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Really up until 1943 Imperial Japan might as well have been the protagonist faction in a Baen series. They effectively came out of nowhere, punched the Russians in the face so hard it ultimately set up the downfall of the Russian Empire, scared the poo poo out of Europe/"the old powers", slid further into right/militarist control through repeated pro-emperor coup attempts by ultra-nationalists in the military ("The Legion of Blood Incident"), and embarked on a campaign of brutal colonialist expansion that was largely unopposed until they picked a fight with a massive industrial power that could launch aircraft carriers faster than other powers could launch destroyers.FuturePastNow posted:The journey of Russian fleets around the world is still a comedy Putin has discovered Atlantis and is building an undersea empire with countless airplanes, submarines, nuclear missiles, a drydock, and even a choir. (paraphrasing a joke I saw elsewhere, from Arkaday Babchenko I think?)
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Aug 30, 2019 19:03
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C.M. Kruger posted:Another third aspect to "why do (military) scifi writers like monarchy?" is that people are lazy and it's a easy way to explain away A) how you organize government across the vastness of space and B) why Hiro Protaganist and Mary Sue are operating without oversight and have a super cool space ship and so on. Especially for space opera themed stuff, since corrupt and deccadent backwater nobles make for great adversaries to The Good Space Prince(ss) or Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau smdh at implying that the great hero Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau would have anything to do with most milSF protagonists
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Aug 30, 2019 21:27
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i think it is worth analyzing the differences between sorta weber-school milSF authors and kratman/ringo-school milSF authors, in terms of how their politics relate to our modern political-military landscape of endless policing actions, backchannel regime-changes and undeclared proxy wars waged in order to maintain hegemony if you ask kratman, ringo or correia about the evils of neo-imperialism, they'll scream, piss everywhere, and call you a limp-dicked pinko pedophile who should be spread-eagled to the front of an M1 for even suggesting that such a thing exists if you ask weber or his ilk about the evils of neo-imperialism, they'll go "yeah, it's really bad, right? that's why we should just have an Emperor" i don't know if we should consider these to be different political tendencies, since they have compatible end goals and support all the same things within the context of real-life politics, but it's weird Ultimately it will be for future generations of scholars (ie Let's Read thread participants) to puzzle out these mysteries
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Aug 30, 2019 21:48
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Also regarding ground combat, it's only huge in hh if you consider missiles to be infantry
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Aug 30, 2019 22:06
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Agreed...mostly. I'm going to read it all!
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Aug 30, 2019 23:24
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shovelbum posted:Also regarding ground combat, it's only huge in hh if you consider missiles to be infantry It's a lot bigger in the side stories, IIRC. Weber doesn't like infantry cuz they're all dirty poors, though.
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Aug 31, 2019 00:22
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Kchama posted:It's a lot bigger in the side stories, IIRC. Weber loves scenes where a small unit of Marines push through an enemy/pirate ship/base, until the last one alive makes it to the enemy commander and blows him to bits. These scenes are a tiny % of the novels overall but they're a recurring theme. Of course, there's also the scene where Honor decapitates a dude with a katana. And the mass murder of natives in the first book. Weber loves ground combat, just some specific forms thereof. FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 01:17
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Kchama posted:Weber doesn't like infantry cuz they're all dirty poors, though. honor has two (2) infantry friends! FuturePastNow posted:
i dont remember the tenuous rationale for why this was okay yeah i understand they were attacking the manticoran researchers and traders on the planet, but...you have space ships, move your settlers elsewhere were the Bad native guerillas attacking Good native settlements or somesuch PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 01:32
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PupsOfWar posted:
The hostile nomads were attacking a region containing multiple native cities (at least three are mentioned by name), and a key clue to figuring it out was a nomad who was told "don't go to this region this winter or you'll die" and decided to pass it on to the off-world government to repay a debt.
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Aug 31, 2019 04:50
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It's been about a week......post the John Ringo dissertation part one like you threatened PupsOfWar. Also eagerly waiting for kchama's and CM Krugers feedback on the Sten Chronicles series. The series villain ultimately being a 1980's yuppie that seized ultimate power via hydraulic despotism and a cloning/skinner-box imprinting immortality gimmick was the best thing about the series.
