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Comment by Scubabear68 | Hacker News Reader

I like going into sub genres of Sci Fi (and liked when it was referred to as speculative fiction to cover the gamut, including Fantasy).

In particular, I love Military Sci fiction is a close cousin of Space Opera, but with a harder core emphasis on military logistics, strategy and tactics in a sci fi setting.

Time Travel Sci fiction.

Hard science fiction.

Hybrid worlds - think Proton / Phaze in Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity series, or his Incarnations of Immortality.

Social science fiction (think Stranger in a Strange Land).

Juveniles.

The list goes on!

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Ditto. Speculative Fiction is a better label. It seems authors these days like to write to a specific set of sub genres and tropes. Narrowing their vision. I want cool space stuff, cool fantasy stuff, cool science stuff.

What books are your favourite military scifi?

Not the parent but The Forever War by Joe Haldemann is a classic. (As is Starship Troopers).

For something different, think "navel warfare in space", the Lost Fleet series from Jack Campbell dealt with relativistic effects in space, with regard to combat, and the difficulties of predicting where/when people were.

I enjoyed the Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee.

It also is labelled a space opera and has a decent amount of naval warfare in space

As you mention "naval warfare in space", David Webers "Honor Harrington" series is apparently quite well regarded.

Weber himself has described the series as "Horatio Hornblower" in space.

The CoDominium series by Jerry Pournelle and David Drake.

The Empire of Man novels by Weber and Ringo.

Belisarius series by Eric Flint and David Drake.

The General series by S.M. Stirling and David Drake.

Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising.

I think most people usually don't consider Tom Clancy to be a science fiction writer, but these two books (his best two by far, FWIW) both feature speculative technology central to the story. Red October features a magneto-hydrodynamic drive for a submarine; MHD drives work for real in the small scale but without great superconductors it doesn't scale well to work for a full scale military submarine. In Red Storm Rising there are F-19 stealth jets based off rumors of the F-117. They get a few things wrong (smooth continuous curves instead of flat facets, poor stealth from below, armed with anti-aircraft missiles, etc) but on the whole they were reasonably grounded speculation.

If you're not convinced, here is a longer argument for Red October (the film) being hard science fiction: https://qntm.org/october

> Tom Clancy to be a science fiction writer

This is a canonical examples of the sub-genre / crossover category named "Techno-thriller"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-thriller

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DQUKZMY/

It's basically 21st Century Naval Warfare in space. I quite enjoyed it. A lot of thought was put into the world.

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