General Military Science Fiction Anthologies

[Timerover51]

Just curious. Does anyone who reads military science fiction read a lot of actual military history, including but not limited to personal accounts?

 

[Supplement Four]

Just curious. Does anyone who reads military science fiction read a lot of actual military history, including but not limited to personal accounts?

Some. I read military fiction, too. Earlier this year, I read John M. Del Vecchio's Thirteenth Valley.

I thought it was good, and it could have been great. But, it was way too long and got repetitive. Plus, the author had a political axe to grind, which irritated me.

 

[aramis]

Just curious. Does anyone who reads military science fiction read a lot of actual military history, including but not limited to personal accounts?

Not much since my MAED program. In my undergrad, my senior thesis was on Trotski & his return to Tsarist military models for the Red Army.

Most of my real life accounts I've encountered were oral; I wish I'd taped Ed's memoirs. (WW2 Polish Air Force vet) and Ted's (LTC Theodore Heller USAAF/USAF) various recollections.

 

[Putraack]

I'll say none of the above.

The only two mil-scifi anthologies that I can recall reading are:

1. some of the Honor Harringtons-- I think there are 4 books in the Honorverse that are all short stories by different authors, as well as 3 subseries written or co-written by other authors. I've liked just about all of them.

2. "There will be war"-- something like 12 volumes that I collected when I was in college and just after. Some of the CoDominion and Slammers stories appeared in them.

Like most anthologies, they could be hit or miss whether I liked them.

On the other question, I read a lot more military history than I do sci-fi or mil-scifi, but not many of them are personal accounts.

 

[whartung]

On the other question, I read a lot more military history than I do sci-fi or mil-scifi, but not many of them are personal accounts.

That's kind of why, to me, history is less interesting than fiction.

History tends to be about events and the people involved in contrast to fiction which is about people and the events involved.

Certainly not a universal truth, but characterization is very important (to me as a consumer) as much as the environment they are placed in.

 

[Timerover51]

That's kind of why, to me, history is less interesting than fiction.

History tends to be about events and the people involved in contrast to fiction which is about people and the events involved.

Those who do not study history are doomed to make the same mistakes.

Certainly not a universal truth, but characterization is very important (to me as a consumer) as much as the environment they are placed in.

The following comes from some military history, which can be found online.

I recall distinctly the sad, solemn feeling produced by seeing the ambulances brought up to the front; it was entirely too suggestive. Soon we reached the woods and were ascending the hill along a little ravine, for a position, when a solid shot broke the trunnions of one of the guns, thus disabling it; then another, nearly spent, struck a tree about half-way up and fell nearby. Just after we got to the top of the hill, and within fifty or one hundred yards of the position we were to take, a shell struck the off-wheel horse of my gun and burst. The horse was torn to pieces, and the pieces thrown in every direction. The saddle-horse was also horribly mangled, the driver's leg was cut off, as was also the foot of a man who was walking alongside. Both men died that night. A white horse working in the lead looked more like a bay after the catastrophe. To one who had been in the army but five days, and but five minutes under fire, this seemed an awful introduction.

From: The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson, by Edward A. Moore at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22067

This battle of Olustee was a very severe fight, and a bloody one, in which the Federals under General Seymour were routed by the Confederates under Gen. Pat. Finnigan and Gen. A. H. Colquitt. In this battle the Federal loss was about 1,900 men and the Confederate about 1,000. The obstinacy of the struggle may be appreciated when it is observed that, out of the total of 11,000 men engaged, the casualties amounted to 2,900, nearly 27 per cent. As I have said, our battery reached the scene after the battle, so we made no stay near Olustee, but retired to Madison. The wounded were all cared for at the wayside hospitals, and the dead white men of both sides buried; but the dead negroes were left where they fell. There had been several regiments of negroes in the Federal force, who as usual had been put into the front lines, and thus received the full effect of the Confederate fire. The field was dotted everywhere with dead negroes, who with the dead horses here and there soon created an intolerable stench, perceptible for half a mile or more. The hogs which roamed at large over the country were soon attracted to the spot and tore many of the bodies to pieces, feeding upon them. This field of death, enlivened by numbers of hogs grunting and squealing over their hideous meal, was one of the most repulsive sights I ever saw.