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Aug 31, 2019 04:51
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Gnoman posted:The hostile nomads were attacking a region containing multiple native cities (at least three are mentioned by name), and a key clue to figuring it out was a nomad who was told "don't go to this region this winter or you'll die" and decided to pass it on to the off-world government to repay a debt. Also, it's been a really, really long time since I've read On Basilisk Station, but I think I remember drugs were involved. Like the attacking mob of natives were out of their minds on space heroin. Which, and this is just me, I don't think it makes gunning them down en masse ok
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Aug 31, 2019 05:23
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iirc the epic honorverse isnt even one of those ones where orbital lift capacity is a significant weakness of space forces, so basically they had zero reason to not just evacuate to an alternate site and wait till diplomacy worked again. the natives didnt have sailing ships so like... couldnt the scientists just base off an island?
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Aug 31, 2019 05:46
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I get that you guys love making fun of the details, but the most damning part of Weber is that he has nothing to say. If someone told me to go and do a thematic analysis on On Basilisk Station or they would shoot me, I would look them in the eye and tell them to pull the trigger. It really says something about the genre that all of the fighting done thousands of years in the future with supposedly hyper advanced technology is done using weapons that are either used in the modern day or very similar to weapons used in the modern day but with bigger numbers. A railgun is really the same as an AK-47 in that they both shoot projectiles in a line. It is a serious failure of imagination that Weber has come up with a world of spacecraft using wondrous technologies and all he can think to have them do is to mimic Horatio Hornblower with less compelling characters. I suppose I could do a post on the incoherence of Weber's views on hereditary (the monarch should be hereditary but no genetic engineering) but now that I think about it that makes perfect sense. Elizabeth gets to be monarch because of who her parents were, and that is a Good and Noble Thing (because space republics are run by UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS) but genetic engineering is wrong and bad because commoners can usurp the divine right of kings by interfering with the bloodline. That would also require me to break out more Weber, though we could always do his fantasy stuff for a laugh, or that lovely Portal Wars series off the Baen website.
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Aug 31, 2019 06:09
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What bugs me about Weber is that, in his recent stuff, all the battles feel the same. Which is pretty damning for a series nominally about the cool battles. Between the Safehold books and the last few Harrington books nearly every battle boils down to kicking the poo poo out of a technologically inferior foe, massacring common sailors/soldiers/starship crews by the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. Taking a moment to complain how terrible it was that there was no choice than to kill all those people. Move on to the next battle. Repeat until end of book. Not only is it grisly, it's boring which is even worse. 
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Aug 31, 2019 06:38
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he truly is one of the shittiest authors ever. like i read lots of trash sci-fi, i get and expect most of the books i read to be devoid of any real characterization. but you have to at least have a plot, and he and his loser friends barely have that. i cant think of a single weber, ringo, kratman, etc book that didnt basically have the same plot structure as a kindle unlimited harem novel where the good and noble hero occasionally feels bad about stuff but more importantly always triumphs in the end and is good and correct
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Aug 31, 2019 06:54
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Larry Parrish posted:he truly is one of the shittiest authors ever. like i read lots of trash sci-fi, i get and expect most of the books i read to be devoid of any real characterization. but you have to at least have a plot, and he and his loser friends barely have that. i cant think of a single weber, ringo, kratman, etc book that didnt basically have the same plot structure as a kindle unlimited harem novel where the good and noble hero occasionally feels bad about stuff but more importantly always triumphs in the end and is good and correct Welcome. Glad that you've achieved genre Mil-SciFi and Military Fiction enlightenment and can now join the real party. Just going to requote the OP text with highlighting for tldr folks. quote:Doing this thread because others have failed to do so. Thread is about Mil-SciFi Fiction + Military Fiction in general. Note: "other 'visionary' Baen Book Mil-SciFi + Military Fiction authors" was my polite way of slurring authors published under the Baen Books imprint. Admittedly this slurs not-terrible authors like Bujold and others....but hey they choose to be published/republished under the Baen Books imprint. gently caress them.
