Military science fiction

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. Such war is usually shown from the point of view of a soldier. In general, a detailed depiction of conflict forms the basis of most works of military science fiction. The main characters are often part of the military chain of command.

Characteristics

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.

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.

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.

Authors

Defining authors of the genre include:
* Chris Bunch, co-author of the Sten series and author of the Last Legion series;
* C. J. Cherryh, author of the Faded Sun Trilogy and "Company Wars" novels from her Alliance-Union universe;
* David Drake, author of the Hammer's Slammers series and other works;
* Robert A. Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers, among other books;
* Jerry Pournelle, author of King David's Spaceship, Falkenberg's Legion and the Janissaries series;
* John Ringo, author of the Legacy of the Aldenata, Empire of Man, and The Council Wars series;
* S. M. Stirling, co-author of The General series, and author of the Draka series;
* David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington series.
* Lois McMaster Bujold, author of the Vorkosigan series.Many current Military SF books are published by Baen Books.

Military examples

Books, movies, TV and Anime, and games.

Books

* AmerIndian 2192 by Scott Garibay
* Armor (1984) by John Steakley, inspired by Starship Troopers
* Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
* Bill, the Galactic Hero, (1965) Harry Harrison's parody of space opera such as the Lensman series, as well as of Military SF, which was hardly defined as a genre when this was written
* Broken Angels (2003) by Richard Morgan
* Clash by Night (novel) (1943) by Lawrence O'Donnell
* The Dark Wing and The Dark Path by Walter H. Hunt
* Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
* The Invincible (1964) by Stanisław Lem
* Dune by Frank Herbert involves futuristic military strategies in a vastly original Science Fiction world. Other books in the series are less involved in militaria, and more involved in possible future politics and cultural phenomena.
* The Forever War (1975) by Joe Haldeman, which is rather critical of the military, while sympathetic to the plight of individual soldiers
* Galactic Center Saga by Gregory Benford
* Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett
* Hammer's Slammers series by David Drake
* Honor Harrington series by David Weber, one of the most popular series of the genre
* Kaleidoscope Century (1996) by John Barnes
* Legacy of the Aldenata series by John Ringo
* None But Man by Gordon Dickson
* The Seas of Venus by David Drake
* The Serrano Legacy and Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon
* Soldier (1954) by Harlan Ellison. Often cited as the basis for the Terminator films.
* Starship Troopers (1958) by Robert A. Heinlein
* Sten'' by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole

Movies, TV and Anime

* Aliens
* Babylon 5 TV series
* Battlestar Galactica the 2003 reimagined miniseries and 2004+ television series
* Crest of the Stars by Hiroyuki Morioka (Anime)
* Exosquad animated television series
* Gundam metaseries is mostly military SF, with some exceptions (Mobile Fighter G-Gundam is a "fighting anime" show and After War Gundam X is post-apocalyptic).
* Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka (Anime)
* Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles the CG television series based on the movie and novel
* Space: Above and Beyond TV series
* Space Battleship Yamato Anime series, known as Star Blazers in the US
* Starship Operators (Anime)
* Stargate SG-1 TV Series
* Starship Troopers (film)'' the rather ironic movie adaption of the novel

Video Games

* BattleTech universe (also known as the MechWarrior universe), started as a wargame, now is the setting of more than seventy books,
* FreeSpace series of space-combat videogames.
* Halo series of videogames and books.
* Homeworld, a series of three-dimensional RTS and space-combat videogames.
* StarCraft is a RTS computer and Nintendo 64 game from Blizzard Entertainment revolving around three races, human Terran, insectoid Zerg, and humanoid Protoss. It has spawned many games and books.
* Planetside is an MMOFPS which the player can take sides with one of the three empires in the game.
* Star Wars: Republic Commando, in which the player takes command of a Clone commando team of elite Clone troopers.
* Total Annihilation is a highly unique RTS game involving the survivors of two human armies (one using mass cloning, the other having moved their consciousness to machines) who have been battling so long they have devastated much of the galaxy and no longer even truly remember why they fight. It is one of the few entries of the genre to create a tangible sense of pointless conflict on an epic scale, the protagonists having started the war in trying to preserve their humanity, have gone on to ultimately destroy the last vestiges of it instead.
* 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.
* Warzone 2100 is a post-nuclear war sci-fi RTS game set on earth, where the noble survivor group of the 'Project' must gradually recover lost technology against several increasingly powerful fascist military survivor groups (although the political nature of the Project is not actually known and may be fascistic in some ways itself).
* Wing Commander universe, started as a game detailing the fictional conflict between humans and a race of cat-like aliens, and spawned several books, sequels/games, a movie, and a cartoon series.