#military sci-fi

[elliottkay]

Every show and film and book I grew up with presented the military as a place where you’d find yourself. The military could be good, could be bad, and all that “glory” stuff was clearly nonsense… but shared trials made you stronger and forged ride-or-die buddies for life. And hey, it’d pay for college.

Then I joined. It didn’t work out. Every day ranged from tedious to toxic, even when we did genuine good. I made one short-term friend in four years.

I still loved those stories, but none of them were ever about the guy who joins up and doesn’t find himself and never belongs—so I wrote it.

Poor Man’s Fight is a rockin’ space opera built on shattered dreams, student debt, and space pirates. Lots of space pirates. It’s funny, it’s sober, and you’ll want to hug Tanner Malone even when he’s covered in blood. The real enemies are always capitalism and toxic masculinity.

And then comes the war with the corporations that built this whole dystopia, because the enemy is still capitalism, even for the aliens.

On a brighter note, Tanner does make it out of the military and into college, becoming the Deadliest Unpaid Intern in the Galaxy… and the Resident Advisor for a freshman dorm full of chaos goblins.

(Cover art by Lee Moyer, Julie Dillon, Dan Watson, and Brittany Torres, for which I’m forever grateful.)

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’re looking for where to pick this up. They’re all available on ebook and Kindle Unlimited, and everything from Poor Man’s Fight to Last Man Out is also in paperback and audio.

And bonus: they’re cheap!

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

BARBARIC, CRUEL, CUNNING, & COOL -- THE FIRST LADY OF COBRA COMMAND.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 940x1418 -- Spotlight on Chief Cobra Intelligence officer, The Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, a.k.a., "The Baroness," variant cover to "G.I. Joe" Vol 6 #1. January, 2013. Cover C/ Subscription Variant by Arthur Adams. IDW Publishing.

Source: https://news.hisstank.com/2012/11/16/idw-relaunch-g-i-joe-1-variant-covers-11689.

[owlbear33]

can people recommend any good millSF (novels), that's not written with a rightwing slant

in the past, I've enjoyed Tanya Huffs' Valour series, and Joe Haldimans' Forever War and Forever Peace were some of my fave books as a teen

but I tried reading Elizabeth Moons' Vatta's War, and I just found the Corporate heiress MC and the constant brr capitalism frustrating

I kinda like the ooh military tech cool (guns, tanks, power armour, spaceships, whatever), and the community in adversity, but all that needs to be tempered with a big load of war bad and pointless, military-industrial complex evil

[sharpestasp]

Psi/Net

Psi/Net by Billy Dee Williams and Rob MacGregor, published 1999

Picked this up to see what sort of stuff Williams would have been writing with a co-author. We get a fast paced thriller with a black-box military project turned rogue under some bastards. We get a flawed hero who manages to pull himself out of his own head enough to keep doing the right thing. We get a man that lost his wife because of who he was getting a second chance with her by the end of the book.

We get racist bullshit in the background of all that is going on being scathingly presented.

We get a large woman who has the genesis of the idea of how to use what they are to undo the bad guys' game.

It's political, it's psychic, it's interesting, and I am just going to be over here wallowing in the vast descriptions of the people in the books. Doc? The woman I mentioned? Is Amanda Waller with a conscience, I think, or at least a fine-tuned ability to marry her vengeance to the Right Thing. Calloway, the hero? Well, I am over here seeing him as a blend of Billy Dee Williams and Al Matthews from the description and the way the man handled himself in the book.

Basic premise - the military had psychics, used them as spies. Group goes under, former leadership recruits several to use for shitty goals. Doc and Calloway and allies step up to the plate to end it.

Quick read, good prose, immersive.

[mugbearerscorner]

This is just in: A local playboy rich kid playing a military officer is anti-capitalist because he thinks the essential workers must be tipped because their wages are already undermined, and that the politicians shouldn't take more than they earn for the job they were voted for to perform.

The kid is also the son of the biggest military manufacturer in the galaxy.

[lightyearsandbeyond]

3 - Michael Lordes (rough draft as it is written)

Inside the office of the Minister of Intelligence for the Nagap Federate life was quiet and rigidly structured. Outside the window, a thousand plus feet below her office on the 112th floor, structure had been obliterated. Police sirens coalesced with loudspeaker shouted commands and the roar of an incensed mob to create a nightmarish noise. Bottles, rocks, in some instances gym weights were…

[quentin719]

With how often people complain about how 343 handles Halo, I never hear my own biggest issue:

343 pushes the fantasy elements HARD and forgets to approach it as a war story at all.

