As previously mentioned, July 1 is Canada Day. There being only 365 (sometimes 366) days in a year, date-space collisions are inevitable. On July 1, two major events in Canadian history collide, one happy, one sad. The sad: on July 1, 1916, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment took part in the Battle of the Somme. 780 men went into combat. 68 showed up for roll call the following day. Having one’s signature regiment annihilated to bring an unpleasant war to a swift end would be tragic enough, but in this particular case, the geniuses running the war on both Allied and Central Power sides managed to drag out the carnage for another two years. The loss of the cream of a generation had consequences for Newfoundland that echoed for decades, not least of which was their eventual merger into Canada. Which is to say, July 1 isn’t as jolly a day in Newfoundland as it is in other parts of Canada.
Armies sacrificed for no obvious purpose and meaningless wars are not entirely unknown in speculative fiction1. Here are five examples from that golden age of such stories, the Vietnam War era, and its literary aftermath.
The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw2 (1969)
Advanced civilizations are rare and short-lived. Hard luck for humanity that they share the Milky Way with the Pythsyccans, who, aside from their curious lack of Bussard ramjets, are otherwise the equals of humans and for reasons unexplained, implacably hostile to the human species. Mack Travener threw himself into the war effort—then, embittered over the futility of the conflict, tried to reinvent himself as a civilian mechanic on the backwater world Mnemosyne.
His efforts to put the war behind him are doomed; while conventional interstellar craft cannot approach the debris-shrouded planet, the war most certainly can. Mnesmosyne’s artists will be pushed aside so the planet can better serve the war effort. Mack himself will be drafted into a central role in the human-Pythsyccan conflict… but first he will die.
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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1976)
Earth in the late 20th century was faced with the doleful prospect of peace; only the recent development of interstellar exploration can serve as a distraction. How fortuitous that human craft encountered and then clashed with the alien Taurans. The practicalities of interstellar travel meant that even with collapsar shortcuts, the war would take centuries to play out, entire lifespans during which Earth would never have to worry about a peacetime economy.
Former physics student-turned-draftee William Mandella has a different perspective. Relativistic starflight means centuries for Earth are mere years for Mandella. Mandella and his fellow soldiers—those who survive the brutal, pointless conflict—will fast-forward though history. Unlike the UN functionaries who began the Forever War, the conscripts will discover if the conflict will ever end or if the Human-Tauran War will last until the end of history.
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The Faded Sun: Kesrith by C. J. Cherryh (1978)
The mercenary Mri are a skilled warrior people; despite this fact, their Regul bosses proceeded to not just lose a war with humans but to squander most of the Mri forces in the process. Having grudgingly conceded the planet Kesrith to the humans, the Regul are faced with a quandary regarding Kesrith’s Mri. It’s possible that the Mri might attack the humans who now own Kesrith, which would unduly complicate the peace process. Or, even worse, the Mri might decide to ally with the humans against the Regul. The Regul conclude that there can be no Mri-related complications if there are no Mri. The Mri must be annihilated.
The Regul do not succeed. Their effort does have an unexpected side-effect: the surviving Mri ally with a human soldier, an uneasy alliance that will have far-reaching consequences.
***
The Forlorn Hope by David Drake (1984)
Colonel Guido Fasolini made a fundamental error when he leased his mercenary company to the Federalist side of Cecach’s civil war. His employers are losing the war with the fanatical Republic. This is very bad news for mercenaries who hoped to be paid for defending Smiriky #4 Industrial Complex.
A moment of ill-timed inspiration on the part of Sergeant-Gunner Roland Jensen transforms the mercenaries’ predicament into something much worse. Jenson manages the difficult trick of obliterating a Republican starship traversing Cecach’s upper atmosphere. This transforms the mercenary company from a creditor the Federalists may not be able to pay to loathed enemies of the Republic. As such, they may be of value to the increasingly panicky officers of the Federalist 522nd Garrison Battalion; the mercenaries can be traded to the irate Republicans in exchange for a safe stand-down for the Federalists.
Jenson’s lucky shot has left Fasolini’s company trapped between two hostile armies.
