The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century - Джо Холдеман

The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th CenturyAn anthology of stories edited by Martin H Greenberg and Harry Turtledove

INTRODUCTIONHarry Turtledove

HERE AT THE DAWN of the third millennium C.E., we dont like to think about actually fighting wars. We hope weve outgrown them. For more than half a century, weve had the chance to wreck our civilization, and we havent taken it. This says something good about us as a species, maybe even something surprisingly good. Perhapsjust perhapswe arent really so stupid as we often give signs of being.

Mankind has always hated war. And yet, it has always fascinated us, too. As long as weve written, weve written about it. This is quite literally true. The Epic of Gilgamesh goes back to the earliest days of our literacy and is, among other things, the story of warfare. The Iliad, the foundation stone of all Greek literature, centers on the siege of Troy and the great struggle between Akhilleus and Hektor. The Aeneid, Beowulf, the Norse sagas, the Chanson de Rolandall stories of battle, of warriors. And were still writing fiction about war, in and out of science fiction, to this day.

Why?

For the two cents its worth, heres my answer. Fiction is about character under stress. What we do when the heat is on reveals far more about us than how we behave in ordinary times. What comes close to putting so much stress on the character, fictional or otherwise, as nearly getting killed? As Samuel Johnson said, When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Well, I admit there is one other stress that does the same thing: love. And, of course, what passes between man and woman (or, less often, between man and man or between woman and woman) is the other enduringly popular theme of fiction.

And to this mix science fiction adds a couple of other interesting riffs: gadgetry as interesting as the writer can come up with and, sometimes, alien beings also as interesting as the writer can likewise. The grand-daddy of stories of this type, H. G. Wellss The War of the Worlds, actually saw print in 1898, but since it set the stage for so much that came afterward, I dont see how I can possibly neglect mentioning it here.

Wells was far from the only author interested in the effects of the Industrial Revolution on warfare yet to come. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was, in fact, a small boom in what we would now call technothrillers, stories examining near-future wars with emphasis on the newfangled machines that would make it different from anything that had gone before: ancestors of Tom Clancy, one might say. A fair number of these tales are collected in a fascinating volume called The Tale of the Next Great War, 18711914, edited by I. F. Clarke. In 1907, in his story The Trenches, a British army officer, Capt. C. E. Vickers, foretold the invention of the tank. His colleague, Major (later Major General) Sir Ernest Swintonalso a writer of such talesmust surely have seen this piece; when World War I broke out, he was one of the people who helped devise the actual armored fighting vehicle. Here fiction may well have influenced later fact. Others of that period who worked in this subgenre include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and A. A. Milne, who is better knownand deservedly sofor Winnie-the-Pooh than for tales such as his 1909 story The Secret of the Army Aeroplane.

Drawing a hard and fast line between technothrillers and science fiction proper has never been easy, and probably never will be. The one Id try to make is that technothrillers tend to be interested in gadgetry for its own sake, while science fiction examines not only the machinery but its influence on the society thats invented it. And if people are now lining up to tear me rhetorical limb from limb, well, so be it.

After the experience of World War I, far fewer people were interested in predicting what a second world war might be like. The short answerdreadfulseemed obvious to everyone: and, indeed, everyone was right. Instead, conflicts set in distant times and against strange aliens took pride of place for a while. John W. Campbell, later the tremendously influential editor of Astounding and its later incarnation, Analog, was one of the champions of this invent a weapon today, mass produce it tomorrow, and use it to beat the enemy the day after school of writing.

A writer who stuck closer to home, and one whose influence on the entire field of science fiction was also incalculably large, was Robert A. Heinlein. His novellas If This Goes On and Solution Unsatisfactory and his novel Sixth Column, all written before the American entry into World War II (Sixth Column springing in part from a Campbell idea), remain readableand in printtoday, while so much of the fiction of two generations ago has fallen by the wayside. Solution Unsatisfactory is an early and remarkably prescient attempt to define a problem that has plagued us ever since: How do you deal with the specter of atomic weaponry? The solutions we have worked out are as unsatisfactory as the one Heinlein proposedbut, as I said before, so far weve been both smarter and luckier than we might have been. As a graduate of the Naval Academy, Heinlein spoke with peculiar authority on matters military.

