Doug Dandridge's Blog, page 16

The End of Civilized Civilization

I have been noticing a lot of invective on the internet recently.  Well, maybe not all that recently, it has been going on for some time.  Some people do not engage in polite conversation on the internet.  Or at least both parties do not.  Sometime during the discussion, when one party decides they are not getting their point across, they resort to cussing, put downs and threats.  I have experienced this myself, though I usually just back out of the conversation and block all notices of it.  Recently, in a discussion of concealed carry, a young man from Russia, who couldn’t keep from crowing about his mastery of ‘self defense techniques’, threatened to push my gun up my ass.  Of course, my gun was no threat to him at the range of thousands of miles, as his ‘self defense techniques’ were no threat to me at the same range.  In another post by a friend, again about firearms, the anti-gun supporter voiced his wish that the government would kill the pro-gun poster and all his ilk, in no uncertain terms or language.  I seem to remember things being a little more civil when I was growing up, a time before the internet and personal computers.  That may just be my faulty memory, but I think not.  There were societal controls on public comments at that time that no longer exist.  If you wanted to post a review or a comment that people would see you had to go through the newspaper or some other publication.  They would not print some of the words that make up the majority of internet replies these days.  And your name was attached to the comment, so everyone knew who you were.

Robert E Howard said, in his famous Conan series, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”  Anonymity makes people brave enough to say things online that they wouldn’t say to the local drug dealer or street fighter down at the local bar.  People post their names, or at least what they want us to think are their names.   They’re still protected by the fact that most of us don’t want to spend to time and effort to find out who they really are.  Or they are separated from us by enough distance that, like the young man in Russia, they have no fear that we are going to track them down and do violence to them.  Of course most of us wouldn’t really do violence to them even if they lived across the street from us, though there are people in the world who would travel those thousands of miles to do just that.  But mostly they post with impunity.

The biggest problem with these trolls is that they seem to have unlimited time to post, unlike those of us actually doing something productive.  I have found the best strategy to deal with them is to make one final post telling them what you think of them, without resorting to their level of invective, ending the message with a statement that you are getting off that thread or blocking them, and ending with a goodbye.  After that I simply leave the thread, after making sure that I no longer receive notification of their comments, or blocking them.  Then, they are welcome to post as much as they want.  It makes no difference to me what they have to say after that, and I am sure it pisses them off that I am no longer reading their posts.

Filed under: Barbarians, Conferences, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Kindle, Military, Near Future, science Fiction, Tropes, Typos, Websites, Writing Tagged: blogs, internet, replies, Robert E Howard, Trolls

This Is What It’s All About.

First, I want to apologize about not keeping up with this blog.  February was a weird month for this writer, and period of contrasts, of ups and downs.  It started with the end of a great January.  Sales were good.  A new book came out and was doing very well on Amazon.  I traveled cross country to Colorado for the Superstars Writing Seminar.  I met some great people there, both beginning writers and people who had scaled the mountain and achieved the success I am still hoping to achieve.  Now, 75,000 sales is not bad, but some, Kevin J Anderson, for example, have sold multiple millions.  But all in all it was a great time, a great learning experience.  I was celebrated as an indie success.  Of course I’ve got an ego, and praise always feels good.  I flew back to Tallahassee with great plans to get to work on my goals.  Up next was a local interest book about growing up in Venice Florida, to be followed quickly by the next volumes of the Exodus and The Deep Dark Well series.  I was also determined to work up a fantasy novel for submission to Baen Books.  So I arrived in Tallahassee with great expectations and settled in my study to, well, nothing.  The rest of February was a disaster as far as work went.  I typed no new words.  I did no marketing.  The last blog about Superstars was about all I could get off the hard drive and onto the net.  Mostly I read and played computer strategy games, which in and of themselves are not bad activities for a writer, as long as they’re not all there is.  I learn from both, and ideas got kicked around in my mind.  And I socialized more than normal.  Writing is kind of a lonely business.  Just you, your computer and your own head.  And sometimes living alone in your own head is being in bad company.  The only thing I miss about my old job is the daily contact I had with people who were involved in the same Government run mess as I was.

About the only thing I really put effort into was working out, which was a good thing.  Even on the day I hurt my back, yet again, I went into the gym and worked with my trainer, and discovered ways to work around an injury while strengthening the weak point.  But the writing went out the window that looks over my small back yard.  So what happened?  I was trained as a psychologist, so I should be able to figure this stuff out.  Was it, sitting on the side of the mountain of success I had worked so hard to climb, I realized the top was still so far above me?  Now I can see more clearly the challenges that lay ahead.  Or was it Imposter Syndrome, something I had learned about in two different professional programs?   The feeling that I had fooled so many people, and that once they got to really know me, and to understand how little talent I had, they would come to hate me.    Then, late last week, I received this email.  I have removed the name to protect the privacy of the sender, but all else is a direct copy:

Mr. Dandridge,

Sir, I just bought your new book “Ranger,” and want to make a comment on your observation in the “Notes for Fans.” I very much enjoy your descriptions and depictions of ground combat, the utter confusion, violence, heartbreak and nobility. I love space opera and space combat as much as most fans (the Honorverse, Crimson Worlds, Sten series, Wilf Brim, etc) I absolutely love the ground conflict parts (Falkenberg’s Legion, Tom Kratman’s work, etc).

As a retired US Marine with 4 combat tours, it was sci-fi such as yours that got me through the stress. I recognize so much of the moral dilemma’s the “sloppiness” of war and the frequent choices of bad or more bad as the only choices available. Space combat, when written, soon becomes too stylized and dependent on better tech or surprise, but ground combat is far more unpredictable, and on occasion foes sometimes find out they have much in common or are faced with a greater threat forcing them to work together. And ground combat always shows both the inhumanity and humanity of human beings, and the essential nobility, fragility and crippling fear of men, women and children.

And finally, as both a combat veteran and semi-professional historian, when ships of war engage in conflict, be it in space or on the sea, some poor bastard of a grunt will always need to stick a flag into the burnt and shattered ground and say, “This is ours!”

So please, keep writing the ground combat stuff. It is highly appreciated.

Semper Fidelis,

XXXX XXXX

Major, USMC Retired

After reading this it struck me.  All of the other things, the dreams of success, the mind games, the self doubt.  All is BS.  The reason most of us write is because we have stories within us that we need to tell.  And sometimes the payoff is that people love those stories, that they see the work that went into making them as real as possible, even in the realms of scifi and fantasy.  And sometimes, if we’re lucky, they help a reader to work their way through the stress of situations most of us can’t really imagine.  Since receiving this email I have started back at the keyboard.  I am studying, worldbuilding, getting an idea ready for that Baen submission.  Things are back on track.  The book of local interest is on hold for the moment.  It is not of enough interest to pull me away from the stories I want to tell.  So, thank you Major.  Semper Fidelis indeed.

