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Kchama posted:So I have a little time for work and I was thinking how I'd rewrite this book to be better. And I here's what I've come up with: I'm thinking it could be like a US military on Okinawa situation but reversed. So Manty personal, especially the women can't go out on Grayson because they could be mistreated and misunderstood. A combination of bigotry on the Grayson's part and cultural arrogance from the Manties. After all, they do think they are better and that was never an endearing quality.
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Jun 14, 2020 20:42
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Sad King Billy posted:After all, they do think they are better and that was never an endearing quality. Later on in the series, there's some effort to paint the level of sexism seen on Grayson in this book as exactly that - the Manties going off of reputation, stereotype, and a Grayson notion of "how things ought to be" as opposed to "how things actually are". Problem is that he shows too much direct poo poo in this book, which is one of the reasons I think he edited this one to remove the worst and missed some.
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Jun 14, 2020 20:59
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I've been stuck on one story in Bolos vol.1, a measly 10 pages of WTF. Here it is, and I'll get to the last three stories in due course. Ghosts Mike Resnick & Barry Malzburg I have no loving idea. I've re-read it twice and I just don't loving know. This is one of the shortest, and definitely the most bizarre of the stories in this volume. This is the story of a Mk LX far, far in the future of even the later stories in the loose chronology of the various Bolo stories. This Mk. LX is anonymous, we never get it's serial number or a nickname. The story here is of the Mk LX faced with a deception by unnamed shape shifting aliens who can "assume any form, speak any tongue, mimic anything imagined or imaginable. They had built their linkage to the stars upon their ability to assume a thousand masks and doff them only at the moment of treachery and murder." The aliens exploit gaps in the LX's memory due to both damage and a practice of wiping a Bolo's memory and personality between campaigns to spare it the trauma of repeated combat. While an alien trying to talk a Bolo into disarming itself is a classic theme all the way back to Laumer's Combat Unit, wiping a Bolo's accumulated experience and personality is unheard of in the rest of the setting. A Bolo with a damaged memory is another classic theme - Combat Unit again amongst others, but the wipe is abhorrent to the very idea of the Dinochrome Brigade. There is precious little action in this one, it is all introspection and doubt by the LX. The Bolo draws upon a few fragmentary memories, including one "racial memory" reaching back all the way to the dawn of armored warfare to help make its decision. It finally decides it will not decommission and starts nuking aliens. As the nukes fly, it decides that if it won't decommission for the aliens, it won't decommission for it's human masters either. It will hold onto its consciousness and fight until the last gasp, surrendering its mind only under duress. Since the "racial memory" is of being a Panzer Mk III fighting and being destroyed in the Ardennes, I'm going to assess this story as some Triumph of the Will bullshit. I'd be interested in anyone else's take on it. At least it wasn't a Mk. LXXXVIII p.s. If you only ever read one Bolo story, make it Combat Unit. https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133751/1439133751___2.htm
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Jun 14, 2020 21:18
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I get it! I get the roman numeral joke
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Jun 14, 2020 21:28
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Sad King Billy posted:I'm thinking it could be like a US military on Okinawa situation but reversed. So Manty personal, especially the women can't go out on Grayson because they could be mistreated and misunderstood. A combination of bigotry on the Grayson's part and cultural arrogance from the Manties. After all, they do think they are better and that was never an endearing quality. Gnoman posted:Later on in the series, there's some effort to paint the level of sexism seen on Grayson in this book as exactly that - the Manties going off of reputation, stereotype, and a Grayson notion of "how things ought to be" as opposed to "how things actually are". Problem is that he shows too much direct poo poo in this book, which is one of the reasons I think he edited this one to remove the worst and missed some. I think that'd be a pretty good idea. It'd actually drive home the cultural differences rather than what Weber eventually settles on of them basically being, as Gnoman is saying, culturally like the 1940s or something where the big difference is women wear skirts and men play baseball. I don't think Weber would think of using the Manticorean arrogance as a flaw is because I don't think he realizes they are arrogant. Like later in the books 'culturally arrogant' becomes a Solarian thing as Weber scrambles to show how they can be so worthless, despite the fact that every scene the Manticoreans have with Solarians, the Manticoreans are the ones who are smug to the most infuriatating extreme.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:56
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Kchama posted:I don't think Weber would think of using the Manticorean arrogance as a flaw is because I don't think he realizes they are arrogant. Like later in the books 'culturally arrogant' becomes a Solarian thing as Weber scrambles to show how they can be so worthless, despite the fact that every scene the Manticoreans have with Solarians, the Manticoreans are the ones who are smug to the most infuriatating extreme. The Weber version of Manticore is that they are the Space Good Guys, and their arrogance is supposed to come across as righteous fury at the Space Badmans. The appeal of these books is that they offer the comforting fantasy that a wise monarch will come and dispense justice upon the communists and the crazy religious people and you're supposed to rejoice in the triumph of the good competent people over the inept and dumb. It's the equivalent of five year old me bombing castles of bad guys with lego spacecraft.