The original Halo games' narratives were war movies in a sci-fi fantasy setting, not sci-fi in a military setting. That is, it was a war story first with fantasy set dressing. The earlier books and Halo: Reach took this approach the strongest, but that was the priority for Halo's story for Bungie's entire run.

Basically all of the grounded but glorified approach to war that you'd expect from an American propaganda film, but set in a sci-fi universe with sci-fi bad guys.(another example of this style of story is the movie Battle: Los Angeles)

Even in the more fantasy leaning parts of the original trilogy, the UNSC and the Covenant had the appearance and feel of a functioning military, especially in terms of how characters interacted with each other outside of combat.

The sci-fi elements on the humans' side were also much more grounded than 343's interpretation. Outside of spaceships, the games, books, and other media always mostly showed humans using technology that, to some degree, already existed in the real world at the time, only inserting sci-fi on the humans' side where it was necessary for gameplay or to facilitate events in the story.

343's portrayal of how military personnel (Spartans moreso than normal soldiers) interact may as well be ripped from an MCU film, and most of their sci-fi leans WAY harder into fantasy than Bungie ever would have.

Beyond the contents of the narrative itself, I grew up in a city with a population that was 2/3 active military and veterans, and I went to a public high school that was on an active military base. Tons of people everywhere from ROTC to the actual military preferred Halo over other games because its story portrayed military personnel more accurately and respectfully than more "realistic" shooters like Battlefield and CoD. I've heard from other people that this sentiment didn't end at my hometown.

Halo Infinite managed to correct or compensate for a lot of the problems with earlier 343 titles, and Halo Wars 2 brought back the best of the old visual elements, but I'm worried that what made Bungie's Halo stories stand out might be gone for good.

[admiralfisher01]

Chapter 18: The Contract

Brinus stood in the Captain’s office thirty minutes after his summons. Captain Plato was looking at Brinus with a look of concern as Brinus stared at the contract on the table. He had two paper contracts in front of him. A pen and a man in a suit and tie was on his triquarter. The man in the suit was a Vendalfi male at seven feet tall with a blue tail, navy blue fur, and a set of furry light…

[rma-9000]

STARGATE ATLANTIS

category: tv show

robot positivity: 50%

premise: a spin-off of the 1994 stargate film and subsequent series SG-1, stargate atlantis follows a scientific mission to a distant galaxy.

review: honestly, this show (and the stargate franchise as a whole) has a pretty poor exploration of artificiality for such a sci-fi behemoth. however, i quite like some of the artificial characters, even if their plotlines are often short and end unfortunately.

i don't recommend this show if you're looking for positive or even nuanced explorations of artificial experiences. but, if you're looking for a fun sci-fi show with a large fanbase (who i know would be interested in hearing additional interpretations of robot characters and storylines), then this might be for you! i'm biased, i've loved this show since i was a kid, but it's definitely not without its problems.

warnings: warnings for robot death and generally pretty negative representations of artificial life. nothing is too explicit or violent in this show, but there are some things to watch out for. not as bad as SG-1 in the robot department though! i don't think i'm even going to recommend it here.

[bixels]

I watched Starship Troopers tonight.

[threeravenspublishing]

Are You a Fantasy or Sci-Fi Fan? You'd Love LibertyCon!

Are You a Fantasy or Sci-Fi Fan? You'd Love LibertyCon!

[elliottkay]

Hey, that book I've been talking about is finally out! Which book? MY book! Poor Man's Fight 6: NO MAN'S LAND is available now!

Tanner is fully done with alien crises and military bullshit. His first college Spring Break takes him to the wedding of his high school crush—just in time for a different military to drag him into another crisis.

Honestly, he'd rather have stayed at the wedding. He had a great date, and it was way less drama than all this.

Grab NO MAN'S LAND, or pick up the first in the series for a rockin' tale of student debt and space pirates!

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE DREAD FACE OF HIGH GRADE MILITARY SCI-FI IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE.

PIC(S) INFO: Resolution at 1294x2000 (2x) -- Spotlight on a Deathlok color guide by Noelle Giddings, c. 2022. A xeroxed copy of Denys Cowan's original pencil and inks on paper mounted to a foam core board.

Source: www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1846078 (Comic Art Fans 2x).

[zekethefreak]

The Ananda Accords Now In Paperback

The Ananda Accords Now In Paperback

JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!!! The PAPERBACK VERSION of THE ANANDA ACCORDS IS NOW AVAILABLE on AMAZON along with a CORRECTED VERSION of the EBOOK!!! Get your copy today! Makes a great GIFT!!! Purchase here: Amazon

[shadefish]

March Of Robots Lancer Edition

Day 11

Karrakin Trade Baronies Use Gorgon

ooo cool links you wanna click on to support me

[arcticdementor]

(link)