Showing posts with label Military Science Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Military Science Fiction. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Worldbuilding from Reality Part 11 - Worldbuilding Does Not a Story Make

Worldbuilding from Reality
Part 11
Worldbuilding Does Not a Story Make
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous posts in the Worldbuilding From Reality series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

When you are worldbuilding, you are weaving the black velvet that will cradle and display your diamond.  You are not creating the light that will make your diamond sparkle, or the diamond itself, but if you do a messy job of worldbuilding then no adjustments of light or cut of diamond will create the riveting effect you intend.

Worldbuilding is crucial, but should be as invisible as the black velvet of a jeweler's display case.

In this analogy, I'd guess the "light" is your theme, and the diamond is the Relationship you are depicting.

The Worldbuilding is an integral part of the light and the jewel it illuminates, and some genres, some authors, make the Worldbuilding into the whole plot.  Done well, this is also riveting.

For example, the long running Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson with the 2019 entry in the Series #14, Pass of Fire.



https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Fire-Destroyermen-Book-14-ebook/dp/B07HDQXWYW/
I think the overall Theme of the Destroyermen novels might be, "The best defense is a vigorous offense."  The world situation, and how a handful of "can-do" American sailors can improve the situation, is the plot. The Story

I can't sing the praises of Anderson's Destroyermen too loudly.  The "world" is an alternate Earth (which a WWII Destroyer falls into from a storm in the South Pacific), and the building is how this tiny group of sailors orchestrates a reproduction of WWII, but with totally different factions, different species (some not human) and humans who fell into this world from different historic epics.  We also have the indications some of the humans from different epics are actually from different parallel universes than our own.

So there is a cosmic-level worldbuilding theory behind the series, and the World where the conflict is in progress when our Destroyermen land there is the result of the asteroid that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs landing in a slightly different spot, rearranging the geography of Central America.

There are a couple of species of feathered lizards that have achieved sentience -- and a civilization based on feeding the voracious populace both with humans and with their own species.

Our Destroyermen take the side of the people being attacked and eaten, or attacked and conquered by some stray WWII Japanese.  Alliances form, war spreads, and the Destroyermen put the natives on the track of ever improved weaponry.

The 2029 entry in this Series is Pass of Fire (the fire being a series of volcanoes in Central America, the Pass being formed by the asteroid hit).

And from this base of intricate worldbuilding, the long-long sequences describing weapons improvements and what counter-improvements the enemies achieve (with the help of the Japanese), and what huge, world-wide, sprawling strategies and tactics can be launched, and which of the surviving Destroyermen are leading parts of the war, and which parts are led by those who learned from our Destroyermen, also describe the Relationships developing because of the battle-camaraderie.

The Characters gradually emerge as well rounded, understandable individuals with unique talents brought forth by vicissitudes.  But even the marriages and births are incidental, except as one more motive to fight.

Survival is the biggest motive for this war.

Hollywood romanticized WWII by telling many deeply romantic stories about couples meeting during war, or separated because of it.  War impacts real lives, reshapes life directions.

In an Action Genre, the war itself and how to conduct it, is the story and the plot.

In Science Fiction the science of war is shown as the key to winning.

In Romance, the impact of war on family relationships, and the highly intensified Romances sweeping people into Relationships they would never have chosen, is the Story while the war itself (strategy, tactics, weaponry advantage, resource allocation) is just background.  The Romance-During-War Novel Plot is not the war, but the insane chances people take to get back together.

The Destroyermen series has no Romance in it, but it does have a few plausible Love Stories woven through it.

A Romance writer should read this series to study techniques for weaving flawless, featureless black velvet.

The last thing an artist wants is to distract the viewer's attention from the work of art being displayed.

In a Romance novel, the Jewel being displayed, the work of art, is the evolving Relationship.  As the Relationship matures into Love through many classic stages (each experienced uniquely), the "action" unfolds on the field of Relationship.  What the couple will do next is the suspense line.  If they are soldiers in a war, which side wins the war is usually not the problem.  If they are running the war, they win it together as a team.

In Romance, the war happens only to fertilize and inform the Relationship.

In the Action Science Fiction genre, which the Destroyermen Series precisely nails to perfection, the Relationships happen only to infuse the winning spirit into the combatants.