 

Filed under: Agents, Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Conferences, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Past, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Writing Tagged: Colorado, Exodus: Book5: Ranger, ground combat, Kevin J Anderson, Marines, Superstars, Superstars Writing Seminar, Tallahassee

Superstars Writing Seminar.

I spent this last weekend in Colorado Springs at the Superstars Writing Seminar, put on by Kevin J Anderson and his lovely wife, Rebecca Moesta.  I met the pair at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, where I was involved in a writing workshop prior to the regular convention programs.  During their presentation they pitched the seminar, intended for people who already know how to write, but in need of some training in the business aspects of being a writer.  At the time I really had no intention of attending this year.  In correspondence Kevin again suggested the seminar, and I decided to take a chance and fly out to Colorado (after having not been on a commercial airplane for over 22 years).  It was one of the best choices I could have made in my third year as a self-published author.

Most people have heard of Kevin J Anderson, maybe the most prolific science fiction and fantasy writer of modern times.  He and his wife, both writers, editors and publishers, live in the area, and have made the seminar, which used to be a traveling road show, into a home based operation.  They do a wonderful job of paying it forward to starting writers.  The program of the seminar was set over three eight hour days, and covered many aspects of the business of writing, from productivity to pricing to motivation.  There were bestselling authors, editors, an agent, and the marketing director of Kobo.  I sat on one panel, dealing with Indie authors, my first ever.  Let me just say I ate it up, and can’t wait to sit on more.

One of the highlights of the seminar was the Drawing Out the Dragons presentation by Author/Artist James Owen, in which he told the story of his trials and tribulations in becoming a success in the business, as well as driving forth the message that we make our own choices.  Kevin gave a presentation of increasing productivity, while Eric Flint taught us the ins and outs of publishing contracts.  At other times I was able to talk with many of the faculty.  Lunch with Rebecca and Scott Boone, a trip to the Garden of the Gods with Kevin (almost my undoing), speaking with David Farland at the mixer, an hour in a chair after the first day talking with James Owen, the Friday night dinner sitting with Eric Flint (more on that in a future blog), and several conversations with Mark Lefebre of Kobo.  There were many opportunities for networking and friend building despite the busy schedule.  Author Brandon Sanderson also attended on Saturday, but was not really there long enough for me to get any personal time.  I found, just as I had at Dragon*Con, that most of these famous authors were first and foremost very good people, willing to take the time to give advice to the newby.

There was a lot of information.  Not overwhelming, but a great deal to digest.  I know it will help me in my endeavors to keep building a fan base and a career.  But to me the best part of the seminar was networking.  Talking with Kevin, James and Mark.  Lunch with Rebecca and Scott Boone, the attorney who presented on Copyright and Trademark.  Dinner with Eric Flint, during which I learned a great deal about Baen Books as a company to work for.  But to this writer, the best part was talking with other writers who had the same dream.  Presenting the synopsis of one of my books, then listening to their really cool idea in return.  People who got it.  I made a lot of new friends, and am looking forward to seeing them gain success in the future.

I enjoyed the seminar so much I signed up for next year’s event on Saturday night.  It may have some of the same presentations, but, with the rapid changes ongoing in publishing, there are sure to be new gems.  And it will be a chance again to network, to reacquaint with friends while making new ones.  Is this seminar for everyone?  Not really.  I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who is just dabbling around with a story here or there, with no real commitment to becoming a professional.  For the person with the desire to go to the next level, I can’t think of a better investment.  If you’re serious about your career, maybe I’ll see you there.

Filed under: Agents, Comics, Conferences, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Golden Age, History, Kindle, Past, Plotting, Proofreading, Titles, Tropes, Typos, Websites, Writing Tagged: Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Drawing Out the Dragons, Eric Flint, James Owen, Kevin J Anderson, Mark Lefebre, Productivity, Rebecca Moesta, Superstars, Writing Seminars

Superstars of Writing Conference

Already a great year as far as sales, with 6,000+ ebooks going out the door for January.  Last year I went to my first scifi convention, Dragon*con, and attended a writer’s workshop.  I met Kevin J Anderson, who was a guest speaker at the workshop, and talked with him after a couple of panels at the con.  He suggested attending this annual event he puts on in Colorado Springs.  Being a recent dirt poor state worker until March of last year, I thought, maybe sometime, but probably not soon.   I got to thinking about it in October when the income looked very good for the year, and the Superstar’s early bird price break deadline was coming up, and then thought, why not.  Dragon*con turned out to be a great networking experience, and Superstars looked to have the makings of another.  So Tuesday I will be getting on an airplane for the first time in twenty-four years and winging it to Colorado.  Colorado, in February, for a Florida native?  I know, sounds kind of crazy to me too.  But it looks like a great conference, and I get to appear on my first panel (I have possibly another coming up later in the year).  I will post about the conference when I return.  Have also made plans for Liberty*con (hotel and registration), Dragon*con (same) and the Venice Book Fair in April.  Venice Book Fair you say.  I grew up there, and kind of wanted to appear as an author, not that I plan to make a lot of money at that venue.

Exodus 6 and Book 3 of The Deep Dark Well trilogy will be coming in Spring.  After that I will drop TDDW series for the time being, even though I have the first draft of the first book of a second trilogy already on the hard drive (and backed up in about twenty places).   I also plan to put out the fourth book of the Refuge series sometime this year.   Book five, next year, may see the suspension of that series for awhile, though I always want to come back to the genre bending world of fantasy.  Exodus will probably take up most of my time for the next couple of years.  I have a lot of ideas for that Universe and the characters that populate it.

And after that?  I would eventually like to try my hand at alternate history.  I have a love for military history, especially the history of the second world war.  Several years ago I started to develop a pair of series at WW2.  One would involve Hitler being deposed in 1939, and Stalin launching an attack on Europe in 1943.  The other would be more of a scifi idea, with people from the future, with knowledge of history and technology, sending their personalities back in time to take over the brains of several leaders of the Third Reich.  Others would do the same with the allies, but there are some twists to that part of the plot which I won’t reveal at this time.  Again, that will be years in the future, which give me plenty of time for development.

 

 

Filed under: Antimatter, Armor, Conferences, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, steampunk, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Writing Tagged: alternate history, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Exodus: Empires at War, Kevin J Anderson, Refuge, scifi convention, Superstars, The Deep Dark Well, World War 2, writer's conferences

Exodus Five is Alive and Well.

