Bookworm: "Military Science Fiction

Introduction - Baen Books:

I don't know any author, other than a few who are — to speak bluntly — cretins, who hears about people lending his or her books to their friends, or checking them out of a library, with anything other than pleasure. Because they understand full well that, in the long run, what maintains and (especially) expands a writer's audience base is that mysterious magic we call: word of mouth.

Word of mouth, unlike paid advertising, comes free to the author — and it's ten times more effective than any kind of paid advertising, because it's the one form of promotion which people usually trust. That being so, an author can hardly complain — since the author paid nothing for it either. 

And it is that word of mouth, percolating through the reading public down a million little channels, which is what really puts the food on an author's table. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. 

Think about it. How many people lend a book to a friend with the words: "You ought a read this! It's really terrible!" How many people who read a book they like which they obtained from a public library never mention it to anyone? As a rule, in my experience, people who frequently borrow books from libraries are bibliophiles. And bibliophiles, in my experience, usually can't refrain from talking about books they like.

 (Eric Flint: "First Librarian", Baen Free Books)

It all began, of course, with Robert Heinlein.

My love affair with books actually had it genesis with other others, such as Lewis Padget (Henry Kornbluth) and Phillip Wylie ("Tomorrow", "A Generation of Vipers") ... two  "speculative fiction" writers who I accidentally discovered in the Umatilla County Library in Pendleton, Oregon, sometime about 1960.

Searching through the card files, I discovered that these were examples of "Science Fiction" .. and I was hooked.   Because that is when I discovered Robert Heinlein ("Starship Troopers", "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farnham's Freehold" etc.)

So I grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, and subscribing to all the pulp sci-fi magazines like "Amazing Stories",  and "Astounding", and "Galaxy Magazine", and .. well, if you have traveled the same road, you know the titles; if you haven't, you never will. They're all gone.  Defunct.  Out of business.

Then the movie biz caught on, and we had giant rabbits discovered by Matt Dillon (James Arnez, in "THEM", and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" ... okay, I admit that I was prepped for this invasion of the mind snatchers by watching "Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen" at the Saturday matinees in my local movie theater.  Do you remember "Food of the Gods", and much later "The Stepford Wives", "Westworld", and "Mysterious Planet" and " ... and ... oh, I have to cut this part short. 

No wonder I stood in line for two hours to watch the first "STAR WARS" movie!

And Television didn't help, when they discovered that "STAR TREK" was worth millions!

(Not to mention 1959, when "Space Patrol" was a regular Thursday Night feature on Radio .. right after "The Lone Ranger" ..... .. so much for cutting this short.)

But somewhere, after reading everything that Heinlein and Clarke and Azimov wrote (an exaggeration, Azimov wrote 200+ books, most of them science FACT rather than FICTION), I grew up.  I got married.  I went to war.  I had children.  I got divorced.

And somewhere in that period, I discovered a new author: David Drake.  Drake is a Vietnam Vet, who is a failed bus driver, accomplished Professional College Student (LLD, among other things), and started writing about The War .. but set among "other" settings.

So I bought every thing HE ever wrote!  (Until he started writing Swords and Sorcery novels, which I respectfully eschew because nothing can compete with "Fafner and the Grey Mouser"  by Barry Smith, AKA Fritz Lieber, whom I read heavily in High School and continued to read for years.)

Sorry .. I get distracted.

Drake co-authored with Steven Stirling (The General), so I bought everything HE wrote, too!  Even the one-or-two dogs.  (The Draka series, and the celebrated "Corvallis" series, and the associated "Nantucket" series, and .. and .. oh, this is 'cutting it short?)

One of the series that Drake started with Stirling was finished with Eric Flint writing the last of the five-book series, so I started reading Flint.  Which somehow lead me to David Weber, who authors single-handedly the magnificent "Honor Harrington" series .. a take off on Horation Hornblower.

Then things changed about ten years ago.   There's a whole new generation of authors in what has developed into the "Military Science Fiction" series when Weber co-authored a 4-book series (slated for more books in the future, as of this date) with a young writer named JOHN RINGO.

I thought Drake was a dark madman; I thought Stirling was certifiable .. a genius, but still quite insane in terms of taking Mil-Sci-Fi to a new level.     But Ringo is just sick!

I say that as an honorific; the man's a genius, and I hate it when authors who are younger than I am prove that talent will always succeed where mere age and enthusiasm will not.

Ringo has been producing a couple of books (or three) every year, for about ten years;  I just bought his latest issue in the "GHOST" series, and he has got the touch.

Ringo ALSO has co-authored (is this a spawning thing with authors?) books with upcoming authors like Travis Taylor, Tom Kratman, and Michael Z. Williamson.     ALL of whom have authored excellent novels in that same genre, and all of whom I (once again) have bought everything they have written.

Whew!

Which brings me to the denoument .. I have 37 banker boxes of books, because there isn't room for them all on the FOUR bookshelves in my home.  (I keep 'respectable' authors, like Robert Rourke and John D. MacDonald and ... sorry, I know; not another list!) on the bookshelves.

Somewhere along the line, I discovered that while I often find female novelists to be too maudlin for my taste, there's room for Elizabeth Moon ("Seranos" series) and Lois McMaster Bujold ("VorKosigan" series).

...........

If you've read this far .. and I know that this is a subject which I have treated in similarly hideous detail a couple of hears ago ... you will have realized that what I have just done is to provide a reading list to folks who may have read one or more of these authors.  If you like them, you'll like these.

In my retirement, when I'm not writing cranky blogs about the Second Amendment and Politics and Terrorism ... I'm reading.  I've worked for over fifty years, from mowing lawns as a pre-teen through delivering Caterpillar Tractor Parts to the great dams being built on the Columbia River, to working summers as a vacation-relief route salesman for the Nabisco Cookie Company, to serving as an Infantry Platoon Sargent in Vietnam, to working for 30+ years as a computer geek.  I've accumulated enough books that I can read one a day through my retirement, and (one of the benefits of getting old) when I go through my OWN library stacks, I often don't recognize a book that I've read before .. usually, several times.  Some of the series I reread annually ... I just finished a book today, which (according to my records) I last read in 2002.   I enjoyed it as much today as I did 11 years ago.

Okay, THIS is what it looks like when I "cut it short".

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