I have found not one single flaw in all of the novels in Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen Series.

I've discussed a few previous novels in this series:


https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html










https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/reviews-45-military-science-fiction-and.html




And we discussed Pass of Fire in the Theme-Plot Integration series.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/07/theme-plot-integration-part-18-stating.html

Clearly, I can't stop raving about Destroyermen. It's flawless, for what it is,  but that just whets my appetite for a similar series, complete with intricately perfect worldbuilding, the science of weaponry, all used to create and showcase the developing of Relationships.

We are enjoined to love our fellows as ourselves, but we humans often fall short of that goal.  The way Romance genre can illustrate the moves, strategy and tactics of warfare might teach us what there is to love in every human.

Romance writers need to study the Art of War as illustrated in the Destroyermen Series to see how the worldbuilding doesn't make the Story, but this kind of worldbuilding from the realities of WWII could make a whopping good Romance.  Just keep asking yourself what's missing.  What's there is perfect - but what's missing is even more important.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Theme-Plot Integration Part 18 Stating Your Theme

Theme-Plot Integration
Part 18
Stating Your Theme
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in Theme-Plot Integration are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

By the end of the first scene of your novel, preferably the end of the first page, the reader should have a grasp of your theme.

Oddly enough, though it's not discussed in books on writing, and most readers would deny it, THEME is the reason people read books all the way through, or toss them aside half-read.

THEME is what the novel, story, book (non-fiction, too) is about.

It's the topic and you need a topic-sentence on your opening page, something to frame the story so the reader can tell if they want to invest the time (and money) to read the entire thing.

What you're talking about has to be something the reader is interested in.

Writing craft instruction usually starts with "make it interesting" -- or write about something interesting -- and other phrases that seem to assume that some topics are inherently interesting and others not.

In other words, the FALLACY underlying writing craft instruction is simply that "interesting" is an objective property of topics.

We discussed various fallacies masking ultimate truths in our world in Parts 6 and 7 of this series of posts.

Fallacy is an aspect of our culture that can be exploited by fiction writers, especially Romance writers, to interest a reader in a topic, a THEME.

The theme itself doesn't have to be interesting.  In fact, all themes are interesting to the writer who is stating their own angle on a topic.

"Interesting" is not a property of theme.  All themes are equally interesting.

And in fact, a particular reader doesn't have the property "interested in" as an inherent trait of that person.

What interests a particular person at a specific moment will be whatever problem is currently between them and the satisfactions of life they crave most.

Children are always interested in how the next older age-group copes with whatever problems they are up to in life.

Adults are eternally interested in The Mating Game -- even after having solved the problem "Who Should I Marry" people are interested in where other sorts of choices might have led, and how they'd cope with those situations.

When you add science fiction to the mixture of fictional ingredients in theme, you can lead the reader from their own (boring) here and now, to a "there and then" which you can use to cast the spell of "this is interesting" over them.

What is interesting about science fiction?  It isn't where the reader is living at that time.

Life, the treadmill of work, housekeeping, kids, carpooling, school meetings, and all the drudgery that goes with it gets boring with repetition.  All that boring drudgery can become refreshingly NEW after reading a good book.

But what is a "good book?"

Is a "good" book the book you want to write?  Or is it the book the reader wants to read?  Or - is it really the UNEXPECTED?

The best writers best books are about themes that ask questions most people never think to ask, and present answers that challenge everyday assumptions about the common world of daily drudgery.

Two such series are currently being published that, while barely acknowledging Romance and only occasionally nodding to Relationship as a plot moving dynamic, nevertheless give the Science Fiction Romance writer many themes to pursue.

Pass of Fire (Destroyermen Book 14 ) by Taylor Anderson
https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Fire-Destroyermen-Book-14-ebook/dp/B07HDQXWYW/










Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, The Book 3) by Jack Campbell
https://www.amazon.com/Triumphant-Genesis-Fleet-Book-3-ebook/dp/B07GV29RDX/

These are good books, can't put it down reads, about a topic that will bore you to tears -- war.

Yet how many grand War Romances have you seen on film, usually World War II settings?  How many marvelous novels have you read which are War Romances, and how many of your favorite kick-ass-heroines are from books set in a war zone?