I released Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger on December 27th, 2013.  Since that time it has sold over 2,400 copies, mostly ebooks, but some paperbacks as well.  Currently it is ranked number 1 in three categories across the pond on Amazon.UK, Books: Space Opera and Kindle: Space Opera and Military Scifi.  It’s ranked number 7 in Books: Space Opera and Military Scifi, and Kindle: Space Opera onAmazon.US, down from a number 5 rank in all those categories a week ago.  It is averaging 4.5 stars at Amazon US, with 16 five star reviews, 2 four star, a three and a pair of twos.  One of the twos admitted to skimming much of the book, so I really discount his opinion as far as how much attention I should give to his points.  In the UK the book has six reviews, with five 5 stars and a 4.  I have also received emails, Facebook posts and blog replies that let me know that people are really liking the book.  Book 5 was somewhat of a departure from the previous books, concentrating on ground warfare, with one of the minor characters of the other books now the star, and the majors pushed into a distant supporting role.  I was told by some readers even before the book came out that they wouldn’t like it because it didn’t feature space action.  Some of my reviews said they loved the book despite the focus on land warfare, while others, mostly from ground pounders old and new, loved the setting.

When I started the Exodus series it was intended to be Military Science Fiction, covering all aspects of a future war on a grand scale.  It was labeled Space Opera by readers who marked it as such on Amazon.  No problem, since that is a very popular sub-genre.  But I did not want to be pigeonholed into only writing about spaceships.  There is so much more to scifi that things blowing up in space, though I tend to include a lot of that in most of my books as well.  There are the planets, big complicated things with their own evolutionary path and history, leading to some strange and interesting life forms.  There are aliens, who shouldn’t always act just like humans, nor look like people with prosthetic devices on their faces.  There are politics, and intrigue, and technology.  Aw, the technology.  Several years ago on a site specializing in helping science fiction and fantasy writers I posed a question about wormholes, asking the members what uses they could think of for them besides transport of people and things.  The answers I got really surprised me.  Mostly no ideas, just responses of ‘what else would they be needed for.’  I have come up with many uses for wormholes in my novels, and have some more on the horizon.  They are a central tech in my books, and central techs in societies are normally developed in way that even surprised the inventors.

The first four books stuck with the main storyline, as convoluted as it was.  I decided that one of the characters needed a story, so I wrote it.  One of the great things about being self-published is I have total control of the series.  I will continue to write side stories in the future.  I already have the ideas, and I think they add something to the overall saga.  But I have a thought, just to keep everything straight, I would start doing the side stories under a different title, like Exodus: Tales of the Empire, to cover excursions into other areas of the war, short stories, and historical events (in that Universe).  I will still concentrate on the main storyline, but will also put out one or two books a year in the side line.  That way, people who only want to follow the main storyline can do so by buying the Empires at War books, while those interested in the larger scope of the Universe can also pick up the Tales of the Empire line.  And thanks to all of you who keep buying any of my books.  You make it all worthwhile.

Filed under: Acceleration, Alien Invasion, Antimatter, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, History, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Typos, Websites, Writing Tagged: Exodus, Exodus series, Exodus: Book5: Ranger, Exodus: Empires at War, Exodus: Tales of the Empire, Military Scifi, self publishing, Space Opera

Just in Time for the Holidays: Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5.

Still not sure of the actual release date, but Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger. will definitely be out before New Years Day.  Most probably by a day or two after Christmas.  Can’t narrow it down more than that, as sometimes things come up, or problems come to my attention at the last moment.  I already have the next three books in the series in mind, and hope to release them through the 2014 year.    To my mind this will be a long series, at least 20 books, and as new subplots develop that might turn out to be a conservative estimate.

Ranger is a book about Cornelius Walborski, the farmer introduced as a minor viewpoint character in books 1 and 2,  His role grew in ways I never expected, and I thought he needed a book of his own.  While trying to keep the series in some kind of chronological order, I knew the book had to come out early in the series.   The story follows Cornelius as he trains to become a regular in the Imperial Army, culminating in his augmentation and induction into the ranks of the elite Specops warriors of that Army, the Rangers.  It also tells the tale of the invasion and slaughter of the civilian population of a developing world in Sector IV, the main theater of combat in the Human/Ca’cadasan War.  It follows the efforts of a young girl forced to survive in the wilderness of one of the deadliest planets in the Empire.  The two main characters eventually come together, each aiding the other in their plans.

I received some complaints that my last book, Exodus: Book 4: The Long Fall, did not have enough space action, despite having almost a half dozen major space fights in it.  Some said that good Space Opera mostly concerned itself with spaceships and space battles.  Well, when I first put out the series I tagged it as Military Science Fiction, which does cover land warfare as well.  It was tagged Space Opera by readers on Amazon.  This book will be almost all ground action, the exception being some point of view scenes of the battle for the orbitals as seen from the surface of the planet.  That said, the next two books in the main storyline will concern themselves almost entirely with space action.  I realize that by the time the books are set in arrives, the Army will definitely be the secondary service after the Fleet, though there will still be a place for ground warfare.

Speaking of past books, the series to date has sold over 43,000 books across the four, mostly ebooks, but some paperbacks.  Book 3 made it to number two in Space Opera (all books) on Amazon.US, while book 4 topped out at number 1 on Space Opera, Space Fleet and Military Science Fiction on Amazon.UK, and number 2 Military Science Fiction and number 8 Space Opera on Amazon.US.  In order of sales, Amazon.US and Amazon.UK are the big two, followed distantly by Amazon.DE and Amazon.CA.  I hope that this book will do as well.

An now to the excerpt:

That’s it, thought Rebecca, looking at the rock formations on the side of the mountain and checking her position.  She had only seen the refuge from the air before, or on the ground right outside of it.  Nothing else she had seen on the mountainsides on the way here had looked familiar, not like this.

She lay there for almost an hour, using the field glasses she had packed to scan the area.  It looked unoccupied, which was how it should be, even if there were someone there.  A refuge that looked like it was occupied, especially from the air, was not much of a hideout.  She found a dark area on the mountainside, just behind the flat region that would have been the landing pad for her family.  It looked like a cave entrance.  They had planned to provide cover for that opening when they had started their habitation.  That it hadn’t been done was a sign that the cave hadn’t been inhabited.  Or had it?

Something moved, and she focused the glasses on that area, seeing a hunched over figure at the entrance to the cavern.  At this distance she couldn’t tell if it was human or Caca.  Caca meant the refuge was closed to her.  Human?  Maybe, maybe not.  She continued to study the figure, which stayed hunched down in a stance that didn’t allow her to see the number of its limbs.  She was also having problems with the scale.  Was it a less than two meter tall being, or one over three?

A second figure joined the first, and they squatted there, looking out over the area in front of the cave and beyond.  They were obviously talking, and one waved a hand at the open area, then looked up at the sky.

Come on, thought the child, the sweat rolling down her face as she continued to watch.  Move out where I can see what you are.

