WHAT IS COMBAT SF?

Almost nobody agrees on the definition of science fiction, but since this is my list we’ll use my definition. SF explores the effects of technology or social change on society, and includes such things as alternate histories, parallel worlds/universes, utopias and dystopias. It differs from fantasy in that there is an explanation for everything, even if it is double-talk as in the Star Trek universe. Combat SF is a subset of science fiction where the stories are set in the context of war or battle. The main characters are usually (but not exclusively) military personnel.

These books are available through Barnes & Noble if linked; otherwise, try Uncle Hugo's Bookstore in Minneapolis, which has a mother-huge stock of used SF paperbacks and does do mail orders. As a last resort, make the rounds of your local thrift stores and used book shops, especially in areas near military bases.

Books are listed by author, roughly in alphabetical order.
I have not personally read the titles in italics.

Robert Asprin:
Phule's Company, Phule's Paradise, The Bug Wars

Baldwin, Bill:
The Helmsman, Galactic Convoy, The Trophy, The Siege, The Mercenaries, The Defenders, The Defiance

Bujold, Lois McMaster:
The Warrior's Apprentice, Shards of Honor, Barrayar

Card, Orson Scott:
Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow
Earth is desperately preparing for the third invasion of the insectoid "Buggers" who came close to wiping out humanity twice already. Colonel Anderson of the Battle School is betting that Ender Wiggin is the commander Earth's fleets need - even though Ender's just a pre-pubescent kid. Ender's Shadow tells essentially the same story from the viewpoint of Bean, one of the main characters in the original novel.

Cherryh, C.J.:
Downbelow Station, Hellburner, Rimrunners,
All novels in Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe, these three novels bracket the Company War that sets up that universe, with Hellburner describing the construction and crewing of the great carriers that form the backbone of Mazian's Fleet; Downbelow Station showing the end of the war as the orphaned Earth Company Fleet falls back on Pell Station to make its last stand, and Rimrunners showing the aftermath as one of Mazian's marines, trapped on the wrong side at Pell, tries to sort out just where her loyalties lie when she signs onto the mysterious A/S Loki.
The Faded Sun trilogy: Kesrith, Shon'jir, and Kutath.
Sten Duncan was a Surface Tactical Officer, a lone wolf special forces operative who fought the alien mri during the long war between the Alliance and the regul masters of the mri. Now the war is over, Duncan serves as the secretary to the humans' first ambassador to the regul on the desert world Kesrith, and meets the last living mri - who are targeted for genocide by the regul until Duncan saves them and launches them back to their homeworld...with the regul and human fleets in pursuit.

Dan Cragg (w/David Sherman)
First to Fight

John Dalmas:
The Regiment, The Khalif's War, The White Regiment

Gordon R. Dickson:
Steel Brother, The Outposter, Bootcamp 3000(anthology),
Combat SF (anthology), The Harriers (books 1 and 2)
The Childe Cycle (sometimes erroneously referred to as the Dorsai novels):
Dorsai!; Tactics of Mistake; Soldier, Ask Not; Lost Dorsai; The Spirit of Dorsai, The Dorsai Companion.

Doyle, Debra and James D. MacDonald:
The Price of the Stars, Starpilot's Grave, By Honor Betray'd, The Gathering Flame

