As the post-World War Two ere gave way to the Cold War, military science fiction continued to ramp up. While it would be simplistic to say that the military science fiction of those decades was all about the Cold War, all novels are the products of their times. Science fiction is no different; SF novels are about their presents, not (despite the Gernsback Delusion) educating the public or predicting the future.
The Cold War pitted the United States and its allies against the Soviet Union and its allies, two empires that did not dare to go to war directly against one another, and so carried out war by other means. Those sometimes included proxy wars, such as those in Korea, Vietnam, Soviet-era Afghanistan, and Grenada.
To generalize a bit more: Two of the basic plots in military science fiction are “If This Goes On” and “The Man Who Learned Better.” Two of the basic viewpoint characters are The Young Recruit and the Old Veteran. And the military life is highly mannered, which provides room for social commentary.
Since The Battle of Dorking, works of military SF had been cautionary tales, warnings of the dangers of unpreparedness or of the horrors of war. Now they became meditations on current politics.
With World War Two recently over, veterans began to write novels. And with wide-spread paperback publication and a public hungry for novels, so many examples of military SF were produced that it grows difficult to present them all. Where in the nineteenth century we see one here, and a decade later another one there, in the late fifties and later we come to sorting and classification problems; many fine examples of the genre will be left out, or touched on only briefly.
British Royal Air Force veteran Eric Frank Russell published two comic military SF novels in 1958: Wasp and The Space Willies. Set during an interstellar war against a non-human—but still humanoid—foe, the novels can be read as textbooks on unconventional/asymmetrical warfare. The protagonists in both novels are military men in the midst of a hot war.
Robert Heinlein was a military veteran, a Naval Academy graduate, though he had only seen peacetime service before being invalided out with tuberculosis. But his experience in the Academy brought authority to his voice in Space Cadet, and the time he’d spent at sea brought experience to the feeling of being locked up in an iron box for months on end; whether that box is called a ship or a space-ship. Those who want an understanding of Heinlein’s spaceships and computers might want to visit one of the WWII-era museum ships that you can find in various places (e.g. Battleship Cove, Fall River MA). As an earlier writer, Heinlein was influential on later authors in the sub-genre.
Heinlein also wrote one of the most influential military SF books: In 1959 he published Starship Soldier, serialized in two issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, then released as a novel under the title Starship Troopers. In Starship Troopers, a young man rebels against his family and enlists in the infantry, then takes part in an interstellar war against an implacable and unknowable foe, the inhuman Bugs. The story is mostly told in flashbacks as the recruit goes through high school, then through boot camp, then out into space. Along the way he’s treated to many long philosophical discussions on the meanings of virtue, honor, and civic duty. And here we see the purest form of military SF: the viewpoint character is a military member, often against a wartime setting, and military values are stressed.
Science fiction, like other art, isn’t just in dialog with the society in which it is created; it is in dialog with the other works in the field. The heritage of Starship Troopers includes Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974), John Steakley’s Armor (1984), and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (2005.)
Joe Haldeman was a Vietnam veteran who had seen combat, and been wounded, in Southeast Asia. In The Forever War, the protagonist becomes alienated from his own society due to the time dilation effects of light-speed travel to and from the battlefields; he eventually learns that the entire war was a mistake based on a misunderstanding.
In 1960 Keith Laumer, who had seen service in the US Army Air Corps in Europe during WWII, introduced cybernetic tanks called “Bolos,” fearsome and nearly invincible fighting machines with advanced artificial intelligence. The Bolos embody military values: They do not question their orders, they do not fear for their lives, and they guard the weak against the strong. The first Bolo appeared in the short story “Combat Unit” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (1960). A typical Bolo story is “A Relic of War” (Analog, 1969): A Bolo tank is a war memorial in a small town. It is capable of lighting cigars on request. However, a threat develops; an attack by a leftover unit from the long-forgotten war in which the Bolo served. The tank reawakens to service, and defeats the enemy. For its pains, the tank is deactivated—its artificial intelligence killed—by a representative of its own side; the old tank is too dangerous to keep around.
More cybernetic intelligences followed. Fred Saberhagen, an Air Force veteran from the Korean war, wrote the Berserker series (first short story, “Fortress Ship” (1963) in If magazine). The Berserkers were implacable and incomprehensible fighting machines, left over from another war in another galaxy, their alien creators long-since dead. The berserkers, with their singleminded mission to destroy all sapient life, had drifted between the stars for millennia, and now had come to the Milky Way galaxy, home to a variety of species from various star systems living together in peace. And among the sapient species of the Milky Way galaxy, only earth-descended men were genetically aggressive enough to take them on, to fight against the robots to save all life.
Laumer and Saberhagen continued writing their stories of Bolos and Berserkers though the sixties and seventies.
“History,” according to Ken MacLeod—himself a military SF writer (The Cassini Division, 1995)—“is the trade secret of science fiction.”