From: Life in the Confederate Army, by Arthur Peronneau Ford and Marion Johnstone Ford, located at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37112

People have often asked me how it was that I, an Australian, came to take a part in the defence of the Ottoman Empire, and to serve as a military surgeon under the Red Crescent, which, as every one knows, is the Turkish equivalent of the Red Cross of the Geneva Convention. Red Cross and Red Crescent are alike the symbols of a humanitarian spirit, in which philosophers and students of ethics profess to see the small beginnings of a future age of universal peace; but as for me, I have seen how Cossacks and Circassians fight, and I cannot help regarding the future prophesied by the philosopher as an impossible dream. When one has seen a soldier of a civilized force sawing off the head of a wounded but still living enemy with the edge of his sword-bayonet, it requires an unusually optimistic nature to believe in the abolition of war and a perpetual comity of nations.

From: Under the Red Crescent, by Charles S. Ryan, located at
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42202

It was the day after Tung-Chow had been occupied by the Allies. I was riding along a sunken road between the city wall and some high ground on which houses were built. There was a sheer drop of considerable height between the walls of the houses and the stony road below. The shouts of Russians mingling with screams could be heard proceeding from the houses. At the base of the cliff two Chinese girls were lying. Their legs were bundled under them in a way that showed they had jumped from the height above. From their richly embroidered silken tunics and trousers, their elaborate coiffure, and their compressed feet, they were evidently ladies. They were moaning piteously, and one of them appeared to be on the point of death. Their legs or hips had apparently been broken, or dislocated, by their jump. As I went towards them, the one who appeared least injured shrank from me with an expression of loathing and horror until I offered her a drink out of my water-bottle. Her delicate, childish little hand trembled violently on mine as she drank eagerly from it. The other was almost too far gone to swallow. The hoarse cries of the soldiers, mingled occasionally with a sobbing scream, came from the houses above, telling what they had tried so desperately to escape from. They lay there helpless, evidently in excruciating pain, under a brazen sun that beat down on the deserted dusty road. There was no one within reach to come to their assistance. And there was nothing for it but to leave them there, as many under similar circumstances had had to be left during our previous march of several days. This scene was typical rather than singular. In a large number of Chinese houses in the villages we passed through on our way up, at Tung-Chow, and in Pekin itself, it was no unusual sight to see an entire family lying dead side by side on the Kang, where they had suffocated themselves, or to see them suspended from the rafters of their houses, where they had committed suicide by hanging.

In the burden of corpses which the river Pei-ho carried downwards from Pekin towards the sea were to be seen the bodies of many Chinese girls and women. One day I myself counted five. There is no question whatever that they had committed suicide. And close to Tung-Chow girls were actually seen walking into the shallow water and deliberately holding their heads under the surface till they were drowned. Such a tale seems very terrible. But to any one who had the opportunity of judging of the conduct of portions of the Allied troops it was not in the least surprising. Under similar circumstances our sisters and wives would have done likewise.

The Russians and French carried off the palm for outrages on women during the original march, and subsequently the Germans similarly distinguished themselves. This was more particularly the case with small bodies of men who were detached from the main force. In a village on the way to Paoting-fu, for instance, through which a body of Germans had just passed, three girls were taken by our troops out of a well, into which they had been thrown before the Germans left. They were still alive. This method of disposing of their victims was frequently adopted by the soldiers as the safest way of hiding their misdeeds and escaping the consequences.

From: Impressions of a War Correspondent by George Lynch, located at
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21661

 

[JimMarn]

I read military history for a few decades before I read military science fiction. I was born not long after WW2 ended. My relatives refused to talk about it, wanting it to fade away.

So as I approached my teen years, I started using part of my allowance to purchase military history. My first significant purchase was the paperback condensed version of the 'Official History of the U.S. Navy in World War 2' by Admiral Samuel E. Morison. A few years ago I spotted the hard backs on sale and bought all of them.

