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To be fair, that's not a high bar. I tried to re-read the HH books and just couldn't.
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Sep 11, 2020 02:57
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Wibla posted:To be fair, that's not a high bar. I mean yeah, but it's impressive how not only does Weber does it worse in every way, but it's just so loving boring to read.
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Sep 11, 2020 03:51
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Kchama posted:so loving boring It's like you don't care how many missles there were and what was the the ecms efficiency rate.
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Sep 11, 2020 10:53
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If you want to read "Horatio Hornblower...in SPACE" stories but can't stand Weber's Honor Harrington stories anymore, read the A. Bertram Chandler story in this link (Worlds of IF Magazine, April 1967) https://archive.org/details/1967-04_IF/page/n7/mode/2up This link also contains a good(pre-stroke era) Keith Laumer Retief the Diplomat story, and a Vernor Vinge story that predicted 100% CGI movies a few decades before Pixar made Toy Story 1.
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Sep 11, 2020 12:09
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So the reason why I've done no posts since September is the book is both as boring as it gets, and also I was writing my own, infinitely superior book.
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Nov 20, 2020 10:57
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Bolos! Always good to see them mentioned. Had some of the Laumer collections, but lost them. Still have volumes 1 and 2 of the Baen short stories (the only good ones). Any plans to review Volume 2? Slogged through the Honorverse books until somewhere between the nonsensical prison planet and the utterly cringy romance, then gave up. The short stories are good, though. I think that's true of a lot of MilSF, if only because the ideas for a book rarely have enough substance to fill 300 pages. I had a dream once about a version of HMS Pinafore, set in the RMN. Can't remember the lyrics, though.
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Nov 26, 2020 05:30
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"I am the very model of a Mary Sue protagonist My author fiat renders opposition down to the grist. These macross missile massacres make all my fights most tedious. But those big Baen paydays leave my editors obsequious." Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Nov 26, 2020 |
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Nov 26, 2020 10:17
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Cobalt-60 posted:Any plans to review Volume 2? Technically yes. I just need to finish the original Bolo collection first.
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Nov 26, 2020 10:44
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Cobalt-60 posted:Bolos! Always good to see them mentioned. Had some of the Laumer collections, but lost them. Still have volumes 1 and 2 of the Baen short stories (the only good ones). Any plans to review Volume 2? Have a psychic cat and comms faster than c And you can be the ruler of the queen's navee Or how about one about the actual hero of the series: Though I've been made a peer I still battle with no fear Because I know my MDMs will treat me right With my missiles flying long Against my foes I can't go wrong And I've never, never lost a fight! What, never? No, never! What, never? Hardly ever! She's hardly ever lost a fight! Then give three cheers and one cheer more For the long ranged missiles made by Manticore! Then give three cheers and one cheer more For the missiles made by Manticore!
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Nov 26, 2020 21:41
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Is there a Duke of Wellington in Space book?
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Nov 28, 2020 11:05
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Thanks to whoever recommended that Mission of Honor: Retold story.That is space opera as it should be. And space operetta: I am the captain of this ship; Off to war we boldly zip And wage our battles 'cross the vast expanse -and fire off our missiles and more missiles (but no lance) -and fire off our missiles and more missiles (but no lance) -and fire off our missiles and more missiles with which our ship quite bristles (but no lance) For she herself has said it, And it's greatly to her credit, That she is Manticoran! That she is Manticoran! For she might have been from Grayson, From Beowulf, Flax, or Mesan, Or perhaps Solarian! Or perhaps Solarian! But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, She remains Manticoran! (doesn't quite scan, but that's dreams for you)
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Nov 29, 2020 05:10
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quantumfoam posted:If you want to read "Horatio Hornblower...in SPACE" stories but can't stand Weber's Honor Harrington stories anymore, read the A. Bertram Chandler story in this link (Worlds of IF Magazine, April 1967) I would like to also recommend Drake's RCN series because its ftw. It's an Auburey/Marturin rip off instead of horatio hornblower though.
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Nov 30, 2020 10:29
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Larry Parrish posted:I would like to also recommend Drake's RCN series because its ftw. It's an Auburey/Marturin rip off instead of horatio hornblower though. The RCN is a decent Aubrey/Marturin clone and are enjoyable books, the characters never seem to truly grow or change but it's a good read and there are a lot of books in the series.