The brute fact of the atomic bomb hit popular consciousness hard after 1945. Nuclear war and its aftermath became a common theme in science fiction. Two early examples were Poul Andersons stories later collected in the paste-up novel Twilight World, and those of Henry Kuttner collected as Mutant. Anderson in particular would go on to have a long and amazingly successful career, frequently revisiting military themes in a variety of contexts: most often in his future history peopled by such swashbucklers as Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry.

Another writer who did likewise was H. Beam Piper, till his unfortunate and premature death in the mid 1960s. His series of paratime stories of alternate history, particularly his fine last work Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, revolve around matters military. So does the elaborate future history he built up, including such novels as The Cosmic Computer and Space Viking, which combines themes from medieval European warfare and the rise of Hitler in a most striking way.

Heinlein, of course, did not disappear after the war, either. In his juvenile novels (what would now be known as YAs), such as Between Planets, Space Cadet, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Red Planet, military themes either dominate or play a strong subordinate role. And in Starship Troopers, he produced a novel of military fiction that remains intensely controversial more than forty years after its publication, was made into an extraordinarily bad movie, and spawned at least two fine novels of direct rebuttal, Gordon R. Dicksons Soldier, Ask Not and Joe W. Haldemans The Forever War: no mean feat.

Another work from about the same period that should not pass unmentioned is Christopher Anvils novella Pandoras Planet, later expanded into a novel of the same name. Anvil, most often published in Astounding and Analog, took a contrarian, sardonic, and often very funny look at things, and Pandoras Planet shows him at the top of his form, with bumbling invading aliens trying to deal with humans who are both smarter than they are and, except for lacking starships, more technologically advanced, too.

During the 1960s and 1970s, no doubt under the influence of the Vietnam War, interest in military science fiction waned. The military generally came under a cloud during those turbulent decades. One interesting exception to the rule here is the rise in those same decades of fantasy series chronicling enormous wars, most often against the power of evil. The archetype, of course, is J. R. R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings. I think such works became popular for a couple of reasons: first, who was good and who was not was very explicitly definedwhich was not always the case in either the real world or the more realistic forms of science fictionand, second, the stories were set in worlds so far removed from our own as to distance the readers from the everyday mundanities of life.

Fred Saberhagens Berserker series of science-fiction adventure tales solved the problem of good guys and bad guys by making the enemy a fleet of robot starships programmed to root out life wherever it might be encountered (a theme also used earlier, not long after the end of World War II, by Theodore Sturgeon in There Is No Defense). In The Men in the Jungle, Norman Spinrad solved it by not solving it; as far as anyone can tell, there are no heroes in the story, only villains of one stripe or anotheragain, a motif disturbingly close to real life.

There is a certain irony in the fact that, in the 1970s, military science fiction revived not so much in book form but in the moviesirony because Hollywood, a traditionally liberal place, has not always taken kindly to soldiers and their trade. But blood and thunder have played very important roles in both the Star Wars and Star Trek sagas, not least because matters military tend to create strong blacks and whites without shades of gray, and also because they lend themselves to spectacular special effects. Written science fiction is often thought-provoking; filmed sci-fi is more often jaw-dropping. The two usually appeal to different audiences, which aficionados of the written variety sometimes forget to their periland frustration.

The last two decades of the twentieth century saw a revival of written military science fiction. Jerry Pournelle, a Korean War veteran, has written a number of stirring novels with strong military themes, both with Larry Niven (notably in The Mote in Gods Eye, a first-contact story, and Footfall, a fine tale of alien invasion) and by himself.

