Why I Write Military Science Fiction
06/12/2004 . Source: Elizabeth Moon 
Three things pushed me toward writing military SF. The first reason is history. In the long history of humanity so far, war is almost as constant as death and taxes. Three things pushed me toward writing military
SF. The first reason is history. In the long history of humanity
so far, war is almost as constant as death and taxes. Since the
best guide to future behavior is past behavior, the constancy of
intertribal conflict suggests that there will be war for a very
long time to come.
The second nudge towards military SF was personal experience. I
grew up among veterans of WWII and Korea, men and women who are
now called "the greatest generation." I knew them as interesting,
competent adult civilians long before I knew about their military
experience.
I admired them for their hometown skills in stringing wires and
farming and frying chicken and making bread before I knew that they'd
been Seabees and Army nurses and paratroopers and pilots. That early
experience among veterans led me to join the military myself, where
even so brief a period of active duty—three years—made permanent
changes and still affects my life today.
Finally, there's science fiction, which makes possible stories
that cannot be written in the here and now, stories which can deal
with ideas and issues in ways that leapfrog barriers in the readers'
minds.
Besides the obvious crash-bang-boom of armed conflict, there are
deep moral, ethical, social, and political issues that engage everyone
who joins any military organization, and these deserve thoughtful
consideration, not sound-bite dogma. Soldiers come to the military
with attitudes and ideas already formed, with cultural and personal
pressure behind them.
No matter how hard a military organization tries to make its members
into identical units, individuals remain individuals, and the sandblasting
of military discipline reveals more than it conceals. Some of the
issues soldiers face in our military today will still be around
in future wars; others may vanish with changes in both technology
and society.
It's the sharp ends where character meets conflict, where preconceptions
meet reality, that make up the stories I like to write...and for
a lot of such stories, the natural home is military SF.
Elizabeth Moon
(c) 2004 - Elizabeth Moon and Del Rey
The following material is being reprinted from
the Del Rey Internet Newsletter. Thanks to Fleetwood Robbins. To
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