War is a male occupation, a fascination and inherently interesting.  Therefore, male writers, when using a war-plot, waste no words trying to convince their readers that war is interesting.

How many chapters of plot development do you build into a Romance to convince your readers that Romance is interesting?

When was the last time you asked yourself why you find Romance interesting?

What's interesting about it?  Why would anyone WANT to meet that Perfect Stranger?  What's wrong with the boy next door?  Why would anyone WANT to fall in love with the boy next door when they could adventure with a Stranger?

What do we write about that needs no explanation?

That topic is what must be explained, (e.g. used in the THEME) to non-Romance readers in order to convince them that Romance is interesting, and then to intrigue them into being interested.

None of that process is evident in either Taylor Anderson's writing or Jack Campbell's series-of-series.

I love them both, gobble them up, but fight through the flat-boring and tedious wordage that doesn't acknowledged the Relationship energy necessary to drive a war-plot.

I've discussed both these writers and their series at length - there is so very much to say about what a Romance writer can learn by studying these two exemplary series, so I'm pointing you at the latest entries.  Here are previous posts where I've discussed them:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/orson-scott-card-mormon-jack-campbell.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-6-depicting-money-and.html

Depicting Political Disruption From China To Today
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/depiction-part-16-reviews-26-depicting.html

Depicting Interstellar Commerce
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/depiction-part-18-interstellar-commerce.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/lost-fleet-beyond-frontier-leviathan-by.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/08/reviews-38-jack-campbell-genesis-fleet.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/reviews-45-military-science-fiction-and.html

Why would a writer of Science Fiction (or Paranormal) Romance need to read these books?

Surely, you've studied military tactics and weaponry issues.  If you've ever played a video game, (and won), the principles of resource conservation and weapons superiority are ingrained in you.  Tactics are second nature.

If you've ever captured a guy's attention, you've mastered the fine art of war, strategy, tactics, and that little black dress is your most potent weapon.

On your own battleground, you know what you're doing.

But what makes your battleground of interest to readers who hate Romance Genre?

Notice the phrasing of that question: "of interest to"  -- that's the key. "Interesting" is not a property of a static element in the equation.  It is something that the Artist Makes.

In graphic arts, we learn how to "lead the eye" of the viewer, and focus attention where we want it.

The same is true of writing stories -- grab the reader's attention, then lead that attention through an obstacle course to a goal which becomes more enticing with each passing page of the narrative.

The THEME hint on page 1-5 "grabs attention" and just before the final climax scene, the THEME STATED image-or-dialogue congratulates the Reader on having guessed correctly what is to be REVEALED by the nature of the ENDING.

The initial problem from page 1 (where the two forces that will conflict to generate the plot first meet) asks the question the writer thinks will intrigue the target reader for this novel.

The same story can be opened with a dozen different page-1 questions.  The artist chooses an approach angle to the story's main problem the same way a photographer chooses an angle to snap a portrait image.

It's all about composition, and that is all about what is concealed and what is revealed.

When you write out in plain language what your theme is, you are presenting that them "on the nose" -- a blatant, can't-miss-it, insistent statement that will not allow the reader to use their imagination to "fill in the blanks."

What makes War and Relationship connected lies in that blank space the reader has to fill in.

But to entice the reader into a story framed in a genre they are convinced is un-interesting, the writer has to frame the blank space so that the reader wants to know what's in that dark hole.

The most boring material in our current world is considered to be philosophy, but it is in fact the most interesting material.  And in fact, at this point in history, philosophy is the most explosive issue.

For example, a lot of people now think that Capitalism is Evil.  But just a few decades ago, Capitalism was considered the greater Good.

Capitalism is a word that's been redefined, as has Socialism.  That redefinition is possible because each of these words represents a system rooted in vast, but different, philosophical systems.

We all live in the same objective reality, but we all craft our own subjective reality from what we observe, then proceed with life assuming that what we don't see isn't there.

The writer's job as an Artist is to reveal what we are not seeing.

What we, today, are not-seeing is what we call Philosophy.

Both Jack Campbell and Taylor Anderson have created imaginary wars in which the sides are divided along the same philosophical line -- Totalitarian Vs Democracy

But each is analyzing Democracy differently, and in some instances peppering the argument with "Republic" -- or the USA hybrid a "Representative Democracy."

