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From what I remember of high school technothrillers, Clancy didn't hold a candle to Dale Brown in batshit lunacy.
Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 19:43 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 19:41
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Dead Reckoning posted:From what I remember of high school technothrillers, Clancy didn't hold a candle to Dale Brown in batshit lunacy. Yeah Dale Brown was just too over to the top though. Sky Masters involved sinking a Philipines Navy ship by crashing a satellite into it, IIRC.
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May 20, 2014 19:44
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That's strange, none of this feels like it would be out of place...in an Ace Combat game. I mean, AC5 alone has SSTO space lasers shooting down ballistic missiles and submarines, F-5s kicking F-22 and Su-47 tailpipe, fuel-air ballistic missiles designed to burst in the air and take out fighter squadrons, a space railgun with nuclear capabilities that the bad guys try to crash into a capital city, a revanchist national-corporate conspiracy trying to drag the not-US and not-USSR into full scale destructive war by kidnapping their leaders and planting warmongers, even loose nukes which not-US and not-USSR loose cannon forces try to fight over. I wonder how these books would have been received if they'd been explicitly written as pure fiction for a world that was like ours, but wasn't ours.
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May 20, 2014 19:53
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I think the reason Ace Combat gets away with it is less that Ace Combat is in a fictional world and more that it's pretty much the only good console jet fighter game, so you either take it and maybe have a few laughs about the crazy story so you can shoot down people while flying a Tomcat or Viper or whatever, or walk away from how ridiculous it is and not get to fly cool jet planes on your Playstation/Xbox. Well maybe HAWX was good or something but I never tried it and it doesn't seem to have the fanbase of AC so I'm still going to assume AC was/is the only game in town for not-lovely but still arcadey modern air combat.
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May 20, 2014 20:02
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Dead Reckoning posted:From what I remember of high school technothrillers, Clancy didn't hold a candle to Dale Brown in batshit lunacy. I liked the one where the liberal president was OK with Russia nuking a bunch of american military bases and it was up to glorious hero to bomb Russia in revenge in his b52 because no one else would. Yeah.
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May 20, 2014 20:32
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Pornographic Memory posted:Well maybe HAWX was good Ahahaha no. No they really weren't. The plots in a nutshell: HAWX 1: PMCs are eeeeevil and invade the US because the US were mean to them. HAWX 2: Russians are eeeeeevil and invade Norway after one of their oil fields get nuked by separatists. I can probably go on for a while about why I both like and dislike the HAWX games but none of those reasons are related to the plot.
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May 20, 2014 20:59
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The HAWX games plots are laughably awful. I played the first game on console and enjoyed it. The second game I got for PC and played with a joystick. For multiplayer balancing purposes they added a deadzone to joystick controls to artificially reduce fidelity and make it fair to the people using controllers. Since I only played singleplayer anyway I still haven't beaten the final mission, which requires a fair amount of precision and the deadzone thing makes it impossible. But yeah the story is just loving dumb. The PMC thing is like, where the gently caress do you get these huge (completely expendable) fleets of ships and tanks and airplanes with which to pose a serious, credible threat to the United States in ~2017? Moreover, how does a private company loving pay for all that?
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May 20, 2014 21:07
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Dead Reckoning posted:From what I remember of high school technothrillers, Clancy didn't hold a candle to Dale Brown in batshit lunacy. Is that the book (series?) with the SUPER-B52 that had all sorts of anti-everything weapons on it?
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May 20, 2014 21:08
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It's also invisible to radar. Later the navigator gets a suit that stops missiles and bullets with carbon and electromagnetism. He uses it to hunt bank robbers and gangbangers. EDIT: I forgot, they were meth dealer bikers, not bank robbers. Also, the suit has rocket boots. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 21:41 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 21:20
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's also invisible to radar. Later the navigator gets a suit that stops missiles and bullets with carbon and electromagnetism. He uses it to hunt bank robbers and gangbangers. From Wikipedia: quote:EB-52 Megafortress[edit] ...yeah.
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May 20, 2014 21:24
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's also invisible to radar. Later the navigator gets a suit that stops missiles and bullets with carbon and electromagnetism. He uses it to hunt bank robbers and gangbangers. I mentioned my friend before I think, the one whose father was an O-6 BUFF driver? His dad loves that book.
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May 20, 2014 21:29
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See, all I'm seeing there are new "superweapon" targets for Ace Combat missions. Plucky fighter pilots flying straight on at these things, popping engine nacelles and weapon pylons and jammer pods, while the lead plane's commander screams at his underlings to aim the laser properly... ...wait, are these are supposed to be "good guy" planes?
