Neocons in Military Sci-Fi A Rant and a Challenge

[Darth Hoth]

The most idiotic thing about this entire chain of events is that Freehold special forces massacred billions, but didn't actually touch any important military infrastructure.

The UN navies were left almost completely intact. In a realistic world, what happened next would be Earth stalling for time before launching a massive vengeance strike against Freehold, wiping the planet clean of life and then hunting down every last freeholder still left alive.

Of course, knowing Williamson, they'd do something stupidly insane like use non-lethal weapons or send an angry letter or use paraplegic troops because the UN is both stupidly liberal and totally opressive (Williamson UN somehow has total surveillance and secret police, yet also absurdly high crime. It is also starving yet full of bloated fatsos)

I believe the novel line was something like, they demobilised the navy and put the personnel into providing disaster relief for the surviving Earth civvies.

Also, the oppressive UN Gestapo supposedly does not care about "mundane" crimes, if I recall correctly. They are too busy hunting down offenders against political correctness to be bothered to deal with the robbers and rapists who infest Earth's slums. Or something to that effect.

That the Freehold's terrorism is successful merely shows more of Williamson's worldview. It works because liberals are all idiots and easily intimidated by terrorism and fear, as everyone with any brains should know. If Gore had won the elections, the US response to 9/11 would have been to immediately pull out of the ME altogether. And so on, and so forth.

****

Simon: Fair enough, I suppose, though I still think his concepts in the two novels I read were rather towards the softer edge of SF, with some quite poorly explained technobabble.

[PeZook]

I believe the novel line was something like, they demobilised the navy and put the personnel into providing disaster relief for the surviving Earth civvies.

Yeah, precisely my point. The UN always does things in the opposite way of actual real-life opressive regimes. Hell, even a non-opressive nice and democratic regime would commit genocide after shit like this.

Also, the oppressive UN Gestapo supposedly does not care about "mundane" crimes, if I recall correctly. They are too busy hunting down offenders against political correctness to be bothered to deal with the robbers and rapists who infest Earth's slums. Or something to that effect.

Yeah, he rationalizes all the problems away. Of course his totalitarian gestapo does not care about NON-mundane crimes, either - the brainless idiot protagonist of the book massacres a gang which tried to extort money from his cover business, and the regime does nothing.

If the USSR operated like that, it would be couped by the CIA in two years.

That the Freehold's terrorism is successful merely shows more of Williamson's worldview. It works because liberals are all idiots and easily intimidated by terrorism and fear, as everyone with any brains should know. If Gore had won the elections, the US response to 9/11 would have been to immediately pull out of the ME altogether. And so on, and so forth.

Yeah. There's a scene when he and his girlfriend do a shootout in the street and the UN is unable to apprehend them despite freehold's special forces apparently being supermuscled steroidified freaks in a sea of (starving!) whalemen

[Connor MacLeod]

I always get the impression that much of this writing is based on a certain nostalgia for the 'old days' like the revolutionary war or wild west type eras (you know, cowboys, fronteir settlers, the TRUE Americans.) Often the protagonists of these novels tend to have qualities or traits quite similar with that - one of the more hilarity-inducing examples I recall is from the Posleen novels where Mike decides his best option is to leave his daughter to learn from CRAZY OLD MILITIA GRANDAD who has the whole fronteir settler thing/militiaman thing going on. And it magically works out too!

The whole wildwest/frontier nostalgia really tends to clash with the ideas that lead to the UN or some organization like it being created as some big liberal inept enemy, because you know its bad to try to suppress individualism.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon: Fair enough, I suppose, though I still think his concepts in the two novels I read were rather towards the softer edge of SF, with some quite poorly explained technobabble.

I don't read SF for hardness, that would be silly.

This is only one of the multiple qualities on which I judge SF, but the sense in which I use "quality" is one that can accept varying degrees of technobabble. What matters is the presence of something my mind recognizes as science and scientific awareness- that the basic laws of physics appear to be in operation. That the writer is paying attention to them to some reasonable degree, consistent with not turning the book into a ridiculous slog. That any actual science going on within the fictional environment is portrayed in ways compatible with my own knowledge of how scientists and research operate. And so on.

[Darth Hoth]

Yeah, he rationalizes all the problems away. Of course his totalitarian gestapo does not care about NON-mundane crimes, either - the brainless idiot protagonist of the book massacres a gang which tried to extort money from his cover business, and the regime does nothing.

If the USSR operated like that, it would be couped by the CIA in two years.

You expect the libertopian paradise of Freehold to be as competent as the CIA?