David Drake (who, like Joe W. Haldeman, saw the elephant in Vietnam) has contributed a gritty realism to the field in his future-history stories, such as Hammers Slammers, and, thanks to his strong background in ancient history and classics, with tales such as Ranks of Bronze and Birds of Prey.

Drake and S. M. Stirling have also collaborated on a series of novels set in the far future but based on the career of the Byzantine emperor Justinians great marshal, Belisarius. On his own hook, Stirling specializes in alternate histories with a strong military flavor: the Draka universe, surely as unpleasant a dystopia as has burst from anyones word processor; and the stories begun with Island in the Sea of Time, which drop the island of Nantucket back to 1250 B.C.E. and involve the inhabitants in military affairs up to their necks.

Lois McMaster Bujolds series of novels, mostly based on the fragile (both in ego and in corpus) hero Miles Vorkosigan, have deservedly attracted a large following. Miles subverts hierarchies and discipline but is remarkably effective in spite ofor because ofthat. His adventures also have in them a strong humorous strain not often seen in military science fiction.

Where Drake and Stirling have projected the career of an actual historical figure into the future, David Webers series of novels about Honor Harrington has many analogies to the fictional seafaring adventures of Horatio Hornblower set in Napoleonic times. Many fans of military science fiction are also passionate aficionados of the tales penned by C. S. Forester, Patrick OBrian, and others who work in the small, crowded world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I dont precisely know why this should be so, but that its so seems indisputable; its an enthusiasm I share myself.

One of the advantages of writing an introduction such as this is that I can also subject my readers to a two-paragraph commercial for my own work. As an escaped Byzantine historian, Ive used Byzantium as a base for my Videssos universe, with the Time of Troubles series being based on the eventful career of the Emperor Herakleios, The Tale of Krispos on the reigns of Basil the Macedonian and John Tzimiskes (an advantage to fiction is that one can mix and match to suit oneself ), and The Videssos Cycle on the chaos surrounding the Battle of Manzikert.

Switching from fantasy to science fiction, Ive imagined time-traveling South Africans interfering in the American Civil War in The Guns of the South, an alien invasion during World War II in the Worldwar series, and the United States and Confederate States on opposite sides of the European alliance system during the late nineteenth century and World War I in How Few Remain and the books of the Great War series.

Elizabeth Moon is a former member of the Marine Corps who has made a name for herself with both military-oriented fantasy and science fiction. Her worlds combine gritty realism and striking wit; no one else currently working in the field has a similar voice.

The Sten novels from the team of Allan Cole and Chris Bunch combine military affairs and political intrigue. The teamunfortunately no longer working togetherhad a striking mix of talents, Bunch having served as a member of a long-range reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam and Cole being the son of a prominent CIA official. Their hero, named for a British submachine gun of World War II vintage, is every bit as deadly as his prototype, and much less likely to go to pieces in action.

Technothrillers are vulnerable to events in the world around them. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, truly world-shattering ones became much harder to write; indeed, the entire genre suffered something of a collapse. However pleasant a much-reduced likelihood of armageddon may be for the world at large, its not far from hell for those who made a living with stories about such catastrophes.

Military science fiction seems less vulnerable to events in the world around it. Technothrillers, by their very nature, are limited to the near future, while military science fiction can and does span all of space and time. If the near future looks peaceful, theres always the further future to exploreeither that or a twisted past in which things went differently from the way they turned out in real history.

One area where written military science fiction differs from what vast audiences see on the silver screen is that it demands more from those who pursue it.

AMONG THIEVESPoul Anderson

HIS EXCELLENCY MKATZE UNDUMA, Ambassador of the Terrestrial Federation to the Double Kingdom, was not accustomed to being kept waiting. But as the minutes dragged into an hour, anger faded before a chill deduction.

In this bleakly clock-bound society a short delay was bad manners, even if it were unintentional. But if you kept a man of rank cooling his heels for an entire sixty minutes, you offered him an unforgivable insult. Rusch was a barbarian but he was too canny to humiliate Earths representative without reason.

