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Klaus88 posted:Cryano, you know what must be done. poo poo, I might do a thread for at least one or two of them. The entire series is a bit much for Let's Read, since there's 16 books in the Wingman series alone and 6 Starhawk books. They really are incredible in the way that only 80s and 90s pulp action novels can be. Starhawk, in particular, is crazy enough that you get the feeling that Mack really has a ton of creativity for unique ideas and just can't figure out how to write anything but pulp.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:33
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Lobster God posted:The summaries of these books on the author's website are fantastic: quote:Return of Sky Ghost – This was a big surprise, because even though it’s essentially a sequel to Sky Ghost, this book made Barnes & Noble’s web page bestseller list.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:35
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Starhawk 4: Battle At Zero Point, has a Captain Gym Bonz. He's described as "only 120 years old" and with a light green aura surrounding him due to so many trips to space, I think because of their FTL tech. I remember one other book in that series had a disintegrator gun that slowly made a person disappear layer by layer, painfully and over a long enough time for loved ones to see them before they faded away totally. Spoiler alert: The alternate history WW2 in the 1990s ends with a giant nuclear bomb destroying all of Japan except for a tiny bit of land left over in the ocean.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:42
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quote:Still it’s a good story. Hawk has set out to find the evil Viktor who has reared his ugly head again. The devil himself has blasted off in a Russian space shuttle and now it is up to Hawk to figure where and when the super-villain is coming down. Ringo has a challenger...
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Jun 13, 2016 22:45
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Oh got an actual question for our 17th century experts. Let's say you're raising a decent sized army for a campaign. Say 10,000 men. How much money would you have to spend to raise and equip such a force.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:46
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I really like the concept behind the last campaign in Wargame: European Escalation. The war goes hot, nukes start flying, and Europe gets incinerated. A bunch of soldiers in the German wasteland decide to massacre the government officials at the post-exchange peace accords, for no reason besides pure vengeance. I've always wondered if somebody wrote a book like that.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:46
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Lobster God posted:Ringo has a challenger... Maybe not. That sounds an awful lot like "Infant Island", the place in the South China Sea that Mothra is from. The series may take a turn for the awesome right there.
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Jun 13, 2016 22:57
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Lobster God posted:Ringo has a challenger... It's honestly not Ringo levels of bad. It's the classic insane kind of pulp novel, where everything is stupidly over-the-top and women are living sex toys to be fought over, but the protagonist isn't a self-admitted rapist psychopath who listens to Cruxshadows and it's not virulently racist or anti-Islamic. The series did have a few movie deals fall through (I don't think Ringo novels have ever been considered for movies) and Goodreads usually has their ratings sitting somewhere around the 3 star point. They're just hilarious to read as an adult after growing up with them.
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Jun 13, 2016 23:24
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How can a guy named Hawk Hunter not fly the best and most coolest looking plane of all time, the Hawker Hunter?
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Jun 13, 2016 23:25
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^^^^ Also that. ETA: wait, no! Maybe he IS a Hawker Hunterkin?  chitoryu12 posted:the protagonist isn't a self-admitted rapist psychopath who listens to Cruxshadows 
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Jun 13, 2016 23:42
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In what possible scenario is there only one F16 left in the world, those things are everywhere.
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Jun 13, 2016 23:52
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:How can a guy named Hawk Hunter not fly the best and most coolest looking plane of all time, the Hawker Hunter? HAWKER HUNTER  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pzOXPOT2AE
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Jun 13, 2016 23:53
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Does the book ever explain where he gets the parts to keep his F-16 running?
