With all due respect to General Douglas MacArthur, who, in 1951 concluded his farewell address to Congress with these words, “I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have all since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.” I beg to differ. Old soldiers don’t just fade away—some of them write military science fiction!
Baen Books recently released Citizens, an anthology of military science fiction stories by military veterans, and just listen to some of the genre legends featured within: Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Gene Wolfe, Jerry Pournelle, Joe W. Haldeman, Hal Clement, David Drake, and John Ringo, to name a few!
While I’ve never served in the armed forces, many of my family members have; my grandfather fought in WWI, and had the scars to prove it. I’ve heard my fair share of war stories over the years, from pranks my father witnessed on his ship when he served in the Korean War to nightmarish memories from my uncle’s 12 years in the Navy, much of which was spent in Vietnam.
War is a horrific and insane thing and I’ve always been fascinated when I get the opportunity to hear veteran’s firsthand experiences. That’s why this anthology was so intriguing to me. Editor Ringo writes in the introduction that: “we have selected a gamut of notable writers who’ve not only borne witness to war, but also whose experiences of war and the military stretch through the majority of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from World War I to the current conflicts in the Middle East, ranging from reprints written by Grand Masters to original fiction from the current generation of warriors.”
Of the 15 stories featured, personal favorites were Heinlein’s profound “The Long Watch” (1949), in which a heroic soldier risks his own life to stop a coup d’etat on an American lunar base that houses nuclear weapons; Clarke’s “Superiority” (1951), a story about how a civilization’s own scientific advancements can cripple them in times of war; and Eric Frank Russell’s Hugo Award winning “Allamagoosa (1955), a comedic masterwork about a spaceship that is faced with a major inspection and how its officers rush to create a mysterious “offdog” which, according to their inventory, they should have one of.
The “purpose” of Citizens, according to Ringo, was “not only to share entertaining stories but to explore the mind of the warrior through the lens of authors who have experienced, at the very least, military life and, in most cases, the sting and clash of warfare.”
It’s fascinating from a historical perspective to read how military science fiction has evolved over the last half century. Clement’s “Fireproof” (1949), for example, revolves around a European terrorist (called a “saboteur” back then) attempting to destroy a Western Alliance torpedo station orbiting Earth. Written more than 50 years before 9/11, the storyline has an almost naïve feel today…
I highly recommend this anthology, not only for fans of military science fiction but any genre-fiction fan who may be looking for a thought-provoking read that offers up glimpses into the psyche of a soldier…
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