I don't read SF for hardness, that would be silly.

This is only one of the multiple qualities on which I judge SF, but the sense in which I use "quality" is one that can accept varying degrees of technobabble. What matters is the presence of something my mind recognizes as science and scientific awareness- that the basic laws of physics appear to be in operation. That the writer is paying attention to them to some reasonable degree, consistent with not turning the book into a ridiculous slog. That any actual science going on within the fictional environment is portrayed in ways compatible with my own knowledge of how scientists and research operate. And so on.

Sorry if I misused the labels. Going by some people, lack of scientific understanding (in addition to lack of scientific accuracy) is in itself a mark of softness in SF. Then again, "hard" and "soft" are more or less impossible to define rationally anyway, so I probably should have avoided the terminology, period.

[Zixinus]

Do I get this right, this is an invitation to write a short-story SF with competent liberals and incompetent republicans/conservatives?

[Simon_Jester]

In a word, yes.

You can also, presumably, skewer SF-dream-libertarian states (of which there's a trend running through Heinlein, Pournelle, and assorted others).

[Connor MacLeod]

Despite what some 'hard' sci fi fans have complained about, i doubt it would be a good thing for it to become mainstream. Becoming mainstream means it has to be profitable, and the kind of 'hard' sci fi that is in vogue currently involves alot of numbers and math and detail that is time consuming at the best, and probably not conducive to a novel that has broad appeal or is easily accessbile. What would result is probably some sort of dumbed down "hard-looking' sci fi that resembles nBSG without the FTL or robots or something. Or firefly.

[General Mung Beans]

Actually in historical terms this might be something like the America right before World War II, the liberal interventionists being opposed by pig-headed isolationists.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, for this purpose, what's being addressed is the sense that the societies advocated in this kind of military SF really aren't what they're cracked up to be. Libertarian dream-worlds don't really give you super-elite military forces and certainly not super-elite intelligence organs, kids from rural villages don't really make better soldiers than kids from the inner cities, a social safety net does not predictively evolve into a "bread and circuses" state where the general public is a bunch of mindless drones left to prey on each other because it's too politically incorrect to do anything about their problems... et cetera.

[Ahriman238]

I just read John Ringo for the ACS power armor and the Posleen themselves. The armor is sweet in all of it's faintly ridiculous capabilities, while the Posleen are what Starship Troopers would be like if all the bugs had guns.

...The movie, or the novel?

Oh, and just to pick up on Simon's point- in the book version of Starship Troopers, the bugs do have guns, and the reasoning that comes out of Rico's mouth is that it is basically them or us- if we don't get the bugs, they'll wipe us out, they're genocidal psychopaths at least on the same level as humanity. The book and the movie are as different as WWII and Vietnam.

I was thinking of the movie specifically. I've heard much about the book but never truly read it. Though 'Us or them' describes the early Posleen books pretty well.

I always get the impression that much of this writing is based on a certain nostalgia for the 'old days' like the revolutionary war or wild west type eras (you know, cowboys, fronteir settlers, the TRUE Americans.) Often the protagonists of these novels tend to have qualities or traits quite similar with that - one of the more hilarity-inducing examples I recall is from the Posleen novels where Mike decides his best option is to leave his daughter to learn from CRAZY OLD MILITIA GRANDAD who has the whole fronteir settler thing/militiaman thing going on. And it magically works out too!

You can make a pretty compelling argument for the local gun nut with the vast illegal arsenal being a good friend to have when the aliens land. But refresh my memory, isn't the Grandad from those books a bughouse crazy Vietnam vet? Cause if it's the guy I remember, they left their daughter with him so she would be SAFE. Then his old Black Ops buddies tried to recruit him, putting the girl in a lot more danger then she would have been in if she had gone, say, to one of the underground bunkers.

Despite what some 'hard' sci fi fans have complained about, i doubt it would be a good thing for it to become mainstream. Becoming mainstream means it has to be profitable, and the kind of 'hard' sci fi that is in vogue currently involves alot of numbers and math and detail that is time consuming at the best, and probably not conducive to a novel that has broad appeal or is easily accessbile.

True. One of the best things about Baen books is they tend to give people like us lots of numbers to chew over and debate. And we can make actual comparisions (well, sometimes.)

[DrMckay]

A good guide for most Mil-Scifi Writers in my opinion would be "The Good War" By Studs Terkel It's an oral history of World War II from every side, and every perspective; Children, women in nursing or war industry, conscientious Objectors (and how badly they were treated by the Roosevelt establishment) internees, camp inmates (Japanese and Jewish) POW's, engineers and medics.