Which bore out everything that Terrestrial Intelligence had discovered. From a drunken junior officer, weeping in his cups because Old Earth, Civilization, was going to be attacked and the campus where he had once learned and loved would be scorched to ruin by his fire gunsto the battle plans and annotations thereon, which six men had died to smuggle out of the Royal War Collegeand now, this degradation of the ambassador himselfeverything fitted.

The Margrave of Drakenstane had sold out Civilization.

Unduma shuddered, beneath the iridescent cloak, embroidered robe, and ostrich-plume headdress of his rank. He swept the antechamber with the eyes of a trapped animal.

This castle was ancient, dating back some eight hundred years to the first settlement of Norstad. The grim square massiveness of it, fused stone piled into a turreted mountain, was not much relieved by modern fittings. Tableservs, loungers, drapes, jewel mosaics, and biomurals only clashed with those fortress walls and ringing flagstones; fluorosheets did not light up all the dark corners, there was perpetual dusk up among the rafters where the old battle banners hung.

A dozen guards were posted around the room, in breastplate and plumed helmet but with very modern blast rifles. They were identical seven-foot blonds, and none of them moved at all, you couldnt even see them breathe. It was an unnerving sight for a Civilized man.

Unduma snubbed out his cigar, swore miserably to himself, and wished he had at least brought along a book.

The inner door opened on noiseless hinges and a shavepate officer emerged. He clicked his heels and bowed at Unduma. His Lordship will be honored to receive you now, excellency.

The ambassador throttled his anger, nodded, and stood up. He was a tall thin man, the relatively light skin and sharp features of Bantu stock predominant in him. Earths emissaries were normally chosen to approximate a local ideal of beautyhard to do for some of those weird little cultures scattered through the galaxyand Norstad-Ostarik had been settled by a rather extreme Caucasoid type which had almost entirely emigrated from the home planet.

The aide showed him through the door and disappeared. Hans von Thoma Rusch, Margrave of Drakenstane, Lawman of the Western Folkmote, Hereditary Guardian of the White River Gates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, sat waiting behind a desk at the end of an enormous black-and-red tile floor. He had a book in his hands, and didnt close it till Unduma, sandals whispering on the great chessboard squares, had come near. Then he stood up and made a short ironic bow.

How do you do, your excellency, he said. I am sorry to be so late. Please sit. Such curtness was no apology at all, and both of them knew it.

Unduma lowered himself to a chair in front of the desk. He would not show temper, he thought, he was here for a greater purpose. His teeth clamped together.

Thank you, your lordship, he said tonelessly. I hope you will have time to talk with me in some detail. I have come on a matter of grave importance.

Ruschs right eyebrow tilted up, so that the archaic monocle he affected beneath it seemed in danger of falling out. He was a big man, stiffly and solidly built, yellow hair cropped to a wiry brush around the long skull, a scar puckering his left cheek. He wore Army uniform, the gray high-collared tunic and old-fashioned breeches and shiny boots of his planet; the trident and suns of a primary general; a sidearm, its handle worn smooth from much use. If ever the iron barbarian with the iron brain had an epitome, thought Unduma, here he sat!

Well, your excellency, murmured Ruschthough the harsh Norron language did not lend itself to murmursof course Ill be glad to hear you out. But after all, Ive no standing in the Ministry, except as unofficial advisor, and

Please. Unduma lifted a hand. Must we keep up the fable? You not only speak for all the landed warloadsand the Nor-Samurai are still the most powerful single class in the Double Kingdombut you have the General Staff in your pouch and, ah, you are well thought of by the royal family. I think I can talk directly to you.

Rusch did not smile, but neither did he trouble to deny what everyone knew, that he was the leader of the fighting aristocracy, friend of the widowed Queen Regent, virtual step-father of her eight-year-old son King Hjalmarin a word, that he was the dictator. If he preferred to keep a small title and not have his name unnecessarily before the public, what difference did that make?