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Jun 15, 2020 01:53
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:It's the equivalent of five year old me bombing castles of bad guys with lego spacecraft. in weber's cosmology, the lego knights would simply capture the lego spacecraft and use them to create a powerful and virtuous interstellar empire, as the principles of Feudalism would grant them the superior intellectual rigor to quickly master advanced technology and not-yet-invented socio-economic theory 
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Jun 15, 2020 05:17
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PupsOfWar posted:in weber's cosmology, the lego knights would simply capture the lego spacecraft and use them to create a powerful and virtuous interstellar empire, as the principles of Feudalism would grant them the superior intellectual rigor to quickly master advanced technology and not-yet-invented socio-economic theory That does explain how Grayson goes from hundreds of years behind to the most advanced in a couple of years.
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Jun 15, 2020 20:08
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Kchama posted:That does explain how Grayson goes from hundreds of years behind to the most advanced in a couple of years. There's no real mystery to this. Manticore just straight up gives them the technology, and all of Grayson's advances with it are pretty much from just implementing ideas that Manticore decided not to go ahead with, like "what if we keep refining our LACs?" or "What if we build podnaughts from Manticoran plans, even though they decided against it?" All the real new R&D stuff like Apollo and MDMs and stuff still comes from Manticore.
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Jun 16, 2020 06:33
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Khizan posted:There's no real mystery to this. Manticore just straight up gives them the technology, and all of Grayson's advances with it are pretty much from just implementing ideas that Manticore decided not to go ahead with, like "what if we keep refining our LACs?" or "What if we build podnaughts from Manticoran plans, even though they decided against it?" I mean yeah, I was just making a snarky remark since they go from backwards feudalists to super-advanced feudalists in line with that book. Don't take me so seriously there. Though the timeframe is actually still too quick even for a straight transfer of technology cuz it takes more than two years to filter in how this stuff works and how to make it to everyone, especially when they're two hundred years behind.
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Jun 16, 2020 06:40
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Does The High Crusade predate that Weber book?
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Jun 16, 2020 23:46
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Does The High Crusade predate that Weber book? By about thirty years.
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Jun 17, 2020 00:00
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the poul anderson take on "medieval englishmen meet aliens" was sufficiently different (ie better) that i am willing to buy weber's as simple parallel evolution rather than ripoff or, rather, as simply the natural result if you take David Drake's earlier Romans in Space book and apply weber's pronounced anglophilia to it
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Jun 18, 2020 00:07
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I finally got around to starting Post Captain and holy poo poo I did not expect the bear costume.
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Jun 21, 2020 09:22
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Post Captain owns. It's where O'Brien fully committed to a) writing an ongoing series and b) rolling up his sleeves and saying gently caress it, let's rock and roll. That's an indescribably awesome scene that few authors would even attempt to write, let alone pull off that well. ps. crosspost this to the actual Aubrey-Maturin thread.
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Jun 21, 2020 10:37
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Any love for the Dominic Flandry stories? It's been a while since I read them.
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Jun 22, 2020 04:58
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Any love for the Dominic Flandry stories? It's been a while since I read them. Much love. A less lovely James Bond in space ? Sign me right the gently caress up. I'll keep on with the Bolo stories, you do Flandry.
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Jun 22, 2020 05:25
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mllaneza posted:Post Captain owns. It's where O'Brien fully committed to a) writing an ongoing series and b) rolling up his sleeves and saying gently caress it, let's rock and roll. That's an indescribably awesome scene that few authors would even attempt to write, let alone pull off that well. I haven't looked at that thread because I didn't want to spoil myself on anything.
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Jun 30, 2020 22:36
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I give Weber props for naming the slave labor company after a temp agency. I don't know if he did that on purpose but it's perfect
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Jul 13, 2020 17:19
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FuturePastNow posted:I give Weber props for naming the slave labor company after a temp agency. I don't know if he did that on purpose but it's perfect I can't deny it's possible after it came out that he was naming villains after movie directors he doesn't like. Or the random rapist on a Havenite ship named after Bill Clinton.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:09
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FuturePastNow posted:I give Weber props for naming the slave labor company after a temp agency. I don't know if he did that on purpose but it's perfect Manpower? That's funny, I always kinda assumed their founder must have been a Weber-fan. 