Almost as if in obedience to her thoughts the second figure stood up and walked out into the clear area, heading for the spring that was near the south end of the small plateau.  Rebecca almost whooped for joy as she saw the easily recognizable motion of a human walking.  She focused in the glasses and saw that the being only had two upper limbs, swinging with the walk, one holding an empty water container.

So, do I take the chance that they might let me in, or do I just go away? she thought.  Looking over her shoulder at the jungle behind her she shuddered.  She was surviving in that jungle, barely.  That could change any day now.  There had been some near misses in the last couple of days, and it would only take one hit by a native life form to kill her.  She glanced up at the sun that was beating down on her.  Clouds were gathering on the horizon, a sign that the afternoon deluge was gathering.  She thought it would be nice to be dry again.  The survival suit kept the rain off of most of her body, but the humidity went everywhere.

I’ll just be careful, she thought, getting up and moving back into the jungle to start working her way to the refuge.  It took several hours of hard going to work her way within earshot of the cave.  She was still a dozen meters down the mountainside, out of sight from the cave, conversely not able to see what was going on up there.

She climbed those last dozen meters, her muscles aching under the pull of gravity that wanted to deposit her at the bottom.  She could hear voices now, a couple of people talking.  She thought they were male voices.  The chances were greater that women would let her in.  Not that men wouldn’t, but as a, as of this day, thirteen year old with a developing body, there were other risks with men in a situation where societal norms had broken down.

She climbed the last meter, looking over the rocks while exposing as little of her face as possible.  There were now three people at the entrance, all male.  A fourth male was returning from the spring, a full water container in his hand.  She studied the men, still not sure what to make of them.  That they were using the refuge her family put together went without question.  That would not be a problem, since her family had not come, but she still needed it.

She saw another man come out of the cave, this one in partial light battle armor, the type the planetary militia wore.  That gave her a bit more hope.  If they were militia they would surely have an officer, or at least an NCO, in charge.  With that thought she scrambled up the last bit of slope and rose into sight.

The men at the cave all jumped and pointed, and some weapons made their appearance.  They calmed a bit as they saw that she was just a child.  She didn’t like some of the looks that came across the faces of the group.  They made her distinctly uncomfortable.

“Where the hell did you come from, girl?” asked the oldest looking of the men, one wearing the torso covering of light battle armor and a partial helmet.

“From the jungle,” she said, her eyes looking for a way out, just in case this had been as bad a decision as it was now looking.  She looked back at the man.  “This place was my family’s.  We set it up when the aliens came.”

“And where is this family of yours?”

“They didn’t make it.  Are you militia?  My father is a reserve officer.  Is there any way you can contact him?”

“We were militia,” said the man with a sneer.  “Until those sons of bitches wanted to throw us away trying to slow them down, for no damned reason.  Now we’re on our own.”

Deserters, she thought with a shudder.  What the hell did I get myself into?

“How old are you, girl?” asked another of the men, moving toward her.

“Ten,” she said, lying, hoping that they would decide she was too young for whatever game they wanted to play.

“You look a lot older than that, girl,” said the older man who seemed to be in charge.  “We don’t have any women here.  And you sure could fill the bill.”

Thoughts of gang rape started to go through her head, and she started to back toward the place where she had climbed onto the small plateau.

“You stop right there, girl,” said the man, pulling a pistol from the holster at his side.  “We won’t hurt you, not really.  You play with us, we’ll make sure you’re protected and fed.”

Rebecca knew about sex.  She had learned about it in biology courses.  And she knew she was too young, and didn’t want to have anything to do with it at her age.  She would become a sex slave to these men, all of them using her whenever they wanted.  Her internal nanites would keep her from getting pregnant, and protect her from disease.  Still, the idea of being used by these deserters was not her first choice, or her last.

“Stop,” said the man, pointing the pistol at her.  “If you take another step I will shoot you.”

And he doesn’t know I’m wearing a military class survival suit, she thought, looking at the pistol, then at the nearby rocks.  They also don’t know what kind of weapon I have.

With that last thought she dove for the ground.  Something smacked into her suit, which went rigid from the impact.  Rolling over she came to a stop behind the rocks and pulled her particle beam pistol from its holster.  A flick of her finger and the weapon’s accelerator started humming and whining.

“Come out of there and you won’t be hurt,” yelled the leader.  “Make us come for you and it will go hard for you.”

I can imagine, she thought, checking the pistol and seeing that the proton charge was up to full acceleration.

One man came around the rocks and caught the particle beam in the chest.  The nearly relativistic particles ripped into his body and vaporized kilograms of tissue, dropping him into a smoking heap on the ground.

Rebecca stared at the man for a moment.  She had never killed a human.  She had of course killed a Ca’cadasan, and many animals, but never another human being.  She thought that she should have felt shock.  Instead it was rage that was the dominant emotion.  Rage that these people had made her a killer of her own kind.

“Fuck you,” she yelled out, looking around the rock and leveling her weapon at the cave mouth.  A quartet of shocked looking men stood there, some pointing weapons her way.  A couple fired, the worst thing they could have done.

The girl pulled the trigger on the pistol and held it down, swinging the beam across the mouth of the cave.  Three men went down with catastrophic wounds while the other ran into the cave.  The beam tore into the rock, shattering large pieces that fell into the mouth.

“This is mine,” she yelled, still holding the trigger down even when the weapon stopped firing.  “I will be back, and I want you gone.”

She wasn’t sure that was the truth, but in her anger she wanted to panic them.  She looked down at the pistol, afraid that she had broken something, and was relieved to see that the blinking light indicated that the proton pack was empty.  She only had one left, and she cursed herself for a fool for letting her anger rule her.

Rebecca slipped back over the lip of the plateau and started down the slope.  Her shoulder blades cringed at the thought that the men might come out of the cave and shoot at her from above.  Her suit might protect her from a few shots, but with enough there was sure to be a hit to her head, or a penetration of the suit.

She reached bottom without incident, saying a prayer of thanks before she realized what she was doing.  Stopping for a moment, she looked back up at the mountain, wondering what she was going to do now that the refuge was closed to her. I could wait and see if they leave, she thought, rejecting that idea as soon as she had it.  They might never leave, and she wasn’t sure she could force herself into another firefight.  Having to fire back was one thing.  Starting a battle in which she intended to kill other humans was quite another.

Rebecca shook her head, knowing that waiting here was not the answer.  But where to from here?  She checked the map and saw that there were several villages and a minor town within five days walk.  There was no guarantee that they were intact, or that she would be able to shelter there if they were.  Seeing no other option, she took a compass reading, set her location on the inertial navigation device, and started on her way.

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Writing Space Warfare: Part 3: Fire Till The Barrels Melt.