Ill be glad to pass on whatever you wish to say to the proper authorities, he answered slowly. Pipe. That was an order to his chair, which produced a lit briar for him.

Unduma felt appalled. This series ofinformalitieswas like one savage blow after another. Till now, in the three-hundred-year history of relations between Earth and the Double Kingdom, the Terrestrial ambassador had ranked everyone but God and the royal family.

No human planet, no matter how long sundered from the main stream, no matter what strange ways it had wandered, failed to remember that Earth was Earth, the home of man and the heart of Civilization. No human planethad Norstad-Ostarik, then, gone the way of Kolresh?

Biologically, no, thought Unduma with an inward shudder. Nor culturallyyet. But it shrieked at him, from every insolent movement and twist of words, that Rusch had made a political deal.

Well? said the Margrave.

Unduma cleared his throat, desperately, and leaned forward. Your lordship, he said, my embassy cannot help taking notice of certain public statements, as well as certain military preparations and other matters of common knowledge

And items your spies have dug up, drawled Rusch.

Unduma started. My lord!

My good ambassador, grinned Rusch, it was you who suggested a straightforward talk. I know Earth has spies here. In any event, its impossible to hide so large a business as the mobilization of two planets for war.

Unduma felt sweat trickle down his ribs.

There isyouyour Ministry has only announced it is aa defense measure, he stammered. I had hopedfrankly, yes, till the last minute I hoped youyour people might see fit to join us against Kolresh.

There was a moments quiet. So quiet, thought Unduma. A redness crept up Ruschs cheeks, the scar stood livid and his pale eyes were the coldest thing Unduma had ever seen.

Then, slowly, the Margrave got it out through his teeth: For a number of centuries, your excellency, our people hoped Earth might join them.

What do you mean? Unduma forgot all polished inanities. Rusch didnt seem to notice. He stood up and went to the window.

Come here, he said. Let me show you something.

THE WINDOW WAS a modern inset of clear, invisible plastic, a broad sheet high in the castles infamous Witch Tower. It looked out on a black sky, the sun was down and the glacial forty-hour darkness of northern Norstad was crawling toward midnight.

Stars glittered mercilessly keen in an emptiness which seemed like crystal, which seemed about to ring thinly in contracting anguish under the cold. Ostarik, the companion planet, stood low to the south, a gibbous moon of steely blue; it never moved in that sky, the two worlds forever faced each other, the windy white peaks of one glaring at the warm lazy seas of the other. Northward, a great curtain of aurora flapped halfway around the cragged horizon.

From this dizzy height, Unduma could see little of the town Drakenstane: a few high-peaked roofs and small glowing windows, lamps lonesome above frozen streets. There wasnt much to see anyhowno big cities on either planet, only the small towns which had grown from scattered thorps, each clustered humbly about the manor of its lord. Beyond lay winter fields, climbing up the valley walls to the hard green blink of glaciers. It must be blowing out there, he saw snowdevils chase ghostly across the blue-tinged desolation.

Rusch spoke roughly: Not much of a planet weve got here, is it? Out on the far end of nowhere, a thousand light-years from your precious Earth, and right in the middle of a glacial epoch. Have you ever wondered why we dont set up weather-control stations and give this world a decent climate?

Well, began Unduma, of course, the exigencies of

Of war. Rusch sent his hand upward in a chopping motion, to sweep around the alien constellations. Among them burned Polaris, less than thirty parsecs away, huge and cruelly bright. We never had a chance. Every time we thought we could begin, there would be war, usually with Kolresh, and the labor and materials would have to go for that. Once, about two centuries back, we did actually get stations established, it was even beginning to warm up a little. Kolresh blasted them off the map.

Norstad was settled eight hundred years ago. For seven of those centuries, weve had Kolresh at our throats. Do you wonder if weve grown tired?

