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Kchama posted:That seems to fly in the face of this chapter though. Nothing in that package indicates that they expect their trole in the coup to be known. They expect to have to pay reparations for destroying Madrigal, and they intend covert control over Grayson. "Covert" means "nobody in the galaxy except us and MacManus has the faintest clue he is working for us. The "destruction of the local regime" means that Benjamin Mayhew is dead, and his successor has ordered Manticore out of the system,
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Dec 14, 2021 16:12
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Goddamnit are you people actually going to succeed in getting me to read my second Honor book
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Dec 14, 2021 16:37
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Trust me you aren't missing anything.
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Dec 14, 2021 16:40
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quantumfoam posted:Call me sentimental, but I didn't expect the movie Invasion U.S.A. to end with a bazooka vs bazooka standoff. Plotting and storytelling wise, Invasion U.S.A. was equivalent to a mid-tier David Drake mil-fiction novel or one of the middle of the series STEN CHRONICLES books. Rocket-equipped motorcycles have a long and storied career in cinema, like in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and of course, 'Megaforce'... mllaneza posted:Even semi-modern warships have extensive machine shops on board. Here's a look at the kind of gear HMS Belfast, a WW2 light cruiser was carrying, The Red Oak Victory (WWII Victory Class freighter that was a replacement for Liberty ships) is docked in Richmond in the East Bay and gives tours. They had a fully equipped machine shop with lathe, milling machine, drill press, and the rest. Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 17:26
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Gnoman's Let's Read Harry Turtledove thread and the Let's Read Animorphs thread and the Let's Read Flashman and the decade old Let's Read the Aubrey-Maturin series have proven that a standalone thread for David Weber Let's Read attempts will thrive and survive. Please move all future Let's Read David Weber posts to a new thread kchama. Humbug Scoolbus posted:Rocket-equipped motorcycles have a long and storied career in cinema, like in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and of course, 'Megaforce'... Might be misremembering things but wasn't the rocket inside a motorcycle sidecar for The Spy Who Loved Me? vs the front mounted rockets and the rear mounted rockets/mortars in Delta Force? Megaforce slipped my mind re: action movies with vehicle mounted rockets because that drat flying motorcycle is just so stupid and the costumes and the vehicles and the Megaforce team seems like someone tried to make a live-action G.I . Joe movie without actually securing the G.I. Joe rights beforehand.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:13
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Drakyn posted:
If you think that's bad, go back in literary history and count all the times snakes are described as cold and slimy
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Dec 14, 2021 21:53
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The historical parallel is literally just SMS Goeben and Breslau with the numbers filed off, isn't it?
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Dec 14, 2021 22:17
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Space Butler posted:The historical parallel is literally just SMS Goeben and Breslau with the numbers filed off, isn't it? Yup. Politically anyways. Historically there was an opportunity for four Armored Cruisers to engage Goeben, but the admiral in charge wisely refused action (and beat the court martial). Weber could have gottn some good scenes out of something like that.
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Dec 14, 2021 23:09
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Kchama posted:This is what he expects to happen in the case of Maccabeus SUCCEEDING. They're expecting Manticore to back off after the assassination despite everyone knowing that Masada did it and put a Masadan stooge on the throne, as long as Masada pays the reparations for 'accidentally' blowing up a Manticorean ship. The main benefit to Maccabeus's success in their eyes is the fact that they can tell Haven to shove off because Manticore won't attempt to conquer them for for blatantly taking over Grayson by hook and crook. The Masadan stooge was the legitimate heir to the throne, and their plan was to murder Harrington and the Protector, say that she killed him before being taken down by his security, and then rely on Grayson conservatism being okay with the new leader blaming everything on the woman officer who snapped under pressure or whatnot. That would put Manticore in a position where if they wanted to intervene they'd be forced to play the heavy and forcibly replace the head of state, and they were betting that Manticore would rather just cut their losses than get involved in that kind of political issue. It's really not that bad of a play, especially when you consider that the Manticoran government at the time barely even gave a poo poo about the wormhole nexus that's the heart of their entire economy and the source of any political power that they had at the time.