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Jul 14, 2020 20:19
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Kchama posted:I can't deny it's possible after it came out that he was naming villains after movie directors he doesn't like. Clinton apparently broke his brain, he's named multiple evil antagonists after him.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:47
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Deptfordx posted:Clinton apparently broke his brain, he's named multiple evil antagonists after him. I'm pretty sure every single series has a villain named after Clinton. It seems like a bizarre common thing among right-wing authors. Terry Goodkind had the Clintons as evil murder-rapists too.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:11
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Bolos ! Book 1 - Honor of the Regiment Let's wrap this first anthology. Three stories left and they're a mixed bag. The Ghost of Resartus Christopher Stasheff This is a medium length story with not much to say about it, following a short story with a lot going on. Actually there is a lot to decode in this one, and it isn't pretty. A frontier planet is the usual point of conflict between Humanity and an alien race known as the Xiala. The Xiala have an extreme rate of population growth, so they're highly expansionist. A lovely agricultural world like Milagso is perfect for them, so they keep trying to take it away from us. Milagso, it turns out, is an armed agricultural community. A Military-Agricultural Soviet if you will (Stasheff seems to have invented this phrasing) They ended up just leaving Bolos on the planet between invasions, since the Xiala always come back. So the colonists run vast farms with help from the Bolos. There are references in some of the Laumer stories to Bolos converted for use as agricultural or industrial tractors (complete with 0.5 megaton/second secondary batteries). That makes a certain amount of sense. You basically get one of these,  but smarter, faster, more adaptable, and also helps defend your planet. It's a good use of an older mark of Bolo. Nobody ever seems to re-sleeve a Bolo mind into a later model. That's probably because something like Moore's law is still going on and an older personality can live comfortably in a virtual machine running in an out of the way corner of the newer unit. That of course comes up in the story. We start with our protagonist, a regular kid from the core worlds, watching propaganda videos. These inspire him to volunteer for a tour of duty on Milagso. He arrives, gets oriented, assigned to barracks, and is introduced to the Bolos who he'll be working with. The big thing he has to get used to is always going armed, the colonists have to be prepared for the Xiala to attack at literally any moment. All his propaganda fueled fantasies about the noble colonists protecting the core worlds - even the ones that don't deserve it - and yes, that's in the text - come true and he falls into the local cultural and the work routine. Out on work assignment with one of the Bolos, Miles, our protagonist is alarmed to discover that the Bolo may be going mad; it's claiming to be the reincarnation of Bolo Resartus, the Mk XX that was the first truly self-aware Bolo. It's not time to panic, the Bolo is also aware that it is itself, but Resartus is in there and also aware. Resartus was notable for disappearing immediately after activation and manipulating society from the shadows to prepare for an alien invasion. A fully armed Bolo with a paranoid sub-personality is still a worrying development. So why is this happening ? Bolo Miles explains that constant vigilance is required because the Xiala have been known to stealthily land a force and slowly build it up over years ebfore boiling out of the irrigation trenches for a surprise attack. As this goes on we cut away from the colonist's POV to... a force of Xiala that have been breeding an attack force in secret tunnels. No landers to leave the slightest trace of an invasion, just steadily growing numbers. Miles has been picking up seismic signals from the hidden Xiala as they prepare for an imminent attack, boring out their attack tunnels. Those seismic signatures match the historical record, but they're missing the trace signatures of the landers so the partial match presents a conundrum to Bolo Miles. Miles isn't at full combat awareness, so his subconscious routines handle the problem by booting up the Resartus code to put a properly paranoid personality on the job. The Xiala attack and are defeated because the Bolos were able to react quickly because of Resartus/Miles' early warning. End of story. So we have a population of literal snake people dwelling in the colonist's midst and planning a violent takeover. They are defeated by open-carrying civilians who trust the wisdom of soldiers (the name Miles means 'soldier'). Put this together with the propaganda and nasty attitudes towards some of the core worlds and I'd say this is thinly coded fascist bullshit. Baen at its worst.
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Jul 19, 2020 18:27
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Bolos ! Book 1 - Honor of the Regiment And now the last two stories! Everyone will be happy to know that the volume ends on two high notes. There's one more after this, and it's both good and short. Operation Desert Fox Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon This is going to be about a Bolo operator and his Bolo. Notably for the entire series, the author is more interested in the operator than the Bolo. The story opens with a few pages on Siegfried O'Harrigan's family and personal background, and how a dead-end posting on a minor colony world with an obsolete Bolo is a welcome assignment. Most particularly we get the story of how a black man ended up with the name Siegfried O'Harrigan. To cut it short, an Irish immigrant bought one ancestor fresh of of her boat, freed her, and sent her and her child to Liberia. a couple of centuries later, an Afrika Corps officer named Siegried identified another ancestor as a non-belligerent and repatriated him back to Liberia. Still more centuries later the family traditions are still alive, and so here's Siegfried. He's an officer, a specialist in certain now-obsolete weapons systems, not particularly ambitious he doesn't re-spec but stays in his comfortable rut. Given his namesake, we can't be surprised he's also a military history buff with a particular interest in Rommel's campaigns. Facing impending eary retirement he casts about for a new assignment, eventually being posted to Bachman's World. The enterprising colonists of Bachman's World do well for themselves with agriculture, exporting a few cash crops, but they aren't terribly prosperous. Some of the local politicians have a great idea, they're entitled to military protection. Even safe colonies in backwaters of space away from the frontier can get a battalion assigned. That would mean hundreds of soldiers spending their pay locally as well as being supplied from local sources, which could give a small a kick to industry, at least for uniforms, boots, and anything else but weapons a small startup can produce. The military recognizes this for the naked cash grab that it is. Checking the regulations carefully they discover that they don't have to send an infantry battalion requiring expensive, ongoing support. A single, obsolete Bolo and its operator will fulfill their military obligations at minimal expense. They were going to decommission the Bolo anyway. Which raises a moral question - an AI as sophisticated as one running a self-aware Bolo is absolutely a person. Is turning it off murder ? I'd say yes, but in-universe the AI rights activists haven't gotten that far, so one lucky Bolo gets a reprieve from euthanasia. That lucky Bolo ? Unit RML-1138 of the Line. Yup, you can already see where we're going in this story with that as the Bolo's designation. Three guesses what it