Military Sci Fi Suggestions

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#1

Sean stole my thunder by finding the Vatta’s War series before I got around to posting about it, so here’s a load of Military Science Fiction series I’ve found and read.

Vatta’s War Series
Elizabeth Moon
Kylara Vatta was an honors student at the Slotter Key military academy until she got caught in the middle of a political scandal. Fortunately for her, her father, the CFO of Vatta Transport had a backup plan for her. Now she’s commanding the oldest ship in the Vatta fleet, taking it to the scrapyard. But when a simple detour lands her in the middle of a war zone, she gets caught up in a conflict that threatens more than she can imagine.

Books:
Trading In Danger
Marque and Reprisal
Engaging the Enemy
Command Decision
Victory Conditions

Kris Longknife Series
Mike Shepherd
The Wardhaven Navy has a problem with Lieutenant Kris Longknife. She’s a competent officer and pilot, but her father is Wardhaven’s prime minister, who isn’t particularly happy with her career choice. With the Society of Humanity disintegrating, the political and military situation is complicated enough without the daughter of a powerful family who finds trouble wherever she goes.

Books:
Mutineer
Deserter
Defiant
Resolute
Audacious
Intrepid
Undaunted
Redoubtable

Valor Confederation
Tanya Huff
Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is an experienced marine in the middle of a war, but when her platoon gets their leave cancelled to serve as the honor guard for a diplomatic mission, she’s in for more trouble than she realizes.

Books:
Valor’s Choice
The Better Part of Valor
A Confederation of Valor (Valor’s Choice & The Better Part of Valor omnibus)
The Heart of Valor
Valor’s Trial
The Truth of Valor

Starship
Mike Resnick
Commander Wilson Cole is a hero to the people of the Republic. Unfortunately for his career, he became a hero by proving how incompetent his superiors were. Now, they’ve exiled him to the obsolete starship Theodore Roosevelt, crewed by misfits and troublemakers. The Republic knows that the Teddy R wouldn’t last long in front line combat, so they’ve stuck it in sectors well away from the enemy Teroni Federation (or so they think).

Books:
Starship: Mutiny
Starship: Pirate
Starship: Mercenary
Starship: Rebel
Starship: Flagship

The Lost Fleet
Jack Campbell
Captain John “Blackjack” Geary died a century ago in one of the first battles between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds. Or so everyone thought until an Alliance fleet, en route to a surprise attack on the Syndic homeworld, found him in stasis in an escape pod. When the intelligence allowing the attack ended up being a trap, all of the fleets flag officers died, leaving Geary the most senior officer in a fleet that has changed drastically in the hundred years he was “dead”. Now he has to find a way to get his fleet through enemy space and teach his own people that there’s more to war than charging headlong at the enemy.

Books:
The Lost Fleet: Dauntless
The Lost Fleet: Fearless
The Lost Fleet: Courageous
The Lost Fleet: Valiant
The Lost Fleet: Relentless
The Lost Fleet: Victorious

#2

Also by Elizabeth Moon is the Familas Regnent series. It’s mostly millitary sci-fi. I haven’t finished the series yet, but so far I’m enjoying it.

The Honor Harrington series is probably so obvious that you didn’t need to mention it. Also by David Weber is the Safehold series. It’s not about ship to ship combat and fleet manoeuvres, but it is definitely millitary and definitely sci-fi. David Weber really does seem to like combining sci-fi and the Napoleonic wars.

I’m going to look into some of those other suggestions though. Although I’m dying for a Honor Harrington re-read. The paperback of Mission of Honor is out next month, and the new novel A Rising Thunder should be out early next year. I can’t wait.

#3

My dream is to write sci-fi which is right up this alley.
Anyone know what kind of sales numbers these books rake up? And have these titles broken into the eBook market?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

#4

If you ever played Wing Commander back in the day I’d recommend checking out the tie-in novels, they are good fun!

Wing Commander

Freedom Flight by Lackey and Guon
Fleet Action by William R. Forstchen
Heart of the Tiger by William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith
Action Stations by William R. Forstchen
The Price of Freedom by Forstchen and Ohlander
End Run by Christopher Stasheff and William R. Forstchen
False Colors by William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith

#5

Just don’t watch the movie with Freddie Prinze jr.! :eek:

#6

On this forum I keep to “If you don’t have any nice to say, say nothing”. This is why I didn’t mention the movie.

#7

The Major Ariane Kedros series by Laura Reeve is great! Starts with Peacekeeper. There are 3 of them out so far with a fourth coming soon.

#8

I happened to like that movie. One of the actors in it looked like one of the guys I knew from boot camp, lol.

#9

Since my last post in this thread I finished my Honor Harrington re-read, epic stuff (hopefully that A Rising Thunder eARC will be out shortly), I also caught up on Safehold again awesome stuff. Amazon has been screaming at me to read Jack Campbells ‘The Lost Fleet books’ so I decided to give them ago. Excellent stuff. I’m a few chapters in to ‘Dreadnaught’, which is the first book in a series set slightly after ‘The Lost Fleet’. I’ve really enjoying. Although after being immersed in the Honorverse for a while, it takes a little time to get used to a technology system. I have to stop myself thinking ‘Why aren’t they rolling pods?’ or ‘just get interpose your wedge’ etc. For some reason I think Geary is a lot like B5s John Sheridan, but I don’t think I’m able to explain why.