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Dec 15, 2021 00:09
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Rocket-equipped motorcycles have a long and storied career in cinema, like in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and of course, 'Megaforce'... I wonder how much of this capability today's Navy retains as more and more gets pushed onshore and towards contractors, but as recently as the 80s/90s Yellowstone-class tenders had full foundries, machine shops and every sort of craft imaginable, down to seamstresses. They'd make casts of broken pump casings to pour and machine new ones. At the end of Desert Storm, the two that were deployed (Cape Cod and Acadia) ended up being the deployed Navy's recycling receptacle for aluminum cans. Holds full of the things, stinking in the heat. They decided to melt them down, use the aluminum to make huge ship logo plaques for every single person on board, then broke the mold. Nice little lemonade from lemons story. Helped that it made the admiral that visited pretty put out that he couldn't get one 
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Dec 15, 2021 02:33
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Khizan posted:The Masadan stooge was the legitimate heir to the throne, and their plan was to murder Harrington and the Protector, No it wasn't. a) The meeting of those two persons isn't even in the cards yet. b) the protector is at this time still a figure head not the actual ruler. The ruler is the chancellor or whatever. c) The stooge is not the direct legitimate heir (there's the brother of the protector and maybe even a baby son of the protector already). He's just legitimate of they kill enough. d) we actually do not know what their original plan was. They just seized the opportunity of the meeting / short circuited there. The original plan obviously also had to get rid of the chancellor. Also the traitor at this point in time could have been many more people. a)since the Protector was actually not the ruler, it could have been him. Think about it: he's actually doing a soft coup with that meeting. b) it could have been the Protector's brother. Or his uncle/cousin (which it is). Or it could have been the chancellor going after the throne. The admiral (ok, dead now which hampers it a bit) or some high officer. Or some others - the real traitor didn't get too many lines yet.
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Dec 15, 2021 14:03
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Thanks for creating a standalone David Weber/Let's Read Honor Harrington thread kchama. Finished reading a book about the USA interstate highway system creation, which covered a bunch of stuff like Eisenhower's torturous experience in the 1919 transcontinental expedition, and how The Oregon Trail videogame wagon loadouts were required for almost any automobile going more than 10 miles outside of a city/town circa the late 1890's - 1920's in the United States. . Definitely put stuff like the sheer amount of mileage armies on both sides did in WW2 europe & WW2's sahara desert into better perspective, most mil-fiction/mil-scifi strips out the logistics side of things vs bam-bam action/my character is a tactical genius stuff. Would definitely read a mil-fiction short story series from the perspective of an ammo transport company in WW2, those people had the deadliest jobs possible.
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Dec 19, 2021 17:39
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quantumfoam posted:Thanks for creating a standalone David Weber/Let's Read Honor Harrington thread kchama. No problem. Also, I've always had a fondness for Fang of the Sun, Dougram just for bothering with the logistics issues. Like needing to steal a Combat Machine transport and capture a mechanic to work on it purely because just hoofing it everywhere without a decent place or person to maintain it was causing its performance to degrade severely, leading to situations where they came close to losing everything.
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Dec 20, 2021 00:30
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Nice, I will look that stuff up. If anyone thought I was joking a few months ago about how petty and self-aggrandizing Jerry Pournelle was, I found hard links to the Avalon Hill essay-contest about ending the Vietnam War that Jerry Pournelle "won" in 50 words or less". https://archive.org/details/GeneralMagazineVol4i6 -page 13 for the contest. https://archive.org/details/GeneralMagazineVol5i1 -page 13 for the last issue's contest winners And The General Vol16i6 has a cool looking Dune cover-art that I hadn't seen before. https://archive.org/details/GeneralMagazineVol16i6
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Dec 21, 2021 21:52
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So do we know what his genius 50 word solution was? The article just seems to list the winners as far as I can see.
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Dec 22, 2021 17:35
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Jerry Pournelle's award winning "50 words or less" essay that got him a $6 Avalon Hill gift certificate: Contents of contest winner submissions rarely got listed due to space concerns in the General newsletter-magazine. I am guessing a suck-up essay like "I would unleash the tactical geniuses working at Avalon Hill to decisively win the Vietnam War" happened or something in defense of Robert Strange McNamara being held back by civilians and old-school military leadership. Sadly Avalon Hill got bought out by Hasbro Toys back in the 1980's so any hard copies of contest winner submissions got lost and thrown out almost 3 decades ago.
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Dec 22, 2021 20:21
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quantumfoam posted:Gnoman's Let's Read Harry Turtledove thread and the Let's Read Animorphs thread and the Let's Read Flashman and the decade old Let's Read the Aubrey-Maturin series have proven that a standalone thread for David Weber Let's Read attempts will thrive and survive. That gives me an idea for a Let's Read of my favorite short story collection: Let's Read Hammer's SLammers
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Dec 23, 2021 05:04
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Fivemarks posted:That gives me an idea for a Let's Read of my favorite short story collection: Let's Read Hammer's SLammers An excellent suggestion. Please do this thing.
