Hi there, and welcome back to Hugo's There 2.0, and this is another of the zoomed-out subgenre spotlight episodes that I've been doing, and this time we're covering military science fiction, and the obvious guest for this episode was... previous guest, William from Future War Stories, who joined me just over six years ago to cover the forever war. So now he's back. Hi there, William. Thanks for coming back. Oh, it's a real pleasure. And I cannot believe it's been six years.
It was forever ago. It was, yeah. It's always a time warp when I have previous guests on. It seems like it was yesterday, but it was not. That was episode 20, and I think this one is in the 90s somewhere. The 90s were always great. I agree. So anything new with future war stories? I pulled up the website the other day. I see it's still a going concern. It is. It has been slower over the last two years due with a new job and more home responsibilities.
And I unfortunately became very much into playing Destiny 2, which kind of took over my life for a little while. And I very much apologize to anyone. that follows my blog regularly just because it has been difficult to do uploads. And I've been attempting to do another format with a podcast and I hoping to launch it at some point, but life does get in the way.
I am actually about to publish a new article on Starcom, the U.S. Space Force storyline, probably in about two more weeks. I just scored an interview with somebody. That's rolling out, and then I'm hoping to keep back in production. Nice. And just, you know, I guess I didn't say at the top, right? Future War Stories is a blog about military science fiction, yeah? Yes, it is. It's only a blog because I didn't want to pay for a website. So I did it on the cheap, and they're in-depth.
articles about different topics surrounding military science fiction and everything to do. The tagline is Future War Stories, explaining and exploring the realm of military science fiction. Very nice. All right. So then you're the perfect person to answer what is military science fiction, kind of as we move into the intro portion of the subgenre spotlight.
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that covers a vast array of settings and stories that are countless as the stars in the known universe. And it started off in 1889 with H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Military science fiction explores one of the most popular types of sci-fi stories, which is war and the after effects and the people that fight in it and the people that are affected by it.
The settings and the stories, this is the key, the settings and stories revolve around military situations, military technology, military characters, and all manner of conflicts, wars, and hostilities. And this could include... soldiers fighting on distant wars on off-world colonies. It can include alien invasions. It hosts nuclear holocaust situations.
And wars in time rather than in space, Doctor Who, for instance. Yes. And even space exploration stories that have military characters in it. Kind of like the 2000 and... 2009 movie that Ron D. Moore made called Virtuality, which had a couple of military characters. It kind of runs that genre. And we know, you know, military science fiction, Starship Troopers, Halo.
Warhammer 40K, Battlestar Galactica, and others. So that's what military science fiction is. And most people are going to equivalent fighting hideous bugs and off-world colonies, but it can be... just as simple as a military character in a science fiction story. And it can be not that exciting. And that's why I wanted to talk about running the gamut between different kinds of stories that explore different kinds of military situations.
But that to me is kind of the definition. Nice. I've noticed that when you sent me the list of like, here's the sort of recommended reading, I'm like, oh, I've read quite a few of those. And some of it is just because like Starship Troopers and the Forever War are both on like two of the classics and they're on the Hugo's list, right? So I had to read those. But I've noticed that like, I think it's like with any genre, right? Where the...
subgenre that you're doing can be very just sort of bare bones to tell this story, right? Or it can be... the background to tell a really complex story or to explore themes as well. And not all military science fiction does both of those things. Some of it is just like, I'm going to tell you a roaring, you know, rip roaring adventure.
set in a military thing. There's going to be nothing deeper, and you're going to be okay with it. Yes. Or it could be Battlestar Galactica, the reimagining series, which covers some of those episodes, no one fires a shot.
They're going to drink. I mean, it's Balcer Galactica. But that's a show to me that can tell the depth and breadth of military science fiction. It doesn't always have to be, you know... the the 1997 movie starship troopers it doesn't always have to be 40k where there's endless war although you know so i think it it's interesting to see kind of what how authors and creators my kind of terminology for everyone
how they explore these topics and within it and military science fiction, you know, sometimes you can get it wrong and say, okay, I think this, this thing is, and it may not be when you look at it. Yeah. Yeah. There's also kind of the, the. Almost like a...
There's some common DNA between military science fiction and hard science fiction where the hard science fiction author really wants to talk about the science, really wants to talk about the technology. Where in military science fiction, a lot of military science fiction authors really want to tell you about the ships and the weapons. in the armor. 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless, right? The line from aliens. So as a creator in the genre as well, but...
And that's one thing with future war stories. It's like, what exactly would be a phase pulse rifle, a phase plasma rifle in a 40-watt range? What does that line mean in Terminator? So we explored it. to me you know you can it's like star trek i have technical manuals behind me that are detailed of the warp drive the enterprise d but then the you know you might skip and say okay i really want to know about the phasers and so i think every author in the genre
really has something that they want to explore and you're right military science fiction unlike the hard science fiction we want to talk about the body armor the guns the tanks all the military paraphernalia as it would seem they want to talk about and in military science fiction the one Big thing that we love to talk about armored power suits. We love armored power suits. Yeah. Big time. Big time.
Would you say there's military science fiction analogs to basically all the branches of the service that you can think of, Army, Air Force, Marines? Even Coast Guard. Maybe. Yeah, even Coast Guard. Even Coast Guard. There have been some Coast Guard-esque mentions. I'm sorry, I cut you off from your question. No, no, no. You just sort of completed the question. I wrote an article recently about would there be blue water navies in off-world military organizations?
When everyone thinks about space Navy or space fleets, people debate about what terms should be used, but would there actually be naval ships in off-world alien oceans? Right, surface fleets. Thank you. Thank you. That would have been much more eloquent. I'm reading The Hunt for Red October right now. Oh my God. Yeah. I have a copy of that lying around. Everyone has a copy of that lying. First movie I ever saw on Surround Sound. Oh, nice. Yeah. Salt and Tulsa. I think.
That's an interesting thing because what are the two organizations we see most? We see some sort of infantry, space marines. We see space marines of some type. we're going to see a space Navy, a Starfleet of some kind. Right. But it's like, I have seen references to like a Coast Guard, Blue Water Navy, Surface Navies.
you know, even medical branches and air force, they're the more complicated because it's like, how do you put them in the mix with all that? And then you'll get people that really spread them out. A lot of times war top simulation games have the most complex. military organizations because it's hard to communicate that in a written page and it gets really it gets really in the weeds on it something like robotech for instance you know when they
Because it was an anime and then you put it into book form, there's more of an equivalation in your mind. I can picture this and I can go there. That sometimes can help. Nice. Starfleet doesn't have any tanks or anything. They're pretty easy to talk about. They just have ships and phasers and pretty uniform. So it's interesting how they can make the difference between those kinds of organizations. But that's an interesting question. I do think it's really interesting how they picture...