David Drake:
The Hammer's Slammers series: Hammer's Slammers, Rolling Hot, The Warrior,Counting the Cost, The Sharp End, The Tank Lords
Drake himself has described Hammer's Slammers as "the 11th Armored Cav with ray guns", and that's a pretty fair description, though the galaxy Alois Hammer and his regiment of mercenaries fight in is a wee bit different from Southeast Asia in the 1960s.
The Military Dimension, Mark II
Various pieces of non-Slammers combat SF and one non-SF story, "The Way We Die".
All the Way to the Gallows
Humor, most of it combat SF, some of it fantasy.
The Jungle/Clash By Night;
Clash By Night is actually a Henry Kuttner story from the 1930s about the underwater colonies on Venus and the mercenaries who fight their proxy wars for them on the otherwise uninhabited surface; The Jungle is a short novel by Drake set in that universe.
The Northworld series (Northworld, Northworld Justice, Northworld Vengeance);
The General series (with S.M. Stirling): The Forge, The Hammer,The Anvil, The Steel, The Sword, The Chosen, The Reformer
You're a young officer in the Civil Government exploring the crypts under the capital with a friend when you find an actual functioning computer - a holy artifact not seen since the Fall of civilization on Earth (er, Bellevue) some eleven centuries ago. This computer decides it's time to unite the world - and you're the one that's going to do it! Five bloody novels and a sequel (loosely based on the life of Belisarius) describing Raj Whitehall's conquest of the (blonde, blue-eyed, Namerique-speaking) barbarian Military Governments and then the Moslem Colony for el Gubierno Civil. Sequel takes place on another planet with late 19th/early 20th century tech (as opposed to the mid-19th century tech of the original novels) and roughly parallels the European wars of the first half of this century, though the Chosen are far nastier than the German Nazis they're modeled on.
The Forlorn Hope
A company of mercenaries, a disabled starship, and a native supply officer against the crack armored regiments of a bloody-handed theocracy? Drake makes it work.
Ranks of Bronze
A dwindling band of Roman legionaries fight for alien merchants, until they decide it's time to go home to Rome.
Redliners
They needed to colonisze a dangerous world. Who better to escort the colonists than combat veterans who were already on the edge of insanity, too fragile to be risked on the front lines any more?
With The Lightnings, Lieutenant Leary, Commanding, The Far Side Of The Stars
Daniel Leary didn't want anything to do with his politically powerful father, so he joined the Royal Cinnabar Navy - and promptly found himself in he middle of a revolution on Cinnabar's ally Kostroma. Good thing for him he's got the galaxy's deadliest librarian on his side. On his second cruise, Leary takes his prize the Princess Cecile into harm's way once again but needs to lead a pirate fleet into action to save the day for the RCN. Good fun, not as serious as the Honor Harrington novels and not as high-tech, either.

William R. Forstchen:
1945(with Newt Gingrich)
The Lost Regiment series: Rally Cry, Union Forever, Terrible Swift Sword, Fateful Lightning, Never Sound Retreat, Battle Hymn, Band Of Brothers<
Very gory series about a regiment of Union infantry and its attached artillery that gets dropped onto a world where men are treated as livestock by nomadic aliens whose technology isn't up to that of 1860 America.

Mary Gentle:
Grunts (a must read-ESD)
Orc Marines, anyone?

Ronald Green (with John F. Carr)
Great King's War (the sequel to H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen)
King Kalvan and the army of Hos-Hostigos square off against the massed armies of those loyal to the Gunpowder God Styphon, while Paratime Police boss Verkan Vall tries to help out his friend while protecting the Paratime Secret and a clutch of uncooperative academics at the same time.

Joe Haldeman
The Forever War
The Vietnam veteran's take on interstellar war and the effects of relativity. Often compared to STARSHIP TROOPERS.

Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers
The classic combat SF novel that mixed political polemic and powered-armor action Spawned a decent game by Avalon Hill and an awful movie by Paul Verhoeven.
Revolt in 2100
The Masons and other malcontents rebel against an American theocracy. Part of Heinlein's "Future History".
Sixth Column
Some people say that with its racist overtones this was actually a John W. Campbell novel filled out by Heinlein. True or not, this story of a handful of military men and scientists who decide to free a conquered America by founding a new religion to exploit a new scientific principle is somewhat dated but interesting.
Between Planets
A teenager who grew up on Mars gets caught in the middle of the Venus colonies' revolt against a tyrannical Earth. One of Heinlein's "juvenile" novels but a good read for adults as well.
Red Planet
Teenage boys growing up in the Martian colonies find that their "unintelligent" fuzzball Martian pet is anything but when the Martian colonists find themselves having to revolt against Earth or die

L. Ron Hubbard (yeah, the Scientology guy)
Final Blackout
The Lieutenant shepherds his tiny platoon of survivors through a Europe ruined by a Second World War that never saw American intervention but saw plenty of NBC weapons used on all sides. He and his men are barred from England by decree, but one day the Lieutenant decides it's time for him and his men to go home and set things to rights.

Keith Laumer
The Bolo Combat Unit stories: Bolo Brigade, The Compleat Bolo, [Honor of the Regiment, The Unconquerable, The Triumphant, Last Stand, all edited by Bill Fawcett, all containing stories by various authors], Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade, Rogue Bolo
All about the self-aware cybertanks that we should have started building twenty years ago, and that fight our wars through the 31st century.
The Glory Game
Commodore Tancredi Dalton pays the price for being correct when he averts an invasion of Earth by the Hukk but can't please either of the political factions in Washington - he gets RIFed out of the Navy and relegated to running a scrapyard on a backwater colony planet. Ten years later, the Hukk are back...
Retief's War
More Bond than James Bond, Terran diplomat Jame Retief leads a counterrevolution against the Voion tribe supported by his own bosses at the CDT when the Voion decide to turn their native planet into a galactic source of cheap electronic parts - for on Quopp, all the natives are metallo-organic, not bio-organic. The usual Retief fun and hijinks mixed with derring-do and bare-knuckle action.

