dauntless

John G. Hemry may have ended his JAG-in-space stories early this year, but he is back with a new series at Ace Books, under the nom de plume Jack Campbell. A few days ago, I finished reading the first volume, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless, and it confirms that he remains the the only writer of military space adventure I can stand. I have tried other writers of that kind of story and I always came out of it with the sense that, even when their characters say that War is Hell, they seem too willing to resort to it. Maybe the difference is that Hemry is a Democrat and a former Navy officer. And so one isn't surprised by his story of Admiral Jack Geary from the early days of a war who, after 100 years of drifting in space while in cryosleep, wakes up to find that things have changed. Not only has he become a legend, but he sees that people have forgotten about sound military tactics. He eventually realizes that there is a lot that they have forgotten, when he finds how his side now treats prisonners of war. And if that wasn't an obvious enough jab by the author at the way things are in these early years of the 21st Century, here's an excerpt from later in the book...

Desjani grimaced but nodded. "Security and logistics. Those two things keep getting in the way of a lot of good ideas."
"You got that right," Geary grinned. "Though I've seen plenty of plans that didn't take reality into account, and that didn't seem to bother the people who created the plans."
"Of course not. Why spoil a great plan by letting reality intrude?"