At the moment, all was triumph. Red-splashed, panting, in scorched and dinted armor, Sir Roger de Tourneville rode a weary horse back to the main fortress. After him came the lancers, archers, yeomen — ragged, battered, shoulders slumped with exhaustion. But the Te Deum was on their lips, rising beneath the strange constellations that twinkled forth, and their banners flew bravely against the sky.

It was wonderful to be an Englishman.

• Title: The High Crusade
• Author: Poul Anderson
• Genre: Space Opera/Historical Adventure
• Year: 1960

The year is 1345; the place is the village of Ansby, Lincolnshire, England, Earth. A great host is being assembled under Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville in preparation for a campaign in France as part of the ongoing conflict that would come to be known as the Hundred Years War. The army features knights and men-at-arms and longbowmen and the various other components of a Medieval host — but it certainly doesn’t have anything to match the likes of the Wersgorix. Alien invaders, they fall from the sky in the midst of Ansby in an enormous chrome ship bristling with weapons. They have anti-gravity, beam cannons, force screens, flame guns, sophisticated communications and mapping technologies and the will to use them — for the Wersgorix are the overlords of an enormous galactic empire that makes a habit of finding new worlds, exterminating or enslaving their populations, and installing new Wersgor masters in their place. The Wersgor emerge from their ship, demonstrate their overwhelming power, and deliver their ultimatum to the assembled primitives of Earth in the form of the army of Sir Roger.

Sir Roger orders a charge — and the ‘assembled primitives’ butcher the shocked crew of the Wersgor scout ship and capture it for themselves.

Thus begins The High Crusade. Slim, fast-paced, fun and compelling in equal amounts, it’s the kind of book people used to write before they got so damn serious and decided to milk every idea for 500 pages. And make no mistake, the premise of The High Crusade is very milk-able, being both instantly understandable and wide-open for exploration. But Anderson keeps his story tight, throwing off clever extrapolations of his ‘Middle Ages meets Space Opera’ idea like sparks off a grinding wheel all, while keeping his story moving at a breakneck pace along the edge of its well-honed plot. Originally written for John W. Campbell’s Astounding, the story bears all the hallmarks of the best magazine fiction of the era, and more’s the pity that such skills are no longer in evidence in popular fiction.

And it’s a shame no one can deliver a couched lance charge from horseback like they could in the fourteenth century, either, because such skills just might save us from alien invasion one day. Sir Roger and his victorious host soon decide to make the best of the ‘demonic’ vessel that has fallen into their hands and, with the aid of a Wersgor prisoner named Branithar, they pack the entire village along with the army into the ship and decide to go to France and win the war — but only as their first stop on the way to liberating the Holy Land. But it is a very different Crusade that they eventually undertake, as Branithar sets the ship’s autopilot for the nearest Wersgor colony where, doubtless, Sir Roger and his fellows will learn what a fluke their success against the Wersgorix really was.

Only, of course, Sir Roger’s army takes that place over too, and keeps on going. Anderson progressively increases the stakes of the conflict over the course of The High Crusade, and never fails to deliver a solution both novel and logical at every turn. The Wersgorix weaknesses go beyond their having forgotten how to fight in close quarters, and the humans find they cannot rely purely on the tried-and-true methods with which they won their initial success. Here is the heart of the book, the ingenious ways these men of the Middle Ages adapt what they know to fighting an enemy superior to them in nearly every category. So we get to read about delightful juxtapositions such as a trebuchet — its all-wooden construction undetectable by Wersgor scanners — flinging nuclear shells, or volleys of arrows bringing down thin-skinned aircraft protected only by anti-beam forcefields, or knights in spacesuits boarding enemy vessels with axe and sword and longbowmen loosing their shafts within the vacuum of space.

But perhaps the best weapon the humans have is, as Sir Roger terms it, ‘knavery.’ Reared in the complicated and cut-throat politics of Medieval Europe, negotiations amongst the Wersgor and their neighbors seems like child’s play. Sir Roger out-foxes, out-bluffs, and out-maneuvers the Wersgor at every turn, and the aliens cannot fathom if the humans are some sort of hyper-advanced race that have come out of nowhere, or mad barbarians from the fringe of their empire. The trouble the Wersgor have deciphering human activity — is Sir Roger’s insistence of only speaking with someone suitably ‘well-born’ an indication that his people practice sophisticated genetic engineering? And is the ritual chanting the humans begin their negotiations with, something called the ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ really some sort of psycho-somatic neural trigger that increases their brain functions?