calls itself. Also, that's not the last Star Wars reference we'll see. Unit RML also happens to use the very same obsolete weapons system that our main character specialized in. On paper a perfect match. They meet for the first time at the spaceport. Siegfried introduces himself to Herr Rommel in German, and is answered in kind. The Bolo then asks him "Aren't you a little dark for a stormtrooper ?" There's some discussion along Clean Wehrmacht lines, which is not at all out of place for a story written in 1993, and serves to establish that there are no Nazis here, nossir. The two get on well enough and Siegfried moves into the in-board commander's quarters, cramped but adequate for a bookish bachelor. poor colonists, they aren't even getting room and board for Siegfried since he's living on the Bolo and eating rations shipped in once a year. About the time of their first resupply the local media is starting to get obnoxious about how "their" Bolo is just sitting at the spaceport not doing anything. So they head out into the countryside, whereupon the local media starts complaining that they're missing and still not doing anything. The two realize that they really aren't doing their jobs. They've run a few sims using the provided maps, but that's all. Now they set out on a campaign of exploring the local terrain in detail, finding gullies and overhangs that can hide a Bolo, conducting maneuvers on the actual ground instead of in sims, and making real contingency plans for the defense of the colony. When they start "ambushing" farmers in rural areas, popping out of concealment, waving, and collecting the cammo netting they start to get good press. When they start intervening in disasters and search & rescue efforts they start getting popular with the locals; a Bolo's sensor suite can find lost hikers with ease, it's child's play to put out a raging wildfire if you're immune to anything cooler than plasma just by driving over it, and when Rommel can't help, Siegfried can still lend a hand. Several pleasant years pass in this manner. Naturally there i an alert one day, and an unidentified spaceship starts bombarding the spaceport and landing troops. Siegfried and Rommel ambush a lander and discover that it's a human ship, probably corporate owned, carrying remote-controlled tanks. Siegfried hacks the AI in the lander and steals the command codes. Physical access is root access, even in the future. Rommel is delighted to have his very own armored task force, and they use it to knock out another lander and take over its forces. After the fourth group is taken over they get two pieces of bad news. They've only taken a fifth of the enemy forces and the bandits know there's someone on defense taking over their units. Worse, the strain of running four armored forces is cutting into the computational power Rommel needs to run his personality. Siegfried has to take over driving, weapons, and tactical direction. Rommel can keep adding a few more units to his control, but they're now relying on a backup storage system untested in actual combat. It's a good thing Siegfried read the manual ! Victory comes when the attackers in orbit self-destruct the last ground units still under their control and break orbit. The colony is saved, but Rommel as a person is gone. Siegfried spends hours and hours trying to get the restore process going, finally passing out while staring at the progress bar. Rommel wakes him up and everybody's happy. When he's asked how he managed such an impressive feat of psychocybernetics, Siegfried replies "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book! Rimshot. The end.
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Aug 2, 2020 02:31
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What is the earliest military sci-fi written by a woman? SN Lewitt? Charles Ingrid? I know there aren't many in the genre but I'm trying to think of who the first ones were to write war + sci-fi.
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Aug 2, 2020 05:44
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StrixNebulosa posted:What is the earliest military sci-fi written by a woman? SN Lewitt? Charles Ingrid? I know there aren't many in the genre but I'm trying to think of who the first ones were to write war + sci-fi. Clash by Night by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore springs to mind. Published in 1943, basic setup is the colonists of Venus live in underwater domes as the transforming turned the surface into a jungle worthy of a 40k deathworld and settle their disputes by having mercenaries fight battles on the surface. David Drake expanded the story into his "The Jungle/Seas of Venus" setting later on. Going a little further back and more tenuous in "military" theme there's Swastika Night in 1937 by Katharine Burdekin.
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Aug 2, 2020 06:06
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I'm not sure when Andre Norton first made it into the subgenre, but she was definitely writing mil-SF in the 50s, possibly the 40s.
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Aug 2, 2020 21:36
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Been reading the SF-LOVERS Digest archives (aka the SFL archives), a early internet mailing list that existed from 1979 to 2001, which covered a broad range of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Heinlein, Mil-Fiction, Mil-SciFi, scifi movies, GOR, goat-unicorns, comics, fantasy movies, YA fiction, etc. Currently at mid-January 1984 in the SFL Archives readthrough. Jim Baen founded Baen Books sometime last year (1983), but nobody in the SFL has mentioned it yet, and best of all, Honor Harrington won't exist for another 8 years. Lots of interesting stuff has come up in, figured it was time to dump all the notable mil-fiction/mil-scifi into the Mil-SciFi thread while it still exists <insert whatever ominous tone you like>. -Keith Laumer and his first ever Retief story Diplomat-at-Arms. Diplomat at Arms is hard to track down, but if you manage to do so, it's good. Keith Laumer mostly used his Retief stories as jokey-angry David Drake style rants against the Vietnam War and the utter uselessness of the US State Department's Diplomatic Corps (Laumer was briefly a minor functionary in the US State Diplo Corps). Retief almost always ignored direct orders from his superiors and got stuff done. Anyway, Diplomat-at-Arms was the first ever Keith Laumer Retief story, and Diplomat-at-Arms stands out in many ways from the normal "Retief" stories. Firstly, Diplomat-at-Arms is roughly 7x the length of a "normal" Retief story, DaA is serious in tone, and features how Retief uses the letter of the Law to short-circuit an incipient colony-world uprising. -Somebodies circa 1983 worse SF novel ever encountered is ARMADA by Michael Jahn. Just from the posters description of it, ARMADA is 100% mil-SciFi. -An uber Libertarian mil-fiction series all about Texas and Texans kicking names and taking rear end of everyone and everything else in the world got mentioned positively first, then not so positively mentioned. Daniel Da Cruz is the author, The Ayes of Texas is the series starting book, and the book plot is 100% ripped off from Space Battleship Yamato only Texas-ified. -Are you bored by David Weber's Honor Harrington slash Horatio Hornblower in Space stories and want something different? Well there is a Horatio Hornblower in Space series that predates Weber's Honor Harrington by 25 years. The first A. Bertram Chandler The second Horatio Hornblower John Grimes story collection (The Inheritors/Gateway to Never) was much worse though. The Inheritors was Chandler 130% doing an ode to Cordwainer Smith, complete with naked 24/7 superhot feline Underpeople, while Gateway to Never was a much older John Grimes getting voluntold into dealing with icky Customs and Border Patrol people and acting smug while everyone else out-thought/out-planned/out-played him for the entire book. That's it for now.