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Jun 13, 2016 23:59
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chitoryu12 posted:(I don't think Ringo novels have ever been considered for movies)up with them. From what I've heard from random third parties who give enough of a poo poo to read about old message board drama, Ringo is super salty about this. Something something hollywood liberals something, instead of the fact that his books have an admitted rapist pedophile as the hero and all of the political subtlety of a chic tract. Arquinsiel posted:
yeeeeeaaaahhhh. . . he has multiple people, independently and without prompting from one another, singing lovely Cruxshadows songs during their glorious last stand warrior's death, waiting for the valkeries to carry them off to Valhalla,* moments. *in some cases quite literally as he heavily features a lost band of Vikings / Varagian Guard lost in the backwaters of Georgia (country not state) for a thousand years or so
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Jun 14, 2016 00:08
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Splode posted:In what possible scenario is there only one F16 left in the world, those things are everywhere. I think the justification is that the Soviets or something started destroying American military gear that wasn't woefully obsolete, and only Hawk's old Thunderbird F-16 was hidden and saved. It's been like 8 or 9 years since I read the first book. pthighs posted:Does the book ever explain where he gets the parts to keep his F-16 running? Not really. They do manage to find the parts to miraculously turn it into an F-16XL once. Hawk is also a master mechanic (because of course he is), so I think he scavenges poo poo from elsewhere. There might also have been parts and munitions that the burgeoning Free America uncovers from hidden caches or captures in war. It actually ends up being really neat in its own pulpy way because of the sheer scale of everything. Like one book is about traveling around the country finding the black boxes of a flight of B-1 bombers that can all be slaved together for combined bombing runs, and he goes to Pearl Harbor to find one hidden in the memorial there (I think this is the book where he knocks out some checkpoint guards by giving them free cocaine laced with tranquilizer, because every bad guy is a drug addict and there's just mountains of coke and heroin everywhere). He gets attacked by Cold War-era jets (during which he shoots a pair of bombs out of the air with an M16, because his signature weapon is a full auto M16 loaded with magazines full of tracer rounds that he uses a few times to scare tribals) and jumps into an A-1 Skyraider nearby to win a dogfight against the jets. And then he of course gets all the black boxes and the B-1s do a giant bombing run near St. Louis, because the Soviets have given one of the post-war nations of America enough SAMs to divide the country in half and they need to be destroyed.
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Jun 14, 2016 00:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:yeeeeeaaaahhhh. . . he has multiple people, independently and without prompting from one another, singing lovely Cruxshadows songs during their glorious last stand warrior's death, waiting for the valkeries to carry them off to Valhalla,* moments. In fairness random Cruxshadows interludes are a really good stylistic match for the rest of the books.
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Jun 14, 2016 00:29
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There should just really be a general lets read crazy military pulp themed books mega thread.
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Jun 14, 2016 00:42
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SeanBeansShako posted:There should just really be a general lets read crazy military pulp themed books mega thread. Oh Tom Clancy No
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Jun 14, 2016 01:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:yeeeeeaaaahhhh. . . he has multiple people, independently and without prompting from one another, singing lovely Cruxshadows songs during their glorious last stand warrior's death, waiting for the valkeries to carry them off to Valhalla,* moments.  ) this is just blowing my mind.
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Jun 14, 2016 02:05
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Arquinsiel posted:Having met the Cruxshadows (did you know the umlaut makes the x silent? Just wait until you read the thing.
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Jun 14, 2016 02:15
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chitoryu12 posted:Just wait until you read the thing. There's a whole second thread now, with many more of those awful books read and dissected.
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Jun 14, 2016 02:22
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oh David Weber no
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Jun 14, 2016 02:37
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Grognan posted:oh David Weber no
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Jun 14, 2016 02:39
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ive still got a soft spot for david weber, he's got the balls to make the queen of space england black too bad the cover art for the MC makes her look white as hell
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Jun 14, 2016 04:10
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he might go on long screeds over the superiority of laissez faire constitutional monarchies, but at least he's not an outright racist or sexist also, the only thing he hates more than lefties are tories
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Jun 14, 2016 04:15
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Phobophilia posted:he might go on long screeds over the superiority of laissez faire constitutional monarchies, but at least he's not an outright racist or sexist And he acknowledges that homosexuals exist and doesn't reduce them to jokes and/or evil. I've only read the first Honor Harrington book and the Safehold series, though. The latter occasionally acknowledges the existence of homosexuality but has yet to actually have any gay characters.
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Jun 14, 2016 04:23
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Recent Weber is certainly something. On the one hand, Eric Flint taught him that not all liberals are bad, so the more recent books have less political craziness. Unfortunately, that just leaves more room for five more repetitions of "Out of the 159,000 missiles, 20,000 were fooled by ECM. Countermissiles killed another 35,000 and the point defense lasers stopped another 47,000. That left 57,000 missiles enveloping Task Force 73, and the ships writhed in agony as bomb-pumped lasers stabbed deep into their armor." Over and over and over.
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Jun 14, 2016 05:08
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So what was with the early 20th century Naval Treaties? I get vaguely that they were there as a polite way to avoid a massive bankrupty arms-race, but I'm curious about the specifics. How did they get negotiated? How were they enforced? Were people really so worried about someone building a gigantic battleship, larger and more deadly than all the other battleships, that they needed an international arms treaty as though battleships were nuclear weapons? How did this work?
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Jun 14, 2016 05:38
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Phanatic posted:And Patriot Games wasn't bad except for Clancy's readily-apparent hard-on for the House of Windsor. Also a hard on for flat taxes and the elimination of Capital Gains tax started about here.