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May 20, 2014 21:30
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It's like that Gavin dude wrote a book about super updated Gavins but witn B-52s.Cyrano4747 posted:You've got to remember that the early 90s there was a bit of patriot-paranoia in the US that an economically successful Japanese superpower was going to buy the US one beachfront property at a time. It was just silly nonsense that politicians abused for votes back then, but it got reflected in some of the sillier airport fiction. Rising Sun by Crichton represents the real high water mark of it in somewhat mainstream culture and media, but it staggered along on the sidelines for a bit later. gently caress me, Rising Sun. I've never read the book; is it as hallucinogenic as the movie? Sean Conery speaking Japanese, my boyhood crush Tia Carrere in a wheelchair, actual sword battles among Yakuza. I for the live of me cannot remember the plot. The movie's theme seems to be "those jap celestials are mighty alien and inscrutable." If we're talking about this really strange sub-genre, Clive Cussler's entry must be mentioned. Dragon has the Japanese detonating an atomic warhead over the western US, so that the Japanese can take it over. Also I think Cussler races Dirk Benedict in a vintage car race and looses.
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May 20, 2014 21:31
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's also invisible to radar. Later the navigator gets a suit that stops missiles and bullets with carbon and electromagnetism. He uses it to hunt bank robbers and gangbangers. Okay, sold, somebody make a Let's read thread please.
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May 20, 2014 22:18
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Mortabis posted:The HAWX games plots are laughably awful. I played the first game on console and enjoyed it. The second game I got for PC and played with a joystick. For multiplayer balancing purposes they added a deadzone to joystick controls to artificially reduce fidelity and make it fair to the people using controllers. Since I only played singleplayer anyway I still haven't beaten the final mission, which requires a fair amount of precision and the deadzone thing makes it impossible. Wasn't even aware of the deadzone, didn't stop me from repeatedly kicking other people's rear end scorewise whenever I played the coop mode. I kinda liked that final mission even if the slalom part could be aggravating and the the tunnel is hard until you realize all you need to do is to fly as slow as possible before the game just takes over for you. Still a way better final mission than the one in HAWX 1 though. Way way better. Davin Valkri posted:See, all I'm seeing there are new "superweapon" targets for Ace Combat missions. Plucky fighter pilots flying straight on at these things, popping engine nacelles and weapon pylons and jammer pods, while the lead plane's commander screams at his underlings to aim the laser properly... Well AC6 did have the Aigaion flying aircraft carrier and I think the DS title had a giant bomber but I could be wrong obviously since I haven't looked into that game that much, or maybe that was AC0. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 22:27 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 22:22
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Phanatic posted:Best cheesy Cold War fiction I ever read was the first few books of the Guardians series. First one has this amazing set-piece battle between two armored cars and an AC-130 that's stuck on the ground. And it's actually really well written for airport-bookstore-level stuff. The scene where they're sitting under the White House and the bombs are falling is amazing. Later ones got ridiculous, and had actual magic and poo poo in them, but the first one at least is solid. Looks like no one has recommended Arc Light so...go read Arc Light. It's Tom Clancy technomilitaryfetishism done right. Also the book has a no poo poo counterforce nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in like the first 100 pages.
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May 20, 2014 22:24
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Does anyone remember a terrible book from the '80s that involve a bunch of world war 2 vets in restored WW2 aircraft taking down US airforce F-5s? Apparently not "Iron Eagle-the book", something else in a similar vein.
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May 20, 2014 22:34
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Nebakenezzer posted:gently caress me, Rising Sun. I've never read the book; is it as hallucinogenic as the movie? Sean Conery speaking Japanese, my boyhood crush Tia Carrere in a wheelchair, actual sword battles among Yakuza. I for the live of me cannot remember the plot. The movie's theme seems to be "those jap celestials are mighty alien and inscrutable." It's been a loooooong time (15 years or so) but as I recall Chriton got seriously creepy and detailed with the rape poo poo, and had a whole bunch of strange "mystical oriental" sexuality stuff sprinkled throughout that was juuuuust this side of 'I bet they got sideways cooters.' The plot flowed a little better in the book (I presume - I just remember the movie made a lot more apparent sense to me than most of my friends who saw it, largely because I'd read the book). On the whole though, yeah, it could pretty much be summarized as: Rising Sun posted:MEGARAPE . . . those jap celestials are mighty alien and inscrutable. . . oh gently caress they have money and are buying the whole west coast!