My lord, II can sympathize, said Unduma awkwardly. I am not ignorant of your heroic history. But it would seem to meafter all, Earth has also fought

At a range of a thousand light-years! jeered Rusch. The forgotten war. A few underpaid patrolmen in obsolete rustbucket ships to defend unimportant outposts from sporadic Kolreshite raids. We live on their borders!

It would certainly appear, your lordship, that Kolresh is your natural enemy, said Unduma. As indeed it is of all Civilization of Homo sapiens himself. What I cannot credit are the, ah, the rumors of an, er, alliance

And why shouldnt we? snarled Rusch. For seven hundred years weve held them at bay, while your precious so-called Civilization grew fat behind a wall of our dead young men. The temptation to recoup some of our losses by helping Kolresh conquer Earth is very strong!

You dont mean it! The breath rushed from Undumas lungs.

The other mans face was like carved bone. Dont jump to conclusions, he answered. I merely point out that from our side theres a good deal to be said for such a policy. Now if Earth is prepared to make a different policy worth our whiledo you understand? Nothing is going to happen in the immediate future. You have time to think about it.

I would have tocommunicate with my government, whispered Unduma.

Of course, said Rusch. His bootheels clacked on the floor as he went back to his desk. Ive had a memorandum prepared for you, an unofficial informal sort of protocol, points which his majestys government would like to make the basis of negotiations with the Terrestrial Federation. Ah, here! He picked up a bulky folio. I suggest you take a leave of absence, your excellency, go home and show your superiors this, ah

Ultimatum, said Unduma in a sick voice.

Rusch shrugged. Call it what you will. His tone was empty and remote, as if he had already cut himself and his people out of Civilization.

As he accepted the folio, Unduma noticed the book beside it, the one Rusch had been reading: a local edition of Schakspier, badly printed on sleazy paper, but in the original Old Anglic. Odd thing for a barbarian dictator to read. But then, Rusch was a bit of an historical scholar, as well as an enthusiastic kayak racer, meteor polo player, chess champion, mountain climber, andand all-around scoundrel!

NORSTAD LAY IN the grip of a ten-thousand-year winter, while Ostarik was a heaven of blue seas breaking on warm island sands. Nevertheless, because Ostarik harbored a peculiarly nasty plague virus, it remained an unattainable paradise in the sky till a bare two hundred fifty years ago. Then a research team from Earth got to work, found an effective vaccine, and saw a mountain carved into their likeness by the Norron folk.

It was through such meansand the sheer weight of example, the liberty and wealth and happiness of its peoplethat the Civilization centered on Earth had been propagating itself among colonies isolated for centuries. There were none which lacked reverence for Earth the Mother, Earth the Wise, Earth the Kindly: none but Kolresh, which had long ceased to be human.

Ruschs private speedster whipped him from the icicle walls of Festning Drakenstane to the rose gardens of Sorgenlos in an hour of hell-bat haste across vacuum. But it was several hours more until he and the queen could get away from their courtiers and be alone.

They walked through geometric beds of smoldering blooms under songbirds and fronded trees, while the copper spires of the little palace reached up to the evening star and the hours-long sunset of Ostarik blazed gold across great quiet waters. The island was no more than a royal retreat, but lately it had known agonies.

Queen Ingra stooped over a mutant rose, tiger striped and a foot across; she plucked the petals from it and said close to weeping: But I liked Unduma. I dont want him to hate us.

Hes not a bad sort, agreed Rusch. He stood behind her in a black dress uniform with silver insignia, like a formal version of death.

Hes more than that, Hans. He stands for decencyNorstad froze our souls, and Ostarik hasnt thawed them. I thought Earth might Her voice trailed off. She was slender and dark, still young, and her folk came from the rainy dales of Norstads equator, a farm race with gentler ways than the miners and fishermen and hunters of the red-haired ice ape who had bred Rusch. In her throat, the Norron language softened to a burring music; the Drakenstane men spat their words out rough-edged.

Earth might what? Rusch turned a moody gaze to the west. Lavish more gifts on us? We were always proud of paying our own way.