12 Greatest Science Fiction War Stories

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The title said great, not "So bad, you wish you had the part of your life you wasted reading Battlefield Earth back".

Also, NuBSG just doesn't belong there. It was awful. Babylon 5 belongs there instead. B5 just had so much going for it on so many levels and it was original. Not a poor imitation of an original classic.

I enjoyed both series (Actually all three if you include the original Battlestar Galactica), but I think of the three, the new BSG easily took the most unflinching look at war and the cost that is paid by those who fight it. The classic series was fun, but after the first few episodes, ending with the death of Serena, it was pure space opera (even before then... they caused a planet to blow up with hand weapons for goodness sake!).

--
Bill

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Heinlein lost me with "Stranger in a Strange Land". Still love his early work, but haven't read anything newer.

Friday was decent.
Farnham's Freehold had something provocative to say.
Even the more self-indulgent stuff like TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE were readable.
But NUMBER OF THE BEAST was simply incoherent wandering.

I do have to say that any list of war SF that doesn't include at least *some* DORSAI or Vorkossigan is suspicious. And throwing in FIREFLY (which I adore) suggests the list's compiler ran out of titles to feature. Which suggests a limited exposure to combat SF. Especially the modern stuff. (Honorverse, RCN, Aldenata, Paladin of Shadows, Hammers Slammers... You could do a top ten just of *series*.)

[WillAdams]

Surprised Saberhagen's Berserker series didn't make it.

[foghat]

Old Man's War looks pretty cool. May put that down for next on the reading list.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I do have to say that any list of war SF that doesn't include at least *some* DORSAI or Vorkossigan is suspicious. And throwing in FIREFLY (which I adore) suggests the list's compiler ran out of titles to feature. Which suggests a limited exposure to combat SF. Especially the modern stuff. (Honorverse, RCN, Aldenata, Paladin of Shadows, Hammers Slammers... You could do a top ten just of *series*.)

Actually, I could see not including the Vorkosigan novels... only a couple of them really are about war. That being said, excluding Dorsai is easily a gigantic omission. I suspect that Firefly got included because lists like this often have an over representation from movies and television despite the fact that the literary world generally has tens times as much good stuff as anything that has ever appeared on screen.

And its also very America centric; if you are going to include video, what about Legend of Galactic Heros and Gundam?

--
Bill

[JSWolf]

I think the list should have been for books only.

[DrNefario]

It was a popular vote. This is just 12 vaguely war-related things with a lot of fans.

[jgaiser]

Some a bit more than *vaguely* war-related.

Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Armor and Old Man's War are pretty hard-core war-related.

But yes. It was a popularity contest. As was mentioned upthread, it's missing *some* much better War Stories.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that things were allowed to win that don't really fit the category such as Firefly.

[shootingMaNs]

Did I read that right? A re-make of the movie Starship Troopers?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by shootingMaNs

Did I read that right? A re-make of the movie Starship Troopers?

I wasn't aware anybody had actually filmed STARSHIP TROOPERS.
I did see a movie that plastered that title on NAZIS IN SPACE! but it bore as much resemblance to the book as the Antonio Sabato/Tracy Lords PRINCESS OF MARS bore to the ERB book.

[jatkin]

Heinlein lost me with "Stranger in a Strange Land". Still love his early work, but haven't read anything newer.

I got through about the first half of stranger in a strange land, he had me at the beginning, but then I just sort of lost him in the last third

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I wasn't aware anybody had actually filmed STARSHIP TROOPERS.
I did see a movie that plastered that title on NAZIS IN SPACE! but it bore as much resemblance to the book as the Antonio Sabato/Tracy Lords PRINCESS OF MARS bore to the ERB book.

[morriss003]

I see a lot of references to Robert Heinlein. For those who are interested, here is the link to his wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

As was mentioned upthread, it's missing *some* much better War Stories.

Even on the TV side it is missing *the* SF War Series.
Any discussion of TV SF War series has to start with SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND.
(And FOX cancelled it because they had to choose between it and SLIDERS.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond