about military SF
Some ranty bits here, because this concerns no one at LJ.
If your book is 'military SF' and the main point of your book is to show how bad war is and that we shouldn't be having it, or, alternatively, how bad the enemy is and pow pow pow pow, ratatatatatata and kaboom...
Then you're seriously missing the point of military SF.
Military SF takes as a given that war is bad, a last resort, that it has positive results sometimes, that is is boring, confusing, scary, heart-wrenching and very rarely exhilarating to be involved in. Those things are background fluff.
Military SF is about the people in the story, how they function and survive (or not), given *all* the stuff in the above paragraph.
So, if your claim is that 'this military SF book shows how war is bad', sorry dude, but it ain't military SF.
(when all the above was said at the famous Worldcon panel on military SF, I finally felt confident enough to call Charlotte's Army military SF)
If your book is 'military SF' and the main point of your book is to show how bad war is and that we shouldn't be having it, or, alternatively, how bad the enemy is and pow pow pow pow, ratatatatatata and kaboom...
Then you're seriously missing the point of military SF.
Military SF takes as a given that war is bad, a last resort, that it has positive results sometimes, that is is boring, confusing, scary, heart-wrenching and very rarely exhilarating to be involved in. Those things are background fluff.
Military SF is about the people in the story, how they function and survive (or not), given *all* the stuff in the above paragraph.
So, if your claim is that 'this military SF book shows how war is bad', sorry dude, but it ain't military SF.
(when all the above was said at the famous Worldcon panel on military SF, I finally felt confident enough to call Charlotte's Army military SF)