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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2910 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm once again recommending Walter Blaire, a very unknown, self-published writer who is, nevertheless, fairly skilled. It's ostensibly military SF, and there's fair amount of action and some SF but is really more about societies, organisational and individual psychology in the context of a somewhat believable and internally consistent setting of eternal war. Unlike in 40k, in this case the 'eternal war' is strictly local and something that needs be preserved at all costs. The saving grace is that the ..people who fight it are enjoying it greatly, having the time of their rather short lives and really don't mind dying, having been engineered and then evolved to fight. The people directing it and keeping it going, not so much, but their suffering is usually related to bureaucratic snafus, old age, observing their country going to the shitter, summary executions for incompetence or deaths in duels.

Here's my review of 'the Eternal Front'

And here I'm going to offer a short review of 'What the Thunder Said', a shorter book he published after 'The Eternal Front'. It's a short SF novel, with military themes and sort of coming of age/romance framing, I guess. Unlike the Front, which has .. at least four viewpoint characters and several story strands, this one is centered on a single person, and is a sort of a coming-of-age. No worries- it's not smut - it never gets further than violations of prescribed distance and some unresolved interspecies* sexual tension. I say 'interspecies' because technically and practically, while the Tachba military servitors Haphans are stuck with look human, albeit extremely chad-ly[1], they're psychologically quite different and definitely not interfertile. And, like the Adeptus Astartes whom they somewhat resemble, very much not horny either. I said 'slightly resemble' but if you go by it line by line, it does seem they're supposed to be a realistic take on supersoldiers. Not some archetypal, mythical badasses but what would be practical, possible and physiologically feasible. It's not long for a novel and very readable.

Anyway I'm shilling it because as I was reading through the slush pile of Kindle store, I was struck by the writing quality and feel the author deserves more exposure.

[1]: honestly I feel like asking the writer if he had Gigachad in mind while writing it. quoting:

In all, he was unkempt, patchy, and dirty—though not outright filthy. It was more of an “end of a hard day in the field” level of dirtiness. Still, she felt a touch of disappointment, almost concern, that the empire was being represented like this to the enemy. When she couldn’t put it off any longer, she raised her eyes to his face. Jephia had tried to explain it to her once. The presence they could have. It couldn’t be adequately conveyed in second- and third-hand accounts. To truly separate the historical and clinical facts from the people themselves, Jephia told her, one had to personally meet the Polluted. The man’s eyes were slate gray, crinkled at the edges, and they returned her gaze unflinchingly. His eyes bored into hers. Somehow, Caulie didn’t find it rude—he was simply intensely interested, as if he’d never seen another human and never would again. She had the impression that he looked at everything this way—and that, despite their rocky first exchange, he was intelligent or at least perceptive. Little would escape those eyes. As for the rest of him . . . well. It was unfair. She was finally across from someone who was categorically her social inferior. The very fabric of civilization and empire gave her every advantage over him, and he still made her nervous and shy. Although Caulie was tall for a Haphan woman, he towered over her. At least six-foot-five, and that was while slouching. His general wear and wrinkles put him in his thirties, but these Tachba aged differently and he could have been younger. Really, thirty would be an anomaly, and not just because of the Tachba’s shorter lifespans—active soldiers of any race rarely reached that age on the eternal front. Old or not, his hair was an unkempt, glossy black where it escaped his forager cap, and he had several days of scruffy growth on his cheeks. In addition to the slab-like Tachba jaw, he had the broad forehead of an easterner from the Ed-homse mountains. The books described it as “frontal cranial bossing,” and it did look like some of the skulls in her lab, but there was nothing bulging about it in real life. His features were regular and attractive. Caulie never thought of her samples in terms of attraction, yet the word floated into her thoughts. It was the combination of his size, his lean body, and the angular features of his face. And those eyes. That was it. He didn’t look Polluted. He wasn’t moon-faced, soft-faced, or soft anything. He wasn’t blank, and nothing about his demeanor seemed to be waiting for her to ascribe features and traits to him. He wasn’t anything like the template she’d expected, and nothing like the blundering, wayward misfits from popular entertainment. She hadn’t even known she’d had any expectations until they weren’t met. Maybe that was why his simple, direct gaze was so disorienting.

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