Victor Milan
CLD (Collective Landing Detachment)
Grim to the brim. May actually be worse than the "Lost Regiment" series for sheer volume of horror. A penalty unit of assult troops lands on a planet where no edible food exists and has to make its way to a city where they can be retrieved.

Larry Niven
The Man-Kzin Wars I-VII
Mostly stories written by other authors, but Niven's "Madness Has Its Place" and "The Soft Weapon" are in there.
Footfall(with Jerry Pournelle): Aliens invade Earth - big elephants with no opposable thumbs, but they throw rocks from orbit really well.

H. Beam Piper:

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
Pennsylvania State trooper Calvin Morrison falls into an alternate time line where gunpowder is the monopoly of the god Styphon and his cult. Unfortunately for Styphon, Morrison knows how to make better gunpowder than the priests of Styphon, and has a few other tricks up his sleeve to save the kingdome of Hostigos and it beautiful princess Rylla...
Space Viking
The Sword Worlds had grown wealthy on the plunder picked from the bones of the Terran Federation by the Space Vikings, but only Lucas Trask seems to see that the best and brightest of the Sword Worlds are being drained off into raiding instead of building up the Sworld Worlds themselves. Then his wife is murdered on his wedding day, and he has no choice but to go viking himself.
Uller Uprising
Retelling of the Sepoy Mutiny set on a colonial planet where the four-armed natives have found a new/old use for the atomic bombs used to mine the next-door planet. General Carlos von Schlictenberg has to move fast with his handful of loyal troops and improvised staff to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Jerry Pournelle:
Falkenberg's Legion Originally published as The Mercenary, West of Honor), and "Sword and Scepter". When the United States and Soviet Union join forces in the CoDominium, it buys peace - but at a stiff price indeed. Eventually the CD falls apart, but in its twilight the CoDominium Marines keep order on the colony planets, and one of the best officers in the CD Marines is John Christian Falkenberg. After he's cashiered, he turns mercenary...but who is he really working for?
The Childrens' Hour, with S.M. Stirling
The human colonists of Wunderland have been under kzinti occupation for decades, but the UN has a plot to decapitate the occupation regime... The Helot War novels, with S.M. Stirling:
Go Tell The Spartans, Prince of Mercenaries, Prince of Sparta
In the twilight of the CoDominium, Peter Owensford has come a long way since he hired on to the wrong side in the Thurstone wars. As the commander of Falkenberg's mercenaries sent to train up the Royal Army of Sparta, he finds himself fighting a bloody guerrilla war against the totally amoral and extremely lovely Skida Thibodeau. Will the Spartans prevail, or will Skilly lead her Helot army to victory against the Dual Monarchy? Janissaries, Storms of Victory, Clan and Crown, Tran
Rick Galloway and his men faced certain death in Africa when they were rescued by...aliens in flying saucers? Their rescuers have a price, though - they want Galloway and his men to land on the planet Tran and ensure that a very valuable crop is grown and harvested for them, and promise support. But thhe aliens' human pilot has a girlfriend that gets dumped on Tran with Galloway's men, and she says the aliens haven't told the the whole truth. King David's Spaceship, originally published as A Spaceship for the King with a kick-butt Kelly Freas cover. Or, get the serialization in Analog, with the same cover and more Freas illos.
When the Empire of Man comes to Prince Samual's World, not everyone in the ruling Kingdom of Haven is happy to see them, even though they're helping Haven unite the planet. One of those unhappy men is the chief of the secret police, who hires down-on-his-luck colonel "Iron Man" McKinnie to lead an expedition to the primitive planet of Makassar, where the salvation of Prince Samual's World may lie in a pre-Empire temple...which MacKinnie will have to defend against the nomads who have nearly brought humanity on Makassar to its knees. War World stories: Bloodfeuds (novel), Blood Vengeance (novel), CoDominium, Invasion, Death's Head Rebellion, Sauron Dominion, The Burning Eye. All of these are written by other authors including Harry Turtledove and Susan Shwartz; the novels are based on (and built on) a trio of Turtledove stories which are in turn based on Oedipus Rex. The stories are all set on the "world" of Haven, used by the CoDominium as a prison planet and abandoned by the Empire when the Secession Wars began. Into the chaos of the Secession Wars' end comes a fleeing Sauron cruiser, seeking refuge on Haven...but the Havenites have been hardened by their cruel world, and aren't about to let the Saurons just take over.
There Will Be War anthologies - last time I looked there were eighteen of these, a mixture of SF, poetry, science articles and political polemics. Most of the latter are dated since the demise of the Soviet Union but the fiction is generally excellent.