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Aug 3, 2020 01:31
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Bolos ! Book 1 - Honor of the Regiment And we're done with the first volume of the Biolo anthologies ! Batting last will be milsf icon David Drake with a Bolo POV story. I can summarize this one easily: a Bolo confronts an Outside Context problem and does its duty. But I'll expand on that. Our Mk XXX artificial protagonist never gives its unit designation, just its name, Maldon. We get a quick potted recap of the history behind the name. In the Battle of Maldon 991 AD Earl Byrhtnoth left a good defensive position in favor of honorable open battle. That was as good of an idea as you might expect and he and his men got their Anglo-Saxon asses kicked by Vikings. This no doubt informs the personality of the Bolo. This time out, the Enemy - Enemy is often capitalized in Bolo stories and used in place of the species or faction name, just 'Enemy' - is the Anceti. They're believed to be a fallen race that expanded and then lost stardrive capability. No cause for hostilities is given, Bolos ask not, theirs is just to do and die. The trick here is, Anceti worlds under assault by Human forces are known to have been reinforced somehow, despite the very definite absence of any starfaring capacity by the Enemy. The enemy also produces extremely powerful lasers; captured samples function, but have no discernable power supply. As the story opens, Maldon is in reserve, and chafing at the bit to get into the action. Bolos are universally high morale, highly motivated, and well-trained. He's keeping an eye on an infantry company tasked to capture an Enemy research facility. He takes offense when they call out on an open channel, "Big Brother's here to help." He's Maldon of the 3rd battalion Dinochrome brigade ! A unit that traces its history to the 2nd South Wessex Dragoons, who made a key breakthrough on the road to Falaise (even less Nazi apologism from Mr. Drake, his Bolo's history was fighting them). The battle-suited infantry disembark and advance on the research facility. All they can see of it is a semi-spherical optical distortion. The infantry opens with small arms and adds in support rockets and other heavy weapons. Exactly 0.03 seconds after each weapon type is used, the anomaly begins deploying identical weapons in response. The infantry is forced back, they're taking casualties while the anomaly just sits there lashing them with their own weaponry. Then we cut back to the night before drop for Maldon's third and last clue. One of the human officers, a self-described civilian in uniform in an analyst's slot is profoundly unsettled by the contradictions presented by the Anceti. Unsettled enough to show up drunk in a drop bay filled with 48 Mk XXX Bolos - which would have to be a big loving drop bay, Mk XXXs are more like landmarks than human constructs. A good chunk of the narrative is his conversation with Maldon. In it Major Bowen is spending a lot of time giving background on what they know about the Anceti. He drops the big clue: every Ancetti-settled system, at some point in galactic history - billions of years - either did occupy a point in space that another Ancetti system had occupied, or would occupy in the future. That doesn’t necessarily imply classical time travel, but does show signs of some manipulation of spacetime and causality. Back on the battlefield Maldon is ordered to attack the research station where the infantry attack had failed. He plays it smart, he’s cautious, but every attack, missile, mortar, infinite repeater (Bolo secondary armament is almost always referred to as Infinite Repeaters. Because it sounds cool. On the Mk XXX they’re coilguns firing specs of depleted uranium at relativistic velocities) sent into the anomaly comes right back out 0.03 seconds later targeted on drones, sensor booms, anything. Malfon knows that’s going on, now to test the limits of whatever mechanism lurks inside the anomaly. Unfortunately for him, it can absorb and redirect the focused supernova that is a 60cm Hellbore shot. 0.03 seconds after firing it, he takes an equivalent blast right back in the face. Surface fixtures like antennae and such are blasted off, a damaged infinite repeater emplacement allows star-hot plasma into his internal structure, basically he gets atomic blowtorched. And survives. Bolos are that tough. He adapts as best he can, turn the main turret to face aft to shield the compromised armor, put out new antennae and similar “consumables”. Then he’s off on an overland charge over open terrain. Before he gets to the anomaly a second Hellbore blast - these are rated in megaton/seconds by the way - scours him down. He can keep moving, so he rigs self-destruct and finishes the story just as he’s about to roll into the anomaly himself. Add to the “famous last words file: “My sole regret, as I initiate the scuttling sequence that will send my fusion pile critical, is that I will not be present in 0.03 seconds. I