There are future military organizations looking at all these different titles we're going to talk about. Yeah, yeah. All right. So on that note, why don't we go ahead and head into sort of the 101, the beginner recommendations. If you are not familiar with military science fiction, where should you start? There is the Holy Trinity of the beginning titles. That is going to be Starship Troopers by Robert Highline, which is from November of 59. Old Man's War by John Scazzi. That's 2006, I believe.
And we have The Forever War by Joe Handelman from 1975. Yeah. These are the big three. A lot of listeners and readers, when they Google this term, military science fiction, they are going to come across these three titles. Or just through osmosis. Starship Troopers has a very famous or infamous movie, depending on your mileage, from 1997. And now with Helldivers, and there's going, I think there is a Starship Troopers-like game that has got the original actor played Johnny Rico.
So Structure Troopers has from, I mean, that book is from 1959. It has legs. And then The Forever War has been in movie production off and on for many years, but has enjoyed a life through people like me. And the graphic novels from the 80s by NBW, NBM, they published a series of really great graphic novels in the 80s.
My very first article ever in Future War Stories was about it. I actually bought it and found it. It took me forever to get the other two. So these have enjoyed. And one day I think the Fred War is going to be a major movie. Old Man's War eventually is going to be something. It's one of the best.
I'll kind of talk about what these three are, what to kind of share in common, why they're kind of beginning. So in the beginning, there was H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which has been told and retold many, many times by many different ways in 53. I think in 2005 with, of course, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise. But Starship Troopers is, to me, the founding classic of military science fiction because what does it do? It gives us powered suits. The very first opening scene is with power suits.
atomic grenades. That's the interesting thing about this book that I think most people miss. It was written in 59. Robert Highline, who was with Isaac Asanoff and other early writers, wanted kind of a... kid's story on democracy, if I remember the story correctly. He writes this book that is incredibly important to science fiction, but it's a dense book to read now. You've read it fairly recently.
And if people are expecting the 1997 Paul Wehrhoven movie, you're going to be really sorely disappointed. Yeah. I wish Michael Ironside was in the book too. The power suits don't even make it until the third direct – the Marauder suits don't even make it to the third movie from 2005, I think. Yeah, those movies. The sequel movies are pretty bad.
I enjoyed the third one a little bit. I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed it. And Jillian Blaylock, who was in Star Trek Enterprise, which is my favorite Star Trek, she was in it. She's super awesome. The Starship Troopers is written in 59, so it has a very involved military structure. It tells a lot about the journey from citizen, from non-citizen member of the Federation.
to becoming a citizen in the mobile infantry. And he pioneered a lot of concepts that, especially Japanese animation and manga would pick up on later. And this book is dense. And it's... fairly, really interesting, but has little combat in it. Very little. I think it's a book that if you're going to be interested in military science fiction, it's a book I would say is really worth reading. But to me, it's almost a cimmerillion of military science fiction.
Because it is a little bit denser. It's not the movie. It's not the book you think it is. But you come away always remembering it. You've read it. What do you think? Yeah. You know, I don't really recall having any difficulty getting through it. It was one of my dad's favorite. Like it was a beach for him. Yeah. And, and he.
It seemed like three or four times, and I'm sure I talked about this on one of my other podcasts about it, because I've done it for Take Me to Reader, talking about the movie and the book, and for this podcast. And he used to... lots of times when they would come down from Alaska to visit us in Oregon, they would go out to the coast for a while and he would always hit a used bookstore out there. And almost every time without fail, he'd...
He'd buy a copy of Starship Troopers and then leave it at my house. And so that was the first way I read it on one of those $3 ones that he picked up from an outlet store in Lincoln City, Oregon. And so, yeah, I read it and I, you know, I, I did not find it dense. Um, now the one different thing about it, right. Is that here you have this foundational.
military science fiction title. And it's not so concerned about the combat stuff. It's much more concerned about some of the philosophical ideas that a lot of people find objectionable to Heinlein A. Pick up a different Heinlein book and it's a different philosophy. So it's not like... Starship Troopers is just everything he believes, but it's there. He's talking about themes. The book is also really a breakdown of a World War II
military structure in space. It's not a modern military. This was written after Korea during the Cold War as we know it. was starting to really become a thing in the proxy wars of that time period were going to be starting. This is post-Korea before Vietnam. Like most military science fiction authors today are pulling from modern conflicts. post 9-11. So we have to remember that what Highline did is put a World War II style military into space. And there's a lot of discussion about
training and structure and rank. It's starting to become a book that's getting close to the 100-year mark. I mean, it's going to be soon. So I think that's one of the things about it. And I think for a lot of people that may have seen the movie that want to know more, do you want to know more? I definitely think that it's a title. It's basically the founding classic.
Since we talked about someone who served in World War II, which Highline did, we're going to talk about someone who served in Vietnam. And that is Joe Haldeman. Joe Haldeman, yeah. Joe Haldeman, thank you. He, if I remember correctly, has a bachelor's degree in astrophysics, if I remember correctly. That may be corrected. But he came at this, and we were discussing earlier about hard science fiction. This book...
is heartbreaking. And you and I discussed it six years ago at length, but it's a heartbreaking book. I cried at the end of it, not ashamed to say. It tells the horrors of combat through the eyes of someone who served in Vietnam. And I think the book was a cathartic experience for him. It's a book I recently read. And of course, it has soldiers. Some of those people in it fought in Vietnam in the character background, because I think the book originally starts off in the mid-90s.
late 90s, I think. And it's a book that does, because of his background in science, he was one of the, not the first author, but the first one I really liked the way he put, if we travel faster than light to fight a war. what consequences does that have for the soldiers? And it's put into such heartbreaking detail. And like a lot of the Vietnam soldiers came back to a very different world during the States.
he comes back several times into more, um, into earth space or earth controlled space. And he has encounters with fully different people that are thousands of years separated from him. No spoilers, of course. It's a book. I think everyone should read in the genre because it is so emotional. It's so well-written and heartbreaking. Yeah. No, it's terrific. And I got to meet Joe Haldeman at Worldcon this year in Scotland. I just said hello to him and Gay in the hallway. Oh, his inspiration.
And you can tell how much he loves his wife by reading that book. It's a weird thing to say, but I feel like I know the man. I think everyone that reads the book has a window into his soul. Yeah. Well, they're a great team, too. I've seen them doing other podcasts and video interviews and stuff, and it seems like they're always together. It's quite heartwarming. I love that.
He's a very important voice. He did write a sequel, but I really recommend anyone pick that up. And the cover arts are kind of interesting. The older cover arts are really interesting. Even the graphic novels, if anyone's not like, I don't want to read it, but the graphic novels are really good and they were republished. They're not, they're not hundreds of dollars, like one, you know, or 50 bucks to buy anymore. They're, they're in that Dell on digital, the gun Titan.