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Dec 1, 2020 14:11
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Came up with a solid concept for the imaginary Mil-SciFi writers merit badge in the SF&F megathread a while ago. === Boot camp stories need to be added to the Mil-SciFi writers merit badge. I think of the Mil-scifi merit badge as the Baen Logo, inverted with Chevrons: 1a-Have a mil-scifi story published that is Xenophon's Long March or a thinly disguised reworking of Xenophon's Long March (tin chevron) 2b-Have a mil-scifi story published that is about Belisarius the Byzantine empire General or is a thinly disguised reworking of Belisarius (pewter chevron) 3c-Have a mil-scifi story published that is about going through boot camp or a series of boot camp stories (brass chevron) All the chevrons snap into the Mil-scifi merit badge lego block style, and stack lego block style. Certain authors would have mountain looking mil-scifi merit badges Having all 3 different chevrons gets you the full mil-scifi writers merit badge. === Realized this morning that Steven Erikson's Malazan book series fully qualified him for the Mil-SciFi writers merit badge. Deadhouse Gate's main storyline is Xenophon's Long March(chevron 1a) with a torture porn ending, and the Bonehunter army/Adjunct Tavore stuff in the core Malazan books cover chevrons 3c & 2b respectively.
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Dec 4, 2020 02:44
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I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. Are there any good time-traveling military novels? Air carriers are the best, but I'll take any naval vessals or cool planes time traveling and messing with history. Or sci-fi, I'll take sci-fi too! I just want displaced military men being confounded by everything.
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Dec 4, 2020 02:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. Not a novel, but there is an anime/manga series called Zipang that has essentially the same plot as Final Countdown. It involves a modern Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force destroyer getting sucked back into WWII. It isn't wholly successful (IIRC it mentions the conflict between the mindset of modern JMSDF crew and that if the Imperial Japanese Navy, but doesn't really explore it all that much), and (last I checked) lacked an ending, but it might serve.
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Dec 4, 2020 05:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. You want the Axis of Time books by John Birmingham, which is exactly this. Be warned that they're also grimly post-9/11, depicting the future society as numbed to superviolence by years of 'global war on terror' and the 1940s 'contemps' as racist and self-interested (not unfairly so). Expect war crimes, characters coming to brutal ends, definitely at least two subplots involving rape...it gets pretty ugly. That said, it has slickly written technothriller scenes of 21st century warships and air power versus 1940s technology. And it grapples very interestingly with the question of 'what happens when Hitler/Stalin/etc get hold of future history and learn about who's going to betray them?'
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Dec 4, 2020 05:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. Destoryermen is basically that. Except they dont go to the past but to an alternate earth. The locals are basically Copper Age Polynesians.
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Dec 4, 2020 07:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. John Barnes did a pulpy series called timeline wars, Patton's spaceship, Washington's dirigible, Caesar's bicycle. It's parallel universe wars mixed with anachronistic time travel.
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Dec 4, 2020 10:12
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General Battuta posted:You want the Axis of Time books by John Birmingham, which is exactly this. Be warned that they're also grimly post-9/11, depicting the future society as numbed to superviolence by years of 'global war on terror' and the 1940s 'contemps' as racist and self-interested (not unfairly so). Expect war crimes, characters coming to brutal ends, definitely at least two subplots involving rape...it gets pretty ugly. He wrote a classic Gen X/slacker true story book about sharehouse living in Australia 'he died with a falafel in his hand' and kicked around doing lefty art writing but yeah he took a strange turn around 2001. Got a new military/space opera series with the first book out now, cruel stars, I bought it but haven't got around to it yet.
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Dec 4, 2020 10:23
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Perhaps this is too political, but it's mind blowing to compare the pulse of right wing entertainment of 2004 to the modern day. Imagine trying to pitch the heroes using an aircraft carrier called the Hillary Clinton, locked in a forever war thats still going on to the 2030s.
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Dec 4, 2020 12:53
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Probably my favorite moment in the Call of Duty games is when you're on the USS Barack Obama and the bad guys hack the drones and Tony Todd growls "motherfucker...the drones are turning on the Obama!" e: okay apparently I made this up, Tony Todd does not deliver this exact line General Battuta fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 14:45
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I'm disappointed there are only four choices here, but also excited there are four choices here. I'm off to read, thank you!
