C.M. Kruger posted:

He allegedly told Heinlein that "society's morals" wouldn't accept another Lensman book or something to that effect.

PupsOfWar posted:

"Doc Smith invented space opera" was always kind of dubious

i propose that we take this plaudit away from him and give it to charlemagne de fontenay or the unauthorized War of the Worlds sequel guy or somebody

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Just give it to Scalzi. He may not really deserve it but it'll upset a lot of people.

branedotorg posted:

Not sure why you'd think this guy would write nazi supermen stories?

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Cordwainer Smith, banned and arrest-on-sight from 6 veterinarian practices and 3 "normal" medical doctors offices for his hands-on cat breeding method.

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Since Ninurta mentioned Palladium, the dam has been broken.
I will swear on a stack of Palladium vouchers that Palladium Book's sourcebooks, more specifically Palladium's RIFTS world books + Beyond the Supernatural RPG + Rifts Conversion Book 2, are Jim Butcher's secret source material for his Dresden Files universe. Harry Dresden does MEGADAMAGE attacks by default, the central american vampire empire in Changes was pretty much a wholesale lifting from Rifts World book 1, the christian angels and demons and Norse godlings all seemed pulled stat-wise from Rifts Conversion Book 2, and so on.

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Cordwainer Smith, godfather of the furry movement. Cordwainer Smith, who got extremely excited overhearing the term "animal husbandry". Cordwainer Smith, banned and arrest-on-sight from 6 veterinarian practices and 3 "normal" medical doctors offices for his hands-on cat breeding method.

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

lol what

branedotorg posted:

Not sure why you'd think this guy would write nazi supermen stories?

tooterfish posted:

Yes, the Romans weren't at all appalled by dictatorship. They only stabbed the guy who declared himself dictator for life because they thought his toga needed a bit more colour.

tooterfish posted:

Yes, the Romans weren't at all appalled by dictatorship. They only stabbed the guy who declared himself dictator for life because they thought his toga needed a bit more colour.

jng2058 posted:

jng2058 posted:

Funny how no one, at least no one in western MilSF circles, ever sees fit to draw from the Russo-Japanese War.

tooterfish posted:

Well yeah the lower classes loved him, but that was more a function of how they were getting hosed over by the patricians than their love of the idea of dictatorship.

jng2058 posted:

I've always suspected that the "MilSF love royalty" thing comes from two different angles. One, a lot of them are directly copying the height of the Royal Navy, right down to being able to make money from capturing enemy ships, going on half pay, First "Space" Lord, and so on and so forth. And if you've got the Royal Navy, you gotta have someone royal to be the head of it. There are as many faux Napoleonic era Royal Navy set ups in MilSF as there are oddball wizards living in London stories over in urban fantasy. Part of that is because, whether consciously (Rob S. Pierre, cough cough) or not the Napoleonic Wars are one of only a couple of recent naval wars that everyone draws inspiration from¹. But the rest is Hornblower and Aubrey–Maturin cluttering the imagination space for how to write navies.

But besides just Royal Navy fanboyism, I feel there's something relating to the way MilSF tends to write its heroes. You know, the lone admiral, burdened by the weight of command, being the only one with the courage to make the Hard Decisions^tm. He or she is threatened by superiors who are too far away from the action to know what's really going on, having to guide the usually well-meaning but less capable subordinates through the dangers of war that only the admiral can navigate them through. And if you take one step further from "this is the ideal military leader" to "this is the ideal military leader" then the best form of government is obviously a military dictatorship². But most MilSF writers are at least canny enough to realize that in western circles dictatorship < empire < kingdom³, so they tend to couch their "One Leader, One Voice" politics behind the trappings of monarchy. It helps that they always portray the monarch as wise, well-intentioned, and capable, albeit hamstrung by the petty politics of the Parliament (remember, it's always the UK circa 1800 in space). Oddly, you never get a syphilitic madman obsessed with personal projects at the expense of the realm, who tend to outnumber the capable, well-meaning, smart monarchs like a thousand to one in real life⁴.