It's worth reminding folks that Forever Peace is not actually a sequel to The Forever War. Forever Free is the direct sequel. Forever Free. Yes. Yes. And it's different. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, I read it last year. It was fine. It's fine. There is a short story that has the events of one of the other characters away, and I can't remember where that short story is contained, but I remember reading it at Barnes & Noble once. Anyway.
The Forever War is a phenomenal book. And to me, it is the best military science fiction book ever written because of the heart, the passion. It explores the trauma of soldiers living for a war that does not end, that goes on for thousands of years. I think it's the emotional core sometimes to military science fiction that grounded it, and I think it only could have been written by somebody that experienced war. Yeah, yeah. And...
The third book I usually, and I've gifted this book to a lot of people, is by John Scossie. That is called The Old Man's War from 2006. And it has two sequels. Actually, the second book is my favorite of the series. And he's written other books in the Old Man Wars universe. But the beginning book is such a fascinating concept. You did something unique. Elderly people signing up for military service off-world into kind of a different society.
and getting to become you know these these new bodies that are green and these fascinating weapons that he based on nanotechnology um and these aliens that are i mean they're He does not mess around with his descriptions of how horrific it is. The bootcamp scenes, bootcamp, sorry, they can't see my quotations, is really enjoyable. And it is a blast to read. It will stay with you.
It is hard-hitting, but it is a very accessible book. If you want more combat, because The Forever War has a little bit, Starship Troopers only has one or two, but Old Damn War has brutal combat, and it's a nice mix. One of the better intro concepts and really great characters, and all three books are really good in the original series. I cannot recommend it enough, and one day they're going to turn into a blockbuster. By the way, for...
And this is to earmark this in case this ever really happens. If they ever make the movie to the forever war, I want 39, the song 39 by not an opera off of the Queen's album, the night at the opera. There's a song called 39. And it should be either the beginning or end theme, the forever war. And if you ever listened to it, anyone wants to listen to it. To me, it's a perfect compliment to the forever war.
Nice. I will say, I love that it's these three books that you're kind of doing as the 101, at least the top of the list, right? Yes, top of the list. I have to admit that when I think back to any of those books, I always go, Now, was that in the forever war and starship troopers or in the old man's war? And usually if it's a, like, if it's a combat scene, I'm like, it's probably in old man's war. Yes. But I do get them mixed up.
I'm like, where was the one where the dude fell over and he died because his cooling system went out of order? I think that's the forever war. That's the forever war. That's where there are basic training inside the solar system. Yeah. That's a brutal sequence. It's tragic, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I remember reading that. I read that book when my dad was in the hospital, and I remember it really put me where they were. It's a phenomenal book.
Oh man's war is, is going to be something big one day. I think Skazi laid out a very interesting world. And I'm curious in the, you know, post avatar world, right. We're in the, um, In the Avatar sequel, they essentially sort of have the ghost brigades almost because they have an upload of the general from the first one who gets a new body. Yeah.
That's really interesting. I kind of thought about that and then now you're bringing it back. That was, yeah, that's true. And it lives a whole other level. There have been a couple authors that have explored that concept of uploading.
you know, famous, there's a book somewhere and someone's going to know this. There is a book somewhere where like the greatest generals brains were in a box. It's from like, I think I saw an atomic rockets website. There's like a picture of it anyway, but it's interesting to see.
How people can take a concept and then bring it. And the second Avatar movie, that was one of the more interesting concepts in the entire thing. All right. So I know we have several other titles that we're going to talk about in sort of 101. Let's go through these a little quicker. Okay. So I want to talk about another book that has a very simple premise but is really good. It's called Orphanage by Robert – Bettner maybe? Bettner. Thank you.
And it's about a soldier who signs up who's been orphaned because there are kinetic impact actors hitting the planet, but the very first expedition to Ganymede to stop it. I bought this book based on the cover art, I'm sorry to say. I'm reading the first two pages. I bought it at Borders. Anyone remembers Borders? Wow. I bought it, devoured it. And I've given this book as a gift. It's phenomenal. It's won awards.
One of the better intros. But it's a great book, has a great love story, has a great character, and it has a really interesting setup. And it's just a fast read. But Orphanage is a great book, great concept. fantastic author and he's written more in the series but i fully recommend it a really interesting book and everyone's going to know this is halo halo has books and i did not know this um at the time
I always figured the Halo book, the very first one, which is by Eric Noland, and he published this in October of 2001. The Halo video game is from November 19th, I believe. it's in november of 2001 this book predates it they did that i don't know why that came out i did not know that till today yeah but the the fall of reach tells the story of the fall of reach but you could say well i'm not in the halo you
have to be. This is a solid military science fiction book about the entire Spartan program. Super soldiers are part and parcel. They're the peanut butter, the chocolate to power suits and military science fiction. You could have both. And of course, in Halo, we do get both. This is a solid story whether you like Halo or not. It is a little bit different if you played Reach. It is a different story than Reach, but Reach was in 2010. This is 2001.
There's a really funny joke about those two movies in there somewhere, but I don't have it. But Halo was my favorite game. And I bought this book. I own the original because in 2010, they did redo them, I think, to kind of catch up with canon.
But I will say this, they're a phenomenal book written by a phenomenal writer who had to establish a lot of canon. And he established some things that have been carried forth. I think it's a solid book. You do not have to be in Halo. And it's probably the greatest video game book ever written.
And I was really leery, but I had friends who said, oh, dude, you got to read that book. And so I read it. I was shocked how good it is. It is a fast-paced book. I fully recommend it. A book I read recently. I was actually reading during the eclipse recently, was Terms of Enlistment by Marco Kloos. Close. Close. I was close on that.
I apologize. He is a phenomenal writer. I have to say that. He was inspired by the same people that I think all of us are military science. He read the classics. But then you turn something out with a very simple concept that is just a... an intoxicating read. Great kind of love story in it. Great premise. It's a kid who grows up in the slums. The only way you can get off world is through a lottery system or you join the military and you have that terms of service.
And then you get to go on one of the off-world colonies. I think it may have been, you know, there's a little bit of Blade Runner in that sentence. I don't think he meant that, but it's very visceral. The character's really good. The action's really good. It's a fast book. I was shocked how fast I read it. And I'm a slow reader. I devoured pages. I could not wait to read it. And it's definitely a child of these other books, the three we took. Yeah. Have you read it?
I got the audio book a couple months ago, and I had seen in Love, Death, and Robots, they adapted one of the stories that's set in the Terms of Enlistment universe, the Frontlines universe, Lucky 13. which is fantastic. It was my favorite episode of Love, Death, and Robots. But this book, yeah, I think calling it like a child of the other, the big three, really makes sense to me. Because to me, it's sort of like...
the distilled down essence of the basic military science fiction thing that doesn't necessarily have a ton to say, but does it really entertainingly. And I don't know if the rest of the series might, might bring in some themes and, and, you know, deeper discussions, but, but to me it was. This is what I picture from a military science fiction title. 100%. And I think you hit the nail on the head because it is that. And it fulfills so many elements. And I can't praise him enough.