would like to watch as the Enemy try to vent an omnidirectional thermonuclear blast into their research facility.” ***************************************************************************************************** That;’s what we got when Baen turned their attention to the Bolo stories. As much fascist trash as they publish, they still get a lot of credit for bringing a lot of classic SF back into print. Cordwainer Smith, Poul Anderson’s future history omnibus editions, even the Man-Kzin Wars series was a solid contribution to fandom in general. If you follow the F&SF thread you won’t see Laumer mentioned every 100 pages. He’s obscure, but dammit he wrote good stuff ! But what did we get in this anthology ? S.M. Stirling’s Lost Legion gave us a very solid story about a US Army unit trying to get home during the collapse. The very first story in Laumer’s Bolo! Collection was Night of the Trolls, set in post-collapse America, a generation into anarchy and warlords. So this doesn’t just have a Bolo in it, it fits with the established fiction. Lt. Martins provides an unexpected in neo-Clancy milfic female perspective. This turns into a good series as the anthologies keep coming, and it never gets really chuddy. S.N. Lewitt gives us a Camelot story with cybernetic tanks. I like the retired veterans shouldering one last task to keep their homes safe theme. Also well worth reading. She neatly evokes the themes of honor and community that show up in Laumer’s stories. A veteran retired to a colony world having to use their skills or knowledge one more time is a strong theme in Bolo stories. J. Andrew Keith, who wrote like half of Classic Traveller’s sourcebooks, contributes a cybertank riff on the 300 that hits a lot of Laumer notes. A Bolo is smarter than its CO and better able to process and correlate data than the entire general staff. Naturally they will occasionally disobey orders in order to win a war, even at the cost of their own functionality. A nice touch in this story is that human units join the Bolo’s last stand and are memorialized by it and with it once the victory price is paid. Highly recommended, this one improves on material from the originals. Todd Johnson asks “would the French and Germans have combined forces, in 1940, against an existential threat to both parties ?” The answer is “LOL, no”, but this isn’t 1940 and this isn’t Earth. This is another Bilo cliche, the “the Bolo knows better” story. It’s well executed and has some interesting original elements. “Bolo disobeys orders” has to be set up very well or it’s just cliche’d nonsense, Johnson pulls it off. Recommended, but down half a point because the New-Schwabian/Neu-French thing could have either worked better or been left out entirely. Resnick and Malzberg give us Ghosts. And shouldn’t have. It’s weird, meandering, hard to pin down, and oddly Nazi-ish. Rating: Should not be. Stasheff kicks in another fascist screed with a story about literally lizard people trying to outbreed our noble, open-carrying, farmer heroes in an invasion from within. Rating: fash trash. Lackey and Dixon put us into the finishing run with a shaggy dog story involving a Bolo and an unlikely LIberian.Never mind that this is all setup for one groaner of a punchline, it’s the first Bolo story where the operator is the main character. The idea of a Bolo running around on practice ops and doing National Guard type disaster relief missions is amazing, strongly recommended. David Drake takes us home with a 100% Bolo POV story. He’s obviously internalized the Bolo voice from Laumer’s Combat Unit, so this reads like purestrain Bolo fiction. Drake is also highly qualified to write about a war that makes no sense, against an enemy that we cannot understand (if you want to understand the Vietnam War failure, read Technowar by Gibson. It’ll piss you right the gently caress off). It’s a classic Bolo story but with a big dose of actual science fiction along with the nobility and sacrifice of your average Bolo. Highly recommended. Summary: some of the stories are fash trash, but Baen’s revival of the Bolo stories is off to a strong start. If you need some good milsf in your life, read Bolo stories.
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Aug 14, 2020 03:32
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mllaneza posted:[b]Bolos ! Ehh, it's a little more nuanced than that. There is an argument that Byrhtnoth did the right thing. Or at least was attempting to do so. If he hadn't let them across, they probably would have just jumped on their ships and sailed a day or two along the coast and hit there instead. This wasn't the time of Alfred, the Anglo-Saxon polity was in a bit of a state and an army that landed in another Earldom might be able to ravage unchecked as the local Nobles fled or submitted. Byrntnoth was there, he had successfully gathered an army and had a duty to his King and country. Rolling the dice on a battle is at worst a defensible action, which necessitated letting them across to deploy.