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Dec 4, 2020 15:31
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Looking for a new book/series to start, and I remembered a setting description from an old gaming book (GURPS Time Travel) with the story idea of the Eternity Rangers- essentially, soldiers from all different time periods plucked by unknown forces, given missions with no explanation across time/space, and rewarded every now and then with what's essentially shore leave with a time machine. A little more in-depth here https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Eternity%27s_Rangers Is there anything out there in this same vein?
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Dec 4, 2020 22:18
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GD_American posted:Looking for a new book/series to start, and I remembered a setting description from an old gaming book (GURPS Time Travel) with the story idea of the Eternity Rangers- essentially, soldiers from all different time periods plucked by unknown forces, given missions with no explanation across time/space, and rewarded every now and then with what's essentially shore leave with a time machine. Literally the Cabal from Warhammer 40k, but there are no dedicated books on that.
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Dec 4, 2020 23:19
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I forget who wrote the stories of the Roman Legions that were kidnapped by aliens and forced to fight space Bronze Age cultures to get around the laws that the aliens weren't allowed to deploy future troops for Reasons, but that seems similar? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/616458.Ranks_of_Bronze That, apparently. OTHER, BETTER EDIT: And it appears to link to David Weber's take on Poul Anderson's space crusaders. I'm sorry, goons.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:24
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So I'm reading Ian Douglas' Semper Mars and I think my favorite thing about it so far is that amongst the OOH RAH marines and AMERICA IS BEST posturing, the evil enemies are not the Russians or Chinese.... no. No, the enemies of all that is good and free and American are.... the United Nations!
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Dec 5, 2020 03:39
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GD_American posted:Looking for a new book/series to start, and I remembered a setting description from an old gaming book (GURPS Time Travel) with the story idea of the Eternity Rangers- essentially, soldiers from all different time periods plucked by unknown forces, given missions with no explanation across time/space, and rewarded every now and then with what's essentially shore leave with a time machine. It's one of the main bits of the John Barnes Timeline Wars I mentioned a few posts back. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/808837.Patton_s_Spaceship Poul Anderson had Time Patrol but it was written between the 50s and the 90s so it's variable. There was a series by a guy named Simon Hawke who wrote about a time patrol that inserted the characters into famous novels, I only read a couple and wasn't really a fan. On the other hand I really liked Cowboy Angels by Paul J McCauley which is an action spy thriller where America in different parallel universes ally. It's a funny one, I really liked it, I know if others who hated it.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:So I'm reading Ian Douglas' Semper Mars and I think my favorite thing about it so far is that amongst the OOH RAH marines and AMERICA IS BEST posturing, the evil enemies are not the Russians or Chinese.... no. No, the enemies of all that is good and free and American are.... the United Nations! I grew up reading his battletech licenced fiction (as William Keith) and the not-battletech (because of a licensing dispute iirc) warstriders series. Bounced off that series because of those bits tbh.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:59
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War Striders was a weird series, where the next book in the series would introduce some part of the setting so massive you were like "Wait, why didn't ANY of this show up in the last book?" Like the second book introduces the fake that genetic engineered workers and slaves are ubiquitous and everywhere and they are a major part of the plot of the second book, but they never show up anywhere in the first book.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:36
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An older mil-scifi story involving time travel and soldiers with a slightly unique Joe Haldeman/pre John Scalzi Old Man's War/Altered Carbon twist This micro-review is from 1989/Volume 14 of the SF-LOVERS mailing list (aka SFL Archives). --- story by Stephen Goldin called _The_Eternity_ _Brigade_ where soldier's body patterns are stored and reconstituted to fight as mercenaries. As the story progresses, the mercs lose more and more of their rights. Their patterns are bought, sold, and copied. If they try to rebel, they are "killed" and then reconstituted. If they are not killed in battle, then their pattern is updated so they can retain their combat experience. The story begins in the 1980s or 1990s and follows a group of soldiers as they are shipped around the universe, only being awakened to fight. Ultimately they end up on a planet, thousands of years in the future, fighting alongside aliens (nobody bothers to tell them why they are fighting anymore). The opposing armies include versions of themselves copied by the same patterns, just wearing different uniforms. ---- Lots and lots of old semi interesting sounding mil-scifi fiction has been mentioned in the 11 years of the SFL Archives I've read so far. An older SF writer named Eric Frank Russell specialized in writing mil-scifi stories, most of which aged pretty well. The "MYOB" story ERF wrote is pure-strain Libertarian fiction but manages, somehow, to be free of Heinleinian Libertarian & Ayn Rand Libertarian influences.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:36
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quantumfoam posted:
Wasp is probably the most famous EFR book, it held up pretty well, a human is sent behind the lines to forment rebellion against a fascist empire fighting earth.