First off, lets ‘s start out with the proposition that this is about Space Warfare in Space Opera and Military Science Fiction.  Not everything is going to obey every law of physics as we know it now.  It is assumed that methods of generating enormous amounts of power and getting rid of excess heat will be found.  And that processes that generate huge amounts of waste heat will become much more efficient over time.  And example could be the laser.  Modern lasers generate large amounts of waste heat, one thing that makes laser pistols impractical at this time.  if 99.9% of the energy could be put into the beam this would no longer be a problem.  And if we don’t solve those problems in the future?  Then none of this stuff will happen, but it still makes entertaining reading today.

So, what about weapons in space combat?  Almost anything goes if it’s well thought out.  That said, there are some fallacies perpetrated in books and movies (mostly movies).  As said earlier, I grew up watching Star Trek.  In the original Trek the weapons carried by the Enterprise were not only really powerful, they were also fast.  As in faster than light.  Starships battled at hyperlight velocities and shot with weapons that didn’t miss.  If you want to use such weapons then the model still works.  You need something other than a normal light beam though, because those only travel at the speed of light, which, while it’s still fast, has its limitations.  Let’s look at this from a historical perspective.  Watch some movies about battles between ships in World War 2.  They’re moving while firing.  The ships turn this way and that, vary their speed, anything so they won’t be hit.  If a torpedo is coming in they point the ship at the weapon and hope it misses the reduced target.  The reason for this is they are dealing with unguided weapons that take time to get from gun to target.  Study some of the weapons profiles and you will find guns firing at targets on high arcs that take a half minute or more to reach the target.  Said target is trying to avoid being hit, and has time to do so.  Most times the shooter will try to bring rounds in to bracket the target, hoping for a hit or two.

Now let’s bring this out to space.  One ship fires a particle beam traveling at point nine five light.  The other ship is probably going to see it coming on its sensors and tyry to move out of the way, but do they have enough time?  At really close range, no, they don’t have enough time to do anything about it.  From particle beam to ship in a fraction of a second is not enough reaction time.  Same with rail guns firing high kinetic energy projectiles.  Even worse with light beams, because you can’t even see them until they hit. You can try random maneuvers to make them miss, but unless you can move your entire enormous ship a half kilometer of more in less than a second this really isn’t going to accomplish much more than a hit to another part of the ship than what was aimed for.  Now let’s move the action out to a light minute, eighteen million kilometers. You still can’t see that light beam coming, though you can maneuver at random, making your ship harder to hit, since they are actually firing at the ship they saw a minute ago.  The particle beam can be seen a little sooner, about three seconds before it hits, but again, the ship could be maneuvering randomly.  The rail gun projectile might be seen a half minute or more before it hits.  None of these weapons can be guided onto a target that moves after the shot, with the possible exception of the rail gun projectile if it happens to have some kind of terminal guidance and propulsion system.  Firing at random location might generate a hit, but enough?

Now move the ships out to a light hour from each other and you have a problem an order of magnitude greater.  The chance of a hit is just about nonexistent.  Add to this the spread of the beam weapons, which go from points of ravening energy to spots kilometers in diameter.  This may generate more chances for a hit, but the damage will be attenuated at best.  As Larry Niven pointed out in his Known Space series, shine a spread beam on a target long enough and you will heat it up.  Enough?  And with the ship trying to get out of the beam?  So at long ranges beam weapons are not really a viable weapon.  This goes for plasma weapons, shotgun blasts of ball bearings, you name it.

These leave guided weapons, whether called missiles, torpedoes or whatever.  At first these don’t seem like viable weapons either.  Play Star Fleet Academy, in which some of the ships have missiles, and you can see how useless fragile slow moving guided projectiles can be.  Beam weapons take them out with one shot.  Give a beam weapon thirty seconds and they can take out thirty weapons.  Again, Weber got this right.  His missiles are large, robust weapons that use advance jamming technology to hide their true position, while using the gravity fields generated by his propulsion tech to protect themselves.   They are fired in waves because not all will make it through.  And he uses a bomb pumped x-ray laser (or possibly gamma ray) at the end to achieve the hit to the ships protected by the same gravitation field.

I decided to use this model, with variations, for my naval combat in Exodus.  Missiles are fired at long range and build up acceleration to relativistic velocities.  They can correct their targeting on the way, while juking, bobbing and basically jamming the hell out of enemy sensors, making them essentially unhittable by long range beam weapons.  As they get closer, into engagement range by the weapons of the vessel they are attacking they drop decoys travelling at the same velocity, and maybe employ their own beam and projectile weapons to knock out counter missiles.  Now in my novels I make the direct hit the optimal attack.  If you do the math you will see why.  A hundred ton missile traveling at point nine five light will generate enough kinetic energy to make a gigaton warhead seem redundant.  A hit would be catastrophic.  So why even include that gigaton antimatter warhead?  Because if a missile misses it flies off into space, unable to turn around and reacquire.  So the next best thing is a hocking big explosion as close to the ship as possible.

Once you decide on your basic weaponry comes the fun part, figuring out the tactics of naval engagement.  I figure that the best attack profile with missiles was at the longest range possible, allowing the missiles to build up to the greatest possible velocity before impact.  Also, the faster they are going the harder they are to hit with defensive weaponry.  Missiles fired at close range, unless we’re talking extreme close range, will be fairly easy to take out, and this would be the realm of the beam weapons.  Missiles fired at a closing enemy would have the advantage of the closing speed, up to the limits of relativity.  Firing at a receding enemy would be more of a problem, as the missiles must get up to and past the speed of the enemy, and would be easier to target with a reduced closing speed.  Also the speed of the firing warship must be taken into account.  Firing missiles the same direction the ship is traveling is good, as the missiles already have the velocity of the shooting vessel in their favor.  Firing missiles behind the ship is bad, as the weapons must first decelerate to change directions.  But sometimes a bad choice is the only one.  In my books I also go into the other advantages and disadvantages of taking different shots, including the use of the hyperspace I have formulated for interstellar travel.  I won’t go into those here.

The last thing I want to touch on is stealth, used so often in military scifi and space opera.  Everyone has seen the cloaking devices on Star Trek.  The enemy ship disappears from sight, with no way of being found, except a slight visual distortion.  I really have never understood how the Enterprise computers couldn’t look for that distortion and find the ship.  Now this technology seems completely possible even in the near future, with light bending fields that I really don’t understand.  And other techniques can be used to absorb active sensors like radar.  But what about the heat?  Big ships using big engines and big weapons produce a lot of heat.  Even if ways are found to offload that heat that are much more efficient than today, that heat still radiates out and can be seen.  The engines could be throttled down to almost nothing, same with the weapons. But there would still be heat, unless a way in found to offload it into some kind of heat sink.  Not impossible, and you just have to find a way to make it work in your story, something I have already done, with limitations.

