bureaucrat. Fun fact, the word Mandarin is a Chinese word at all, but is English by way of Portuguese. The Chinese word for them was guan. Which means 'public servant' with no negative connotations. But besides that, the goofiest thing is how many times Manticoreans start foaming at the mouth in absolute rage about how these UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS have ANY POWER AT ALL and the fact that the literally entire official government of Manticore is made up of 'unelected bureaucrats' is completely lost of them... EDIT: I'm still unable to get over how this one fight had Manticore with twenty five million missiles in one place a few months after all of their infrastructure was blown up including their depots. And having 25 million missiles period when they cost a million bucks apiece to make. I'm surprised Manticore has any wealth for anyone after spending an entire economy just on missiles. Kchama fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 16:06
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That's a big number, but I honestly can't tell if you're exaggerating or not.
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Jul 12, 2019 16:12
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Epicurius posted:I read a bunch of his stuff, until I realized he had written one book multiple times. Don't forget 4. The terrible romance sub-plot.
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Jul 12, 2019 16:22
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90s Cringe Rock posted:That's a big number, but I honestly can't tell if you're exaggerating or not. That's the thing... I'm not! Haven's Super Podnaughts, whose only upside is their special pods that are easy to tractor beam a pile of behind the ships, can carry 200,000 missiles each ship, just in the pods. This was suppose to be every single missile in the Manticorean depots stuffed into pods and predeployed. So considering that Manticore had like two hundred Super Podnaughts, 25 million doesn't sound like an outrageous number if they wanted to keep them all stocked with missiles. Never mind all of their missiles getting blown up a few months ago. Also I did more looking and the one million per missile number from On Basilisk Station was just for the, well, first-book missiles, which are way cheaper than current day missiles, not having a power plant stuffed into them among other things. EDIT: Also I'm been impressed how the moment Manticore 'became an Empire' it's been forcing a war whenever possible, even when the other side is actually not interested. Kchama fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 16:31
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I thought you weren't going to read anymore Weber. Kchama posted:..... You mentioned, much much much earlier in this thread about how you had only read Weber + some Bujold in the mil-scifi genre. So help me out here, what was interesting in Bujold's stories for you? If your answer involves or devolves into a comparison re: David Weber, I will be very tempted to On a much less ominous note for everyone else in this thread, please tell me more about alt-history fiction series, or UNPK forces chat? Is there official UNPK licensed fiction or re-painted GI-JOE action figurines + vehicles in the gift shop of 760 United Nations Plaza, Manhattan NY USA? Alt-history mil-fiction can be pretty bizarre especially when the authors revert to time-travel mechanics. Lots and lots of post-1984 alt-fiction seemed to feature that, hmm I wonder why?
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Jul 12, 2019 19:28
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:I thought you weren't going to read anymore Weber. Huh? I found Mirror Dance on the shelf and it looked cool. And it was a pretty cool book about someone trying to deal with the fact that they're basically the imposter in their own life. And I've actually talked about other authors, you know. I brought up Gundam and mentioned why I thought it had a good commentary on the Hard Man Making Hard Choices with its prime villain. I just don't read a lot anymore and Weber's poo poo is the WORST I've ever read. Also I'm not actually reading it but having other people read it for me. Which is a safe distance. Ringo or Kratman stuff can be talked about too but neither I've found get much reverence among Baenites like Weber does. Bujold's pretty much the only books from Baen I actually gave much poo poo about that's MilScifi. I like Ryk E Spoor's Grand Central Arena but that's kind of a personal like since I liked the dude's fanfiction when I was a little kid, and GCA was a solidly good fun book. EDIT: I never particularly liked the Time Travel Alt-History genre, to be honest. Maybe it's cuz I don't like Turtledove and he's a huge amount of it. Man in the High Castle was a decent show though. Haven't gotten a chance to read the books.
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Jul 12, 2019 19:53
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i feel it is worth distinguishing between alternate history (bring the jubilee, the man in the high castle) and the cross-time castaway format (Connecticut yankee, lest darkness fall, etc) yeah they tend to be marketed together and are often written by the same dudes, but they're fundamentally different devices that do different things 2 different microgenres imho then there's the weird Alt-Hist adjacent category of apocalyptic futures using cyclical time yer canticles for leibowitz and so on PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 19:54
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Alt-history, alt-history, uhh... Agent of Byzantium is pretty decent, if unfortunately a single novel (more accurately, half a dozen novellas back-to-back), and it starts with the main character being a scout in the Eastern Roman Empire. Aside from that and the Ring of Fire series, which has had more than a few posts in this thread already, I got nothin'. (Okay, I lied, but Leo Frankowski can go skinny-dip in Lake Michigan.)
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Jul 12, 2019 20:01
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frankowski is a Terrible Author everyone here would enjoy dunking on iirc the stargard books got (justly) banned from most book stores and libraries for advocating pedophilia though, so there aren't really any sporkings of them around PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 20:06
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PupsOfWar, time-travel mechanics and post-1984.....was referencing how alt-fiction books featuring time-travel mechanics suddenly got marketed harder after Terminator 1 came out. At least one or two of Turtledove's many different alt-history series feature that stuff. US Civil War, time-travelling Nazis, Nazi gold or gatling guns gifted to the Confederacy, etc. That Eric Flint 1632 series is also an excellent example of time-travel alt-fiction. Stretching the genre definition hard, Julian May's Pliocene Exile Saga semi-fits too, given the war + battles going down in all 4 series books.
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Jul 12, 2019 20:12
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Oh, poo poo. I forgot, Connie Willis has done several time-travel novels, none Mil-Scifi though.
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Jul 12, 2019 20:17
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Let's talk about Turtledove and how much he fuckin' sucks! Specifically, his Darkness series. It has the world's coolest covers:   These covers tempted me to read at least two books in this series. They're so cool I should buy posters of them. The problem with this series is that it's boring. It's just a slow retelling of WWII with some magic tossed in and basically nothing interesting at all. The idea of Leviathans replacing submarines is badass but he does nothing with it and it sucks.
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Jul 12, 2019 20:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:Let's talk about Turtledove and how much he fuckin' sucks! That about tracks with my scant interaction with his books. Interesting ideas, but the worst execution ever.
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Jul 12, 2019 20:30
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i feel bad ragging on turtledove since unlike most people we talk about in this thread he's...not a bad dude, so far as i know just incredibly, superhumanly dry astoundingly boring impossibly stultifying
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Jul 12, 2019 20:30
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I did like 'the road not taken', but that's just a short story.
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Jul 12, 2019 20:42
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