Taylor Anderson's alternate universe reality has peoples who are not "human" (anthropoid) but have governing philosophies based on their physiology.  At the same time, his Global War has many human factions, torn from our Earth at different points in history.  These human factions have evolved governing philosophies along different paths than our Earth has taken.

Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series pits a wide variety of governing philosophies against each other, but follows a number of evolving Relationships among exceptional individuals whose decisions reshape the course of history on his well built world.

Jack Campbell's universe is huge, and contains several Series set in interstellar war-torn landscapes.  The Genesis Fleet series focuses on an epoch of human expansion among the stars using "jump points" but ships that fight each other within Newton's laws.

Campbell's 3-D warfare tactics are Heinleinesque, and remind me also of Edward E. Smith's Lensman series.

Campbell develops the reasons why the newly settled planets far out there, barely able to conduct commerce with each other, using humanity's known history.  On Earth, we spread out, settle new areas, then fight over resources, or just territory, and very often just over control of large populations.

And that's where Campbell uses philosophy so very well.  He's drawn the newly settled planets' cultures based on  the essential philosophic dichotomy currently splitting our own real world, "Totalitarianism vs. Democracy" in various versions.

Humanity's enemy of freedom is born within us.  Given a few generations of freedom, we will breed a faction that is driven by the urge to CONTROL -- people who can't feel safe or at rest while other people make their own decisions.

Where those who need to control others gain command, war happens because they notice all these surrounding peoples who won't knuckle under.

So battle lines are drawn, alliances formed, and shooting wars held.

On Earth, now and historically, warriors battle without knowing what they are fighting for, but believing in their Cause, stated in some two-word motto.

Jack Campbell articulates what such mottos stand for, and what motivates large populations to espouse one or the other form of government.  His THEME is that people who believe in the same values are natural allies, and even lovers -- with Romance in there, and true love as well.

Campbell's Characters have Relationships which they set aside in order to go into mortal combat to protect those they love.  He has male and female warriors, equally good at personal combat, strategy and tactics, and computer hacking.

Interwoven with the action scenes, there are short dialogue scenes where the Characters articulate what they are fighting for, against, and why these ideas are important enough to die for.

For example, in The Genesis Fleet TRIUMPHANT, one of Campbell's Characters, Freya, says...

-------quote--------

"...I think there's an important point there.  Those who have sought to impose their will on others have often done so in the name of peace and law and order, arguing that freedom must be given up to accomplish those aims.  We know that's false.  That's why we balk at giving up even a little of our freedom even when we see danger at our doors.  But perhaps we should be thinking of it as if all of us were in a fight, and standing back to back to protect each other.  We'd have given up some freedom of movement, but nothing that matters compared to knowing we can't be stabbed in the back."

------end quote---------

The quote is from a discussion about forming an interplanetary alliance of freedom-loving planets to fight off encroaching totalitarians who aim to take over an entire region.

That quote is from page 119 of 327 pages in book 3 of the Genesis Fleet sub-series all set in the same universe, but about the same War.  Being an intermediate restatement of the theme, the reader doesn't get a feeling of finality but rather of progress.

The Characters are trying to figure out why they are doing what they are doing in order to figure out what the enemy is doing, in order to figure out what to do next to win this war.

But given other thematic utterances previously, the reader sees "this war" is a war against human nature, and war isn't the correct tool to win it.

Without war, though, humanity as a whole will definitely lose.

So War isn't the correct tool to solve the problem posed by War.

Later in his timeline, Campbell introduces Aliens who are playing a game of "Let's you and him fight" -- pitting these two factions of humanity against each other in order to conquer (perhaps wipe out) humanity.

The entirety of this Work of Art directly addresses the thematic issue of the role of government in species survival.

There is so much to be said on that theme that is better suited to Science Fiction Romance than to the Action Genre format Campbell is using.  But he does have his most potent Hero Characters deeply involved in committed Relationships.  Their primary motive in every act of war is protecting those Relationships.

It would be so easy to spin off a sub-series of pure Romance from this material.

I highly recommend you pay close attention to both these writers, and both these series.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Reviews 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Page-turners To Study

Reviews 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Page-turners To Study

Reviews 1 (not really the first reviews I've done on this blog!) is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

This series of "Reviews" is about books you can study and learn from.