That all I have on this topic for now, not that it’s all I have thought of on the subject.  I guess if you want to see how I handle space combat in its entirety you’re going to have to read my books.  I don’t claim to be the ultimate thinker in this area.  I just come up with ideas that seem to work in my Universe.  To me, the most important part of all of it is consistency.  If it works one way it should always work that way, unless you can introduce other elements that change the equation.

 

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Writing Space Warfare: Part 2: Size Matters.

Naval warfare on Earth at one time was a battle of getting the most tonnage in the water.  From Galleys to Biremes to Triremes.  From Cogs to Galleons to Men-o-War.  The battleship race.  Bigger ships could carry bigger guns and take more of a pounding.  Now we are in the age of smaller ships, due to technology, with the exception of those floating airbases known as Aircraft Carriers.  But bigger ships are on the drawing boards, and while they won’t carry the same sort of guns that battleships once did, they will have very long range engagement envelopes with rapid fire weapons.

One of the things that caused a change in naval warfare was the introduction of the torpedo, and the ability of small torpedo boats to put a fish into the side of Capital Ships.  Then came the Torpedo Boat Destroyer (commonly known as Destroyers) to escort and protect the bigger ships.  Aircraft also changed the equation, and capital ships soon became floating AA platforms surrounded by smaller AA cruisers and multipurpose destroyers.  These combinations were very hard to hit at sea, contrary to the belief of most people who do not study WW2 history.

Now it’s my belief that size will matter in space.  A bigger ship can carry bigger weapons and more protection.  Of course this comes with a caution.  If weapons are such that one hit will destroy a ship, no matter how big, then smaller vessels will be the norm.  But in most imaginable Universes that will not be the case for several reasons.

Let’s look at armored protection.  For the sake of simplicity I am going to make all the vessels in this demonstration cubes, and the fields around them cubes, though the principles hold true for spheres, diamonds, triangles and just about any other shape you want to make your ship. So let’s have a ship that’s a one hundred meter square.  It has a surface area of 10,000 square meters and a volume of a million cubic meters.  Now let’s make that ship two hundred meters square.  Now we have a surface area of 40,000 square meters, four times that of the smaller ship.  But the volume is eight million cubic meters, eight times that of the smaller ship.  The larger vessel can carry the same thickness of armor protection as the smaller ship while having eight times the amount of propulsive power (though of course some of that goes into moving the mass of the interior around).  Or, even better, it can carry twice the thickness of armor for the same mass penalty as compared to its engines.

The same with force fields.  Now in Exodus I use cold plasma in an electromagnetic field for protection, since I have no reason to believe there are other forces that can be used (but maybe gravity like in Weber?).  Still, the larger ship would generate twice the amount of power per square meter of its shield than the smaller vessel, whether it was an electromagnetic field or a traditional magic type field from Star Trek.

The same with defensive weaponry.  A larger ship would be able to carry eight times the magazine capacity, or four times the number of surface emplacements.  Which would make its defensive fire much more difficult to breach.  Of course this can be carried to extremes.  The Death Star was the ultimate power in the Galaxy, but there was only the one (at a time).  That made it the priority target.  Putting all the military eggs in one basket would be a bad idea.  One lucky hit could equal one catastrophic kill.  Three battleships, not as likely.  A hundred, no way.

And what about a catastrophic hit?  Big ships of today and the recent past could take a pounding.  The same would probably be true of the vessels of future space. In the Battlestar Galactica miniseries the Galactica took a hit by a nuke and survived.  Armors should become much tougher with new alloys and nanotech.  I would doubt a single hit by anything short of a gigaton device would knock out the space battleship of the far future.  Fast moving objects, like hundred ton missiles striking with relativistic velocities might be another story.

So would really large ships be the only ones deployed in this future navy?  I don’t believe so.  Fifty battleships can only cover so much space at once.   Border patrols, anti-pirate expeditions, escorting convoys, these would probably be left to much smaller vessels, which could also be used as screens to keep the battleships from being hit.  Now in the cold hard equation of war a smaller ship with hundreds of crew that took less than a year to build is much more expendable than a larger vessel with thousands of crew that took multiple years to construct.  If a destroyer catches a missile instead of the capital ship it’s a bitch for the escort, but an investment that paid off for the fleet.

The larger ship will rule, but it won’t be able to do everything.  Let’s say you invest everything in a Death Star, and it is the most formidable thing in space.  You have an Empire wide revolt, across tens of thousands of star systems.  But your massive planet killer can only be in one system at a time.  Maybe you can kill enough planets to make everyone else toe the line.  Or maybe the probability that they won’t ever visit your planet might be enough to keep the revolt going.  So it would be useful to be able to have military power stationed around your digs, even if you are not a despotic empire.

What about fighters, used so often in science fiction.  Basically any beam weapons they carried would be useless against a heavily armored or shielded vessel, while every weapon a warship used would blot out a fighter.  And remember, with no atmosphere, there can be no banking maneuvers that might throw off a shot.   Unless you set up something like Weber did in The Shiva Factor, where the ether of space actually exists.  The only use I could see for fighters would be as small missile carriers that come streaking in at high velocity, fire, and go racing out.  It’s a type a warfare that would be hard on the fighters, with heavy losses, but in the cold calculation might be worth it.  Losing two hundred fighters and four hundred crew versus a ship that masses hundreds of times more than the conglomeration of small spacecraft would be well worth it.

One last thing I like to include, something that drives me wild in many movies and TV shows.  Despite all the protection, it is likely that something will penetrate the ship, maybe not in a catastrophic manner.  But enough to turn a habitable area of the ship into a vacuum.  So I think the crew would wear some kind of protection, not just space suits, which can be easily punctured, but some kind of armor.  And if you’re going to wear armor, why not powered armor?  It would be really useful to be able to lift heavy objects, like fallen pieces of metal that trap other crewmembers, or be able to open doors whose mechanisms are no longer working.   And built in propulsion would also be a good thing to have, to cross those gaps created by weapons opening the hull, or to prevent being pulled into space by the evacuation of atmosphere.

In the next segment I will discuss my views of space weaponry, what would work and what really doesn’t, in my opinion.

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Writing Space Warfare: Part 1: The Basics.

It has been some weeks since I wrote my blog entry on writing about ground combat in science fiction.  I have kind of let the blog lapse in that time, and I apologize to anyone who is following.  Health issues, some chronic, some transitory (bronchitis) and the need to get Exodus 5 out the door have cut into my time.  And, to me, the art of writing space combat is much more involved than ground combat.  I was in the Army, in infantry, and know my way around modern weapons.  I also spent much of my time in my younger years in the woods, and have talked to literally hundreds of combat vets.  Navy, not so much.  My dad was in the Navy, but spent his war years on a training base.  My brother served aboard an aircraft carrier off Vietnam, as a dental hygienist, so not a lot of information coming from there either.  Also, space warfare is sure to be very different from wet naval warfare.  How different?  No one really knows, but based on the laws of physics, there will be differences.