¹ = The other is the American naval war in the Pacific in WW2. Weber and White draw on that one twice in Crusade and In Death Ground / The Shiva Option. In both, a technologically inferior aggressor launches a Pearl Harbor style surprise attack against the Terran Federation (read America), does some impressive damage initially, then is stopped in a decisive battle equivalent to Midway, at which point the war sways back and forth for a little while until ultimately the better tech and higher production rates of the Federation/Americans grows to an overwhelming degree and victory becomes inevitable. In this model starfighters suddenly become a lot more important, reflecting the Pacific carrier war rather than line of battle from the sail and shot era. (Funny how no one, at least no one in western MilSF circles, ever sees fit to draw from the Russo-Japanese War. Though to be fair, it does make sense that no one draws from WWI's "sit around, have one big battle, then sit around for the rest of the war".)

² = Their opinion, not mine!

³ = The Romans would have been appalled by this inversion.

⁴ = Unless it's an antagonist, in which case the mad king/queen will be deposed by the lone admiral and there will just happen to be a capable, wise, and good hearted close family relative on hand to replace the deposee with.

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

Deepest memory-holed one: The Battle of Mers-el-Kébir (1940) by the perfidious English. BREXIT means BREXIT. Free Wales.

Larry Parrish posted:

its really funny how insane people get all up in arms about the DISHONORABLE JAPANESE SNEAK ATTACK when really thats the only possible answer to fighting a technological and economic superior

NoNostalgia4Grover posted:

The Free French navy did self-scuttle a year or two later when the Germans tried to seize their ships, so......ehhh.

C.M. Kruger posted:

IIRC another Baen shitlord Travis S. Taylor has a book where American special forces heroically hijack civilian airliners and 9/11 them into Chinese cities.

Deptfordx posted:

Yikes. Which book was that?

I think I've read an early one of his but was super-unimpressed.

blackmongoose posted:

To be fair, "one fleet sits around in port most of the time until they're sunk by land based artillery" isn't the most compelling narrative and drawing from Tsushima means you have one big ambush battle and that's it - which doesn't lend itself well to 500 sequel books. Most of the interesting parts of the Russo-Japanese War happened on land and space battles seem to be the popular thing in MilSF now (though I think someone could do a really interesting Space Marine/Space Army style book drawing from the Japanese Army campaign).

mllaneza posted:

The first phase of the naval war was off to a very interesting start before the competent and dynamic admiral was killed when his flagship struck a mine. The Japanese lost two battleships to mines between then and Tsushima. The RJW could have been much more interesting than it was.

jng2058 posted:

Oddly, you never get a syphilitic madman obsessed with personal projects at the expense of the realm, who tend to outnumber the capable, well-meaning, smart monarchs like a thousand to one in real life⁴.

tooterfish posted:

They weren't the Free French navy though. The admiral in charge of that fleet was specifically a collaborating gently caress who was assassinated for being a collaborating gently caress shortly after the war during(!)* the war. There's no way he was scuttling that fleet, he wouldn't even sail it to British ports, so... ehhh.

I feel sorry for the men who died, but that was an enemy fleet the minute the oval office in charge refused to take it out of Nazi hands.

*misremembered

blackmongoose posted:

To be fair, "one fleet sits around in port most of the time until they're sunk by land based artillery" isn't the most compelling narrative and drawing from Tsushima means you have one big ambush battle and that's it - which doesn't lend itself well to 500 sequel books. Most of the interesting parts of the Russo-Japanese War happened on land and space battles seem to be the popular thing in MilSF now (though I think someone could do a really interesting Space Marine/Space Army style book drawing from the Japanese Army campaign).

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

The journey of the Baltic Fleet would make an excellent comedy

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

The journey of the Baltic Fleet would make an excellent comedy

blackmongoose posted:

To be fair, "one fleet sits around in port most of the time until they're sunk by land based artillery" isn't the most compelling narrative and drawing from Tsushima means you have one big ambush battle and that's it - which doesn't lend itself well to 500 sequel books. Most of the interesting parts of the Russo-Japanese War happened on land and space battles seem to be the popular thing in MilSF now (though I think someone could do a really interesting Space Marine/Space Army style book drawing from the Japanese Army campaign).