Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Thanks for mentioning this series, though I don't understand why you consider it fantasy ...
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Actually, I don't really know what to consider it, and I'm not so sure there is an 'official' definition.
However, this is why I chose the term I used. I assume that when people think of military science fiction they are thinking of space wars and/or mecha's and/or battles on other planets. I do see how these might be squeezed in under some definitions of sci fi, but I was making a note to the original poster that they were not traditional military sci-fi.
I have referred to these as alternate history in the past and perhaps I should have used that here. My original decision not to do so was because many times alternate history is along the lines of: what if person X had not died, or had been put in charge of a certain battle or a given battle was won instead of lost. These stories usually involve an alternate ending or event that could conceivably have occurred and then a supposition of what the outcome may have been. Generally, aside from the one changed outcome the novels are consistent with the period in which they were produced.
In these cases, there was an assumption of a fantastical event. For Belisaurius it was the time travel of two entities an advanced computer and a 'crystalline intelligence'. For 1632 it was the time travel and transposition of an entire city. From the basis of these events, it was very much like alternate history. Flint didn't introduce any other advanced science/fantasy.
So, I could have called it alternate history, but to me that label applies to more mundane events. If, say, George Washington was never born, it will not result in Gatling guns being used in the US Revolutionary War. In this case however, even though there was just one changed starting condition the subsequent technology impacts echo throughout the story.
Then we come back full loop to why I didn't call them sci fi -- well the technology introduced may have been ahead of its time, but it was still behind modern standards.
The bottom line however, is that both series were rousing good reads.