Still, a good place to start is with historical wet naval warfare, from the age of galleys on up.  I doubt that ships in space will work up to ramming speed and try to hit the side of an enemy vessel.  Maybe in an extreme situation, but not as a common tactic.  The kinetic energy of two vessels moving at high velocity would just be too much to handle.  I also don’t see the Star Wars model of two ships moving up and trading broadsides as very workable.   Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but always thought the way they handled space combats as kind of stupid.  The same with space fighters.  There is no air in which to bank in space.  And as I will talk about later, in space, size does matter.

I have received some criticism of my own work for going into too much detail in my space combat, though others have told me that was why they loved my books.  Can’t satisfy everyone.  One problem I ran into was trying to let my readers know that I was not writing Star Wars or Star Trek.  That required going into some detail.  But the notions of Star Wars and Trek are so prevalent in our society, especially among those with a love of scifi, that I felt the need to separate myself from them.  The Exodus series has also been compared to Honor Harrington.  Guilty as charged, but only because there was so much in the series that made sense.  I purposefully stayed away from such concepts as bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads, even though they made a lot of sense for warships trying to hit fast moving enemies at long range.  Originally I thought that Weber was wrong in using lasers as close in weapons and missiles as long range attack platforms.  That was my Trek upbringing.  Then, looking at the problem, I realized that he was correct.  Hitting something at long range with a direct fire beam weapon, while not knowing where it is at the time your beam gets there, is an exercise in futility.

Back to historical context.  I think to write about future space warfare one has to have some knowledge of naval warfare in the past.  The strategy and tactics of the past can give you ideas of how to construct the principles of the future.  Star Wars went with the historical tactic of going broadside to broadside, which was a viable naval tactic at one time, when cannon could only hit line of sight near targets.  Star Trek treated their ships, large as they were, more like dogfighting airplanes that fired on the move while dancing around each other.  As ships developed better weapons the engagement ranges increased, though they were still line of sight, until better sensors (radar) and mobile platforms (spotting aircraft) allowed them to shoot at things over the horizon.

What about communications between ships.  If there’s a light speed barrier then ships cannot talk to each other in real time unless they are very close.  If they can talk to each other in real time, or near enough as to make no difference, then there must be a mechanism in place to allow such.  Star Trek had subspace radio, which still had limitations, though they weren’t portrayed consistently in the series.  At times the Enterprise talked with Earth in real time.  In other episodes, though they weren’t much farther out from home, it was said that a signal would take two weeks to reach home base.  Star Wars had Jedi talking on handheld devices in real time across thousands of light years.  If these were broadcast devices that raises the problem of power, as a broadcast wave out to a thousand light years would be attenuated to the point where it might as well not exist.  In Exodus I introduce using wormholes for communications, which bring up a whole new series of problems.

In the days of sail scout ships would often stay within line of sight of an enemy fleet, transmitting signals by flag to another ship just over the horizon (except, of course, for their masts).  This would be repeated down a line of ships to the friendly fleet.  A similar thing could be done in space, with lasers taking the place of signal flags, though of course that damned light speed barrier still comes into effect unless you have a workaround.

So, where do you get the historical knowledge of naval combat?  Books of history, fictional but historically accurate series like Horatio Hornblower, movies like Sink the Bismarck and others.  Other good sources for ideas are of course other movies and scifi series like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Wing Commander, etc. Not all the ideas are good, of course, but there are some in there, and even the bad ideas can spark some good ones.   I still remember watching the minseries of the new Battlestar Galactica and being blown away when the ship deployed guns all over the hull, putting up a wall of fire that totally destroyed the incoming Cylon ships and their missiles.  Watch footage of a WW2 battleship at sea during an air attack and you will see the same thing.  Japanese planes flaring in the air as they try to penetrate a wall of steel.  Battleships in harbor were easy targets.  At sea, moving and shooting, anything but.

Book are another good source.  Not all writers go into great detail, but almost all have some ideas that can spark your imagination.  Weber of course goes into detail and explains his rationale most of the time.  Some think he goes into too much detail, with long dumps of information.  But to a writer these infodumps are gold, as long as you don’t repeat them.

I played a lot of games, from Great Naval Battles to Star Fleet Academy.  I learned that battleship fighting battleship was a long drawn out proposition.  Sure, the Hood went up in one salvo, but that was rare.  A more likely scenario was the Bismarck being pounded into a wreck over hours of fire.  Star Fleet Academy showed that low velocity missiles were easy to knock out using beam weapons.  Harpoon showed how a fleet could take out waves of missiles coming at it, as long as there weren’t too many.  Not all video games are that good, but all can contribute to your knowledge.

Look at how weapons have changed naval warfare, often making the obsolete again viable.  Nuclear weapons made the battleship obsolete, or so it seemed.  Ships were made smaller and lighter, and became vulnerable to small missiles like an Exocet.  Defenses were developed to knock down the missiles, like autocannon and interceptor missiles, but again the heavy battleship became useful in its invulnerability to these small missiles.  And developments like lasers may make them more or less invulnerable to nukes as well, unless they are targeted by too many weapons to handle.

What about robots.  Might not warships be completely controlled by artificial intelligences in the future?  They could react faster, and fight fearlessly with total logic.  Possibly.  But from a writer’s perspective, this is not an advantageous state of affairs.  We need human, or at least understandable alien, feeling, to resonate with readers.  Maybe it makes more sense that robots will fight, but where is the tension, the drama, of machine fighting machine.  It is much more interesting to look in on the thoughts and feelings of beings like ourselves as they face the possibility of their own demise.

Part 2 will cover my thoughts on the size of warships, which in fiction range from small fighters to the Death Star, the size of a small moon.

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How I Learned to Write About Land Combat

This morning I received a tweet asking how I handle ground combat.  I really didn’t think I could give an answer in a 142 character tweet, or even in a series of tweets.  Now I have never been in ground combat.  I have heard rounds cracking overhead in training, and because of an error in basic my partner put ten rounds from a M16 within inches of where I was lying on a bunker prepping a practice hand grenade to throw into the aperture of the position.   Some of what I learned about ground combat was in training in Marine JROTC, in the Army, in the Florida National Guard, and even in Explorer Scouts.  In the Guard we spent two weeks learning how to conduct air mobile operations, in and out of helicopters.   In Explorer Scouts we played search and evasion (advanced hide and seek) on the Myakka River, against other kids who were as good at woodcraft as I was, even against a former member who was a Marine.  I also grew up with firearms, and have fired everything from .22 revolvers to the German Panzerfaust, including auto-rifles, belt fed machine guns and sub-machine guns.  I still shoot quite often, pistols, M1 Carbines, AR-15s.