And it is a product of the big three, but it's his own thing. And it's really accessible. I think with all these beginning titles, it's accessible. Every one of these titles we've talked about after really the big three.
are very accessible. They're just like your old sneakers. They're really good to put on. They have really good premises. You're always going to go to boot camp in most of them, and you're going to learn this. At least in book one, right? At least in book one, and then there are going to be more of them.
And especially with the Halo book, you don't even have to read anymore. You've got everything. And in terms of enlistment, it's a series. I'm probably going to read the next one, like Orphanage, and kind of see if I'm going to go. So I want to talk about now Dan Abnett's book, Embedded. And he's a noted 40K writer. And I wasn't sure what to think about this book. And then when I read it, it was delicious. Okay. It takes place on a planet that just has a number, 86.
And it has a story about a journalist. His name is Lex. And he, through product, he gets embedded literally in the head of a soldier to see what's going on on planet 86 in this battle. Interesting. So like embedded journalist kind of thing. Exactly. Oh, that's fascinating. It is. And it does not disappoint. I'm not going to spoil anything in this book, but I can tell you. The weapons, I think, are very much influenced by Elysium, the 2011 movie. The weapons seem kind of similar to that.
And it's got pirate suits. But that's all semantics. It's how he conducts it, how he shows it, and how he puts you in those moments. Some of the battle scenes, you could feel it. Yeah. Once again, we're not spoiling any of these titles, but Embedded is a book that I'd like to see more of this author write more. I'm going to pick up some of his 40K books because of it.
Of course, we have to talk about another real classic here, and I put it farther down the list because it is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, who has a fantastic name for an author, right? Yeah. He's written a lot in this series. And of course, the movie really opened up the 1985 book to most people. And the movie and the book are close. They did wipe out an entire sub...
Yeah, yeah. And what they did in that is they shrunk the timeline of things and they shrunk the space of everything as well. Because there's a lot more distant travel in the movie. Yeah, because I think it's time dilation like... forever does. My brother-in-law has actually read most of the other books in the series. Yeah, I've read all of them. Have you? He loves the entire series.
Yeah, it became diminishing returns toward the very end, you know, as he's trying to kind of wrap it up. You can kind of feel that he's trying to wrap it up. And in terms of this one being military science fiction, yeah, Ender's Game, definitely, right? Because it's a different thing because... Here, we're training kids to go to war and to think really dynamically, right? Strategically, yeah. To think about war in space, right?
And there's really something to that, right? The idea that war in space would necessarily be a different way to wire your brain. even like if you went from playing, I'm going to make a video game reference, right? If you went from playing Doom where you couldn't look up and down. Right. to playing Descent or another spaceship-based game, right? All of a sudden, you have to look above you and below you, the six degrees of freedom kind of thing. And so the idea of having kids train for that in...
Zero-G combat games is really, really an interesting concept. It's a concept that Japanese anime and manga has explored extensively about kids piloting mecha and that kind of thing. And to me... This story really provided a foundation of why we do that. To me, having that dimensions of combat and space being differently is something that Spock says to Kirk during the Battle of the Matara Nebula in Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kong. Two-dimensional thinking. Right.
And then he lowers and they go down and they meet him. I always have to make a good, you know, Star Trek reference. Agreed, yeah. Yeah. It's a book that the movie explored. The book has more. And I think for anyone that has seen the movie and was like, I'd like to know more, I think it's definitely that title. And he was really inventive about showing how we could train people to think differently. Because in some space combat, it may be...
Just at all war, it's strategic, but it's on a totally different geography, for lack of a better term. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I'd say about Ender's Game and the series, right, is there's kind of the two series. There's the more parallel series that follows Bean.
Starting with Ender's Shadow. Oh, yeah. It goes into all the shadow books. That is the more military science fiction stuff. It's more geopolitics, and there is some military aspect to that as well. Where in the speaker series that follows Ender... there's really not a military component. Really? And that's always the interesting thing of the branches to descend. Like you can have a military science fiction universe or a book, and then you could take it.
somewhere else and say, okay, we're going to explore a character within this, but they could just be someone in it. You know, like Blade Runner has, there's like this touch in military science fiction, but we never see it. It's there and you can feel it. They did in 2049. So everyone knows this title. I think it's a great book. I think it's a good read. Another one, because it has a movie associated, I think it's a good way to get people engaged. This is my different.
title i read it when i started future stories and i saw the movie of course the movie is of course edge of tomorrow lived i repeat by tom cruise it had a book called all you need is kill fantastic title written it's a japanese author who wrote it, and it was in 2004. It was a light novel, and it had a different life. Originally, sometimes books in the light novel category in Japan can be very disposable. This book became very popular.
It got a manga adaption of it, which I've seen pictures, I've never read it. and then it gets a major Hollywood movie. The book itself is different enough, but the movie kept some of the core concepts because the main character is actually Japanese, which is refreshing that it's not an American character because a lot of the stories we're talking about, they're Americans.
And some of them actually have, like in terms of enlistment, it's America. They have a future America, which is interesting. A lot of times it's a United Planet, but all you need is until it takes place in Japan. Yeah, I was going to mention that one of the interesting things in terms of enlistment is it doesn't start with a united Earth and the forces of Earth. North American. North Americans against the Sino-Russian. Commonwealth. Yeah, the Commonwealth forces. And that was fascinating.
But yeah, like you said, all you need is kill, right, is another thing. And it is set in Japan. There still is the Rita Vertasky character in there. Yes. And I think she is European. Yes, she is. And one of the nods back to that, I always like it when a film adaptation decides to do avert references to things where the main character's name is Cagey in the novel. And then he's Major Cage. Yes. I remember that. I was like, yeah. I really appreciate people that have read it. Yeah.
And it's one of those things where it fits in the perfect pocket of just different enough to really reward reading it after you've seen the movie. And I recommend it in that direction. I almost always do just because that's the way to enjoy the movie. And then you can go and read the book.
Yeah, because like you said earlier in our previous discussion, you're reading The Hunt for October. And then it has, of course, a very iconic movie to it. And when you get this part and parcel and you see, hey, it's like... We're going to talk about this title later, but there's been a major military science fiction book as themes that's been turned into a two-part movie. And for us that are lovers of that, you get to see like, oh, this is what we didn't get to see.
I know the story behind that character and what they said, and you can kind of nod to yourself. All you need is kill as a fan. It's just a solid title that was from a different perspective. And it gave me, I really do like the movie immensely, but I also really love the book. And I think it was the best outcome of both. And it's a cool title.
And this is a movie that to its credit does not get rid of the battle armor. It's just, it's a slightly different thing. Like I like the fact that it's kind of practical. But I loved in the book that it talked about how essentially. You would have to train for years with this, with what they call it, skin? Yes. The skin? Yeah. In order to make it so that if you turned off all the governors on it, that you wouldn't accidentally snap your own spine.