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Jun 14, 2016 06:30
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captain poopfister posted:I didn't know that the invasion of Italy was such a slap fight. Jesus. Didn't stop people from claiming that the soldiers in Italy was having a holiday and avoiding D-Day, leading to this wonderful song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Day_Dodgers
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Jun 14, 2016 06:36
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blackmongoose posted:Recent Weber is certainly something. On the one hand, Eric Flint taught him that not all liberals are bad, so the more recent books have less political craziness. Unfortunately, that just leaves more room for five more repetitions of "Out of the 159,000 missiles, 20,000 were fooled by ECM. Countermissiles killed another 35,000 and the point defense lasers stopped another 47,000. That left 57,000 missiles enveloping Task Force 73, and the ships writhed in agony as bomb-pumped lasers stabbed deep into their armor." Over and over and over. yeh, the best books were when they were underdogs running things by the skin of their teeth
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Jun 14, 2016 07:15
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Thanqol posted:So what was with the early 20th century Naval Treaties? I get vaguely that they were there as a polite way to avoid a massive bankrupty arms-race, but I'm curious about the specifics. How did they get negotiated? How were they enforced? Were people really so worried about someone building a gigantic battleship, larger and more deadly than all the other battleships, that they needed an international arms treaty as though battleships were nuclear weapons? How did this work? Japan was poor, the British Empire found itself newly poor, the US was thrifty as hell, France and Italy were exhausted, and Germany had no say in things. Ships after WWI were trending hard to battleships the size of the Yamato and cruisers the size of the Alaskas. Nobody except for the Japanese hardliners wanted to pay for it, so they sat down and worked out that the UK and US had to deal with two oceans and Japan one, so they'd set up a 5:5:3 ratio so that Japan could have superiority if they could focus in one ocean. They were enforced by the right to waive the restrictions if someone else broke them (alternately, they were enforced poorly). But basically nobody really wanted to pay for a rat race consisting of squadrons of Yamato sized battleships.
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Jun 14, 2016 07:43
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Ah, yes, the Yamato gap.
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Jun 14, 2016 07:46
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Klaus88 posted:Random name generators exist for those who are unable to to come up with un-sueish names.
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Jun 14, 2016 09:22
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SeanBeansShako posted:There should just really be a general lets read crazy military pulp themed books mega thread. oh gustavus adolphus no
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Jun 14, 2016 09:49
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Can someone remind me what the 1632 series is about? I only remember it being so insane I didn't go for it
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Jun 14, 2016 10:02
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HEY GAL posted:i'm in if you're in, all the 1632 books/stories are available for free I would enjoy seeing some quality snark around those books, personally. 
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Jun 14, 2016 10:04
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Tias posted:Can someone remind me what the 1632 series is about? I only remember it being so insane I didn't go for it notable for having everyone who agrees with the main characters be Good Guys and vice versa, so you get things like Gustavus Adolphus being a sort of proto-liberal who is very concerned about the wellbeing of the civilians near where his army is. no moral shades of grey whatsoever are found in this book in the later short stories where some author figures out that Wallenstein was actually really rad he switches sides to like Our Heroes after all, because it's impossible in these books for the protagonists to have enemies who are also badass (or, God forbid, people who are enemies in some ways and allies in others!), you must either suck completely or be down with the protagonists edit: you might like the parts where most of the authors are leftists and commies edit 2: the technical/scientific details are also fantastic, like how nobody in this town is troubled with food shortages or sewage problems, everything still works as it would have so you have people eating cereal out of their fridges, etc. Also the 1630s people are at risk from the diseases modern people carry but not vice versa because modern microbes are "more evolved" than 17th century ones. edit 3: also cultural change mostly only works from us to them, so you have early modern people beginning to like country/western or baseball, but no modern Americans developing a taste for lute music, picaresque adventure novels, or huge floppy hats. it's like the microbes thing, most of the authors assumed we'd just dominate them in every way and this shows up in interesting areas, probably subconsciously. Really I think that the modern Americans would live to see their children and grandchildren grow up "early modern," and that culture clash would be a good hook for a short story. Parents Earl and Barb Smith; daughter Lakynn Jantzsch, nee Smith; grandchildren Ambrosius and Maximilliana Jantzsch. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Jun 14, 2016 |
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Jun 14, 2016 10:07
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Deptfordx posted:Oh got an actual question for our 17th century experts. Here are some prices: http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html If you're making a game, just use 'gold pieces' or something and make it fun instead of spending your time trying to find realistic prices. Trust me on this. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Jun 14, 2016 |
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Jun 14, 2016 10:21
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I remember the David Drake Hammer's Slammers stories to be pretty good military scifi spacepulp.
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Jun 14, 2016 10:24
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