Even when authors wade into the uncharted future or an alternate reality, they still need to get the details right. This is especially true of military-themed speculative fiction, whose readers are drawn to details including strategy plans, epic battle descriptions, and weaponry specs.
In some cases, credibility is borne by the author’s experience. That’s a key selling point for Angeleyes (Baen, Nov.), the latest installment in Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold Series (102,000 print units sold, per Nielsen BookScan). In the new book, Angie Kaneshiro, a former soldier, returns to service as a war begins between Earth and its colonies.
The author’s experience shows in the way he depicts battle strategies, gear, and the mind-set of the characters, says Toni Weisskopf, publisher at Baen, and informs his vision of what the armed forces of the future might look like.
“Williamson is a veteran in both senses of the word, having served in two branches of the U.S. military and published over a dozen novels,” Weisskopf says. The author “knows what it feels like to be a soldier and return home,” bringing this knowledge to the book in a way that rings true for readers.
Joe Zieja, a former Air Force captain who later worked as a government analyst, launched a comedic space opera trilogy with 2016’s Mechanical Failure (Saga). He returns with Communication Failure (June 2017), in which the hero of his first novel is thrust into the role of admiral and is required to make decisions that could imperil the galaxy—a scenario that is played for laughs as well as dramatic tension.
Other titles take a more sober view of current debates happening over government and war, such as fighting terrorism and the repercussions of globalization. Taiyo Fujii’s Orbital Cloud (Haikasoru, Mar. 2017), set in 2020, brings the war on terrorism into outer space, as a shooting-star forecaster, a NORAD staff sergeant, and a billionaire entrepreneur embark an on international effort to fight space-based terrorists.
Techno-terrorism is at the center of Dogs of War (St. Martin’s Griffin, Apr. 2017), ninth in Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger series, which mingles SF with horror elements. The series launched with Patient Zero (2009; 86,000 print copies sold, per BookScan), in which Ledger is recruited to stop a bioweapon that turns humans into zombies.
This installment finds him tackling terrorists whose weapons include robot dogs that deliver WMDs, and plague-spreading sex cyborgs. Though these sound like far-fetched threats, the book’s editor, Michael Homler, says that Maberry aims to “take real-world events and touch them up slightly.”
Robyn Bennis’s debut, The Guns Above (Tor, May 2017), speaks to the political moment from a more personal angle. The military fantasy focuses on a nation’s first female airship captain, as she not only has to outgun enemies in a high-stakes space battle, but also overcome sexist doubts from her crew and superiors—difficulties that would read as anything but far-fetched to today’s readers.
David Weber’s long-running Honor Harrington series, which launched in 1993 with On Basilisk Station, also stars a military heroine, one who lives in the fourth millennium. Baen will publish book 14, Shadow of Victory, in November. Weisskopf says the author has worked to stay a step ahead of the times in discussing political themes of “what government can and should be, how they go wrong, and how they can be put right again—or not.”
In After the Crown (Orbit, Dec.), K.B. Wagers delves into military space opera as the Indranan Empire, ruled by gun-runner-turned-empress Hail Bristol, teeters on the brink of war.
The book is the sequel to 2016’s Behind the Throne, the author’s debut; PW gave starred reviews to both titles, praising the “taut suspense, strong characterization, and dark, rapid-fire humor” of the first and the “action, tension, and constant interplay among the characters” in the second.
Reimagining the Past
Writers who delve into alternate timelines have an additional set of concerns, since their stories may incorporate real people who exist in living memory,
Gregory Benford, in The Berlin Project (Saga, May 2017), considers what might have happened if the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project had built the first atomic bombs by the summer of 1944 and had bombed Berlin.
Benford, an astrophysicist, is a much-lauded author of SF; his awards include a Nebula for 1980’s Timescape. For his new novel, he drew on the accounts of several members of the Manhattan Project, including his father-in-law, on whom the story’s protagonist is based.
Another established author, Harry Turtledove—whom PW called a “master of alternate history” in a 2008 profile—offers a different answer to the nuclear question in Armistice (Del Rey, July 2017). He builds on the premise that in the 1950s, President Truman follows General MacArthur’s advice and drops a nuke in the Korean War, leading Russia to retaliate.
The book’s editor, Anne Groell, says that although the book is set in the past—and an alternate one at that—its themes will resonate with a modern audience. During a time when “global politics are so fraught,” she says, “when countries developing or using their nuclear capabilities remains a real concern, it’s salient to see the potential ramifications of such an act through the eyes of everyday folks.”