Then there were the discussions with people who had been there.  Almost all of my NCOs in Germany were Vietnam Veterans.  All of our squad leaders in the Guard were also vets.  I can still remember a mission Sgt Gluckman, who looked like a clerk, led on us to find and destroy a Recondo HQ (they were regulars stationed in Panama).  The little wimpy looking guy who was a combat veteran in Nam found and destroyed the HQ of these supposedly elite soldiers, which goes to show that real experience goes a long way.  I talked with my brother, who had been in almost nine months of combat in Nam before he was wounded.  He taught me that even a good shot (which he was) could miss everything in front of him due to the adrenaline rush of fear.  I have talked with Marines who were in WW2, Korea and Vietnam, Rangers, Green Berets and Seals.  Listened to their experiences.  Heard their stories, both funny and tragic.

I have read a lot of books on history, from the Greeks to the Persian Gulf.  Both the grand picture books and the personal stories.  The memoirs of Eric von Mannstein and a book by a little know German LT on the Russian front (and if you really want a great description of hard core no holds barred combat, you can’t get anymore real than this.)  First person accounts of the SAS in Iraq.  Books on strategy and tactics, and how superweapons aren’t always the way to go, since your opponent will go all out to defeat them.  Books on the organization of the German Army, probably the best military force of the Twentieth Century (and sure they lost, mostly because they were outnumbered and had a complete idiot at the top of the power pyramid).  Books on the Panzer tactics of that army.  Books about how the Roman Army was trained and organized.  Books about the Napoleonic Wars, the Revolution, the Civil War.  Hundreds of books of history.  War is terrible, as Robert E Lee said.  It’s also flipping interesting, no fascinating.  Reading fiction also helps give one an idea of what its like.  Bernard Cornwell does a great job in the Medieval to gunpowder era.  Robert Heinlein’s Starship Trooper is still the classic book about powered armor.  John Ringo continues that tradition.  Michael Z Williamson gives great accounts of future warfare sans the armor, as does Jerry Pournell.  For fantasy R A Salvatore does a very good job of describing fights with ancient weapons.

Games.  Yes, games, both board and computer, can give you an idea about what combat is like, and what small changes might have ended battles with different results.  Be careful here though, because sometimes the minds of games designers can come up with some ridiculous concepts.  Still, I have played some of the good ones and gotten some really good ideas, like how to defeat a more powerful infantry force with cavalry in Rome Total War.    Or how some wars were literally unwinnable because of disparity in industrial capacity (like World War 2).

And I watched war movies.  Some can give you ideas because they are so good.  And some can give you an idea of what not to do, or how to do it better, because they are so bad.  Cross of Iron (Russian Front), Saving Private Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Stalingrad, Enemy at the Gates, Waterloo, Glory.  Watching the Roman legions deploy in Spartacus, an awe inspiring sight, and maybe too much for most opponents.  Assaulting from boats into machine guns (Private Ryan),  Airborne assaults (Band of Brothers).  Seeing lines of men in lines shooting into each other at fifty yards using weapons designed to kill at five hundred.  Everything is grist for the mill.

Finally some knowledge of near future weapons development, and the realization that what seems so fantastic today will be ancient in the future.  The limitations of today, in battery power, in armor protection, in stealth tech, will not be the limitations of tomorrow.  I studied the effects of lasers and particle beams, including their strengths and weaknesses.  There are actual programs on the internet that will tell you how much power it takes to burn through different materials.  The negative effects of weapons, like using something that vaporizes a target but fills the air with superhot steam, which could be a real bitch.  I was asked particularly about smart ammo in the tweet.  To us it looks like a great idea.  In the far future, when you need ammo that can penetrate really tough armor, maybe a round that has to slow down so it can turn a corner might not be so hot.  Then again, with explosive rounds capable of penetrating armor they might be just the thing.

What kind of weapons do I use in future combat.  Tough armor that allows unprecedented mobility, stealth and protection.  And the weapons that can defeat that armor.  That goes hand in hand in weapons development through the ages.  Maybe the armor can’t withstand a direct hit, or many of them, but if it can render a near miss by a particle beam something that doesn’t fry the soldier, then it has a purpose.  The soldiers themselves will be highly trained, valuable, and something to be protected.  Particle beams, lasers, and high velocity rounds that might have penetration aids built in.  And of course nukes and kinetic weapons and lots of battlefield radiation, also necessitating some kind of armor or field protection.  Cover and concealment will still be important.  I wouldn’t want to be wearing a suit of powered armor that could take a dozen hits by the enemy’s best weapons, then stand out in the open where I could be easily hit thirteen or more times.

Finally, the human factor.  Will future land warriors be just like us?  Or will their emotions be controlled, making them heartless automatons?  I personally think the second route is a dead end, as fear and anger have a place in combat.    I might be wrong, and it is an area to explore.   What will motivate them, what will they fight for?  King and Country?  Medals?  Sometimes, but I don’t think that often.  Sometimes soldiers do fight for a leader.  I remember playing a war game years ago set in the Roman period, and one of the basic rules was that units panicked from losses and then took a beating as they ran.  A caveat to this rule was that units that fought under Julius Caeser never panicked.  Sometime people fought for flags or standards.  I wouldn’t have been one of those people who grabbed the standard before it hit the ground, and then became a magnet for enemy fire that had already dropped the first ten people who had carried that piece of cloth on a stick.  I would rather keep my weapon and shoot back.  What people most often fight for is their comrades and the people at home.  Study Vietnam and the Russian Front, and you will find that American and German soldiers fought heroically for their friends, the people around them.  German soldiers didn’t fight for Hitler and the Nazi Party, unless they were fanatical.  Russians didn’t fight for Stalin.  And both sides fought fanatically to save their own people from what they saw as a menace.  The Russians to keep the Germans from exterminating them.  The Germans to keep the Russians from doing the same thing to their country that they had done to the Russians.  And another lesson you learn from reading about past conflicts, which should translate into stories about future war, is that at times good people fight for bad causes, and bad people fight for good ones.  Many of the soldiers who died for the South in the Civil War were not bad men trying to hold down their fellow man.  Many Germans were not Nazis, but fought hard nonetheless.  And there have been some truly horrible people who have helped the side we most would want to see win with their barbaric actions.  I don’t think any of this is going to change in the future.  There will be Saints and Demons in every Army, though they may be seen as universally one or the other depending on which side is looking at them.

Any way, that;s my take on how to learn how to write land combat, both future and fantasy.  Learn about the real thing, talk to people who have been there, read the works of people who write it well, and get as many ideas as possible, so you can generate your own.  I think next I will talk about naval and space naval combat.

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