Not just frontline uber soldiers. And a War on an interplanetary scale requires more than just gun-lovin' good ol' boys and their subservient womenfolk.

If I do write something, It probably be inspired either by the 442 Battalion (Japanese-Americans who volunteered out of internment camps,) or the treatment of many American veterans of the Spanish Civil War, who were branded Premature Anti-Facists (PAFs)-not like they were fighting Nazis or anything- and accused of communist sympathies. Although this part was true in many cases, they also had the most recent experience with modern combat and many were refused frontline service, and were not used as trainers.

[eyl]

I dont know much about Flint except from the Starfire novels, or many other BAen authors TBH.

Was Flint involved in the Starfire novels? AFAIR they were written by David Weber and Steve White.

Kratman.. is Kratman. For all that has been said about how bad a writer Traviss is, she's nothing on Kratman. Traviss can at least write a decent story if she has some sort of editor with a backbone. The same cannot be said of Kratman, and if anything his work has proceeded to get worse over time. I've been following Thanatos' revelations about "A desert called Peace" on SB and it makes me visibly wince every time. If it wasn't for Thanatos's ongoing commentary (up until he gets raped by a Space Camel in some future novel in retribution at least) I don't think I would have even bothered. Compared to Desert, Watch on the Rhine was a masterpiece. And I've heard his other Posleen collaboration novels were worse, too.

There's another thread on SB now about "A State of Disobedience" (Kratman's first published novel, IINM) which if anything is even worse.

Eric Flint can get annoying with his AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!! attitude, but the man has a point about how alien our world would be to men of the 17th century, and vice versa

Well, in his case it's more AMERICAN IDEALS FUCK YEAH than the normal variant; when it's mentioned at all, it's not unusual for "our" US to come under criticism by the protaganists.

It's a classical case of a group drifting once the initial founder dies/leaves. The writing was on the wall about a year before Baen died, and made editing quality went down hill after that

I'm not sure that's the case, most of the Baen authors people complain about came in well before Jim Baen's death.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I dont know much about Flint except from the Starfire novels, or many other BAen authors TBH.

Was Flint involved in the Starfire novels? AFAIR they were written by David Weber and Steve White.

Yes, it was Weber & White.

[Ahriman238]

Well, in his case it's more AMERICAN IDEALS FUCK YEAH than the normal variant; when it's mentioned at all, it's not unusual for "our" US to come under criticism by the protaganists.

Hey, I'm all for peace, love, and equality obtained at gunpoint. I was thinking more of the celebration of rural smalltown US, with the well-educated outsiders (John Simpson, Melissa Mailey, but mostly Simpson) being portrayed in a somewhat less positive light. And while I can accept that a local union boss might make an acceptable community leader in a crisis, and will have experience with rallies, and speeches and organization, I can't really accept all the corwned heads of europe dreading his fierce abilities. I think the series works much better in the Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette books, where you have many different writers working many different angles.

[eyl]

Hey, I'm all for peace, love, and equality obtained at gunpoint. I was thinking more of the celebration of rural smalltown US, with the well-educated outsiders (John Simpson, Melissa Mailey, but mostly Simpson) being portrayed in a somewhat less positive light. And while I can accept that a local union boss might make an acceptable community leader in a crisis, and will have experience with rallies, and speeches and organization, I can't really accept all the corwned heads of europe dreading his fierce abilities. I think the series works much better in the Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette books, where you have many different writers working many different angles.

It seems to me that Mailey is portrayed very positively; I didn't notice any detraction of her. I agree that the celebration of "hillbillyism" gets annoying after a while.

[BlissAuthority]

Working on it. Oh god am I working on it. 'Progressive military science fiction' is precisely what I'm aiming FOR in the universe I'm working on.

Let me see what I can write up by the end of the month.

[Xon]

It's a classical case of a group drifting once the initial founder dies/leaves. The writing was on the wall about a year before Baen died, and made editing quality went down hill after that

I'm not sure that's the case, most of the Baen authors people complain about came in well before Jim Baen's death.

Yes, but the editorial control was Jim Baen's untill 1-2 years before his death at which point his deteriorating health forced him out of the job. Editorial control can make or break how good a story is.

[ComradeClaus]

You might think this funny, but the novel i'm currently on, started out as just that kind of neo-con shit you hate, then G.W.Bush happened. so it blue (state)-shifted.