***
A Small Colonial War by Robert Frezza (1989)
22nd-century Japan’s empire reaches to the stars. Travel takes years, although relativity and hibernation spares travellers from paying that cost. Instead, they pay in alienation, as society back home on Earth changes beyond recognition. Japan’s solution is to defer the task of controlling their empire to modern-day peregrini recruited from the lesser nations of Earth—forces like Lieutenant-Colonel Anton “the Veriag” Vereshchagin and his command, the 1st Battalion, 35th Imperial Infantry.
Communication lag means the Japanese Diet is forever misinformed about their colony worlds. No problem for the Diet, safe at home on Earth. For the soldiers of the 35th, this means assignment to Sud Afrika, a planet settled by racially paranoid Boers. The Boers were followed by cohorts of heavily armed settlers who, the Japanese optimistically assumed, would bring the previous colonists to heel. The 35th is very much the odd man out in this conflict; they’re hated by all sides.
***
These aren’t always happy stories to read, but they’re reliably entertaining. No doubt you have your own favourites; feel free to mention them in comments.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is currently a finalist for the 2020 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]Although I will leap on any pretext to mention Arakawa’s “Full Metal Alchemist,” the brutal Ishbalan War was not actually pointless. It was more that the purpose of the war was one that its architects did not care to have generally known.
[2]It should be noted that the author, Shaw, was raised in Belfast and later lived in Canada and England. I cannot be sure that he wrote “Palace of Eternity” in response to Vietnam. The plot could just as well have been inspired by British colonial misadventures.
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I think Forlorn Hope is my favorite by Drake. I will have to find the Shaw- I haven’t read much of his work.
My understanding is that Forlorn Hope was supposed to be book one of a series. If so, it didn’t pan out.
I’d put Forlorn Hope in the top three of Drakes, along with The Dragon Lord and From the Heart of Darkness.
Forlorn Hope is now on my TBR list, flagged for early promotion
Armies sacrificed for no obvious purpose and meaningless wars are not entirely unknown in speculative fiction
It’s a bit of a leap to say that the Somme and WW1 had “no obvious purpose” and were “meaningless”. There were definitely war aims on all sides of WW1. And the Somme, though badly executed, also had an objective: to take the pressure off the French army, who were at that time fighting and losing the bloodiest battle in European history at Verdun, to the south. And it achieved that objective – the German advance at Verdun stopped because the army that should have been pushing through was instead defending the Somme.
That a battle was lost, or won at unacceptable cost, does not mean that the battle was purposeless or meaningless.
always had a soft spot for George Zebrowski’s The Omega Point
Kornbluth’s short story The Luckiest Man in Denv. (Free at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50835)
The follow-up article should be “Armies that are already dead in fantasy.”
Well, there’s the undead in LOTR. And a bunch from SF settings where soldiers are digitally mapped and can be Gestetnered at will.
May I suggest Glen Cook’s “The Heirs of Babylon,” the tale of a post-holocaust fleet sent on a doomed expedition; and a nod to Cook’s own naval service. It was out of print forever and it’s now available again.
I think I found where the Tor comment section sometimes disappears to, I just got nos.1-9 followed by 1-9 again. If one set was meant to go to you, I apologise.
Jack Campbell’s “Lost Fleet”, or some of it, somewhat unsurprisingly eventually gets home to Alliance star systems. Since Alliance civil democracy already consists of veterans trading on military glory and civilians of an ordinary degree of honesty who are rather fed up with that, none are really pleased to see the latest heroes returned to join in, and a decision is quickly made to send them off again hopefully for good.
I would suggest John Steakley’s Armor sets the gold standard for this sort of novel.
Kesrith was the first of a trilogy and you have to read all three to get the full impact. C.J. Cherryh is an incredible world-builder and she is excellent at her craft.
@1 @2 Count me as another who puts Forlorn Hope at the top of my list of favorite books by David Drake. I also enjoyed A Small Colonial War, a book I hadn’t thought about for years. And The Forever War speaks for itself, one of the genre’s greatest treasures.