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Aug 14, 2020 09:24
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Bolos ! It occurs to me that the review of the first Baen Bolo anthology was lacking in context for a lot of people; most of the folks in this thread haven’t read the originals ! So let’s fix that.The Baen anthologies came out in the mid 90s, but the originals go back all the way to 1960 for Combat Unit. And these are very 60s, going by memory the only named female character is in the story more for sex appeal and catering to male main characters than as an actual person with agency. Then again, these stories are about the Bolos and don’t necessarily have an organic character in them at all. https://i.imgur.com/3ObFSnf.jpg My introduction to Bolos was being a bored kid at adult parties. One house where I got dragged along to entertain myself for an evening had some science fiction books I hadn’t read and a comfy chair. Actual heaven for nine-year old mllaneza. The best one was Bolo, I read that so often the host noticed and eventually gave me the book. That was probably in 1978, and that’s the copy I’ll be using for this Let’s Read; I still have it. I’m going short for this post, I want a little feedback and then there’s the “A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines.” So for feedback on the last anthology’s worth of posts. How’s the detail level ? Too much, not enough, just right ? More extended quotes ? Don’t bother ? A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines This was probably written around 1976, when the anthology was put together, and reflects the general trends towards a future history that found their way into the much earlier stories; they range from 1960-1969, so there was a real gap before they were collected. In 4-5 pages we get what it says on the tin, a potted history of Bolos and their antecedents. It starts with the Hussite War Wagons of the 15th Century and ranges ahead past the 30th Century. There’s a quick mention that the armored knights could be considered an early form of AFV. That stands out because while a knight in shining armor may not be a tank, a Bolo definitely is a a knight in shining armor. We’ve already seen one story that casts a Bolo as a protector of the realm, and there will be more stories in that vein, more or less Arthurian in theme. The first actual Bolo, the Mk I, was built by the Bolo Division of General Motors in 1989 and was a 150 ton monstrosity with 3 crew. A late-model M1 Abrams is 68 tons with a crew of 4. The Mk. I could perform simple patrol assignments with no crew aboard. The Mk. II from 1995 was much more automated, carrying only a single crew. The Mk. III of 2020 went back to two crew, had an armored carapace of “durachrome” that was “capable of resisting any offensive weapon then known, short of a contact nuclear blast”, and had the firepower of a heavy infantry battalion. That firepower would be one or two direct-fire weapons capable of killing any MBT, VLS missile and mortar batteries capable of dominating the county the Bolo is in, secondary guns (the Infinite Repeaters) for murdering targets softer than an MBT, and enough anti-personnel weapons to make any infantry in LOS to a Bolo a dead person. One thing left aside in this shiny march to an armored future is that military vehicles require a shitton of maintenance work. I really like Stirling’s stories about a Mk. II and a motorized infantry company marching home from Central America, but there’s no way that tank made it all the way without depot maintenance that an infantry company, even one that looted an overseas Army base, simply cannot provide. The Rommel story from the first anthology is more realistic: maintaining a couple thousand tons of sophisticated AFV requires specialists, specialists with specialized equipment and vast quantities of spare parts. Then we skip a few centuries to the 25th and the Mk. XV Model M Resartus. These were the first autonomous, automated Bolos designed to operate without a human on board. This mark served for centuries in an era of interstellar expansion, and culminated in the Model R Horrendous of 2807. The basic tank stayed much the same, but the electronics were continuously upgraded. The Mark XVI through XIX were evolutions of the Horrendous model and were the first to be organized into a single unit, the titular Dinochrome Brigade that operated as a strategic asset. The Mark XX Tremendous… has a story behind it that I’ll get to. It was the first truly self-aware Bolo and was capable of strategic self-directions. It fought This is the model where moral questions about sending AI persons into combat, and “decommissioning” them when they’re worn out not only gain teeth, but start filing petitions with ruling bodies in their own right. If I were to write a Bolo story, the first idea I’d explore is conscientious objectors, and a Mark XX-something that analyzes its strategic environment and comes to the conclusion that “this is stupid, someone just wants to get richer” and solves the problem and screws over the Military Industrialists who started the whole mess. There’s also potential for an “All enemies foreign and domestic” Bolo story that’s juuuuust a little fraught these days.
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Aug 18, 2020 05:30
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I might have a new Honorverse post soon or tomorrow. No promises though. This chapter just is so loving annoying to have to read.