Exactly. And I think that's one of the things when you get into the crunchy bits of technology. It's kind of like when you think about piloting Mecha, and then they came out with that video game one in 2002, Steel Brigade.
you know, for the original Xbox and ate up half the thing. I always wanted that, but how all the buttons and imagine me, like when I would see the art for battle tech and I'd be like, I want to pilot a Mac. And then you're like, Oh no, I would probably fall over like Rick Hunter did in Robotech. Um, so for me,
I think it's great when authors include those crunchy bits of technology. And I think the thing about putting power armored in movies is like putting Mecca. It becomes robot jock. It becomes extremely expensive. those suits were the best they could do you know it's like a starship troopers they weren't they couldn't afford to put those the suits in yeah even if it was because
You know, there's a whole story about that. Well, the biggest problem with powered armor, especially something like the way they describe the suits as being a complete bubble around the person, right, is now you can't show the handsome face of Tom Cruise and the beautiful face of Emily Blunt, right? Yes. And so you're just not going to do it. Hmm.
Exactly. That's a really good point. And then you get these really strange shots of people just grimacing in the camera as the suit gets battered around. The Iron Man kind of camera. Oh, there you go. The Iron Man camera. Beautiful catch. Exactly. And you have actors that are there to sell performances.
And sometimes when you put people in armor, you take away the humanity and you can tell that story, but sometimes you need to put the human back in the armor. And of course, then you can ruin it by showing Master Chief's face, but we won't get to that. Canonically, he has no face. He has no face.
Gordon Freeman does not talk and Master Chief does not have a face. Oh, but I do love Freeman's mind. Oh, God. I love that. I love those. Oh, my God. Okay. So I think we've covered kind of some of the basics. I think those are some great recommendations. I'm looking forward to picking up a couple of those that I haven't gotten to yet. But let's start moving into some more advanced stuff. Oh, here's where the fun begins. Yes. So when you have explored military science fiction...
And you think, okay, I want to be challenged a little bit. I want to see something different. I want to explore something different. This is where we're going to get into some different recommendations. And they are going to be on some of the different kind of different books. And we're going to start with my strangest recommendation. But it is something I love so much that I consider this copy one of my...
Best thing is my library, my military science fiction library. And that is Aliens, the Colonial Marine Technical Manual from 1996. Nice. Written by Lee Brincom Wood. Oh, my God. I don't even know how to put this into words. It's a masterwork. Because, okay, so you're thinking, okay, William, you're recommending a technical manual, right? I'm not Scotty from Enterprise. I'm not going to sit and read it. Because it's a story in there.
If you've ever wondered about the Aliens universe, because James Cameron created such a beautiful, just fascinating, compelling world with the colonial marines, I wanted to know everything about what they had. I want to know about the dropships. I want to know about the M557 APC. I want to know about the M41A false rifle. I devoured that as a kid.
When I saw this in 1996 at a Barnes & Noble in Wichita, Kansas, I pulled the thing out of the shelf so fast and flipped through it. I laid down my $25 faster than one of the gunslingers out of Tombstone. I saw this and think, this is what I've wanted ever since I watched the movie on CBS in 1988. I could not wait. This is my favorite movie. In fact, right above me is my original Aliens poster. Nice. Nice. It's still canceled.
One, not the one they actually released. And this book has everything. It has every single piece of technology that's in the movie. It explains what the world is. And it does it in a way that honors every little piece. And you're like, yes. this is the way it really is. It's canon. And they did take some from a miniature game that was released years ago. Some of the material does come from that. And I think he must have gotten permission for it.
It has quotes from soldiers. It has little lines of dialogue. It talks about stories about battles and enemies you never saw in the series. But it's there. And you're like, I want to read more about that. And to me, that's what advanced reading does. It says, I am now really curious.
I want to know more. And this technical manual, they reissued it recently and I only, you know, I bought the original 96. I cannot recommend enough for any aliens fans, any creators of military science fiction. This is your Bible. This is what you read.
Have you, have you been able to take a look at it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I picked it up a number of weeks ago and I just, I recently last month, the sort of the middle of last month, I posted an episode just talking about aliens with, with my sister and a couple other people just because we love that movie so much. And, uh, And it's funny because on that episode, I talked about the cryosleep stuff or the hypersleep thing. And I had a question about-
How does all this work with how fast do the ships go and that kind of stuff? And I made a guess, which was pretty accurate. Because there's the whole section on the Sulaco in the technical manual. And I read about it and about the reverse relativity that happens. And I was pretty close to write. And I hadn't read that yet. So I was, I was pretty impressed with myself, but yeah, I mean.
There's parts of it where if you don't want to read about the excruciating detail about the armament and defensive capabilities of the dropships, then maybe it's not your thing. But it is definitely worth it for... The little asides throughout that are talking about, oh, there was a rumor that some people went out to this planet and something bad happened. And then there's a whole congressional subcommittee. Yes.
report about what happened on lv-426 and uh in in aliens and that's really really cool it's really cool and it's so well written that to me it's like it's like a dream i don't it's almost too good for us to have yeah it's good stuff Really good stuff. To me, I will compare it, if any Star Trek fans are listening to Trekkies out there, it's comparable to me to the 1990s Guide to the Enterprise-D. Yeah, I had that one as well when I was a kid.
Oh, oh my God. I love that. That thing is loving, loving. They're both very loving and they do it in a way that people should look at this and go, this is how it's done. This is the way to do technical manuals. But it's a really weird recommendation, but I've read it cover to cover. Yeah, me too. Yep. And I love that you have picked it up and read it. So let's talk about another Aliens title because who doesn't love... I mean, I love talking about Aliens. This is...
It was published kind of as a graphic novel, but it really isn't. I kind of flipped through it today. I actually dug it out. Yeah, it's more like a novella. It is a novella. Or a novelette even, maybe. Yeah, it is Aliens Tribe from 1992. And this is... This is something special in the aliens universe because they have, we alien fans have been through a lot. We all have shared trauma, but I want to go back to a time.
When Aliens came out, there was a gap between it and Alien 3, which I saw in the theater and cried. Not because Ripley died, because spoilers, Ripley dies. But also because they had taken away Hicks from me. They took away Newt. So Dark Horse gets the license before this, prints out a black and white comic, six issues. I bought it at the time. I was in grade school and it was intoxicating. Then they put a color.
version out. There was airbrushed, and it's phenomenal. This is an adaptation of Aliens? No, these are just- What happens after Alien? Gotcha. Okay. Sorry, I should have prefaced that more. So Dark Horse gets the license. They decide what happens after Alien. What happens to Newt? What happens to Hicks? So they said it about 15 years. Newt's 18, 19, 20, somewhere around there. What happens to Hicks?