Basically, I wrote it as a protest about the Democrats under Clinton letting genocide happen in Rwanda & Bosnia (AND Kosovo by the same Serb bad guys that launched WW1) Plus Al Gore's Earth hugging got on my nerves so bad that my novel featured a lot of awesome smoke-spewing gas/diesel-guzzling battle SUVs. Plus I loathed Lieberman's attempts to ban FPSs (Murder Simulators) like Goldeneye N64, which actually served as the basis of my novel (instead of alien invasion, aliens ask earth to fight Janus-like-intergalactic crime syndicate)

In my relaunch, I grew so sick of Bush's "your w/ us or w/ the terrorist (who we slaughter like roaches)" rhetoric & corporate corruption of his cabinet (Cheney/Haliburton, Condolezza/Chevron), that the novel starts w/ him as the "Newest prophet of Christendom" (posthumous, naturally, this takes place decades from now), So the Tea Party takes on an "Al Qaeda-like" religious bent ("don't retreat, reload") basically nuking Europe (sans England & East Europe, they were "Coalition of Willing") for being "Socialist" & worse happens to "threats to the traditional American familly" (Gitmo basically becomes hundreds of 'camps' throughout Cuba,) basically the US loses 300 million people from the camps (also health care for poor, global war & no condoms take their toll), then balloons to 500 million as a result of no birth control (besides 'abstinence'), basically, by the time the aliens invade (& drop multiton staballoy [U238] penetrators from orbit)... it's a good thing. (like when the allied & soviet armies firestormed & invaded Germany to 'liberate" it from the Nazis. There's even a Potsdam style treaty complete w/ JCS 1067 policy (1000 calorie/day ration to combat obesity).

But that's merely act one, then the real good stuff happens. It's intentionally violent & absurd, like a South Park/ Family Guy/ American Dad doing the WarOnTerror-in SPACE

(It also originally had a Sauron/Morgoth like Evil Overlord, but I dropped him for being to boring) It does have a few serious badasses though. Even the neocons get a couple Antiheroes.

(Best part? No angsty teens like Anakin Skywalker & Jacen Solo or Bella Swan Mary Sues!)

It'll be a couple years before it's finished though. Tell me what you think.

[ComradeClaus]

It's a classical case of a group drifting once the initial founder dies/leaves. The writing was on the wall about a year before Baen died, and made editing quality went down hill after that

I'm not sure that's the case, most of the Baen authors people complain about came in well before Jim Baen's death.

Yes, but the editorial control was Jim Baen's untill 1-2 years before his death at which point his deteriorating health forced him out of the job. Editorial control can make or break how good a story is.

Thats why I hate comic books. Look at what Joe Quesada did to Spidey after Stan Lee let go of the reins... "One More Day" (That's why I prefer mangas, they usually END.)

& Poor Chewie & Anakin Solo (& all those Young Jedi Knights) in NJO. Only Zahn, Stackpole, Allston & Hambly were good EU authors. (a couple others I can't recall right now)

Kevin J. Anderson wasn't just bad w/ technowank, he even sucked at basic math. Just count the ships Wedge & Ackbar had at Nar Shaddaa in Darksaber compared to later in the book. (the numbers of capital ships actually CHANGES for no reason) He couldn't even write a good Space Battle. Ackbar in a MC80B vs a SSD & 20 Victory Star Destroyers?! & destroying half the (slightly) smaller ships? That's like the USS Arizona vs the Yamato + 20 Fusos. Who proofread that damned mess?! (why does Ackbar [who's a Mary Sue] have thicker plot armor than Madine [who was AWESOME]?!) I have yet to read the Karen Traviss abominations, but I've heard she's worse than Stefanie Mayer. (I'm actually enjoying Twilight, it's like reading a lame Harlequin Romance)

[Slacker]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd like military scifi with good politics, period. Multi-dimensional politics, where both the liberals AND conservatives had believable motivations and realistic policy goals, and neither side was cardboard cutout evil. I don't think that's something that should be unachievable, really.

[Ahriman238]

It seems to me that Mailey is portrayed very positively; I didn't notice any detraction of her. I agree that the celebration of "hillbillyism" gets annoying after a while.

It's a ver small thing, I may even be overreacting to. Hence why I said mostly John Simpson. Honestly it just bugs me that there are maybe a dozen college educated adults in the town, particularly since they said once that if the Ring had been just five miles wider, they'd have taken a State College back with them. Grantville seems about as far from a college town as you're likely to get.