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May 20, 2014 22:39
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Speaking of weird, out-there mil-porn books has anyone ever read the Wingman series? Most of what I remember is the main characters plane of choice being the F-20 Tigershark (and the author wanking over the F-20 constantly) and that the world had broken up into a bunch of little fiefdoms. And you got weird stuff like a flight of C-5 Galaxies setup to volley fire Phoenix missiles. Also remember a book (or series of books) where something had rendered jet/rocket engines completely unusable. I think it had somehow zapped computers and poo poo too. So it was the modern world, but everyone was flying WW2 poo poo. Can't remember the name of that one though.
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May 20, 2014 23:04
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Sjurygg posted:Okay, sold, somebody make a Let's read thread please. I'm a little busy this month, but I'm willing to binge read Dale Brown if there's any interest.
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May 20, 2014 23:36
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Cooked Auto posted:Ahahaha no. No they really weren't. The plots in a nutshell: It's really sad that the devs didn't get to make the HAWX that their design docs had, basically Jagged Alliance with airplanes instead of ground soldiers.
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May 21, 2014 00:02
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I think every av-mil nerd remembers reading Wingman! at the age of twelve, even if they never read it. Flight Of the Old Dog is basically hilarious Marty Stu insert B-52 fanfic where a Heroic Bombardier and his sidekick the Plucky Navigator demonstrate why bombardiers, navigators and the B52 are needed in this age of B1s and GPS. It's a fun read. Edit: forgot the female civilian engineer love interest Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 00:07 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 00:04
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It's not very well known, but if you haven't read: http://www.amazon.com/Arc-Light-Eric-Harry/dp/1476702624 You really should. It's a war novel revolving around an semi-accidental nuclear exchange involving a three-way clusterfuck between the Russians, Chinese, and Americans. It's unique in the sense that it shows an America that's just living with the reality that "oh hey, some nukes went off here" instead of the "running around like chickens with their heads cut off" cliche. There's even a part where one of the protagonist's wives has to drive close to March AFB, which had been hit by a MIRV, and a state policeman tells her to "just close her A/C vents," and a mention that in the wake of the strikes, the Weather Channel had become the most watched network on television because the fallout reports were the most accurate and frequent. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 00:45 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 00:41
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ArchangeI posted:They use it shoot down an AWACS after flying right on top of a bullet train so the AWACS computer would filter out the signal because it mistook them for the train. It isn't quite like this actually, they realize that since the Comanche is (who actually knows since its been cancelled) stealthy they can use the fact that it's slower than bullet trains to cause AWACs to disregard it as possible ground clutter. They then take them up to the thermal limit for the engines and hit a couple AWACs with the Stingers they carry. There's at least 3/4 other subplots for that book that basically go nowhere but just add more racism on top of it (Japan stealing OUR WOMEN and turning into hookers) If you want a hilariously bad airport fiction check out Matthew Reilly's Scarecrow. The climax of the book involves X-15s.
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May 21, 2014 00:42
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Matthew Riley is a Australian treasure and I will hear no words against him 
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May 21, 2014 00:56
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Moving away from milporn and into gun porn, I hope TFR is aware of this masterpiece; it has lovingly crafted descriptions of guns and... Ah, it's worth a read.quote:Earl Swagger, the gritty WWII-vet hero of Hunter's bestselling thriller Hot Springs, is back in this virtually un-put-downable gothic chiller about unspeakable evil in the murky Mississippi bayous. In 1951, five years after the conclusion of Hot Springs, straight arrow ex-county prosecutor Sam Vincent tells Earl - his trusted friend and former investigator, now a sergeant in the Arkansas state police - that he has been hired by a Chicago attorney to travel to Thebes, a mythic prison camp in the remote backwaters of Mississippi to verify the death of a black man who is the beneficiary of a will left by a one-time employer. When Earl hasn't heard from Sam by an agreed upon date, he goes looking for him and discovers that he is being held in the prison. Earl frees Sam, but is taken prisoner himself. Tortured by the prison hierarchy who fear he has been sent by a federal agency to expose their abominable secrets, Earl, aided by a trusty, escapes, vowing to return to destroy the camp and kill its evil warden and his henchmen. A staunch upholder of the law, self-righteous Sam refuses to participate in Earl's plan for retribution, but promises not to interfere. Assembling a strike force of seven of the country's most able gunmen, Earl sets out to wipe Thebes from the face of the earth. Meanwhile, probing the fate of a famous doctor who worked for the military researching biological warfare during WWII, Sam realizes Thebes may harbor an even darker secret after a bomb attempt on his life. Unforgettable characters in vivid settings more than offset the melodramatic, credibility stretching scenarios of the hard-driving thriller. Once again, Hunter proves he is a master of the cinematic prose. The description is way less over the top than the book actually is. There's gunslingers involved. FrozenVent fucked around with this message at 01:06 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 01:00
