Continuing with our Armed with A Bingo giveaway author features, I have Holly Ash with me today! You have met her previously when we chatted about New Adult Fiction, as part of The Creator’s Roulette series.
Holly is the author of the underwater science fiction series The Journey Missions. She has worked for the last ten years as an Environmental Engineer after receiving degrees in Environmental Science and English Literature from Central Michigan University.
The first book of The Journey Missions is in our giveaway this week and I am thrilled to give you a glimpse into the genre of military scifi. Let’s learn from Holly about it!
Expectations of Military Science Fiction
By Holly Ash
It seems fair to say that whether or not a person has served in the military they have some pretty firm expectations about what military life is like. There’s structure, dripline, and order. There’s also bravery, action, and usually loss. All of it with a sense that you are serving the greater good and protecting people. It isn’t hard to understand why military science fiction is such a popular sub-genre.
I’ve always been drawn to military stories, the first rated R movie I ever saw was G.I. Jane and I was probably way too young for it at the time. Hunt for Red October was on so often in my house that I knew it word for word and JAG was one of the most common shows on our family television. So is it any wonder that when I started writing I’d gravitate towards military based stories?
Now full disclosure, I never served in the armed forces and I know that my stories are not authentic what the men and women experience today and I think that’s ok. Combing the military with science fiction allows for some leeway as long as the rules of the military are clearly defined. In my series, The Journey Missions, I make it clear from the very beginning that military on the planet of Neophia might be based on militaries on Earth, but there are a lot of ways that they vary. This is constantly reinforced throughout the series.
In general, I made sure to stick to general ranks and chains of commands. Readers of this genre are going to expect that the Captain is in charge with his commander serving as his executive officer. They will expect that the soldiers follow orders and respect the chain of command. Without concrete truths like this, you’re likely to lose the reader.
That’s not to say that you can’t change things up if you want, this is fiction we are talking about after all. Does it really make sense for an alien race to have organized their military the exact same way as we do on Earth? Of course not, but your reader still needs to relate and understand the structure you set up, so it’s important to define it early and find ways to seamlessly reinforce it throughout the story. For example, in my series the military use stun guns on their enemies. This is first explained in book 1 Crystal and Flint when the combat team arrives at training. It’s later explained that to use deadly force would be considered an act of war according the Peace Treaty put in place at the end of the Great War that almost decimated the population on both sides.
On the surface, military science fiction might seem like simple action-packed stories filled with fighting, destruction, and death, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This sub-genre really allows the writer to dig deep into the moral and ethical center of a character, the cost courage can have on a person, and the cost of sacrifice. All of these things can and should have a deep emotional impact on the characters in military scifi. At its heart this is a genre based on a person’s moral obligation of right and wrong and the lengths they are willing to go in order to protect that.
Recommendations:
The Fifth Wave series while not completely a military scifi has some really great military elements to it. I also really enjoyed the military elements in Marie Lu’s Legend series.
I hope you found this guest post by Holly helpful. You can connect with Holly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Find more about her work on her website. Her book, Crystal and Flint is in our giveaway for this quarter – find more about it on Goodreads.
Cover Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay
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