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Dec 23, 2021 05:55
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I loved Hammer's Slammers. Thin pastiches of Greek epics in fusion powered tanks were extremely my poo poo.
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Dec 23, 2021 06:03
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Fivemarks posted:That gives me an idea for a Let's Read of my favorite short story collection: Let's Read Hammer's SLammers A standalone Let's Read David Drake thread would be cool, and something I'd actually follow. The most WTF David Drake stuff to me are his Lacey stories.
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Dec 23, 2021 08:00
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I've read a fair bit of Drake, but somehow never got around to the Slammers. My library never had them, and I never got around to getting them digitally despite them obviously being on the Imperium. A LR would be fun, I think.
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Dec 23, 2021 11:52
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Dedicated Let's Read's threads for every established and/or terrible mil-fiction/mil-scifi author is something I am firmly behind. This thread was created as a general "why not discuss all mil-fiction/mil-scifi here" because mil-fiction/mil-scifi chat kept getting lost in the general SF&F megathreads. I pity the people who would choose to do Eric Flint, or Eric Frank Russell, or Peter Watts, and John Ringo Let's Reads. Someone doing Let's Read's of Andrzej Sapowski (The Witcher series author) or Sergi Lukyanenko or the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. novelizations, or finally Richard Kadrey would be extremely cool. I'd volunteer to do a Let's Read the STEN Chronicles thread, but that would mean refinding those books again, and my summaries would quickly devolve into what war movie/scifi movie the authors decided to rip off this time or rambling about the STEN CHRONICLES most interesting character/series villain being a 1980's Young Urban Professional investment banker that achieved "immortality via cloning & skinner box imprinting" so that he could live out his 1980's Yuppie lifestyle for thousands upon thousands of years.
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Dec 23, 2021 17:30
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quantumfoam posted:A standalone Let's Read David Drake thread would be cool, and something I'd actually follow. The most WTF David Drake stuff to me are his Lacey stories. I read my first Lacey story in the Grimmer than Hell anthology. Those sure are some books.
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Dec 24, 2021 18:10
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Fivemarks posted:That gives me an idea for a Let's Read of my favorite short story collection: Let's Read Hammer's SLammers Redliners might be a good one as it's a stand alone (I'm sure you know) about a group of burned out vets pulled off the frontline for a near suicide mission escorting civilians through and alien planet
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Dec 26, 2021 09:00
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branedotorg posted:Redliners might be a good one as it's a stand alone (I'm sure you know) about a group of burned out vets pulled off the frontline for a near suicide mission escorting civilians through and alien planet I feel like Redliners needs a special touch, because it's THE story where Drake works out a good deal of his trauma from the war.
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Dec 26, 2021 18:49
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Was that the one with the insanely predatory ecosystem? Where basically even the palm tree equivalent shot you dead full of spikes?
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Dec 27, 2021 13:02
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That's Redliners. The deadliness of the ecosystem is a core part of both plotlines.
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Dec 27, 2021 16:07
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His 'The Fleet' stories are also a lot of trauma removal.
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Dec 27, 2021 19:33
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David Drake's entire thing as a mil-fiction/mil-scifi writer was writing out his trauma, anger, and guilt over participating in the Vietnam War into every single mil-fiction/mil-scifi story he ever wrote. At some point in the 1990's he either: finally started seeing a therapist about his trauma, or discovered Krispy Kreme donuts, or had surgery to fix his decades long impacted colon, or via the Internet found a Vietnam War Veteran support group that wasn't full of World War 2/Korean War veteran douchebags. As much as I dumped on Baen Books for the content & limited range of the stories it publishes, I will always respect and 'stan Jim Baen for providing ongoing financial support group for older authors like Keith Laumer.
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Dec 28, 2021 02:22
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drake'e RCN series is mostly absent of Vietnam depression and is fantastic BTW.
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Dec 28, 2021 06:17
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The RCN series is pretty good  I started on The Culture a few months ago, but when I hit Matter, I just had to stop. Can't do another medieval-but-some-culture-shenanigans book, so I skipped to Surface Detail. It seems better (so far)!
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Dec 28, 2021 11:30
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The RCN series is pure "What if Aubrey and Maturin but in space?".
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Dec 28, 2021 11:44
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That it is, but Drake pulls it off quite well for the most part.