Finding out anything on the 202nd Castal Artilery in the Phillipines for 1940 through 1942 hasn't been easy. That was my first dad's unit. 37mm anti-aircraft.

 

[KyleLittle]

I am on a Napoleonic kick right now, just finished 1805: Austerlitz by Robert Goetz and am almost finished Soldier of Destiny, vol 1 of the latest biography of everyone's favorite Gunner, by Michael Broers.

 

[jec10]

Sven Hassel. Legion of the Damned series.

 

[whartung]

Those who do not study history are doomed to make the same mistakes.

Good thing I'm not a war planner, a legislator, or an advisor to a legislator.

Now, if you'd care to discuss good and bad decisions in information system design, something I'm more intimate with, then, you know, we can go there.

I recall distinctly the sad, solemn feeling produced by seeing the ambulances brought up to the front...

This passage says nothing about the author beyond "he was there".

This battle of Olustee was a very severe fight, and a bloody one, in which the Federals under General Seymour were routed by the Confederates under Gen. Pat. Finnigan and Gen. A. H. Colquitt....

Neither does this. It does not (in this instance) talk about the character of the Confederates, Gen. Finnigan, nor Gen. Colquitt. We know "nothing" about these people save that they appear to care for the wounded.

People have often asked me how it was that I, an Australian...

This one at least gets a glimpse of what was in this guys head.

It was the day after Tung-Chow had been occupied by the Allies.

Similarly here. Mostly a sterile accounting of a gruesome event, but we learn is that the writer supports the decision of this women who committed suicide.

As I said, most fiction is characters and the events that surround them vs history which is the events and characters that surround them.

What was inside Colonel Chamberlain that made him order the charge down Little Round Top? Where did that come from? Because the fact that he was there, at the end of line, that day in the summer, is almost completely out of his hands. It wasn't his choice to be there. What drove the decision to put him there? He was handy? His men were rested? His commanders had a particular respect for his leadership because of his past actions? What was his wife's name? How did they meet? What was he looking forward to after the war? Did he even think that far ahead? Or was he so numb to the overall situation, so fatigued that he just felt dead already and any time above ground was bonus time.

It's fair to argue that Little Round Top would not have gone the way it did if he weren't there.

And if you look at the movie "Gettysburg", roughly 1/3rd of the 3 hour movie is dedicated to Chamberlain, LRT, and the 20th Maine.

 

[BlackBat242]

And if you look at the movie "Gettysburg", roughly 1/3rd of the 3 hour movie is dedicated to Chamberlain, LRT, and the 20th Maine.

And rightly so, as his actions, despite the small size of his unit, truly determined that the Confederates would not win that day.

 

[kilemall]

On the issue of RL history vs. SciFi-


I see less daylight between the two then apparently many do here. To me they are both 'literatures about consequences of the interaction between deciders and large aspects of their environment' and that has a lot to do with their attraction to me.

 

[jawillroy]

I liked Drake well enough in my late teens - but within a few years the whole genre of military Sci Fi went cold for me. I like Pournelle's work with Niven on the Mote books.

 

[Ex_Pendable]

I hovered between Hammer's Slammers and Falkenberg's Legions as I found them both enjoyable reads.

I much prefer though Robert Frezza's A Small Colonial War as it talks about troops being moved around an empire, and while mostly centered on the land troops, you see some of the politics and the use of orbital assets.

David Drake and S.M. Stirling's The Raj Whitehall Series gives you a different perspective of different planets crawling out of the isolation and beginning to rebuild their civilizations to the point they can reach out again. More slug throwers than lasers and plasma cannons. Lot of politics but good fighting scenes.

Little surprised to see none of Bujold's books made the cut?

 

[Hemdian]

Little surprised to see none of Bujold's books made the cut?

I think Mil SF, as a subgenre, is currently more restrictive than just military characters in a SF setting. As such, few, if any, of the Vorkosigian books (all of which I love) would be classified as such.

I know Amazon is *not* the final arbiter of such things but I just looked up Warriors Apprentice on Amazon and none of the three categories chosen for it were Military SF.