@10 I also thought of Campbell’s Lost Fleet series when trying to remember naval versions of the “troops facing impossible odds” trope. And he wrote a prequel trilogy, The Genesis Fleet, recently that fit the mold rather nicely; in the early days of interstellar colonization, before the Alliance was established, a ragtag collection of ships and militias, constantly overmatched, struggle to fend of aggressors seeking to conquer their worlds.
For me, the most inspiring real world example of a doomed force winning the day is the battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where a potent force of Japanese battleships threatened the vulnerable ships engaged in an amphibious landing. In desperation, Admiral Sprague ordered a task unit (Taffy 3) of destroyers and destroyer escorts against the battleships; tiny, lightly armored ships against the most powerful battleships of the day. The ships of Taffy 3 were cut to ribbons, but bought time for the small carriers of the force to launch their aircraft against the battleships. The outmatched Americans fought so fiercely that the Japanese thought they were facing an advance element of an even larger force, and withdrew. A good book on the battle is The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour by James D. Hornfischer.
House Atreides troops…..Battle of Arrakeen on Dune/Arrakis. Slaughtered by House Harkonnen and Emperor Shaddam IV’s Sardaukar
Second the Hornfischer recommendation – quite a read. The bit that sticks with me is the seaman on one of these tiny carriers, with the Japanese surface fleet bearing down on them, who yells “Hold on, lads! We’re drawing them into forty-millimeter range!” For non-naval types, this is roughly the equivalent of a clownfish looking over his shoulder as he flees from a shark and saying to himself “All I need to do is let him get a bit closer and then I’ll be able to bite the blighter.”
A hearty recommendation for The Lost Fleet series. Among other things, since Geary has missed out on a century of constant war, he holds rather old-fashioned views on things like not shooting escape pods, not torturing prisoners, actual competence, and upholding democratic government instead of quietly planning a military coup.
In the post-24 War on Terror era, that sort of old fashioned belief that tough times doesn’t mean you have to become a complete monster “to do what’s necessary” is a refreshing change.
I also love the little bit tossed in after Geary gets the fleet home where ships start suffering widespread system and structural failures, and it turns out he’s the reason; he’s been so successful in winning battles with minimal casualties that the ships, built with the expectation they’d be commanded by officers where Attack! Attack! was their sole tactical ability usually resulting in their ships getting wrecked or blown up, have exceeded their designed lifespan.
Why isn’t Coltaine’s 7th Army on this list?
I’ve enjoyed some military fiction, but I’m so tired of it dominating the science fiction market.
We used to have all kinds of science fiction, or speculative fiction, as some call it: time travel (now taken over by literary fiction, and thus depressing); new technology fiction, and not just computer tech; first contact, in which it was not a foregone conclusion that we would have a war; the ages to come; simple transportation such as Niven’s teleportation or Heinlein’s The Roads Must Roll; galactic or solar system cultures; and most importantly, novels warning about the consequences of tech and cultural forecasts, among other things.
Yes, there are sometimes elements of these things in military fiction, but it is overwhelmed by battle.
As I wrote, I enjoy some military science fiction, but it has taken over the genre (probably something to do about 19 years of war).
Are military sci-fi and space opera really all people want to read?
I’ve enjoyed some military fiction, but I’m so tired of it dominating the science fiction markets
It… doesn’t? I mean, look at the Hugo nominees for the last ten years. There’s some military SF there, sure, but there’s also The Dervish House and Feed and Embassytown and Redshirts and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and Neptune’s Brood and Seveneves and The Calculating Stars and a load of others that aren’t military SF.
I desperately wish someone would put the Robert Frezza books into ebook format for nook or kindle. There are dozens of other books and series, SF and Fantasy, that I would love to reread. Hey, Tor, how about digging through the pulp fiction of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and putting out omnibus editions of all-but-forgotten series?
Theresa Edgerton had two wonderful Celtic fantasy series, one with a knight who is also a werewolf.
The third book of the Borderlands fantasy series is an ebook, but not the first two. (The protagonist is named Rabbit.)
There is a series told from the pov of a reptilian alien who species is allied with humans in fighting off insectile enemies. They are fighter pilots.
