[Main Blog Post] [Books] Military Fiction

[jprussell]

In a comment on the last Ecosophia Post, I shared some recommendations for "military fiction," and the requester, Justin Patrick Moore, suggested it might make a good blog post. Well, what do you know, the second chapter of Seed of Yggdrasill turns out to be the length of a short book and my kids and work were a bit of a handful this week, so I expanded and edited the comment a bit and share with you now my thoughts.

As always, I'd love to hear any reactions, and for this one, I'd welcome any recommendations for stuff I missed that you've enjoyed.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your post!

My image of war is two school classes entering a fight. The cool kids of both classes naturally collaborate to stage some heroics. They agree to sacrifice some losers, preferably those with girlfriends. After a few deaths both classes go home with grand tales and consolation for the bereaved.

A book about war I enjoyed is Catch-22. The author is Joseph Heller who was a fighter pilot during world war two.

[jprussell]

Thanks for reading!

I do find schoolyard metaphors useful for a wide variety of political and historical scenarios, so maybe I'll have to try this one out.

And thanks for the recommendation - I haven't ever read Catch-22, but it is, of course, a classic, and I've heard lots of good things.

Military Fictions

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks again for putting this together Jeff! I really appreciate a good book list and your break down of all of these is superb.

Justin

Re: Military Fictions

[jprussell]

Thanks for the kind words!

[sdi]

Hey Jeff, thanks for the list—I'll check some of these out!

I liked the Chronicles of the Black Company and read the entire series years back. Unfortunately, I found the original trilogy to be of a much higher quality than the rest of the series: I've re-read those first three books a couple times, but never had the desire to pick back up any of the others, and I didn't enjoy the recently released Port of Shadows at all.

[jprussell]

Hmm, I wonder if I had heard something to that effect, because I remember reading and enjoying the first collection and then deciding not to read any more, for some reason. It might have been "maybe I'll get back to this later" or it might have been hearing something like "it drops off in quality." Thanks for sharing your experience with it!

[(Anonymous)]

I loved Patrick O'Brien's series; I learned a lot about sailing techniques, ship architecture and methods of those days, as well as how they fought battles. He obviously studied that tech deeply. Spherical geometry, anyone? How about creating a vehicle that can circumnavigate the world, out of nothing but wood, linen, hemp and a few bits and bobs of iron? Those people rocked it, they were not stupid.

There was a misspelling; it's Alfred Thayer Mahan, with no 'y' in his last name. His books are long out of copyright, but I was able to build a nearly-complete collection of them used. Most of them are also available as PDFs, but they tend to have double-sized foldout maps of battles which the people scanning them are not so careful to do well. He was able to interview Civil War naval veterans some 20 years after that war; his learnings are recorded in "The Gulf and Inland Waters". Grab any of his books you can; they are classic studies of sailing-navy strategy.

"Man-Kzin Wars" piece of trivia-- Niven wrote one incident where a Pierson's Puppeteer engages a Kzin. Pierson's Puppeteers are normally so timid they never leave their home planet, so this one, Nessus, is considered insane by his peers. In the incident, Nessus lashes out with his powerful hind leg (they only have one) and breaks a couple of the Kzin's ribs. The Kzin is flabbergasted that a cowardly prey creature could do him such damage.

Later, Niven was asked to write an episode for the animated Star Trek series of the 1970's. He phoned it in, rewriting Nessus to be Mr. Spock. But since he did that, Kzin are now canon in the Star Trek universe!

- Cicada Grove

[jprussell]

1) I think I need to revisit the O'Brian series - you're not the only one to sing their praises.

2) Aw, shoot, so I did, thanks for pointing it out, I mostly remember spelling by how words sound, and so I do badly with less-commonly-encountered homophones, and names often give me trouble. I've fixed it in the post.

3) I remember Nessus from Ringworld! Funny about the insertion into Star Trek, though.

[k_a_nitz]

For WWI you can't go past ex-soldiers Ernst Jünger and Ernst Wiechert (though Wiechert hasn't made it into English yet, I think).
I also like the Hornblower novels of C.S. Forester as a kid (would probably go well with Master & Commander, though I haven't read the latter).
Recently I've been reading the Flashman novels which give a taste of the wars of the British in the 19th century in a rather hilarious way.
For WWII I enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy and one of my favourites of all time was (I haven't read it in thirty years, so it may not have held up) Alistair McLean's HMS Ulysses (essentially Moby Dick retold as the voyage of a British destroyer on the artic convoys to Russia).

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for these!

1) Junger's been on my list ever since I read something back in college that made the case that the now-popularly-accepted view of how WWI was experienced and conceptualized by the men who fought it was not necessarily accurate, and used folks like Junger and many other contemporary memoirs to illustrate that point. Of course, errr, I haven't gotten to him yet, but he seems to be getting some attention recently - I read a review of Glass Bees that intrigued me.

2) I've heard of the Hornblower novels, but I haven't read them, thanks.

3) Someone recommended the Flashman novels on another platform, and I had heard the name, but didn't know the premise - they sound great!

4) I read Scoop by Waugh, which was actually a gift while I was in the Army, and I liked it okay, though I don't think my taste was as developed back then, so I ought to revisit.

5) I hadn't heard of that one at all, but it sounds interesting.

Thanks again!
Jeff

[k_a_nitz]

Alistair McLean was also the author of the original book of The Guns of Navarone from which the movie was made

Walking Away from Doctorow

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Jeff,

I am just now catching up on your other comment/reply on Ecosophia and just thought I'd reply here since it is almost time for a new cycle of posts and comments on JMG's blog.

I have the same feelings about Cory Doctorow as you (though I never read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom). I really loved his hacker YA novels, Little Brother and Homeland, as well as Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town and Makers. I also walked away from Walkaway, for the same reasons. I thought it was ironic that that book came out around the same as the #walkaway movement, and I always wondered how he might have felt about that. I did regain some respect for him when he walked away from Boingboing.net to do his own thing. I think they may have gotten even too out of whack for him. But I haven't tried any of his books since walkaway...

I ordered the first Glen Cook book to start and will be following up some of your other and other peoples recommendations.

Thanks again!

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: Walking Away from Doctorow

[jprussell]

Fair enough, I was veering pretty far into off-topic territory over there anyhow!

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one - Walkaway produced one of the biggest disparities in how excited I was to read it ahead of time versus how unhappy I was with it on reading it I've ever experienced. I think I read about 2/3, and I didn't even want to finish just to see how it ended. Ugh. Anyway, I haven't read Little Brother or Homeland, but I enjoy good YA books - they're pleasantly straightforward.

Glad to hear it! Hope you enjoy it and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

P.S.: Stross

[(Anonymous)]

You might like the "Merchant Princes" series by Charles Stross. It's a multiverse type series in something of a homage to Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. What does it for me is that it is really good social/economic type SF embedded within that. A really fun and adventurous romp as well. I haven't read his other works.

JPM

Re: P.S.: Stross

[jprussell]

Ah, nice, I've had that on my "to get to" list for a while now - I think I heard about it looking for stuff to use as inspiration for my homebrew D&D setting. I've literally had an omnibus edition of Chronicles of Amber on my bedside table for nearly a year now, but I keep picking up other stuff instead.

I have The Atrocity Archives as an ebook, on the strength of a recommendation of a friend of mine, but I haven't read it either, so I don't think I've read any of his stuff either, which is weird, cos I've read so many others in the same/similar "scene" (Doctorow, later William Gibson, and so forth) that I keep thinking I've read him too, but nope, I haven't!