 

[Timerover51]

What was inside Colonel Chamberlain that made him order the charge down Little Round Top? Where did that come from? Because the fact that he was there, at the end of line, that day in the summer, is almost completely out of his hands. It wasn't his choice to be there. What drove the decision to put him there? He was handy? His men were rested? His commanders had a particular respect for his leadership because of his past actions? What was his wife's name? How did they meet? What was he looking forward to after the war? Did he even think that far ahead? Or was he so numb to the overall situation, so fatigued that he just felt dead already and any time above ground was bonus time.

It's fair to argue that Little Round Top would not have gone the way it did if he weren't there.

And if you look at the movie "Gettysburg", roughly 1/3rd of the 3 hour movie is dedicated to Chamberlain, LRT, and the 20th Maine.

You can find Chamberlain's After Action Report here, and download it for reading.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16040coll3/id/208/rec/5

As for the other examples that I posted, it was more to show what was in Real World Military History that does not appear in military science fiction. If you want to find out what was in the heads of the people involved, I would suggest you read their stories.

U.S. Grant's Personal Memoirs are available online and make quite interesting reading. Quite a few of the Civil War commanders wrote their memoirs after the war, each representing his own viewpoint. That held true for a lot of the lower-ranking soldiers as well. You might also want to read Audie Murphy's To Hell and Back for a World War 2 account, or track down a copy of 100 Best True Stories of World War 2.

 

[Timerover51]

I posted something in the Some Interesting Military Data thread under the Lone Star, post 732, on what war correspondent Robert Sherrod was thinking the evening of the first day of the invasion of Tarawa. If you want to get inside of someone head in the middle of combat, Sherrod's account is pretty hard to beat.

And you can download it at archive.org for free. I would recommend those interested to check it out. Hopefully, you will have a strong stomach, because what is described is not fiction, but cold hard fact.

 

[JimMarn]

I searched archive.org, I'll read what you posted about.

 

[Enoki]

I posted something in the Some Interesting Military Data thread under the Lone Star, post 732, on what war correspondent Robert Sherrod was thinking the evening of the first day of the invasion of Tarawa. If you want to get inside of someone head in the middle of combat, Sherrod's account is pretty hard to beat.

And you can download it at archive.org for free. I would recommend those interested to check it out. Hopefully, you will have a strong stomach, because what is described is not fiction, but cold hard fact.

What's more interesting about Tarawa in terms of Traveller is how the US set up that invasion. If you think of each atoll as a system, with the islands as planets, you get a picture very similar to what such an invasion would take in terms of the game.

The US started by taking the Solomon Islands. Guadalcanal, Rennel, Russell, and Tulagi islands became a huge forward depot to supply the next movement forward.
The next movement was to take unoccupied Funafuti atoll. The Japanese didn't even realize the US had moved in for well over a year.

The US then launched air strikes (think sending in ships on a single jump in then jumping back out after a brief fight) against Betio island (Tarawa atoll) reducing its air defenses to nothing (destroying all the local defense ships and SDBs).

At the same time, the US turned Funafuti into a fully functioning naval base capable of supporting 100 + ships. Refueling by tanker was done by the equivalent of having these outside the enemy system but close enough that in a couple of days travel a ship could refuel form one whenever they needed (say something like having tankers in the Oort cloud or on the edge of the system).
The tankers would rotate in and out as needed, or would be resupplied by other commercial tankers coming forward to refill them.

In this way the US could put a huge naval task force off Betio / Tarawa and keep it there indefinitely for all intents. When Tarawa fell, the US moved forward to find another relatively undefended atoll that would make a good harbor and repeated the process.

 

[Timerover51]

\
In this way the US could put a huge naval task force off Betio / Tarawa and keep it there indefinitely for all intents. When Tarawa fell, the US moved forward to find another relatively undefended atoll that would make a good harbor and repeated the process.

Tarawa was a "relatively undefended atoll"? The 2nd Marine Division took 3407 casualties in 76 hours, while killing about 5000 Japanese.

At the same time the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Division was attacking Makin Atoll. Makin was relatively undefended, Tarawa was not, as Tarawa was large enough to hold an airfield, Makin was not.