There is a SF series about a society of humanoid species, some of which are furry, some of which have unusual abilities.
I may not remember the titles or authors but I remember the books because they were damn good stories.
The Posleen War series by John Ringo had a lot of the “soldiers thrown into the grinder” passages.
The Earth is being invaded by a hostile species of alligator/horse/people which basically conquer a planet, devour its resources and then move on. Humans make a lot of last stands in these books but the series was a lot of fun to read.
I also recommend the Lost Fleet series which other people have mentioned.
The Faded Sun trilogy by C. J. Cherryh is the kind of book you get when an acknowledged master world builder is writing at the top of her game. I’m surprised she didn’t get a Nebula or a Hugo for this tour de force. Which reminds me: I’m about due for a reread.
@20 regarding the Frezza books I’m torn. The idea of Yanks and Commies fighting WWIII and the Japanese dominating the subsequent world order is, well, a 1980s, 1990s thing.
But I’m irritated how in addition to racist characters who are necessary for story purposes (the colony was founded by die-hard white Afrikaners, after all, and it becomes clear that the Japanese are not much better) there is quite a bit of unnecessary racism in it as well. I never know if that is deftly inserted to set the tone, or if it is, well, casual …
I’m giving SFF books to younger relatives. Frezza won’t make that list until they’re much older. Just as I would give Heinlein’s Starship Troopers only to adults, not to juveniles.
Another issue with the Frezza is that book two ends with the good guys essentially pulling a 9/11 on Japan, which is presented as an act of heroism. American or at least New York readers might not care for that development.
Speaking of doomedish armies in books out of print: I know Gilliland’s Rosinante books are available but his Libertarian satire End of the Empire isn’t.
And I think the Wizenbeak books are also not currently in print.
I _think_ the Wizenbeak books have military misadventures to go with the court politics.
Dan Barker@18: I agree with ajay@19 that there is much more than MilSF being produced right now.
But like you, I would sure like to read some military SF that didn’t read like MilSF, if you mean what I mean. Military SF was more interesting when it was just SF with a military angle; it got a lot less interesting once it became a sub-genre that danced to its own tune. And it is hard to dance very long to a medley of Taps, Reveille, and Charge. As a survivor of punk rock, I know about such things. You can’t pogo once your knees get creaky, and only the truly stubborn find that out the hard way.
John Barnes’ first two novels involve doomed armies. The Man Who Pulled Down The Sky starts with an analysis of why the rebel forces are doomed; Sin of Origin shows a rather extreme retreat from an implacable enemy. Or so I recall.
James Davis Nicoll@24:
Another issue with the Frezza is that book two ends with the good guys essentially pulling a 9/11 on Japan, which is presented as an act of heroism. American or at least New York readers might not care for that development.
I understand that emotionally, but if you literally mean “attacking a highly visible target and killing a relatively small number of people as opposed to destroying an entire city and millions of people around it”, I also understand it to be the lesser evil.
Which I realize is pretty easy for me to say when the building in question isn’t in my town.
@24, @26, I never made that connection — probably because I’ve read it well before 9/11, and the kamikaze was mixed into the ground action.
@20, the Borderlands series is by Lorna Freeman. I agree, I’d like them all as ebooks. We could get the German versions, but I at least don’t speak German!
@24
Well, I was in the Pentagon on 9/11, but the run on Tokyo doesn’t bother me at all when I reread the series
@@@@@ 25, JohnArkansawyer:
But like you, I would sure like to read some military SF that didn’t read like MilSF, if you mean what I mean. Military SF was more interesting when it was just SF with a military angle; it got a lot less interesting once it became a sub-genre that danced to its own tune. And it is hard to dance very long to a medley of Taps, Reveille, and Charge. As a survivor of punk rock, I know about such things. You can’t pogo once your knees get creaky, and only the truly stubborn find that out the hard way.
Louis McMaster Bujold wrote The Vor Game as a gift to those who loved military SF. She talked about it in her blog, or somewhere. Many who loved military SF disliked the book. It was too full of squishy human stuff. Or something.