Just so: Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker story “Stone Place” (If, 1965) is a science-fictional retelling of the Battle of Lepanto. And H. Beam Piper, better known for his Little Fuzzy and Paratime series, wrote Uller Uprising (1952), loosely based on the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the same war that motivated Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo to seek revenge on the British, the same war in which The Battle of Dorking’s author was wounded.
The 1960s also saw military science fiction break out of the print media. While there had been earlier radio, television, and movie examples of the military in space (acknowledging the fact that the military had the money, personnel, and organization needed to reach the stars) the fact of military service was seldom important; e.g. in the film Forbidden Planet (1956), a science-fictional re-telling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the characters’ military ranks are essentially irrelevant. In the ’30s and ’40s, spaceship captains were as likely to be eccentric inventors or to be working for civilian companies, as they were to be military officers.
In 1966, Star Trek—created by WWII Army Air Force veteran Gene Roddenberry—brought to the mass audience a military vessel on an exploration mission, with an integrated crew (black and white, male and female, human and alien). Star Trek, and its ever-expanding list of novelizations, spin-offs, and tie-ins, made science fiction in general, and military SF in particular, accessible to more than science fiction’s core readers. The argument has since been made, not without justification, that science fiction is the new mainstream. If this is so, then Star Trek, together with 1977’s Star Wars and its sequels, tie-ins, spin-offs, and novels, all of them also military science fiction, are the hinge on which the change turned.
1870’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Seas was near-future military science fiction, featuring technology which, while it did not then exist, was nevertheless possible. In 1962, another such book, Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, set forth the fictionalized outbreak of a nuclear war between the United States and the USSR (not symbolized in this case by implacable alien bugs, but presented under their true names) This future war used aircraft which was not then, and never would be, in the US inventory. Later still, Tom Clancy
wrote The Hunt for Red October (1984), again with the US and the USSR under their true names, but featuring a submarine that used a propulsion system that did not then, and to this day still does not, exist. Red October was the first fiction ever published by the US Naval Institute Press, otherwise a small academic press that specialized in Naval policy and military history. With Red October, the “technothriller,” which had begun with Twenty Thousand Leagues, broke away from military SF to become its own subgenre.
In the 1980s, Jerry Pournelle, who had been an artillery officer in the Korean War, edited a series of reprint-and-original anthologies of military SF called, collectively, There Will Be War. Pournelle wrote or co-wrote a number of military SF stories and novels himself; including but by no means limited to A Spaceship For the King (serialized in Analog magazine, 1971–72) and Footfall (1985), an invasion novel.
Throughout the ’80s, ’90s, and into the twenty-first century, Jim Baen, of Baen Books, published a large number of military SF novels. Some of his major authors included Vietnam veteran David Drake, former paratrooper John Ringo, and Vietnam-era former US Marine Elizabeth Moon. Lois McMaster Bujold was another of Baen’s military SF authors of the late eighties, beginning with Shards of Honor and The Warrior’s Apprentice (both 1986).
Then, without warning, in 1990–1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. There was no longer a monolithic, unknowable opposing superpower to be symbolized by soulless killing machines or inhuman bugs. At the same time, another branch of military SF arose to join the invasion stories, the future war stories, and the technothrillers: the alternate history. Rather than looking forward to wars that might be, and to militaries of the future, they looked back and rewrote past conflicts, not in symbolic form as had Piper and Saberhagen, but with names and places taken from history. Examples include Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (1992), in which time-travelers give AK-47 assault rifles to Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War. Turtledove also wrote the WorldWar series of novels, beginning with Worldwar: In the Balance (1994), in which space aliens invade earth in middle of World War II, forcing the humans to put aside their differences in order to fight against the outside foe.
The late eighties and nineties also saw the arrival of women as military SF writers. Elizabeth Moon has already been mentioned. Others include Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge, with their Exordium series (1993 and following), Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald with their Mageworlds series (1992 and following), and ex-Canadian military Tanya Huff, Valor’s Choice (2000).
What the future holds for military SF is hard to predict. What isn’t hard to predict is that with conflicts large and small still ongoing around the globe, writers of science fiction will not lack for sources of experience or subjects for commentary.
* * * *
James D. Macdonald is the author or co-author of more than thirty books, ranging from space opera and military science fiction to (pseudonymously) military thrillers and an annotated book of sea chanties. A former Navy officer, he lives in New Hampshire with his wife and frequent co-author, Debra Doyle.
R. A. LAFFERTY
(1914–2002)
An unpredictable, funny writer whose stories were filled with tall tales and larger-than-life characters, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty had a tragically short but very productive career. An Oklahoma native, Lafferty’s first SF story, “Day of the Glacier,” appeared in 1960, when he was in his late forties; over the next twenty years he wrote twenty books and more than two hundred stories, both fantasy and science fiction. A stroke in 1980 essentially ended his writing career, though he lived more than twenty years afterward.