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Dec 28, 2021 12:28
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Procrastinated enough, time for a review of Sten Chronicles book 1: STEN The Sten mil-scifi book series is nominally about Karl Sten, a improbably skilled juvenile delinquent hothead who gets shanghaied into the Imperial military/Imperial SpecOps then becomes the troubleshooter for the ageless immortal Eternal Emperor of Mankind in the far off year of 4553. In reality though, Karl Sten refights and wins all the overseas battles and political scenarios that the 2 co-writers (a former US Army Ranger + a former CIA agent) of the Sten Chronicles lost badly IRL. Sten Book 1 summary: Karl Sten's family is killed off in an dome-blowout accident on the industrial factory space station Vulcan, Sten becomes a juvenile delinquent, and gets thrown into a deathcamp-factory. Sten escapes the deathcamp-factory after making a *secret* unbreakable-cuts-through-anything 50 billion dollar crystal dagger, and then meets up with Bet, a female juvenile delinquent scavenger. Sten & Bet's juvie-scavenger gang gets recruited by ImperialSuckupSpymaster to find out what Baron_EveOnlinePlayer's secret Bravo Project is, the juvie-gang gets mostly killed off with Bet going MIA. ImperialSuckupSpymaster shanghai's Sten into the Imperial military, where Sten goes through future-US Army Ranger training, then joins the thinly renamed Vietnam War's Phoenix Program, where Sten becomes best buddies with ScottishSidekick, the most insufferable sidekick I've ever experienced in mil-fiction. ImperialSuckupSpymaster eventually sends Sten & his Phoenix Program squad back to space station Vulcan to fuckup Baron_EveOnlinePlayer's Bravo Project. Sten & his Phoenix squad kick-off riots, refinds Bet the love-interest, and kill off Baron_EveOnlinePlayer for various reasons. The ending of Sten book 1 is ImperialSuckupSpymaster & the Eternal Emperor sucking themselves off for being so clever, with the implication that Karl Sten is being groomed as a replacement for ImperialSuckupSpymaster. Sten Chronicles characters as of book 1: -Karl Sten: the improbably skilled juvenile delinquent with a secret 50 billion dollar dagger turned soldier turned Imperial SpecOps operative that is the main character of the Sten Chronicles. -Baron_EveOnlinePlayer: Personality of a Eve Online player, owns Vulcan the industrial factory space station that Sten was born on. Funnels all of Vulcan's trillions of profits into his top-secret Bravo Project. Bravo Project's goal is to create man-made antimatter to undercut the Eternal Emperor's monopoly. By the time Sten returns to Vulcan, Bravo Project had successfully produced antimatter for the first time ever. Dead at the end of book 1. -Bet: a female juvie on Vulcan space station. Bet is also the series love interest of Karl Sten, gets insta-promoted into Sten's SpecOps/Phoenix Program squad as of the ending of book 1. -The Eternal Emperor: Ruler of mankind in the year 4553. Is immortal, ageless, has a memory span going back at least 1000+ years. Figured out how to stabilize antimatter into a form safe to physically handle called antimatter2, sole supplier of antimatter2 to the galaxy. Used sole supplier of antimatter2 status to become emperor of humanity about 2300+ years ago. Currently spends most of his time trolling people, picking bar fights with people unable to fight back (aka terminally drunk people), making his minions eat and drink bio-lab recreations of bourbon whiskey, artificial chili peppers/terrible half-assed chili that is 50% cummin powder; and hoarding all the Scotch Whisky in the galaxy(the Scotch Whisky thing will come up again), etc. -ImperialSuckupSpymaster: the aging chief spymaster of the Eternal Emperor's Imperial Empire, former Phoenix Squad member who trained under GrizzledDrillInstructor, promoted way above his competency level, sucks up to Eternal Emperor 24/7/365, pretends to understand all the 1980's pop-culture references the Eternal Emperor makes, etc. -WalrusPsychologist: pretty much SKILCRAFT for mental healthcare, does whatever ImperialSuckupSpymaster wants them to do. -GrizzledDrillInstructor: an ex-Phoenix Squad/current future US Army Rangers Drill Instructor that trained Sten, acts as a talent scout for Phoenix Squad. -ScottishSidekick: Sten's BFF. Phoenix Squad member, explosives expert. Born in New Scotland, a 3G gravity planet. Despite everyone else in the book series universe including aliens speaking flawless non-accented English, ScottishSidekick is the only person who ever speaks with a accent. Is so relentlessly Scottish that he even thinks to himself in a scottish accent. Sten Chronicles series carry-over points -The Eternal Emperor's entire powerbase and mandate of Imperial rulership is built on being the only source of stable antimatter aka antimatter2 in the galaxy. -Anyone who attempts to create antimatter has an instant death sentence put out on their head. Being unimpressed with the Eternal Emperor's antics or being visibly smarter than the Eternal Emperor puts you on triple-secret death sentence probation. -The Eternal Emperor periodically franchises out management of his empire to the biggest suckups alive/the people who pay the biggest bribes; therefore everything in humankind's interstellar empire over 2000+ years has devolved into a lowest production cost/highest possible profit capitalist hellscape, with scaling 1880's education/food standards/human rights for anyone not the Eternal Emperor. -The Eternal Emperor has memories reaching back at least 1000+ years. -The 50 billion dollar crystal dagger Sten carries around hidden inside his right forearm will be referenced a few times in future books (BTW, mentally I picture Sten as having Popeye the sailor forearms for his crystal dagger to be concealed so well). -The Eternal Emperor's 1st reaction in any situation is to troll first "...dance for me, monkey. DANCE." style. -The writers continually inject 1980's Yuppie poo poo/poo poo they wish they could do or afford IRL into stuff the Eternal Emperor does in the Sten Chronicles series.
