Favorite Military Science Fiction Book

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BasinBictory 11/12/2007 7:22:54 AM

dll2000,

Since you mentioned you have lots of time for reading, may I also suggest John Scalzi's recent trilogy of books, "Old Man's War," "The Ghost Brigades," and "The Last Colony." I read Old Man's War on the suggestion I received from another forum, and enjoyed it so much that I quickly devoured Scalzi's other two novels in the series. Old Man's War is excellent, Ghost Brigades is also pretty good, while Last Colony was okay, but felt somehow clipped and heavily edited, as though Scalzi was working up against a strict deadline for publication.

I am currently reading "Ender's Game" - I am about halfway through, and I have to say, mostly it's a book that makes me sad. The idea of having eight-year-old soldiers is depressing.

I plan to read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Phillip K. Dick. This is the novel which the movie "Blade Runner" was based on, and will be my first Dick novel. I am a huge Robert Heinlein fan and have read virtually all of his works, and although Starship Troopers retains a special place in my heart, I honestly believe that Heinlein's masterpiece was "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." I enjoyed that book on many different levels, from Professor de la Paz's musings about government and governance, to the technical aspects of lunar colonization, to Manny's rather unorthodox marital arrangements, to the problems of creating and equipping an army from absolute scratch, to the politics and structure of a clandestine revolution, to of course, the final battle with the Earth authorities for Lunar independence. Just an awesome, awesome book.

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WarNerd 11/13/2007 2:18:23 AM

A long but interesting read is Roland Green's "Starcruiser Shenandoah" series, if you are interested in an action series that deals more with strategic than tactical thinking. It's good for providing perspective as to why we cannot just trash the bad guys like they do in the movies

The basic plot is that the is a revolt brewing on the planet Victoria. The place is of zero (some say negative) strategic or economic value, but; due to interstellar geography and a previous war, The planet is split between the 2 human governments in that part of the galaxy, neither of which wants to set a president by giving up anything to the other. The good guys (the Confederation) send out a small fleet lead by the elderly battlecruiser Shenandoah to try and keep the lid on the problem.

Th problem? Well, besides the Alliance (human) the are the two local governments, 3 alien governments, at least 3 independence movements. Each has it's own political parties, military units, 'intelligence' services, and fanatics, each with it's own ideologies and agendas. Then there are the smart people on both sides who are more concerned about avoiding another interstellar war, that both sides would lose.

Then some idiot gives one of the factions of an independence movement a couple dozen thermonuclear warheads ...

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TrustButVerify 11/14/2007 9:21:10 AM

I suppose I should give Haldeman's Forever War a plug. It serves as a good contrast to Starship Troopers, even if it is in good part a rumination on the Vietnam experience. It isn't particularly glorious. If you want action, blood, and bravery you might want to give David Drake's Redliners a look. (Available for free from Baen's online library, again.) Hammer's Slammers is recommended by everyone with good reason, being in the same vein. There is also a fun trilogy by David Weber which begins with Mutineer's Moon. The first book is good enough on its own, and the sequels are full of nail-biting clashes between opposing battlefleets.
The Stars Must Wait by Keith Laumer is a fun little novel in a sort of post-apocalypse vein. (It has a Bolo. You could do worse.)
Finally, if you didn't care for the romantic subplot in God's Eye you might give Honor Harrington a look. To date I've only read the first book of the series but enjoyed it.
One final recommendation- Apocalypse Troll by David Weber, again. Happy reading.

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paul1970 11/14/2007 5:04:07 PM

the Honor harrington books are his best... they are all Honor this and Honor that so no giving the game away that she has a habbit of surviving... they move up from single ship through small squadron all the way up to lines of battle...

last couple have been very badly politic heavy but the fighting is still top notch......

paul

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dll2000 New Books 2/24/2008 4:51:26 PM

I have read several books since my last posting and have some new recommendations.

Based upon numerous recommendations here I read Card's Ender's Game and went on to read most of his work. Of Card's books his best was Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (same story told through another characters perspective), the rest of the Ender's series was enjoyable but did not rise to the level of those two works. I also enjoyed Card's Alvin Maker series; a type of alternative history set roughly in the early half of 19th century America where it is common for citizens to have supernatural 'knacks' and hexes work.

As for science fiction with a military theme I most recently read and most highly recommend Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. Jim Butcher is most famous for authoring the Dresden Files series which was picked up for a season on the Sci Fi channel.

The Codex series is set in an alternative world with different types of humanoid citizens. The humans in the dominant nation, depicted as a post Romanesque medival feudal society, utilize a type of magic by summoning the abilities of elementals called 'furies' with the nobles or 'lords' having more powerful control and access to furies. Other societies and creatures in that world have their own supernatural abilities and are in a near constant state of war.

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Lu_86 It's not original but... 2/26/2008 2:07:05 AM

I'm not gonna pretend to seem interesting, Ender's Game for the philosophical and psychological aspect and Red Storm Rising just for the fun of it. I still doubt that the politics of the war were any credible, but many of the assumptions about the course of the war sounded reasonable to me, in particular the shortage of ammunition and the role of stealth fighterbombers. In hindsight though, it's pretty dubious that the Soviets would have achieved that kind of progress, the capacities of soviet equipment were probably overestimated.

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BasinBictory 10/16/2008 5:56:32 AM

Just started reading the Honor Harrington series by David Weber, and it reminds me a lot of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books. Honor = Jack Ryan, in which the main character always seems to find themselves the primary focus of events, but there are numerous subplots and a wealth of characters. Weber's character development is quite good, and I would venture that politcally, he's in the same boat with Clancy as well.

Another series which I have read through is Jack Campbell's "Dauntless" series. That's the series where Captain "Black Jack" Geary is a space naval officer who gets reawakened over 100 years after he thought he had died but was in cryo-stasis, and discovers that the war he fought in the first of is still raging, and that he has been elevated to near mythical status by his people - a status that he really dislikes. I liked this series, although I thought the character development was very poor in the first few books. The space battles are very interesting, because there are considerations of radio wave communications and light itself being able to only travel at the speed of light, so manuevers must be coordinated with the knowledge that ships that might be many light-seconds away from the flagship will take longer to receive and execute orders. Also, the fleet on the offensive is always at an advantage because when they first "jump" into a system, they can immediately track all the in-system assets of the enemy, while it will take several hours for the light of their arrival to reach the defenders.

Also finished Ender's Game, I Robot, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I find that Philip K. Dick's writings are extremely sparse, not very illustrative, and it's difficult to really imagine the world of his books.

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Heorot Basin, 10/16/2008 7:28:19 AM

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Heorot Basin, 10/16/2008 7:32:44 AM

Actually,

the inspiration for the Honor Harrington books were the Hornblower books by C S Forester, set in the Napoleonic Wars British Navy. The name of the Havenite leaders were taken from the French Revoultionary leaders, the most blatant being Rob S Pierre for Robespierre. If you read the Forester books, the resonancees are obvious.

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BasinBictory 10/17/2008 4:54:35 AM

heorot,

Yes, I remember reading the wikipedia articles on the Honor Harrington books and how they were basically space-age versions of Horatio Hornblower, but since I hadn't read those books, I was only comparing them to what I have read, and Weber's style of writing reminded me a lot of Clancy, with just enough techno-babble to explain it to a layman, and why that information was relevant to the tactical manuevers of the characters involved. The character arcs and development are similar to Clancy's style as well. I'll probably eventually get around to reading the Hornblower books, but after reading through this thread again, I picked up one of Harry Turtledove's books, "Guns of the South." Looks pretty interesting to me. Kalashnikovs in the hands of the Confederates!

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