The High Crusade, as should be obvious by now, is a light, humorous book, but it isn’t just about a punch line. Anderson does an excellent job of capturing a Medieval mindset and manages to be both respectful and playful in doing so. The voice of Brother Parvus, the book’s narrator, is also well-done, being sufficiently evocative of the norms of Medieval expression to suggest a kind of authenticity, while remaining pulpishly readable. It all adds up to an irresistible combination of against-the-odds adventure and culture-clash hilarity that makes The High Crusade one of the undoubted classics of pulp science fiction.

• The High Crusade at Amazon

He watched his display, noting the cool professionalism with which Fearless had held her counter-fire until she had perfect targets, and filed that away with all his other data on Commander Harrington’s capabilities. A dangerous, dangerous woman, he told himself as two of his missiles were decoyed off course and exploded harmlessly outside Fearless’s sidewalls. But not dangerous enough to make up for the difference in firepower.

• Title: On Basilisk Station
• Author: David Weber
• Genre: Space Opera/Military Science Fiction
• Year: 1993

The Honor Harrington franchise is huge, with something like ten or more books in the principal series, numerous spin-offs and anthologies featuring other Baen authors, and other assorted media like role playing games. Somehow this ‘Honorverse’ hadn’t really registered on my radar until recently, and I bought the first few of David Weber’s books secondhand with the intention of getting to them someday. Well, I’m glad ’someday’ finally rolled around, because On Basilisk Station, the first book of the series, is such a completely engrossing and entertaining read that I can see exactly why it has spawned the tremendous following it has.

The Honor Harrington books are a ‘Horatio Hornblower in space’ (the first book is in fact dedicated to Forester) series of adventures revolving around a brilliant female starship captain of the Manticoran Royal Navy. The backdrop is the far future, with space empires and FTL and superdreadnoughts and power armor — in short a space opera universe. But this is space opera with a difference, for Weber instills his universe with enough good physics and plausible technical detail that even a cynic who rolls his eyes at E.E. “Doc” Smith and chortles with laughter during Star Wars will be won-over by Weber’s meticulous and well-realized detail . (Though I doubt this would have much effect on the staunch ‘Mundane SF’ coterie) Much of the appeal of this type of story is just how interesting these details can be — whether it’s the ship’s chief engineer trying to figure out a better way to modify missiles into scanning beacons, marines discussing the tactical load-out for a planned campaign, or Honor herself pulling off a ballsy maneuver that uses the ship’s systems in unexpected ways — it all makes for compelling reading.

But it’s Honor and her travails that truly capture the reader’s attention and make this book the page-turner that it is. We join Honor just as she is to assume her new command, the Fearless, an aged light cruiser. The Fearless is being refitted with new weaponry that Honor has little confidence in, but she does her best to utilize it in fleet-wide war games. A dominant faction within the navy, for whom this proto-type weapon system is the exemplar of their radical new combat doctrine, don’t care for the results of the simulation, and Honor and her crew are packed off to Basilisk Station — a remote outpost of the Manticoran Republic were the navy sends its screw-ups and those it would prefer to forget. Honor, left on her own by a superior that wishes to sabotage her career, ignored by the top brass, under-equipped and under-staffed, and with a crew that resents and distrusts her, has to somehow find a way to do her duty. Of course she does, and does so brilliantly.

That’s one of the chief appeals and immediate draws of the story, as initially it’s Honor (and the reader) against the world. One of the big, but overlooked, aspects of ‘military science fiction’ — which is often dismissed by snootily insecure critics as mere tales of battles and jingoism and melodrama — is the focus on leadership and group dynamics, as well as creative problem solving. On Basilisk Station has this quality in abundance, as Honor wisely steers her crew toward the results she needs, shepherds her resources or deploys them to maximum effect, and works effectively alongside local authorities to bring a semblance of order to Basilisk Station. The nuts and bolts quality of all this is powerfully immersive, and the reader feels every new threat and every minor triumph right alongside the protagonist.

The book culminates in one hell of a starship battle, and special mention should be made of Weber’s smartly balanced approach to something that is often a bone of contention for sci-fi fans. Weber manages to combine the needs of realism with the demands of exciting action with his development of the ‘impeller wedge,’ a device that activates an impenetrable gravity field above and below a starship that enables extreme acceleration. A simple premise with big ramifications for the shape of naval encounters in the Honorverse, as it both permits engagements across huge, multi-million kilometer distances at tremendous speed, and re-introduces the concept of the broadside to space battles. Since the wedge is impenetrable, ships behave in profile a bit more like their ancient sea-going counterparts, and thus all manner of maneuvers are necessary to bring one’s firepower to bear against the vulnerable part of one’s enemy — a brilliantly done transposition of the tactics of the age of Nelson into a space opera format.