They put out these two comics in the 90s, I think, in the late 80s, early 90s, and eventually they do Earth War. So they kind of tell a story about... about what happened to these characters and pick up the story. And it is so phenomenally great that I thought, oh, Alien 3 is going to be this story. No, it's not. It's not. It's not. The cake is a lie, and that guy will ruin it for me. But what I took solace in was these...
the Star Wars comics, which they didn't do what other comics do. They were like, okay, we got to adjust all this to Alien 3. They didn't do that. They just quit talking about Ripley. But Alien Tribe comes out in 92. It tells a story that should have been a movie. It still should be a movie. It's so written. It haunted me the first time I read it as a kid. No, as a teenager when I read this. It haunted me. I still think about it.
Is it the fact that you get inside the aliens' heads a little bit? You get inside the aliens' heads. The team members that are comprised – because what – let me kind of set this up. So it's about a medical station. And this medical station has an outbreak because it's aliens in the universe, right? This happens throughout. So the Colonial Marines had a special team in that's going to sanitize. It reminds me a little bit of the plot of the xenophobe video game from 1987.
my favorite arcade game. It reminds me a little bit of that, but they go in and these characters occupy how they can eliminate the alien threat, the connections to the characters, and they're all flawed. They're all beautiful. They're all flawed. And it tells the aliens, especially the character of Rat and the Bort and the rest of them. And the first time I read it, I was like, this book horrified me. I want to read it again. Yeah.
But it is the work in Aliens that is so special and so unique. I could not believe that it's never been turned to anything because it's that good. Yeah, I thought it was terrific. I picked it up along with the technical manual and lent it to a buddy of mine. Because it does have that, I think it's probably, if you looked at the word count, it's probably like novelette. Yeah.
I mean, longer than short story, much shorter than a book. And then, but there's these full color, just great dark horse comics kind of art in it that, that makes it worth it for David Dorman to the art. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. They won a Bram Stoker Award for it. To anyone listening, this is the thing that you've always wanted from Alien Years. It almost verches into cosmic horror a little bit, but it's everything you've ever wanted.
And to me, it's one of the most special things ever put out in the Aliens universe. And it's the only thing in the Aliens universe ever won a Bram Stoker award. I don't know how much it is now. I really don't. I haven't priced it. I bought it. Originally, there's a limited edition I want to get my hands on.
But it's probably pretty expensive. When you first started introducing the technical manual and you were talking about something, a prized thing in your possession, I thought you were going to talk about World War Robot. Oh, my God. World War Robot. Oh, my God. Yeah, I bought that because that's another thing that I don't quite know how to explain it to anyone. It's that thing, it's like you have to know a thing to understand a thing. Not to be very doon about it.
I picked up a robot and I wanted to know more. And of course, it's basically told through the backstory of figures, very expensive figures. And the guy, Ashley, Ashley, this is his name. I have it somewhere. And I was like, oh my God, what is this? An art book with a pulse with, you can smell the metal and blood in those pages. Yeah.
So do you own it or have you flipped through it? I flipped through it. I got it through interlibrary loan, I think. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, it's like a big portfolio of art about a robot war. And Mars on Luna. Yeah. It's really, really high quality.
Oh. Artwork, right? And then just a little bit of text. Yeah. You know, the character of Noam De Plume. And I ended up looking at his like 3A, I think is the name of the company. I ended up looking up a lot of the stuff they did. And I'm like, why has this never been turned into anything? It was going to be turned into...
a movie or TV series that never got off the ground. And I don't know why. And it's some heartbreaking stuff on there. It's, it's, it just, it's, it's, it teases you what you want to know. It just, you know, it says, okay. And he's never done much else with it. But.
Even if you buy the figures and he has little blurbs on his old site where you can pick it up. I always wanted to write a short story in it. I never did it. War of Robots, it's a weird, interesting thing. It's definitely a deep cut military science fiction. Another interesting title, because one thing I think we need to talk about in military science fiction just a bit, talk about context. You have everything before Star Wars, and you have everything after. And because...
So before science fiction, before we get to the Star Wars era, science fiction, especially in the 60s and 70s, gets kind of trippy, kind of different. And you have this time period. And so some of the military science fiction works exist there, especially we're talking about Vietnam. There's a lot of...
What's the right word? It's complex. It's complicated. The relationship. You get Star Wars, like, okay, space war is cool, and it's got lasers. And so military science fiction explodes in the 80s. Then you also get the popularity of war gaming.
And that's kind of the scene I was in as a kid. So you get things like MechWarrior and that kind of thing. And so to me, when we look at titles, a deep cut that's right before Star Wars is written by two of the greatest authors in science fiction, Neville and Purnell. And they wrote a book called The Moat in God's Eye in 1974, which of course is a continuation within his co-dominion universe, if I'm saying it right. And it has a sequel, has two sequels. I've only read The Gripping Hand.
The Moat in God's Eye talks about contact between the second empire of man kind of coming out of a big galactic civil war. It's an interesting military organization that's more kind of like 18th century, 19th century kind of philosophy. They discover this alien race, how that would go down with first contact. And I think Robert Hemelman actually said it's like a really good idea of how it would go down. It's a classic. It is deep.
Very thick book, but I read it in high school and I never, ever forgot it. It's definitely something that has a lot of things in it and it's pre-Star Wars, but it has really nice elements within it. I recommend it, but it's... It's definitely a book more about alien contact with a military organization meeting that contact and how that would go down with a kind of futuristic mankind kind of dealing coming out of wars and that kind of thing.
Okay. That's one that I'm not familiar with. I mean, I recognize the title, but haven't read it. Yes. I fully recommend it. Also, we're going to talk about a book that you have to pick up in the middle of this here. And the second book, I didn't... I didn't start off in the middle. I mean, I didn't start off with the first book. I started off the second, and that is Star Tide Rising of The Uplifter. I think there's six books in it now by David Brin, and it's from 1983.
Fantastic cover art. I know that's kind of a weird thing to say, but it does sell books. And it's the second book of six of the Uplifter trilogy, which the term Uplift has now been throughout. I think there's a little bit of, I think Mass Effect borrowed a little bit. from the Uplift universe, but it's about the Earthship Streaker and the Uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees and the human crew trying to avoid a very large problem on a crashed ship.
and kind of the interrelation between humans in a much bigger universe they stumble across. And it was actually turned into a role-playing game at one point. I recommend the Uplift books. There is actually an Uplift war book. It's not much of a military science fiction book. Star Trek Rising has military characters and military situations, but it's so deep and his universe is fantastic. Anyway, there's a first book, Star... Oh, I can't remember the title.