Here are three innocent looking books, but they are anything but innocent.

Each is a 2013 entry in a long running series of novels guilty of being page-turners.  Each one is a complete novel in and of itself, a whole story.  Each one is an "episode" in a longer story arc -- as we've been studying episodic structure and the use of "Interesting" to achieve that structure.  Each one is a page-turner.  Each of these authors has hit the rhythm the current publishing establishment needs to make a profit.

Gini Koch's ALIEN series is Fantasy Romance with the structure of military science fiction -- that good, old fashioned, traditional military-action-formula stuff that has sold well for maybe more than a hundred years.  But Gini is doing it as Romance!

Judging by the vigorous market for very simple shoot-from-the-hip video games, COMBAT based stories are still popular.  Every generation becomes enamored of "winning" in a combat situation -- just being faster, stronger, more skilled than the opposition is every teen's goal in life (for a while, at least).

So there's always a market for stories about vanquishing foes by blasting them to bits.

The same is true of Romance genre.  There's always a market for stories about "dazzlers" (a term Gini Koch uses in her ALIEN Series to good advantage) when you (the writer) can bring the reader into the character of a dazzler whose power over men is devastating. Making the reader feel what it's like to have such power over others is the same as making the reader feel what it's like to have the power to blow adversaries to bits.

Here is the Gini Koch page on Amazon, though I rather imagine readers of this blog have not missed a single one of the Alien novels:

http://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

Touched By An Alien, Alien Tango, Alien In The Family, Alien Proliferation, Alien Diplomacy, Alien vs. Alien, Alien In The House and in December 2013, Alien Research are the ALIEN SERIES titles.

This is the series that connects these other two series of Military Science Fiction/Fantasy. 

Note, that I have told Gini Koch several times that the ALIEN novels need to be line-edited to soak about 20% of the words out -- a couple of reviewers have noted that, though often readers just don't know WHY they have a hard time "following" a story or remembering the huge list of characters as they pop up, then vanish from the pages.

That difficulty is often from a lack of vigorous line editing rather than an innate structural problem. 

The story Koch is telling in the ALIEN series is complex, far-flung, passion-driven (what will a heroic type person do for the sake of maintaining a love-life?), and crazy-funny all at the same time. 

What constitutes "Interesting?"

It is possible to review the ALIEN novels in a dozen different contexts, illustrating many story-telling techniques that are all highly marketable (other than being just plain fun to read) -- but today we are continuing the discussion launched over the last couple of weeks involving the subject of what, exactly, constitutes "interesting?"

Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion of writing a Page-turner:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series on story-springboards,

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

...we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot, one of which is a "springboard" with enough potential energy to hurl the story and plot all the way to The End.

In Part 4 we analyzed "boring" - where it comes from and how it happens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

Now we're looking at what makes a reader turn the page -- want to know "what happens next" -- or be eager to pick up a book they had to put aside because it's long, like the ALIEN SERIES novels are.

What makes a reader buy a sequel?

Well, each reader is different, and a given reader changes taste over the years.  But there is a one-word answer from the point of view of a writer -- "suspense." 

Soap Opera structure -- the episodic structure is best exemplified by the old-fashioned soaps - is generally considered to work well with suspense because the 'characters are interesting' -- watching a Soap even after missing a few episodes is a "visit with old friends." 

The suspense element can be "what will this old friend do about this new problem?" or it can be just, "what's going on with this old friend now?"  Either way, it's "what happens next to my old friend?" 

Life, in general, is all about "what happens next." 

There are two main categories of "happens next."
A) the consequences of what was done before (Saturn)
B) a NEW Event that blindsides the characters and changes everything (Uranus).

Remember, in the vocabulary we've adopted for this blog, "Plot" is the series of Events; "Story" is the meaning of those Events to the characters. 

You will find these two structural elements referred to by various terms elsewhere, but every professional writer knows the structural function of these two elements and - consciously or unconsciously - knows how to weld them together using Theme as the glue. It doesn't matter what you call them.  You just have to know how to work with them. 

Genres are distinguished to some extent by which element dominates - which element has the most words devoted to it, STORY or PLOT.

