military SF n.

What he was, is, and becomes is the frame on which the book is strung. And in the stringing sharp satiric needles are stuck into military sf, satires of military sf, nicotine addicts, godlike superhuman police entities, [etc.].

The Cold War pushed military SF one way. The Vietnam War pushed it in the opposite direction. [Ibid.] The abuse of technology in the Vietnam War and the ecology movement also affected technological speculation in military SF. [Ibid. 61/2] Whatever definitions one uses, current military SF is stronger at the tactical level than at the strategic.

Elizabeth Moon’s newest novel finds her turning from medieval fantasy to military SF, if a rather genteel grade of the latter.

As the code word ‘honor’ in the title reveals, it’s miltary sf, by a writer with 20 years’ experience in the U.S. Marine Corps.

No branch of the genre owes more to Heinlein than military sf, of which there is currently a plethora, perhaps reflective of the zeitgeist…. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (Tor, $23,95) adds a special riff to the formula.

Morgan’s stylish adventure fiction combines tropes of military SF and cyberpunk, with tough, cynical protagonists carrying on sharp struggles against long odds.

There was a lot of fear in the world at that time, and Ender’s Game dropped brilliantly into that pond. It completes what I think of as the Holy Trinity of military SF books written during the Cold War, standing alongside Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s The Forever War.

I geared up for a military SF story filled with scenes of hard-fought combat against implacable foes.