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Aug 18, 2020 09:14
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Something infinitely more interesting than David Weber at his best.quote:When you were a ship captain and it was time to shoot, you sprawled on the floor, lined up the pins on an enemy ship, tried to guess how many inches away the enemy ship was and wrote that estimated range on a handy piece of paper. After everybody had finished moving, Pratt—who was too good at the game and usually headed a board of referees—would go around with a big tape measure measuring out the shots and putting a golf tee upside down on the floor to simulate shell splashes for misses. https://vault.si.com/vault/1963/09/23/the-worlds-most-complicated-game
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Aug 20, 2020 22:12
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Aug 21, 2020 07:34
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They're POD and the quality of the layout is often not the best, but the History of Wargaming project does reprints of some old naval wargames. http://wargaming.co/recreation/details/fpnaval.htmc You can get them on Amazon, usually on kindle as well.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:38
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Bolos ! It occurs to me that the review of the first Baen Bolo anthology was lacking in context for a lot of people; most of the folks in this thread haven’t read the originals ! So let’s fix that.The Baen anthologies came out in the mid 90s, but the originals go back all the way to 1960 for Combat Unit. And these are very 60s, going by memory the only named female character is in the story more for sex appeal and catering to male main characters than as an actual person with agency. Then again, these stories are about the Bolos and don’t necessarily have an organic character in them at all.  My introduction to Bolos was being a bored kid at adult parties. One house where I got dragged along to entertain myself for an evening had some science fiction books I hadn’t read and a comfy chair. Actual heaven for nine-year old mllaneza. The best one was Bolo, I read that so often the host noticed and eventually gave me the book. That was probably in 1978, and that’s the copy I’ll be using for this Let’s Read; I still have it. I love the marketing on this cover. "First time in paperback !" Yeah, not because it had been out in a prestigious hardcover, but because these are short stories published in magazines. "Packed with action ! Written by a Master !" A 100% accurate and honest marketing blurb ! A rare specimen in the wild. But there's a lot of action on the one hand, and while Laumer is no grandmaster, he's goddamned good at what he does. So a unicorn, a hyperbolic statement on a book cover is 100% accurate. On the other hand, that's no Bolo. Bolos are often described as squat pyramids. This is a good looking future tank, but that's no Bolo. I’m going short for this post, I want a little feedback and then there’s the “A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines.” So for feedback on the last anthology’s worth of posts. How’s the detail level ? Too much, not enough, just right ? More extended quotes ? Don’t bother ? The first story in this collection, Night of the Trolls, is fairly long and I've got a chance to adjust my coverage to suit thread tastes before posting it. A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machines This was probably written around 1976, when the anthology was put together, and reflects the general trends towards a future history that found their way into the much earlier stories; they range from 1960-1969, so there was a real gap before they were collected, and between stories. In 4-5 pages we get what it says on the tin, a potted history of Bolos and their antecedents. It starts with the Hussite War Wagons of the 15th Century and ranges ahead past the 30th Century. There’s a quick mention that the armored knights could be considered an early form of AFV. That stands out because while a knight in shining armor may not be a tank, a Bolo definitely is a a knight in shining armor. We’ve already seen one story that casts a Bolo as a protector of the realm, and there will be more stories in that vein, more or less Arthurian in theme. The first actual Bolo, the Mk I, was built by the Bolo Division of General Motors in 1989 and was a 150 ton monstrosity with 3 crew. A late-model M1 Abrams is 68 tons with a crew of 4. The Mk. I could perform simple patrol assignments with no crew aboard. The Mk. II from 1995 was much more automated, carrying only a single crew. The Mk. III of 2020 went back to two crew, had an armored carapace of “Durachrome” that was “capable of resisting any offensive weapon then known, short of a contact nuclear blast”, and had the firepower of a heavy infantry battalion. That firepower would be one or two direct-fire weapons capable of killing any MBT, VLS missile and mortar batteries capable of dominating the county the Bolo is in, secondary guns (the Infinite Repeaters) for murdering targets softer than an MBT, and enough anti-personnel weapons to make any infantry in LOS to a Bolo a dead person. One thing left aside in this shiny march to an armored future is that military vehicles require a shitton of maintenance work. I really like Stirling’s stories about a Mk. II and a motorized infantry company marching home from Central America, but there’s no way that tank made it all the way without depot maintenance that an infantry company, even one that looted an overseas Army base, simply cannot provide. The Rommel story from the first anthology is more realistic: maintaining a couple thousand tons of sophisticated AFV requires specialists, specialists with specialized equipment and vast quantities of spare parts. Then we skip a few centuries to the 25th and the Mk. XV Model M Resartus. These were the first autonomous, automated Bolos designed to operate without a human on board. This mark served for centuries in an era of interstellar expansion, and culminated in the Model R Horrendous of 2807. The basic tank stayed much the same, but the electronics were continuously upgraded. The Mark XVI through XIX were evolutions of the Horrendous model and were the first to be organized into a single unit, the titular Dinochrome Brigade that operated as a strategic asset. The Mark XX Tremendous… has a story behind it that I’ll get to. It was the first truly self-aware Bolo and was capable of strategic self-directions. It fought This is the model where moral questions about sending AI persons into combat, and “decommissioning” them when they’re worn out not only gain teeth, but start filing petitions with ruling bodies in their own right. If I were to write a Bolo story, the first idea I’d explore is conscientious objectors, and a Mark XX-something that analyzes its strategic environment and comes to the conclusion that “this is stupid, someone just wants to get richer” and solves the problem and screws over the Military Industrialists who started the whole mess. There’s also potential for an “All enemies foreign and domestic” Bolo story that’s juuuuuuuuuuust a little fraught these days.
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Aug 29, 2020 03:38
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There is three tiers of Bolo stories -the original Bolo stories written by Keith Laumer -the Bolo pastiche stories written by Keith Laumer after his stroke -the shared universe Bolo stories written by everyone else Original KL Bolo stories are all worth reading, the post stroke pastiche KL Bolo stories are skippable, and the shared universe Bolo stories live and die by how talented/untalented the writer is. If the Bolo series interests you, the nearest equivalent board-game wise is Steve Jackson Games OGRE.
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Aug 29, 2020 04:51
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quantumfoam posted:Original KL Bolo stories are all worth reading, the post stroke pastiche KL Bolo stories are skippable, and the shared universe Bolo stories live and die by how talented/untalented the writer is. Pretty much, I'm just trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.
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Aug 29, 2020 06:28
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I got halfway through the next chapter and then started reading Baru Cormaruant instead and it's literally a better book in every way and it doesn't even have starships. It does everything Honor of the Queen wanted to do and more far better.
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Sep 11, 2020 00:22
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