Sun Diver. I actually read Star Tive Writing first. I bought it in his bookstore, and I actually think... i think it's fine to pick it up there what do you think yeah i i wish i had because i did not enjoy sundiver and and that set me to
I'm not a huge fan of Star Tide Rising. I know a lot of people, it's their favorite. One of these years, I'll revisit it. There were a couple of fantastic scenes in it, but there was something about it that I just bounced off of. And I think it was partially due to not really enjoying Sundiver.
I love the concepts. It's just some of the execution of it. It didn't quite work for me, but I know a lot of people love it. As I said, if you're a great fan of Mass Effect and how deep that universe is... There's touches of shared reality, I think. They're somehow those two connected, especially if you love to listen to the Codex of Mass Effect. Let's talk about a military science fiction book that's enjoying its moment, and I'm very grateful for that.
Because I grew up on the 1984 version of the film with a Harkonnen bikini. That is Dune. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. That is Dune. by the master frank herbert and i've read all six of the original series um i don't really like the books his son has been writing my favorite is god emperor with the fish speakers which are an interesting all-female military but dude is
One of the greatest works of human imagination ever written. And it was a book that got rejected by everyone. I'm very proud owner of several different editions. I actually bought an organ when I was in Ashland once. I bought a autobiography of him. It has some Northwest roots. He does. Tacoma, right? Yeah, Washington, definitely. But I think the book was partially inspired by the Florence sand dunes. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
Everybody knows Doom. We have the 84 Lynch movie, which we could get off on a whole tangent. We have the new movies by Denis Nouveau. Of course, he did Blade Runner 2049. I was super excited to see him take that, and he did a masterful job. Yeah. And you will forever, like this very day, sometimes when I, I'll say Dune, desert planet, because that movie gets in your head. Dune, desert planet. Yes. It is the year 10,191.
Anyway, I grew up with that movie. It was probably wrong with me as an adult, but I like the new version. But the music by Toto is still magical, so fight me on that. You don't have to fight me on Toto. I love Toto. Excellent. So Dune is a military science fiction book intangently. Yeah, I was going to say, when I saw this on the list, I thought... Really? But then I thought, I mean, the Sardaukar and the Fadaikin, these are military units. They are military units.
It is one of the more interesting and imaginative ways that space combat could go down, especially with the Spacing Guild. And the current movie does a really interesting job of showing how alien that world could be. It's not exactly the way it's projected in the book. It's better than the 84 version, except that it's got... Patrick Stewart with a pug and a gun screaming for the Duke. Yes. Anyway, sorry. That's epic. I'm like, I shall follow you.
But, you know, and the fact there's knife combat, the fact that the shields work, but if you shoot a, you know, a lasgun into him, that can cause an atomic explosion. And I was like, it's not military sanction. science fiction, but it is. And the later books are really not, but they kind of are. So it's a really different deep cut. I think it's an interesting way to explore a military organization within a very, very unique universe. I mean, there's Tolkien and then there's...
You know, Herbert, I mean, that's basically the two best works of human imagination ever done. I cannot imagine what went on in his head. And if you love Herbert, the rest of his books are awesome. The whipping star, the whip. Star Whipping Star is really good. I've never read any of his other stuff. Or the rest of the Dune series. I'm going to read Dune Messiah before the third movie comes out. Do that.
A Children Dude is really boring. God Emperor is my favorite. I've heard a lot of people say that God Emperor is great. It's just some homework to do to get there. Chapter House is really fascinating. Of course, he was going to write a seventh book. His son took the notes. If you want to complete it.
Let's talk about an author I met. And this is an interesting book because we talk about the children of the original three, right? We talk about children of Starship Troopers. Well, then we get a direct child. That's Armor by John Stakely. Good one. Now I met him by accident. He was at DFW con and I ran into him, not knowing exactly who he was. We started talking. Now this was well before future war stories. If I had known what I had a rare opportunity to meet this man.
I would love to pick his brain. He was always going to do a sequel. He never did a sequel to this book. The reason it's in here is because he wanted to see more action of the war against the bugs in Starship Troopers. So he writes this book. The book's from 84. The first of it is a powerhouse. It's visceral. And there's armor. There's these guns called the Blazers. There's these ant-like creatures they fight.
Oh my God. The first part of this book is everything you ever want to see in search of troopers. And he writes it so incredibly well, and it's just visceral combat. Yeah. And then it switches to a story about space pirate in the middle of it.
It's like a, it's like a thud. You get like a different book. Yeah. I kept wondering, is this going to connect back in? I could pick up a different book. What's going on here? Did a book get mixed in? I don't know how, I don't know how it got sold to an editor and DAW publishing is really great. on how they ever got this book past an editor and being like, dude.
I was curious if it was a fix-up of like three novellas. Not according to what I read. I think he just – because it comes back. It does. It does. And for anyone that's reading it, hang in there. But it really should have been two different books. I agree with you. I thought, did he need to fill a commitment? Hey, I got 200 more pages on a space pirate. Throw that in. The space pirate's interesting. He's not Captain Harlock or anything. He's not Jack Sparrow, but it is fairly interesting.
But armor is only, I put it on my more advanced list because why it does have some really great combat and it's pretty easy. It is that middle part that's really hard. So I think it's a good book, but I definitely think it's not really a great beginning title.
I really like him. I like the way he writes. I wish he had done more and he was going to write a sequel, but unfortunately we lost him. And he's from my area of the world. He's, you know, he's from here. He's from DFW Metropolis. Yeah. I really enjoyed that. And to me, like. When I was talking about the...
Marco Close title being just sort of like the standard basics of what I want from military science fiction without a lot deeper. This one, ARMA really did have more of that layer to it where it talked about combat fatigue and it talked about like... celebrity soldiers. It was much more visceral, much more connected to the psyche of the soldier. Exactly.
Him getting into, I think he called himself the engine when he gets ready for battle. He flips the switch. You don't know much about the world they live in. From what I remember, I remember I read this book, Poolside, at one point when I first started Future War Stories. And I remember going, my God, this is kind of the book you want Starship Troopers to be. And it's the way one person described it to me. I fully recommend it. It's a really good book.
has amazing cover art, actually. I've seen a couple different covers, and they're both great. You're like, wow. The Forever War cover art can be really weird, depending on what year. But yeah, that's kind of, I have some other, like I always recommend one weird title. I'm just going to put a quick shout out to is the ghost in the shell graphic novel. If you like, if you like the, the 1995 movie.
But they have a really interesting different take on military science fiction in terms of combat and cyber. Dark Horse did publish it. It's by Shiro, of course, who did Appleseed. Big fan. It's a graphic novel, but it's... and he's got a lot of technical aspect, and he's a really learned man. He did a lot of great work, and I recommend it. It's a good read. It was put out by Dark Horse and Combined. That's my other deep cut. It's a graphic novel. It's a real one.
But I think it's an interesting take on kind of the cyberpunk military science fiction because you will get them intersecting at different points. And no one I think has ever done as well as he does. Okay. But anyway, that's my last one on that. Nice, nice. I know that you had at some point mentioned the Honor Harrington series, but I think you hadn't read any of those. I have not. Yeah. I've read two or three of them, and that's in the future Earth, future Empire.