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Aug 31, 2019 08:33
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Welcome. bujold loving owns and you will take this back
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Aug 31, 2019 08:43
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:It's been about a week......post the John Ringo dissertation part one like you threatened PupsOfWar. I've finished the first one and I think my "milSF by way of Laumer/Anvil" assessment was accurate. Protagonist is the most competent guy in the room even before the mandatory boot camp segment, after which he learns all the Dirty Tricks needed to throw things into even more chaos. Otherwise a fairly corny action book. Couldn't help but think of Raymond Chandler's "They pay brisk money for this crap?" being uttered by some pulp author leafing through the Lexicon For Science Fiction Authors their editor sent them before they shrug and get to work. TheGreatEvilKing posted:It really says something about the genre that all of the fighting done thousands of years in the future with supposedly hyper advanced technology is done using weapons that are either used in the modern day or very similar to weapons used in the modern day but with bigger numbers. A railgun is really the same as an AK-47 in that they both shoot projectiles in a line. It is a serious failure of imagination that Weber has come up with a world of spacecraft using wondrous technologies and all he can think to have them do is to mimic Horatio Hornblower with less compelling characters. At the end of the day shooting people with bullets is still a really good way to kill them. Most infantry firearms technology since the invention of the AR15 has just been "making things better" like improved ergonomics, better intermediate cartridges, low-power rugged optics for every infantryman, and bullpup rifles. Stuff like flechettes and caseless ammo hasn't panned out because it turns out flechettes just zip right through people without causing much tissue damage and cartridges help keep the gun from overheating as fast. Larry Parrish posted:bujold loving owns and you will take this back I love Bujold's stuff too but the Vorkosigan series has some  stuff in it when hit with a more critical eye, like how Miles overcomes adversity with his father's money and power. Or the short story where he gets statutory raped by a teenage supersoldier because of "the implication." Or the whole thing about how Aral "grew out" of his bisexuality and then that got retconned in a somewhat ham-handed manner.
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Aug 31, 2019 09:47
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I get that you guys love making fun of the details, but the most damning part of Weber is that he has nothing to say. If someone told me to go and do a thematic analysis on On Basilisk Station or they would shoot me, I would look them in the eye and tell them to pull the trigger. To be honest, you're not gonna get creative stuff done with wondrous technology because the literal point of the Honorverse books IS to be Horatio Hornblower In Space. The 'imagination' he used was to look at Age of Sail combat and then translate it exactly into space combat. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Genetic engineering (besides the 'minor' kind that makes Honor better than everyone else) is taboo because it doesn't exist in the Age of Sail. Space Republics are bad because they were the foe of the British Empire in the Age of Sail (and also Weber hates democracy). FuturePastNow posted:Weber loves scenes where a small unit of Marines push through an enemy/pirate ship/base, until the last one alive makes it to the enemy commander and blows him to bits. These scenes are a tiny % of the novels overall but they're a recurring theme. He loves MARINES, not infantry. The difference is Weber would get mad if you called Marines infantry. FuturePastNow posted:Also, it's been a really, really long time since I've read On Basilisk Station, but I think I remember drugs were involved. Like the attacking mob of natives were out of their minds on space heroin. Which, and this is just me, I don't think it makes gunning them down en masse ok It was totally "they were ON PCP/HEROIN AND MUST BE PUT DOWN" and somehow was the one part of the Horatio Hornblower novels Weber didn't copy. Because in the novels, Horatio gave the natives a super strong ship to wipe out the Spanish with, but it turned out that by the time he returned the British had allied with the Spanish against the French, so he needed to go fight the natives because his country was dumb. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:It's been about a week......post the John Ringo dissertation part one like you threatened PupsOfWar. I'm broke as heck for a bit so that feedback might not be a while. So you'll probably just get me mocking On Basilisk Station or the first Safehold book instead.
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Aug 31, 2019 15:57
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Weber's ships are invincible on the top and bottom to make them function exactly like they're in 2d, but in space
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Aug 31, 2019 21:51
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C.M. Kruger posted:I love Bujold's stuff too but the Vorkosigan series has some Aral didn't stop being bisexual, he became monogamous. That isn't subtext, Cordelia says that out loud.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:19
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I also never interpreted that as meaning Aral stopped being bisexual somehow, although, as we've discussed in the main sci-fi thread before, it is a bit rough how bujold seems to use bisexuality as shorthand for depravity, in the first book. imo when the vorkosigan saga gets real problematic is when it tries to somehow draw equivalences between Beta Colony's enlightened cosmopolitanism and Barrayar's backward militancy, trying to show that Barrayar isn't as bad in comparison as it first seems. there are periodic exchanges where Cordelia will go "sure, Beta colony has full gender equality, but did you know they have restrictions on the number of children you can have?" or "sure, Beta colony maintains the galaxy's highest standards of living and provides free housing, food, healthcare and other essential services for all citizens, but did you know they make you get therapy if you've experienced trauma?" these are always rooted in Cordelia's own preoccupations as a character, but, even so, it can come off as a bit hamhanded. I think this probably comes from the series' origins as a star trek fanfic. also I feel the stuff with Betan hermaphrodites would have to be written differently in the current environment when people are (slowly) starting to become more aware of trans, nonbinary and intersex issues. As it is, it comes off like Bujold hurriedly thought "quick, what's something even Betans would find weird?", which does not age well if u ask me
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Aug 31, 2019 22:38
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shovelbum posted:Weber's ships are invincible on the top and bottom to make them function exactly like they're in 2d, but in space Yeah and since it's never presented as hard science sci-fi, I don't really have any problems with Weber contriving technologies to work in such a way that you get space sailing ships firing broadsides at each other. In fact I think that's a neat premise. He just took that premise and threw it down an ever-deepening hole, almost from the start.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:21
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my favorite is that gravity is faster than light in weber
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Aug 31, 2019 23:32
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shovelbum posted:my favorite is that gravity is faster than light in weber Weber's knowledge of physics is probably actually worse of his knowledge of everything.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:42
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shovelbum posted:my favorite is that gravity is faster than light in weber He retconned that as the magic gravity go-go gadgets generating ripples in hyperspace which is what gravitic sensors actually detect. Whatever you say, Weber. 