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Dec 5, 2020 13:32
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branedotorg posted:Wasp is probably the most famous EFR book, it held up pretty well, a human is sent behind the lines to forment rebellion against a fascist empire fighting earth. Given what I've read of a massive EFR ebook collection so far, EFR has done at least 4 different takes on that storyline and climbing....and they all sort of blend together now. Wasp I think had a captured human scout ship pilot eventually annoying the aliens into letting him go, another version had a squad of "captured" humans A-Teaming up mass revolt on a prison planet, a third version had human slang confusing aliens into better prisoner exchange terms, yet another version added an "you don't die until you lose a game" twist, etc...
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Dec 5, 2020 16:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the movie Final Countdown, and was miffed by the ending. I haven't read it in a million years, and from I remember it was absolute garbage, but the Wingman series by Mack Maloney has time traveling in the later books - the hero (Hawk Hunter  ) is an F-16 pilot who has the best, most awesome F-16 in the whole world, and is sent back into WW2 times or something like that. Maybe that's before or after they go to space. I don't remember. They were bad books. Never mind, don't read them.
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Dec 7, 2020 18:21
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Lucas Archer posted:I haven't read it in a million years, and from I remember it was absolute garbage, but the Wingman series by Mack Maloney has time traveling in the later books - the hero (Hawk Hunter Here's the reverse! The Seventh Carrier (Seventh Carrier Series Book 1) quote:It is the first day of December, 1983. Ted ‘Trigger’ Ross is a very long way from his past as a World War II hero, as forty years later he travels aboard the steamer Sparta, through the Bering Sea. From memory they launch a strike on Pearl Harbour and destory a Marine Harrier carrier (the Tarwana) and sink the New Jersey and duel with Apache's. Someone braver than me needs to do a lets read of this book. There are 9 books in the series- the next book on a Chinese EMP weapon kills all modern technology ships and they re-fight the battle of the Solomans (along with a Japanese Super Battleship that was ALSO frozen in ice(?!?) with a US WW2-era Submarine vs the crazed forces of Colonel Kadafi. Comstar fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 14:12
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Comstar posted:Here's the reverse! This is so dumb it's incredible.  And here I thought the schlock I'm reading is bad.
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Dec 8, 2020 14:27
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The more I think about the Wingman books, the worse they become in my memory. The series starts with the VP of the US being a Russian mole who dastardly defects and causes a nuclear attack on North America which breaks the US apart. I just remember Texas becoming its own country (“they changed their football schedule” was their only response cause they’re tuff Texans). All over the world, abandoned US military units are trying to reunite to reform America. Hawk Hunter ( ) rally’s then with his super awesome better than others F-16 and single handedly beats back the Russians but the evil Russian commie villain kidnaps his girlfriend (an exotic beauty from France) and takes her to space. I think when Hawk ( ) flies after them is when he gets sucked back in time to WW2.Edit : Weird sexually regressive stuff in it too. The only female characters are there to have sexy times with the main characters and there’s some hosed up sex assault stuff that’s presented as “oh how wacky mobs of men can be”. Lucas Archer fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 16:13
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This is next level dad fiction.
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Dec 8, 2020 16:13
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There was a Lets Read thread for the Wingman series going on a few years ago until the guy (who always gets through even the worst drek) gave up halfway through the series. That's how bad they are.
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Dec 8, 2020 16:35
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Lucas Archer posted:Hawk ( The thing is? US fighter pilots actually call each other poo poo like 'Hawk', I met 'General Hawk' in London last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_J._Carlisle That was apparently his callsign but he now, after retiring, uses it as his name.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:56
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