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ianmacdo posted:Me too! He always gets lumped in with all the trash mil-scifi, but his work has always been a bit different. Just a bit more thoughtful. Isn't this because Drake starting writing milsf to deal with his trauma from Vietnam? I might be confusing him with another author, but I'm almost certain Drake was actually in the service before he began writing.
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Apr 3, 2016 22:25
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That Works posted:CJ Cherryh Honestly, I'm having a hard time coming up with anything of hers that isn't good. Read it all.
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May 29, 2016 14:37
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Amberskin posted:In this series you'll find the "Earth as mercenaries" concept, but no "secret empire" I thought these books were pretty good when I read them as a teen. Wonder if they hold up. The basic premise is that humans are fairly unique as a race in that we can actually engage in violence. Nearly every other alien species evolved to be communal/pacifist, so humanity scares the gently caress out of everyone even though our tech sucks, because we can and do just kill the gently caress out of people and aliens just can't deal with that.
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Jun 26, 2016 19:15
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Yeah, there was something about Earth being really strange as a planet because most planets ended up with one Pangaea-like single landmass, with much milder climates and very few natural barriers. Humanity evolving on a planet with a bunch of mountain/water barriers between pockets of civilization (Earth had an excess of tectonic activity or something) led to tribalism and lots of fighting among ourselves, which was really aberrant compared to almost all the other aliens, who evolved on single landmasses and tended to be some type of communal/cooperative herbivore who never needed to run fast or fight hard. I think Earth had more of an axial tilt and/or heavier gravity and that also factored into why humans were so much faster than everyone else? I really liked the fact that humanity was the boogeyman in those books. e: IIRC the cat people were the de facto 'police/military' type troops when that sort of thing was needed, but only because unlike other aliens they didn't outright go catatonic after engaging in violence. At least not every time.
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Jun 26, 2016 20:53
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Kesper North posted:Ah, yes, the 'badass humans' trope. I have to admit I always liked that one. http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4786683/Humans+are+badass/ "Oh god the humans figured out door handles" 
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Jun 26, 2016 21:44
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coyo7e posted:Also there was some other novels about space french foreign legion which was still kicking rear end and riding on their actgion in the mexican american war, I think maybe that was Weber or Drake. I liked those. Weber did the Prince Roger books which are kind of like that but I don't think they're what you're thinking of. Also The Excalibur Alternative which is a stand-alone 'primitive humans get kidnapped to be alien mercenaries' book (which seems to be a whole subgenre in itself).
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Jun 28, 2016 01:49
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FastestGunAlive posted:the mmo-turns-real sub genre ... this is a thing? 
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Jul 1, 2016 23:38
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EVGA Longoria posted:Getting transported into a video game is a pretty common story in cheap sci-fi. Yeah, upon further thought I suppose you could count TRON even. And I did read Killobyte as a youngster (thankfully I don't remember anything particularly creepy in it, unlike the Bio of a Space Tyrant stuff). I just never thought there was enough of it to count as its own subgenre. Now I kind of want to check it out...  e: drat, I shouldn't have gone down that rabbit hole. Now I have a bunch of these 'litrpg' books to read. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 21:13
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Mars4523 posted:I'd love to see a MilSF writer extol the virtues of a Tried and True Old Fashioned Gunpowder Firearm that just so happens to be a Glock 17 or something else mundane that old white gun enthusiasts don't currently cream their pants over. Unbreakable, the first book in The Chronicles of Promise Paen, literally does this with the protagonist's family heirloom glock.  It also weirdly lifts some terms from the Honor Harrington books as well; at least, I haven't seen the term hexapuma anywhere else, or neobarb either even though the etymology on that one is pretty simple.
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Sep 22, 2016 19:48
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jng2058 posted:Is that series any good? I'm generally more of a naval than ground MilSF guy, but I'll dip into some space marine action every now and again. Is Unbreakable worth tracking down? I think only the one book is out so far, and for a first novel it's not that bad. I can't honestly say that it stood out to me as great, but I enjoyed the read. It's mostly self-contained, although there's a hook at the end for the author to continue the story. I'd put it at around the same level of quality as Evan Currie's Hayden War (On Silver Wings et al) books.
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Sep 22, 2016 20:35
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I especially liked how the last book dived off the metaphorical cliff when Steve White decided to have the new bads be some random aliens who never figured out jump nodes so they slowboated over from a different globular cluster in continent-sized generation ships. More bigger is more better, right?!?
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Oct 2, 2016 18:48
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At least it's got an ending, apparently, instead of just petering out like the Honor Harrington stuff seems to be doing. I'm about halfway through At the Sign of Triumph myself, and even though there's been some hinting about the series approaching an end (the discussion of the 'true' reason for the King Haarahld-class ships, the frank talk about what the plans for dealing with the temple are, etc) I still wasn't expecting the second half of the book to wrap up everything. You dicks ruined it for me.  Also I think I missed something somewhere, because there's been several mentions of some Grimaldi fellow who seems to have been yet another agitator against the Church and/or someone else clued in on the truth, by the context but the name is just thrown out there with no explanation (that I remember, anyway) 
WarLocke fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 25, 2016 |
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Nov 25, 2016 19:25
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