Kevin Randle:
Jefferson's War series: The Galactic Silver Star, The Price of Command, The Lost Colony, The January Platoon, Chain of Command, Death of a Regiment

Joel Rosenberg
Not for Glory, Hero
The former is a novelization of several stories that appeared in the "There Will Be War" anthologies about the Metzada Mercenary Corps, and specifically the cashiered general and low-tech specialist Shimon Bar-El. Hero is set before the events of Not for Glory, and it's an interesting combination of war story, love story, and a story of how cowards get turned into heroes.

Fred Saberhagen:
The Berserker Series: Berserker Fury, Berserker Kill, Brother Assassin, Berserker, Berserker Death, Berserker Base (an anthology of non-Saberhagen Berserker stories), Berserker Lies, Berserker Man, Berserker Throne, Berserker Wars, Berserker Planet
You've seen one "soulless killer machines out to destroy all life" story, you've seen 'em all - nope, sorry, not even close. Fred Saberhagen may not have invented the concept, but he's certainly made a name for himself writing about it. These vary in quality, but even the worst ones are damn good.
Empire of the East
Can sometimes be found as two separate novels, THE BROKEN LANDS and CHANGELING EARTH. It only looks like fantasy, and once our hero finds the Elephant...

Rick Shelley:
Until Relieved, Side Show, Jump Pay, The Buchanan Campaign, The Fires of Coventry

John Steakley:
Armor
A lot of folks liked this story, which reads a lot more like the movie "Starship Troopers" than Heinlein's book by the same name (at least in the battle scenes), with its waves and waves of insectoid aliens, but it left me cold. YMMV.

S.M. Stirling:
Marching through Georgia, Under the Yoke, The Stone Dogs, Drakon
Grim alternate history positing that the Tories decamped to South Africa instead of England and Canada. The rest of the world has ample time to regret this.

Harry Turtledove:
Guns of the South, How Few Remain, The Great War: American Front, A Walk in Hell, Breakthroughs, American Empire, The Center Cannot Hold, Blood and Iron, Settling Accounts
Lee wins in the East, Grant dies before he can make a difference in the West, and the South wins its independence; worse yet, ten years later they win the rematch in Arizona, with the only spot of glory being Custer and Teddy Roosevelt's victory over the invading Canadians in Montana. By 1914 the USA and President Roosevelt are ready for some major payback. Riveting alternate history which also features Lincoln as a founder of the American Socialist party.
WorldWar: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, Striking the Balance, Colonization
Lizard-like aliens invade Earth and interrupt World War II. Not as tightly focused as the HOW FEW REMAIN series, but the grudging cooperation between the former enemies against the aliens is a hoot.

David Weber:
Insurrection, Crusade (both with Steve White)
Interstellar war novels on the grand scale. If you liked the star-smashing SF of Doc Smith and Edmond Hamilton, these should be right up your alley. Honor Harrington novels: On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen, The Short Victorious War, Field of Dishonor, Flag In Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, More Than Honor (w/David Drake and S.M. Stirling)
Weber rewrites the Horatio Hornblower novels with a female starship captain instead of a male middie in the Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars. The PC stuff gets a bit thick at times, and the parallels between the People's Republic of Haven and Revolutionary France get a bit obvious, but don't let it put you off.

Roger Zelazny:
Lord of Light (OK, it's a stretch, but it is about a rather protracted war)

The following works are not, strictly speaking, SF, but fall into the category of "technothrillers". Some of them have been forced by events into the "alternate history" file.

Larry Bond:
Red Phoenix, Vortex, Cauldron

Dale Brown:
Flight of the Old Dog, Day of the Cheetah, Night of the Hawk, Shadows of Steel, Sky Masters, Chains of Command

Ed Ruggero: 38 North Yankee; Firefall; The Common Defense; Breaking Ranks

Contributions to this list were made by El Sparko Diablo, Dawnesque Pat, Emily Dachowitz, and some other folks whose names got clipped off the e-mail. Sorry. All errors and oversights my responsibility. Updates gratefully accepted and acknowledged; send them to me at my AOL addtess.

Copyright 1997-2004 by Kevin Trainor and God's Own Breaking Pitch Press.

Last updated November 11, 2004. This is a work in progress.