Lafferty’s writing was quirky and sometimes unpolished, which made him a better short story writer than novelist, even in the 1960s when novels were typically about half as long as they are today. But his style was perfect for illuminating the strange surreality of everyday life, whether it was life in the present day or in some far-off place or time. And his writing tended to have a sense of humor about the strangeness of the world, and of people who take themselves too seriously. He won a Hugo in 1973 for “Eurema’s Dam,” and was a frequent award nominee during his brief career.
THUS WE FRUSTRATE CHARLEMAGNE, by R. A. Lafferty
First published in Galaxy Magazine, February 1967
“We’ve been on some tall ones,” said Gregory Smirnov of the Institute, “but we’ve never stood on the edge of a bigger one than this, nor viewed one with shakier expectations. Still, if the calculations of Epiktistes are correct, this will work.”
“People, it will work,” Epikt said.
This was Epiktistes the Ktistec machine? Who’d have believed it? The main bulk of Epikt was five floors below them, but he had run an extension of himself up to this little penthouse lounge. All it took was a cable, no more than a yard in diameter, and a functional head set on the end of it.
And what a head he chose! It was a sea-serpent head, a dragon head, five feet long and copied from an old carnival float. Epikt had also given himself human speech of a sort, a blend of Irish and Jewish and Dutch comedian patter from ancient vaudeville. Epikt was a comic to his last para-DNA relay when he rested his huge, boggle-eyed, crested head on the table there and smoked the biggest stogies ever born.
But he was serious about this project.
“We have perfect test conditions,” the machine Epikt said as though calling them to order. “We set out basic texts, and we take careful note of the woild as it is. If the world changes, then the texts should change here before our eyes. For our test pilot, we have taken that portion of our own middle-sized city that can be viewed from this fine vantage point. If the world in its past-present continuity is changed by our meddling, then the face of our city will also change instantly as we watch it.
“We have assembled here the finest minds and judgments in the world: eight humans and one Ktistec machine, myself. Remember that there are nine of us. It might be important.” The nine finest minds were: Epiktistes, the transcendent machine who put the “K” in Ktistec; Gregory Smirnov, the large-souled director of the Institute; Valery Mok, an incandescent lady scientist; her over-shadowed and over-intelligent husband Charles Cogsworth; the humorless and inerrant Glasser; Aloysius Shiplap, the seminal genius; Willy McGilly, a man of unusual parts (the seeing third finger on his left hand he had picked up on one of the planets of Kapteyn’s Star) and no false modesty; Audifax O’Hanlon; and Diogenes Pontifex. The latter two men were not members of the Institute (on account of the Minimal Decency Rule), but when the finest minds in the world are assembled, these two cannot very well be left out.
“We are going to tamper with one small detail in past history and note its effect,” Gregory said. “This has never been done before openly. We go back to an era that has been called ‘A patch of light in the vast gloom,’ the time of Charlemagne. We consider why that light went out and did not kindle others. The world lost four hundred years by that flame expiring when the tinder was apparently ready for it. We go back to that false dawn of Europe and consider where it failed. The year was 778, and the region was Spain. Charlemagne had entered alliance with Marsilies, the Arab king of Saragossa, against the Caliph Abd ar-Rahmen of Cordova. Charlemagne took such towns as Pamplona, Huesca and Gerona and cleared the way to Marsilies in Saragossa. The Caliph accepted the situation. Saragossa should be independent, a city open to both Moslems and Christians. The northern marches to the border of France should be permitted their Christianity, and there would be peace for everybody.
“This Marsilies had long treated Christians as equals in Saragossa, and now there would be an open road from Islam into the Frankish Empire. Marsilies gave Charlemagne thirty-three scholars (Moslem, Jewish and Christian) and some Spanish mules to seal the bargain. And there could have been a cross-fertilization of cultures.
“But the road was closed at Roncevalles where the rearguard of Charlemagne was ambushed and destroyed on its way back to France. The ambushers were more Basque than Mos
lems, but Charlemagne locked the door at the Pyrenees and swore that he would not let even a bird fly over that border thereafter. He kept the road closed, as did his son and his grandsons. But when he sealed off the Moslem world, he also sealed off his own culture.
“In his latter years he tried a revival of civilization with a ragtag of Irish half-scholars, Greek vagabonds and Roman copyists who almost remembered an older Rome. These weren’t enough to revive civilization, and yet Charlemagne came close with them. Had the Islam door remained open, a real revival of learning might have taken place then rather than four hundred years later. We are going to arrange that the ambush at Roncevalles did not happen and that the door between the two civilizations was not closed. Then we will see what happens to us.”
“Intrusion like a burglar bent,” said Epikt.
“Who’s a burglar?” Glasser demanded.
“I am,” Epikt said. “We all are. It’s from an old verse. I forget the author; I have it filed in my main mind downstairs if you’re interested.”
“We set out a basic text of Hilarius,” Gregory continued. “We note it carefully, and we must remember it the way it is. Very soon, that may be the way it was. I believe that the words will change on the very page of this book as we watch them. Just as soon as we have done what we intend to do.” The basic text marked in the open book read:
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 328