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Aug 31, 2019 23:57
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Aerdan posted:He retconned that as the magic gravity go-go gadgets generating ripples in hyperspace which is what gravitic sensors actually detect. Whatever you say, Weber. I'm surprised he never retconned the ship shapes. Lol, all the covers have to desperately draw it as close as possible without getting parents mad at them for looking like dicks.  Just picture this going into that space-station-entrance woman's mouth.
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Sep 1, 2019 01:57
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i always thought the bisexual=degenerate thing was supposed to be an artifact of barrayan culture which, you know, is a military aristocracy. there arent a whole lot of aristocracies in history that were down with that publicly, anyway). theres plenty of weird poo poo in those books but idk. I guess I always took it as bujold trying to shock the reader like how forever war has the all gay techno future specifically because Haldeman thought it would piss people off
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Sep 1, 2019 02:52
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Noticed there is a humblebundle sci-fi ebook deal up right now......and it's all Baen Books. Majestic. This is what I meant last week when I said "...The disseminated by real publishers/magazines mil-scifi + mil-fiction stories and story collections I've come across have been so terrible, I'd never felt the desire to search out genre fanfiction stories before." Also... Larry Parrish posted:bujold loving owns and you will take this back My one sentence summary of Bujold remains unchanged: "fully fleshed out worlds and side characters but by god you better enjoy space romance (spoiler: I don't)." Miles V. is also the most aggravating "born on 3rd base thinking they hit a triple" main character I've come across since the 1.5 leads in the Skylark of Space series. Gave it some thought but answer is still: No. Nope. Bujold choose to be published/republished by Baen Books.
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Sep 3, 2019 17:42
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You know what hasn't been mentioned under Mil-SciFi yet. The Halo books including combat evolved novelization and the other ones set during the UNSC-Covenant War they aren't Baen, but I wonder what peoples opinions are. I remember them relatively fondly, but that is also a series of books I haven't read since middle school.
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Sep 3, 2019 21:07
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shovelbum posted:my favorite is that gravity is faster than light in weber Gravity propagating instantaneously (i.e. the newtonian model that is still taught as the lies-to-children version in public school) is a really common trope in SF, especially stuff written in the 90s and before, even in books that try to have very "hard" science. I think it's only relatively recently that gravity being non-instantaneous entered the common consciousness, and it's less than a decade since its speed was experimentally confirmed to be c. So, I can't really blame Weber for that, especially when there's so many other things he deserves so much more blame for.
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Sep 3, 2019 22:59
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Jack2142 posted:You know what hasn't been mentioned under Mil-SciFi yet. the combat evolved novelization is real bad even by video game novelization standards, as it reads like a prima strategy guide without pictures. it also had this deeply uncomfortable subplot where the author seemingly...seemingly tried to make a lady marine officer into a pseudo love-interest for the chief chief does not bone! leave him alone, authors!!! the other books are Alright for what they are i suppose the prequel one i recall has some dece space battle choreography, so I'd recommend that for space battle nerds before I'd recommend anything from Baen.
