Military science fiction

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Military Science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction where interstellar or interplanetary conflict and its armed solution (war) make up the main or partial backdrop of the story. One definition of military science fiction is science fiction in which the main characters are part of the military chain of command. Another is science fiction in which the detailed depiction of conflict forms a major part of the action. Yet another is science fiction in which war is shown from the point of view of a soldier.

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Characteristics

At its best (as in, for example, Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers or Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan novels), military SF examines hard questions about the ethics of violence, individuality versus collectivity, and the relationship between the military and its society. At its worst, military SF becomes simple carnography (pornography of violence).

Frequently, the conflict is assumed to be inevitable (humans vs. aliens, democracies vs. dictatorships, etc.), and the military approach is not questioned. (However, in a significant number of such works, the problem of ending an intractable conflict is dealt with, and in such works the conflict is often shown to have been pointless originally. Examples include David Drake's Counting the Cost, and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.) Traditional military values (Discipline, courage, plight, etc.) are stressed, and the action is described from the point of view of either a soldier or officer. Technology is advanced and often described in detail. In some stories technology is fairly static, wars are not primarily won by R&D or even logistics, but by willpower and military virtues. In other stories technological changes are central to plot development.

Another common characteristic is the use of actual historical battles or conflicts as more or less direct models for fictional situations. A few such events have been re-used often enough to become clichèd, such as the battle of Rorke's Drift or the Nika riots. Often starships are classified as in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922: heavy and light cruisers, etc.

Thus, while the original Star Wars movies have an armed conflict as backdrop, they would not usually be considered Military SF. Most Star Trek series are not part of this genre, though Deep Space Nine borrows some of the genre conventions in later seasons. Similarly, Babylon 5 is a borderline case. Space: Above and Beyond is clear Military SF, but the Lensmen cycle by E.E. Doc Smith is not considered so.

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History

Perhaps the first works of modern Military SF were H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising (1952) (based on the events of the Sepoy Mutiny) and the same author's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965). Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) is another pivotal early work of Military SF, and mostly responsible for spreading this sub-genre's popularity to young readers of the time.

The start of Military SF as a recognized sub-genre might be placed at the publication of Combat SF (ISBN 0441115314, edited by Gordon Dickson) in 1975. This anthology includes one of the first Hammer's Slammers stories by David Drake as well as one of the BOLO stories by Keith Laumer, and one of the Berserker stories by Fred Saberhagen. This anthology seems to have been the first time SF-stories specifically dealing with war as a subject were collected and marketed as such. Shortly afterwards, the book publication of Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary (1977, first section published in Analog Science Fiction in 1972) and of Drake's "Slammers" series (1979) established the sub-genre as an active marketing category.

The series of anthologies under the group title There Will be War edited by Pournelle and John F. Carr (nine volumes from 1983 through 1990) helped keep the category active, and encouraged new writers to enter it.

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Viewpoint

A growing tendency in military SF, largely due to the conservative authors who have dominated the genre in recent years, is to portray democratic government with a certain level of contempt, as bloated, corrupt, inefficient and openly antagonistic to its military protectors (who as the protagonists are typically portrayed as good and noble) and liberals exclusively as out-of-touch ivory tower academics and idealists who must invariably be protected from themselves. Some works in the genre openly admit they have been written to transport certain present-world political messages. For example, Tom Kratman's and John Ringo's "Watch on the Rhine", infamous for its plot where rejuvenated Waffen-SS personnel are used to defend Germany against an alien invasion, includes an epilogue explaining that this serves as a metaphor for the "ruthlessness" that, according to the authors, must be brought out in today's Western civilisation to successfully win a perceived ongoing global conflict.

However, Military SF has been and continues to be written from liberal viewpoints and works like Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, which indirectly criticizes the military, are not unknown.

David Drake, while not in any way a fullblown anti-military author, has often written of the horrors and futility of war. He has said, in the afterwords of several of his "Slammers" books, that one of his reasons for writing is to educate those people who have not experienced war, but who might have to make the decision to start or support a war (as policy makers or as voters) about what war is really like, and what the powers and limits of the military as a tool of policy are.

In more recent books, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, while previously featuring righteous heroes triumphing over despicable villains, now centers on an unnecessary war between two groups of positive characters. This could be interpreted as a comment on the futility of war.

While much military SF is purely entertainment, and caters to a similar audience as historical and modern military novels, some authors manage to work within the genre conventions while posing interesting new questions. An example is Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, where children are trained from a young age to fight for humanity.

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Authors

Defining authors of the genre include:

Many current Military SF books are published by Baen Books.

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Military Examples

Books, Movie, TV and Anime, and Games.

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Books

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Movie, TV and Anime

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Games

  • Halo series of videogames and books.
  • BattleTech universe (Also known as the MechWarrior universe), started as a wargame, now is the setting of more than seventy books,
  • Warhammer 40,000 universe, started as a wargame, and spawned many comics and books (Including the mentioned Gaunt's Ghosts series), and more recently, videogames.
  • Wing Commander universe, started as a game detailing the fictional conflict between humans and kilrathi, and spawned several books, sequels/games, a movie, and a cartoon series.
  • Fallout while not set in space but on Earth, it is clearly Science Fiction - of the future (with a retro touch) and a military backdrop of the past as reason for the state of apocalypse in the U.S.
  • FreeSpace series of space-combat videogames.
  • Homeworld a three-dimensional RTS and space-combat videogame.cs:Military science fiction

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