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Jan 23, 2022 18:31
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I've run into a problem with doing a David Drake read thread. I don't know where exactly to start. I don't want to start on Redliners, because I want to give a good feel of who Drake was before he worked himself out- what his stories were, stuff like his The Fleet short stories, the earlier Hammer's Slammers stuff, and only then do Redliners. I also don't want to focus TOO hard in on the Slammers, because there's a bunch of his other work that deserves attention.
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Feb 9, 2022 10:06
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Fivemarks posted:I've run into a problem with doing a David Drake read thread. I don't know where exactly to start. I don't want to start on Redliners, because I want to give a good feel of who Drake was before he worked himself out- what his stories were, stuff like his The Fleet short stories, the earlier Hammer's Slammers stuff, and only then do Redliners. I also don't want to focus TOO hard in on the Slammers, because there's a bunch of his other work that deserves attention. Maybe northworld trilogy? Vaguely space Norse. First book is the best imo. Time of heroes, his latest series is an ok read, interesting concept but so-so writing. Vaguely Arthurian in a sort of fog of war post apocalyptic world where humans exist on nodes in a mist.
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Feb 9, 2022 10:15
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Fivemarks posted:I've run into a problem with doing a David Drake read thread. I don't know where exactly to start. I don't want to start on Redliners, because I want to give a good feel of who Drake was before he worked himself out- what his stories were, stuff like his The Fleet short stories, the earlier Hammer's Slammers stuff, and only then do Redliners. I also don't want to focus TOO hard in on the Slammers, because there's a bunch of his other work that deserves attention. Go in publication date order for David Drake but be sure to include his Lacey stories. The Lacey stories are super hosed up by standard and are Drake at his "reintegration into normal society for Vietnam war veterans like me is nearly impossible" writing peak. Drake's commentary on his co-authored w/ other peple stuff is worth reading, especially the time when he said the point of co-writing THE CHOSEN with SM Stirling "was to teach (SM) Stirling how to write a book in which the bad guys *lose*." (found that ice-burn on SM Stirling in SFL Archives Vol21a)
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Feb 9, 2022 18:06
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quantumfoam posted:Drake's commentary on his co-authored w/ other peple stuff is worth reading, especially the time when he said the point of co-writing THE CHOSEN with SM Stirling "was to teach (SM) Stirling how to write a book in which the bad guys *lose*." That's the Drake I know and Love
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Feb 10, 2022 03:46
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I went down an SM Stirling rabbithole while trying to get ready for looking at Drake's writings, and, uh SM Stirling is a piece of poo poo, not just for the Draka, but also for Guns of the South, which runs on Lost Cause myths that personally offend me.
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Feb 25, 2022 19:23
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Fivemarks posted:I went down an SM Stirling rabbithole while trying to get ready for looking at Drake's writings, and, uh Yeah. No disagreement on anything you posted. SM Stirling is one of the in quotation marks "visionary" Baen Books authors I thought would be discussed in this thread/his work dissected a whole lot more than actually happened. The Draka series was catnip for more than a few people in the 1990's, Jo Walton in particular was goddamn obsessed with Draka. [source: multiple volumes of the SFL-Archives] If you hate Lost Cause myth authors, stay away from Gregory Benford. He thinks of himself "as a writer from the South, a part of the United States that was defeated and occupied after the Civil War." Apparently this sensibility is at the root of his Galactic Center Saga series. He wanted to write the opposite of the usual Astounding fantasy of human superiority: a story where humanity loses, and is ground under the heel of a superior alien force, and yet still struggles to survive... [source: SFL-Archives vol 20a via a few issues of Fantasy Review]
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Feb 26, 2022 04:20
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