It’s a good feeling to know that there is so much more to this series left for me to discover, as I can say without doubt this was the best book of its kind I’ve read in over a decade.

• On Basilisk Station at Amazon
• David Weber’s homepage

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

• Title: Old Man’s War
• Author: John Scalzi
• Genre: Military Science Fiction
• Year: 2005

Old Man’s War is a book with a hook, the sort of easily-conveyed original premise that tells you enough about why you might want to read it in one sentence. Therefore, anyone that has even heard of it knows it’s a book in the vein of Starship Troopers or The Forever War that takes place in a future in which the elderly may enlist to become soldiers. But Old Man’s War stretches beyond its tagline to deliver a fast-paced, military sci-fi adventure that is a great deal of fun.

John Perry, a widower, joins the Colonial Defense Force when he turns seventy-five, turning his back on Earth and everyone and everything he’s ever known. Little information on the Colonial Union and its military arm reaches the inhabitants of Earth, who are kept at arms length by the CU — an organization that has a monopoly on space communications and FTL travel in the form of skip drives. Mankind has a large, and contested, colonial empire for which Earth serves only as the source of colonists and geriatric recruits — and Perry moves from idyllic small town America into a galactic conflict of which he knows nothing.

Naturally, such old recruits need to be made young (which is their reason for enlisting in the first place), and the exact nature of this process is something I will not spoil for the first time reader. Suffice it to say Perry and his fellow septuagenarians are transformed into super soldiers and, as is expected in a book of this sort, around a third of the story is dedicated to this journey from recruit to soldier. The end result of all this training and high-tech modification are a company of kick-ass CDF infantry that fight to protect and expand mankind’s colonial holdings against an array of alien species.

Scalzi’s aliens are an interesting and varied bunch, as are the various technologies on display in Old Man’s War; from nanite-based limb replacements and programmable ammunition, to brain-based computers, consciousness transference, and personal electromagnetic shielding that allows high-orbit insertion onto a planet. Skip drives, Scalzi’s Faster Than Light equivalent, are perhaps the most novel — rather than warping space or shooting through worm holes, skip drives actually move a ship sideways to any point within a parallel universe. According to the theory of branching universes, such nearby parallels should be essentially indistinguishable from one another, but the idea alone should give anyone pause — and I found this a nice touch of immensity in an otherwise intimate story.

But what about the war? A grim tale of human alienation among the stars? A political diatribe? A jingoistic celebration of fascistic assertiveness? Well, none of the above, I’m glad to say. Old Man’s War isn’t intended to score points at the expense of story, and anyone checking it out under the assumption that it is a continuation of the dialog started by Starship Troopers and The Forever War might be let down by the absence of soapboxing. Scalzi neither celebrates or condemns his conflict, on balance presenting it as a necessary evil. But the focus here isn’t a critique or a justification of war, but rather on the human story of John Perry who is presented with a second chance at happiness and clings to it against all odds. If Heinlein’s story was about duty, and Haldeman’s about futility, then I think Scalzi’s is ultimately about hope.

I had a few disappointments with Old Man’s War, though nothing that would keep me from recommending it. Perry, despite narrating the story, never comes across as an especially rich character though he is a sympathetic one — and he certainly never quite seems like a seventy-five year old. I kept expecting these soldiers, recruited for their lifetime’s experience, to put that experience to use somehow — they never do. Whether this was a missed opportunity for additional depth, or a judgment call by Scalzi to keep the action of the story brisk, I can’t say. Old Man’s War is also guilty of something seen in a lot of sci-fi — so much so that I wonder if I should even single it out for mention — namely, the technological possibilities it presents would seem to render the necessity of certain plot points (such as recruiting seventy-five year olds for their experience) moot if carried to their logical conclusions. Between nanos, clones, and various memory retrieval/transference technologies it seems unlikely that the CDF would need to keep recruiting as they do, and could instead just churn out copies of their best soldiers to replace loses.

But these are fairly minor niggles of the sort that are happily cast aside while one greedily turns the page. Old Man’s War is a page turner; and it’s this smooth, compulsively readable aspect that is the real reason it should be compared with Heinlein. Scalzi is writing more books in the same universe, with The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony available now. Bottom line, this is a great action story, full of all the essential servings of gee-whiz and bang-bang, but with a compelling human story at its heart that lifts it above the run-of-the-mill military sci-fi.

• Old Man’s War on Amazon
• John Scalzi’s homepage