Manticorian Empire. And it's set in the Navy. So it's ships and space battle. They're well done. If you like that kind of thing where you want to have exciting space battles. You've got it. Just don't get attached to any of the characters because David Webber does not mind peeling them off. No. The other thing I wanted to mention was the Vorkosigan saga where Miles Vorkosigan is in the military and then in a brand of mercenaries.
And so there are military aspects to a lot of the books, but that series is very varied where one book will be just like, this is a romance, you know, and other ones are much more, you know, about. fighting and combat and things. Yeah, I think it's always interesting to have a series of books like that. The Honor Harrington series is probably my scarlet letter of being a military science fiction researcher, for lack of a better term, of what I am. And I've never read them.
But I will say this. If I'm ever in Japan, I'm buying all the Honor Harrington covers are awesome in Japan. And the Foreverware cover art in Japan is amazing. Okay. Google it, look at it. The cover art in Japan for The Forever War is, I want to own a copy of it just to have it in my collection. But the Honor Harrington series, I keep thinking it's going to be, eventually one day it's going to be a Netflix series or something.
And it has, there's an anime that's Heroes of the Galactic Legend, or there's an anime series. Oh, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. That's it. I read one of those this year. Yeah. And it kind of reminds me, I don't know why I've honored Harriet when I've ever looked at it. I was like, huh, that. So that's a series I think anyone – it's obviously an iconic series. I don't even know if it's still ongoing. Yeah, I don't know either. There's a lot of books in it.
A lot of books. It's published by one of the bigger military science fiction publishers. And it's a book series that you can go into the Barnes & Noble or anywhere else, pick up a copy of the first one and get into it. I know people love it.
I know people that don't, but it's a series I need to read. Perfect. So I guess that's a wrap on advanced military science fiction. And I will invite listeners. I'm sure there's somebody out there who's screaming at the player that we missed their favorite title. Absolutely. Lay it on us in the comments or on social media because I'm sure that...
William would like to hear of anything he doesn't know about, and I certainly would too, because I've already gotten a couple of recommendations here for further reading. But it's really fascinating how military science fiction can really talk about.
present. And it's just what science fiction does, right? Like you were talking about Battlestar Galactica, the reboot. And I was talking to a friend of mine who's not a big fan of reboots of things, especially things that he likes. And I'm like, yeah, but... Like they used that show to talk about 9-11 and to talk about like post 9-11.
politics and and insurgencies and suicide bombings and stuff and like that's not something you ever would have done in the original and um nope and so not even close yeah the the situation in the world changes and then the military science fiction changes with it although
you still get stuff that's more standard that you would have expected that you could have been written in the 60s, but we're writing it now and it's still entertaining. Yeah. And I think Amazon, if you look at Amazon titles for people writing eBooks, you will see just how popular military science fiction is. And it'd be impossible to do a deep dive on that. And that's been one area I think that really has been revolutionized by the digital publishing.
revolution to me. I think it's one of the genres that really exploded. But you're right. I think that Battlestar Galactica is a good example of how, before we talk about Star Trek covering social issues in a science fiction setting, and they've been doing that since 1966.
But Battlestar Galactica comes along and allowed people to grieve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people to grieve. I know I processed. I still remember the first night. I remember when the colonies fell and watching that on NBC when they aired it.
uh because i didn't have cable at the time oh it's a chance yeah it was it was and then i'll never forget when they're leaving so those people behind that their ships can't jump and then they're begging and screaming to them i was like ronald moore does not take it easy on anyone
And they had to reign him in a lot of times in Star Trek. He wanted to make the Dominion War much darker, and they wouldn't let him. So what did he do? He did Battlestar. I encourage everyone, reading is such a pleasure, and I encourage everyone to pick up a book. or download a book and read something that you're going to get lost in and military science fiction is a great place to to experience that and i've had a lot of joy in my life reading these stories and i'm i feel
very humbled by some of the creators that have lent their imaginations and ideas to us. There's some phenomenal works within this that may think, oh, it's just, you know, killing bugs and off world planets. It can be so much more. I've cried and I've laughed in some of these pages. So I really encourage everyone.
to explore the realm. Yeah, yeah. Well, cool. William, thank you so much for doing this. And where can people find you? So Future War Stories can be Googled and Future War Stories is on Blogger. At the moment, it does not have any. I deleted all my social media quite recently, so it does not exist anywhere else. But it is on Blogger, and it is Future More Stories. Drop by, make a comment, and...
You know, give me something else to research. I always love it. And just respond back and say, hey, have you thought about this? I have some wonderful commenters that give me pathways to research. So please drop by and enjoy.
Awesome. And if you ever get the podcast off the ground, I'll have to have you back on to talk about it. Yes, I'm still trying to come up with a snappy title for that. I'll think about it. I'm pretty good at those. Yes. All right. Thanks so much. And I'm sure we'll talk again. All right. Indeed. Anytime. Bye now. Folks, I hope you enjoyed that discussion with William about military science fiction. It's a fascinating...
genre and much deeper than I think a lot of people think if they think I don't like that genre. There's a lot of variety in it. So I highly encourage you to check out a couple of the recommendations. And like I said, I hope you enjoyed the discussion. Definitely check out William's page. future war stories. I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
As usual, you can support the podcast. One of the simple things you can do is share it on social media. And I want to put a particular plea out here for folks to follow me over on Blue Sky. Look in the show notes for a link to my Blue Sky account. For some reason, I registered in my name.
instead of Hugo's podcast. And so I figure people might have a hard time finding me. And when I say my name, I mean, it's S Heasley. So it looks like Sheasley. So that's what you want to look for on Blue Sky. So if you're over there following me, go ahead and repost the episode. that'll help it get out to your circle as well. And then if you don't already follow me there, follow me and I'll follow you back. I'm trying to...
to kind of build that following there because Twitter is, you know, in the process of self-destructing. And I think it was up to about a thousand followers over there and I'd love to see the follower count. grow on Blue Sky, just so that I know I can kind of get the content out to people who are interested in it. And the numbers have been coming up in recent days, just because of the exodus of Twitter.
So yeah, if you do that, that'd be great. And of course, if you want to buy me a coffee, you can do that. The link's in the show notes. If you want to sign up on Patreon, you can do that link also in the show notes.
Other than that, thank you so much for listening. This has been, I think, a good year for the podcast in 2024. I'm looking forward to next year as well, because, of course, this episode's coming out in December. So this is the last you'll hear from me this year, unless I do a sudden surprise or you listen to Take Me to Your Reader.
Then you'll hear from me again. All right. Thanks so much, everybody, for listening. I'll talk to you next time. Bye. The theme music for the Hugo's There podcast was composed and performed by Tim Kusky.