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Sep 3, 2019 23:08
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:My one sentence summary of Bujold remains unchanged: "fully fleshed out worlds and side characters but by god you better enjoy space romance (spoiler: I don't)." Miles V. is also the most aggravating "born on 3rd base thinking they hit a triple" main character I've come across since the 1.5 leads in the Skylark of Space series. I have a suspicion that that Baen offers more favorable terms to their "star" authors like Bujold, Eric Flint, and David Drake to keep them from going to other publishers. And there's the other considerations of preexisting/captive audiences and contracts and so on. And it did result in the hilariously mockable CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE: A GAMELIT SPACE HAREM ADVENTURE cover.  PupsOfWar posted:the combat evolved novelization is real bad even by video game novelization standards, as it reads like a prima strategy guide without pictures. https://twitter.com/dril/status/862757324305334273
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Sep 3, 2019 23:52
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:
Miles does occasionally get called out for his upper class privilege bullshit, especially as he gets older and his disability defines him less. The character I really found most problematic was Sgt Bothari (sp?), the schizophrenic rapist that Aral kept around and Miles kind of inherited. The hermaphrodites definitely come off as a white 80s author trying to be a bit shocking, but were they a product of Beta Colony or people working out of that libertarian hellmouth that abused basically everyone involved with it? Either way, at least they weren't presented as gleefully accepting of being special sex people, which is a general SF trope I could do without. Bujold being published by Baen was I think out of personal loyalty to Jim Baen after he was the only one who would give her a shot. Maybe that loyalty is displaced now; maybe it was even before Jim died, with the other dreck they published, but it's really hard to group her casually with Weber and Ringo's ilk despite all of them having those awful drop-shadow orange gradient-font covers at various times.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:42
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Sgt. Bothari is a pretty hosed up character, yeah. Although he was drugged out of his mind during the raping, and is apparently supposed to be somewhat mentally disabled on top of that iirc. Vorkosigan Senior isnt at all sympathetic to the other Barrayar soldiers that raped POWs, he calls them honorless scmbags or something like that
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Sep 4, 2019 02:30
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Lets see what happens when SpaceRomance replaces WarCrimes in the OP post. The Bujold problematic stuff in her Miles books is roughly equivalent to the hosed up mental rape + worse stuff in Vernor Vinge's "Deep" book series.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:37
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i do respect that Miles' harem anime childhood best friend character just kinda...peaced out of his life and because a rad space mercenary
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Sep 4, 2019 04:40
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It's fantasy not MilSf but LBJ's The Curse of Chalion is great.
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Sep 4, 2019 08:15
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occamsnailfile posted:Miles does occasionally get called out for his upper class privilege bullshit, especially as he gets older and his disability defines him less. The character I really found most problematic was Sgt Bothari (sp?), the schizophrenic rapist that Aral kept around and Miles kind of inherited. The hermaphrodites definitely come off as a white 80s author trying to be a bit shocking, but were they a product of Beta Colony or people working out of that libertarian hellmouth that abused basically everyone involved with it? Either way, at least they weren't presented as gleefully accepting of being special sex people, which is a general SF trope I could do without. Along with Sgt. Bothari there's also that bit with Lt. Koudelka attempting to force himself on his future wife or something to that effect, going "oh no i've done something terrible" and then IIRC everybody else just kinda laughs it off since he's a cripple and she could have easily fought him off and also turns out to have already been interested in him. IIRC the hermaphrodites were part of some kind of Betan project to make a perfectly egalitarian master race that just ended up making another minority. The libertarian planet had the child supersoldiers and life extension via murdering clone children for brain transplants. Deptfordx posted:It's fantasy not MilSf but LBJ's The Curse of Chalion is great. I've only read the main books but I'll agree with this. I'm not a fan of fantasy but I liked them a fair amount. Only really eyebrow raising thing I remember was the whole thing where Cazriel is like a decade older than the character who becomes his true love, but it's fantasy and they're both adults rather than like actual marriages in the medieval period so I'll give it a pass. On the other hand I peaced out of the Greatcoats series when it had droit du seigneur in the first few chapters, and the first Riyria book when it had some inanity about how anybody going near the king's palace in the city at night would get shot by archers. Both are apparently well regarded and both also appear to be written by authors who's knowledge of the period they're aping extends to "maybe saw a robin hood movie once." For whatever reason bad scifi annoys me less than bad fantasy.
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Sep 4, 2019 09:47
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I always assumed the hermaphrodites along with the licenced sex therapists and that sex dome thing were there to contrast the liberal technocracy compared to the uber traditional, isolated feudal barrayar that had lost so much technology when the worm hole closed and then more so when the nukes were set off. Similar to the natural born babies vs the incubators
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Sep 4, 2019 11:07
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