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Xerxes17 posted:Matthew Riley is a Australian treasure and I will hear no words against him I've been waiting for him to be brought up for a while. His books are great bathroom books because you don't need to be invested in them (and even if you are you can finish them in a couple hours at most), and every other page something explodes. Reading one of his books is like watching 5 summer blockbusters rolled into one with your brain doing the CGI, and it's awesome. The third book features a bounty hunter that flies a modified Sukhoi SU-47 that has a galley and a holding cell for prisoners like loving Boba Fett. And he's one of the good guys. Terrible Robot fucked around with this message at 01:17 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 01:13
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Q_res posted:Speaking of weird, out-there mil-porn books has anyone ever read the Wingman series? Most of what I remember is the main characters plane of choice being the F-20 Tigershark (and the author wanking over the F-20 constantly) and that the world had broken up into a bunch of little fiefdoms. And you got weird stuff like a flight of C-5 Galaxies setup to volley fire Phoenix missiles. Well I guess if the whole world is petty fiefdoms that the F-20's lower price would be a real advantage. 
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May 21, 2014 01:14
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Sounds like Area 88 aka the only anime I ever actually liked.
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May 21, 2014 01:46
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Phanatic posted:B&D is the one where an Apache shoots down an ICBM and a few JSOWs basically destroy the entire armored component of China's army. lol I remembered the Apache shooting down the ICBM but I had forgotten the fact that like a couple squadrons of fighters with smart munitions literally wipe out China's entire armored force. I mean JSOWs and CBU-97s are pretty sweet but come on MRC48B posted:Please don't forget the part where they do a refueling for said Comanches on a Ohio SSBN in the middle of the pacific ocean. hahahahaha also had forgotten that bit If we're talking about Debt of Honor, don't forget that the old crusty USCG dude who Kelly hangs out with in and is chased by at the end of Without Remorse has retired to the Marianas and is the sum total of the U.S. resistance when now Clark and Chavez go in to do some spy poo poo...and of course they meet. Dead Reckoning posted:From what I remember of high school technothrillers, Clancy didn't hold a candle to Dale Brown in batshit lunacy. Came here to post this. Literally every problem can be solved by strategic bombers, as long as you have the unlimited ammo cheat code turned on. The hilarious part is that his original book (Old Dog) is really completely batshit insane if you look at it rationally (a lone super-BUFF penetrates Soviet airspace and successfully blows up a Soviet ballistic missile defense laser, with absolutely zero repercussions for anyone other than the dude who gets left behind) but his later books are so completely off the wall that relatively speaking it doesn't seem that bad. I mean, even the loving plasma-yield warheads or whatever the gently caress in one of his more recent books still look relatively sane compared to the insanity of his last couple (of which I haven't read, just seen the plots for). Sjurygg posted:Okay, sold, somebody make a Let's read thread please. lol...you do not want to go down the Dale Brown rabbit hole. Don't forget the ones where super Ospreys miraculously don't fall out of the sky and are used to defend the U.S. against Dead Reckoning posted:I'm a little busy this month, but I'm willing to binge read Dale Brown if there's any interest. Don't just do the Old Dog/McLanahan ones...you have to do the Osprey (Hammerheads) and the French guy (something Heaven I think) ones, and there's the other one-offs like Silver Tower and the one about the FB-111s where the first female combat pilot in the AF is too busy banging her WSO to do her job or something. Oh and don't forget the one where a bunch of Guard bums singlehandedly defeat North Korea in a couple of souped up Bones (there's a joke to be made there about North Korea being the most sophisticated adversary the Guard could be expected to defeat). e: Day of the Cheetah was actually pretty cool though...the Soviets plant a super deep cover agent who steals a new thought controlled fighter, shooting down a super-BUFF and killing half of the crew from the original Old Dog in the process. McLanahan goes on a one-man crusade in a super-F-15 to chase him down (because B-52 radar navs are totally fighter pilots too guys). It's still hilariously bad but it's at least entertaining. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 05:01 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 04:57
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You are all lucky that I had to cut my book collection down or I'd be posting a picture of Dale Brown's entire collection (up until the point where it went to ghost writers anyway). And you mean Storming Heaven. "Something something the daring of mortals, we storm heaven itself in our folly" Quintus Horace. The quote at the beginning of the book 
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May 21, 2014 05:09
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Totally TWISTED posted:You are all lucky that I had to cut my book collection down or I'd be posting a picture of Dale Brown's entire collection (up until the point where it went to ghost writers anyway). All I remember (besides the weird sex poo poo) was that the cover has this awesome picture of Air Force One in flames flying over D.C. ready to crash into something important.