As for the thing itself, in the early part of the Ram Rebellion, when the good people of Grantville begin to covet land outside the Ring Wall, Melissa tries to explain (grossly oversimplified) 17th Century European property law and how a single acre of land can conceivably have as many as three "owners." He basically blows her off, saying that they'll learn by doing and getting their hands dirty, not studying.

Then Birdie Newhouse manages to negotiate the nearest farming village out under the local Reichsritter (well, it is slightly more complicated) at a greatly reduced price, because the foolish nobleman drastically underestimates the value of a tractor. There are exactly zero unforseen consequences, loopholes, misunderstandings orlegal minutiae that said Reichsritter can use to get his back or screw them over.

There's even a single page "chapter" that consists entirely of Mike Stearns saying "I told you so."

[Nuts!]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd like military scifi with good politics, period. Multi-dimensional politics, where both the liberals AND conservatives had believable motivations and realistic policy goals, and neither side was cardboard cutout evil. I don't think that's something that should be unachievable, really.

It's not impossible, but it is rare. People generally write a story involving politics b/c they're motivated by modern politics, and guess who's the most motivated to do it? (answer: the crazy wingers, usually) Not to say that it can't happen, but as you've noticed, most books related to modern politics have a clear and present political slant.

[PainRack]

I'm going to have to dig through the bookstores again, but there was a whole series of novels/short stories regarding this super-libertarian astronaut, which apparently is partially inspired by Heinlein.

I can't recall the author or the name, but it goes by Sam Hein or something like that....... It is a good read, despite its super libertarian views of the small man outlook. I loved the story where Mars decided to sidestep Earth attempt to govern it by restricting water, by attempting an long range expedition to secure ice comets.

Also, Daley series on Han Solo and Lando Calrissian is one of the most enjoyable novel series in the Star Wars EU. And its clear that their actions are inspired by his libertarian view.

[MKSheppard]

As others have said; a SF novel that has a significant portion of it's length dealing with a military campaign will inevitably lean towards the right -- because the kind of people who have the internal persistence and perserverance to write 200 pages of sentient beings, both human and non-human being blown up, lasered, vaporized, and generally killed in many creative and horrible ways in the FUTURE™ will be leaning to the right.

As Rutger Hauer said in Blade Runner:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate.

I think part of the problem in writing reasonable characters on the opposite end of the spectrum, is that compared to The Good Old Days [tm] there's no longer as many reliable pro-defense liberal politicans, because of the post-Cold War drawdowns and BRACing -- our military bases generally shrank to the South, and we no longer have oversized liberalish politicans like:

Sam Nunn (liberal on social issues, but middle of the road on military issues)

Sam Rayburn (Mr. Sam)

Henry "Scoop" Jackson (aka, the SENATOR FROM BOEING)

Daniel P. Moynihan

etc, where they vote in favor of SOCIAL ISSUES and RIGHTS FOR X/Y/Z, and then in the next vote, call for the KILLFUCKERIZER II to be deployed immediately, and specifically to a military base within their district.

There's maybe one or two nowadays like Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- who got into trouble for writing "Sending you to hell from Almost Heaven, West Virginia" on missiles in Iraq on a PhotoOp tour there; but that's just one guy.

For a more specific non-defense example, you could try Barbara Mikulski, D-MD.

She is a very strong supporter of NASA -- specifically unmanned observatories that are managed by Goddard SFC in Maryland. On everything else regarding NASA, she's lukewarmish, since that money don't go to Goddard.

That said, in my tenative universe which inhabits my head currently; I would have loonies like Spacepeace and PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Alienoids) floating around, and generally mocked by both sides of the political spectrum.

Another example that just came to my head now was what BARRY has done.

If real life was like BAENBOOK AUTHORS VIEWS OF LIBRULS, when he took office, BARI'BAMA would have:

• Let loose every Gitmo detainee into a small town in Florida with a sack of cocaine and a knife
• Withdrew all our troops from Afghanistan/Iraq in a week, and stopped the drone war, relying on legal injunctions and lawyers to fight terrorism.

Instead, well; we got something somewhat like the third term of BUSHBAMA regarding the War on Terror -- in which some aspects got dialed down, while others were dialed up.

Back to the SF universe; it means that when a LIBRUL politican comes into office he may be able to slow down MILITARY SPENDING; but he can't completely halt it -- e.g. the US SPACE NAVY gets thirty Doomnaughts built in the FY2145 program, as opposed to the 38 it wants.

All the more so because every planet/colony would be screaming for some sort of DOOMNAUGHT squadron (or two) floating overhead to protect them from ALIENZ/CHINAMEN/etc; and those people vote.