In the "Action" genres (Fantasy or Science Fiction, Men's action, war stories), Plot is supposed to dominate.

In Romance, Story dominates.

Thus in Romance genre, many long paragraphs between lines of dialogue are there to detail the emotional motivations slowly developing into the next utterance.

In Action genres, many long paragraphs are between lines of dialogue to detail the moves and counter-moves, the narrative of what the characters did to deliver which blows to the opponent.

In Romance, the plot is carried on the story.

In Action, the story is carried on the plot.


When Story and Plot are about equally balanced, each explicating the same Theme, each progressing in a smooth dance rhythm (what editors call "pacing."), you get the broadest audience appeal.  Half the audience will be frustrated there isn't more story, the other half will be frustrated there isn't more plot, and neither half will be so frustrated they stop reading. 

The best way to learn to balance Story and Plot in your writing is to practice doing one without the other -- like "Dancing With The Stars" it does take practice.

But you won't get it just exactly right on first or sometimes third draft.  It takes editing, right down to the minute the novel goes to press, to get the balance correct for the intended audience.

Gini Koch has nailed the "pacing" of the overall novel -- the beginning is in the right place in Plot and Story, the Plot and Story start of on the correct foot, mirroring each other like dance partners on Dancing With the Stars, the quarter point turn is right where it should be, the middle is smack in the middle, the 3/4 turn into the final action is on the nose, and the ending rises to a massive climax spectacle, then glides to rest -- with a few loose ends trailing to suggest the sequel as an episodic series should.

Take any one of the ALIEN novels and find the page numbers for those turning points, write down what happens at those points, read the whole novel, then graph plot and story and see what you find.

So if you wanted to improve the reader experience for the ALIEN novels, you would have to line and word-cut, trim, rephrase sentences, condense -- painstaking, and time-consuming (thus expensive) work.  And you'd have to cut enough so that there was room to add reminders about "who" each of the characters is when they pop up again.

Would it be worth it?  Would you lose some of the humorous banter that fans love about Koch's writing?  Yes, you would lose some readers that way -- would you gain more?  I doubt it. 

Now look at the two other long-running series in the photo above, The Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson and The Lost Stars by Jack Campbell.

These are essentially Combat Strategy Novels -- more about maneuvering fleets, resources, playing politics and diplomacy as forms of combat, deploying fire-power of every sort from explosions to one-upsmanship surprises. 

The Lost Stars is a spinoff series from Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series - same universe, but subordinate characters become the main characters.

The Destroyermen is more of a Fantasy type Science Fiction series.  Some World War II Navy ships get sucked into an alternate universe Earth where evolution took some different turns, producing aliens of various sorts on various continents.  These Destroyer crew people from our world are Americans of the "Can Do" generation who land in the midst of a very confusing multi-cultural world-war situation -- and basically change that world by introducing technology and tactics. 

STORM SURGE is the 8th book in a series.  It's hardcover from RoC, and has gained great praise for a reason.  It's a page turner! 

But like Gini Koch's series, the cast of characters is vast and hard to remember. 

Unlike Gini's series, though, DESTROYERMEN has resorted to following different characters into different theaters of conflict -- and only by reading very fast do you see the overall tactical situation.  The strategies though are lost in a shimmering fog.

There is, however, one driving objective -- each set of characters has the objective of getting out of this shooting war alive. 

They do not spend any paragraphs thinking or dreaming about the perfect life they want to create on this strange Earth.  They form war-buddy relationships, but don't get a lot deeper than that.  To them, the most important thing in life is not the fulfillment of a deeply satisfying Relationship with the Soul Mate who completes them.  The most important thing in life is LIFE -- i.e. staying alive long enough to take the next breath.

The second most important thing in life to these lost Americans (and there are some Japanese warship survivors who allied with the "other side" on this alter-Earth), is doing "the right thing."  Even when living like "drunken sailors" they strive for a solid moral footing.  They have Honor, and won't sell that just to survive.

The oddly non-1940's element is that these Americans unquestioningly accept the non-human allies with all their cultural quirks.  There's little of the prejudices that shaped those decades in the USA. 