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May 21, 2014 05:15
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Terrible Robot posted:I've been waiting for him to be brought up for a while. His books are great bathroom books because you don't need to be invested in them (and even if you are you can finish them in a couple hours at most), and every other page something explodes. Reading one of his books is like watching 5 summer blockbusters rolled into one with your brain doing the CGI, and it's awesome. Matthew Reilly owns in every single way because he doesn't give a gently caress he just writes whatever he thinks is cool and/or would be cool if it exploded, then he makes it explode. Do you have a problem with that? Too bad, because in the time it took you to complain about whatever he just blew up, the protagonist is now on his stealth VTOL 747 he stole from Saddam Hussein and is shooting down incoming enemy bullets using loving magnetic mind powers or something before putting his cyber-arm into your face and tossing off a one liner. also something about shooting a man-eating murder whale in the face.
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May 21, 2014 05:49
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Nebakenezzer posted:If we're talking about this really strange sub-genre, Clive Cussler's entry must be mentioned. Dragon has the Japanese detonating an atomic warhead over the western US, so that the Japanese can take it over. Also I think Cussler races Dirk Benedict in a vintage car race and looses. Also Japan has AI robots and there's a long plot digression that ends with Dirk Pitt getting both a MacGuffin and a completely operational original production Me 262.
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May 21, 2014 06:05
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Terrible Robot posted:The third book features a bounty hunter that flies a modified Sukhoi SU-47 that has a galley and a holding cell for prisoners like loving Boba Fett. And he's one of the good guys. Maybe I lack for imagination can't come up with a single way this premise could be anything other than amazing. 
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May 21, 2014 06:05
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All of these sound like action-y shonen anime. Heck, the EB-52 and AL-52 practically sound like super robots! Are these writers in the right genre?
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May 21, 2014 06:09
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Also Japan has AI robots and there's a long plot digression that ends with Dirk Pitt getting both a MacGuffin and a completely operational original production Me 262. Hope he got a twelve pack of engines. Those things got what, 24 hours flight time per set of fans or something like that?
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May 21, 2014 06:23
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winnydpu posted:Does anyone remember a terrible book from the '80s that involve a bunch of world war 2 vets in restored WW2 aircraft taking down US airforce F-5s? Apparently not "Iron Eagle-the book", something else in a similar vein. Gray Eagles. Basically bunch of Luftwaffe veterans get their hands on restored bf109s and try to exact revenge for the war. They also fight the Confederate Air Force in p-51s. Yeah.
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May 21, 2014 07:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:Hope he got a twelve pack of engines. Those things got what, 24 hours flight time per set of fans or something like that? Something like that, yeah. Anyway the 262 was one of a whole bunch hidden in a giant underground Nazi treasure vault/cavern someone stumbled upon by accident but which happened to contain a crucial plot MacGuffin because something something Axis pact. It was a map or something.
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May 21, 2014 07:47
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BIG HEADLINE posted:It's not very well known, but if you haven't read: http://www.amazon.com/Arc-Light-Eric-Harry/dp/1476702624 There is another book by the same guy that features the West defending Siberia against a Chinese attack. It is basically Bear and Dragon done right: Anarchist Karl-Adolf Marx-Hitler takes over in Russia, the UN steps in to disarm Russian nukes, China decides that it is time to reverse some of the treaties forced on them by the Russians in the 19th century. Also unique in the genre by acknowledging that it is possible under the laws of physics as we know them for the US Army to lose. It has some fairly silly bits (the first black President is a staunch Republican who manages to get Congress to support his war by holding a speech that has literally nothing to do with the war), but at least it acknowledges that in this situation, neither side is willing to escalate to nuclear.
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May 21, 2014 07:56
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