Now I need to decide what to read next, at the moment I’m leaning towards David Webers Dahak books. I might need a good fantasy series soon just to mix it up a bit. I’m sure there’s plenty of good stuff I’ve yet to read.

#10

David Weber (Surprise!) The Dahak series:

  1. Mutineer’s Moon
  2. The Armageddon Inheritance
  3. Heirs of Empire

Starting in the near future, the series quickly escalates. Spoiler, though this much is revealed in the first 50 pages:
[spoiler]Author David Weber says the genesis for this book began with a question: “Assume that Earth doesn’t actually have a Moon, but rather a giant starship disguised as our Moon which has been there for at least 50 or 60,000 years. Where did it come from, why did it come here, and why hasn’t it left?” Weber says the answer to those questions built the foundation for this book and its sequels.[1][/spoiler]

#11

I read one a long time ago, and don’t remember much about it. I’m in the process of going back over some of my previous reads, and looking at them afresh.

The title, I believe, is Rimrunner, and the main character is a former Marine from some space-faring organization. I remember it being fairly good.

Another series I started to enjoy, but the third book went in a direction I found less enjoyable, was the Harbinger Trilogy. (It’s still packed, otherwise I’d provide author information for those who don’t have it.)

Like others, I’ve a burning desire to publish sci-fi works (among other styles), and have one opus that is currently in it’s fifth incarnation. I’ve had some great advice regarding it, and have let it sit for a few years, whilst I ruminate on fixing some of (what I feel to be) it’s glaring flaws. One of those pieces of advice i am still pickled tink about: “watch Star Trek episodes.” (the point was, i believe, to notice how quickly plot and character development happened. If you haven’t noticed, I have a tendency to ramble, and not get to the point.) This actually happens to be a critiquing point for me on most books I read.

One other book I enjoyed, but don’t know if there is a sequel (and I would gladly fork over body parts to get it) was Armor, by John Steakley. Easily one of my top ten all time books.

#12

Will definately be checking out Armor, thank you for the heads up. :slight_smile:

#13

Well…wasn’t expecting to discover new stuff to read when I woke up today…thanks gang!

-Trey

#14

Armor sounds good but I don’t think I could cope with book called “Rimrunner”, heh.

#15

Some of the best military sci fi I have read is the Epic Universe series by Lee Stephen. Right now the first three books are out and the fourth and biggest so far will be comming at some point in the first quarter of 2012.

It’s staged in the future where Earth is under attack by two different alien species. It’s been two years since the first attacks but nobody still knows why they are attacking and there have been very limited communication with the aliens. It’s a little bit like the game x-com, you’ve got bases across the world ready to move out and defend Earth wherever the aliens might strike, and as you go along you see more species and you research and learn more about the aliens.

As with all good sci fi it’s all about the characters. I love every single character in the main unit we follow, and each for different reasons. They’ve got a lot of depth and evolve thoughout the story. When somebody is killed off you feel the pain. And even the new characters that are introduced along the way you quickly fall in love with or hate. A little bit of both with most of them. And of course it’s not just an us against the aliens story. We don’t know a lot about it yet but there are signs that some humans in high places have some big secrets.

The battles are very diverse and well written. They’ve done everything from chasing a particularly nasty species in an empty high school to a huge battle in Chicago, base attacks and even a battle at Chernobyl. You remember each battle because they are all so different and they aren’t there just to have a battle, but something significant for the story always happens there.

The worst part about the series is the wait between books. The writer is an independent writer, publishing the books on his own as well as having a full time job to support his family. The first books were a year apart but as with most series the books are getting longer now and so is the wait. When The Glorious Becoming comes out it will be almost three years after the last book. The series is supposed to be 8 books in total. The writer likes building a community around the books, but it’s not as easy as with a tv series fx when a new season comes out every week and people watch it at the same time. But I believe it will grow over time as more and more people picks up the books and we get even more of the story to talk about.

#16

I have to throw in with John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. Just an awesome blend of humanity and military-based sci-fi storytelling.

#17

As I hoped the new Honor Harrington eARC has been released. I’m just over half way done, it’s awesome.

#18

For me, John Steakley’s Armor rates right up there with Starship Troopers & Ender’s Game as definitive books of this genre. Unfortunately, the only other book Steakley published was Vampire$, not quite military SF. Sad that he died relatively young at 59.

I didn’t see anyone mention The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, very interesting story.

#19

I really don’t like Armor. Well that’s not fair. I really don’t like half of Armor cause one half of it is amazing and the other half is just “WHEN IS THIS OVER SO I CAN GET BACK TO THE AWESOME” you know?

#20

I second this assessment. I read Armor a few weeks ago and felt like half of it took the most exhausting parts of The Forever War and distilled them down to a slow syrup of neverending pages. Sure, there are cool moments, but I wouldn’t really want to recommend it the way I would Starship Troopers (which covers many similar themes).