So, yes, it's Fantasy, but with all the elements of Science Fiction.  These Americans offhandedly re-engineer, re-invent, and originate technology -- and while they're at it, they teach non-humans how to create  technological innovations.  By Book 8, Storm Surge, the non-humans are the primary source of innovations -- new aircraft, new torpedoes, new ways to create and deliver explosions, and of communicating over long distances.  Meanwhile, the majority non-humans adopt 1940's slang English. 

Along the way, you learn enough about the characters (human and not) to be rooting for these folks and against those folks -- you want to know "what happens next" because the action never pauses, even during the tense waits while forces and fleets reposition.

To find the secrets of the "page turner" of episodic structure, check the Events (plot developments) at the beginning, quarter, middle, 3/4 and end points in each volume.  Each volume has a complete story, but leaves over some "loose ends," for the next part of the story.  You can learn more about page-turner structure from books you do not like than you can from books you do like because, without the glamor of an enchanting novel to suck you in, you can see through the surface to the mechanism below. 

If Taylor Anderson gets to finish the DESTROYERMEN series, I suspect it will be the entire story of World War II in all its theaters.  The canvass is vast -- as is the multi-planet canvass that Gini Koch is painting her love story against.

Taylor Anderson seems to be telling a story of Honor using a plot of Technology.

Gini Koch seems to be telling a story of Romance using a plot of Family Dynamics.
http://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

Which brings us to Jack Campbell in a far-far-far future Interstellar War.

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

Campbell builds fleets of interstellar combat vessels -- of various sizes and purposes just as a sea-going fleet of today is composed of various sorts of vessels.  Then he pits them against each other, each driving toward a specific strategic goal.

Campbell's far-flung canvas is stitched together with 2 kinds of "wormhole" transportation gates -- one natural, scattered among various star systems, and the other constructed in strategic locations to facilitate the war, and trade.  The constructed gates are "gifts" from the mysterious aliens, which the main hero of Lost Fleet discovers are really weapons to destroy humanity. 

Attacking, defending, and using these natural and artificial "gates" is the main plot dynamic. 

Most of the words of the The Lost Fleet series are devoted to maneuvering through or around these gates, and out-foxing a rival Fleet for control or access to a gate.

Most of the words of The Lost Stars series is devoted to exactly the same sort of maneuvering, but via politics more than spaceships.  In The Lost Stars, one star-system decides to secede from one of the star empires and declare independence.  That's not working too well, so they start trying to create allies among their nearer neighbors. 

Taken together both series paint on an even larger canvas than Koch or Anderson use -- because here we have a Game of "Let's You and Him Fight" -- where an alien species is manipulating Humanity into a centuries-long war, human against human.  There are a couple other alien species just discovered, but we don't know yet if the first aliens have conquered them, or what kind of allies they might make to humans.

So Campbell's canvas shows a Humanity Divided sitting in the midst of a giant sea of Hostile Unknowns, and one Hero from humanity's past awakened from cold sleep with a way of thinking alien to "modern" humanity.

Both Jack Campbell series, Lost Fleet and Lost Stars, are First Contact stories carried on a Plot of Strategies and Tactics of Warfare.

Campbell takes more time to go into the intricacies of Relationship, develop smoldering love stories that show every sign of developing into full fledged Romances, and to reveal the depths of human psychology that form the platform of warfare.

Now you may be wondering why this blog is focusing on Military Science Fiction when the ostensible subject here is Romance.

Consider Sex and Violence, and their relationship to each other within the Human Psyche -- the origin and nature of what is "interesting" to a reader, and what exactly a writer does when creating the "climax structure" of a novel.

And there is the larger question of whether sexuality has anything at all to do with Romance.

These 3 novels series, taken together, provide a context for exploring the relationships among these abstract components of human nature.

If you decide you don't want to read Jack Campbell or Taylor Anderson -- try Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife series.  It's fabricated of the same material, and has a terrific love story thread. 

Mike Shepherd
http://www.amazon.com/Mike-Shepherd/e/B001H6N2II/

We will return to this subject, and very likely use off-hand references to these novels with the assumption you are acquainted with them.  Even if you don't read them all, every single word, do take a look at the Amazon pages and figure out what about them is "interesting" to the people who like them.  At the same time, study what it is about them that seems so very "boring" to you.

Check the author's pages on Amazon and note especially the "Customers Also Bought Items By" section on the right. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com