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ok so im looking to build up a new reading list and after reading all the song of ice and fire books back to back in 8 weeks im looking for a change ive just read {joe haldeman's "the forever war"} which was amazeing and {the three david gun deaths head novels} and starship troopers { had trouble staying awake for this one }

so i do any of you have any suggestions for me ?

David Drake aka Hammer's Slammers. He writes a quality military, Sci Fi story.

Ringo a good one. "Watch on the Rhine" of the Posleen series was quite interesting how far humans can go to save the specis. Starfist another good one but other branches of the military are not complete idiots.

Trust me on this, man... Old Man's War.

On your 70th birthday, you can join the army and fight for your planets supremacy. The Colonial Union is very secretive, and nobody knows what happens to the old people who volunteer. No news of the outside universe gets back to earth, because its blocked. Nobody even knows how old people like that are expected to fight.

but what follows is an awesome tale of sci-fi action. The sequels, Ghost Brigades and the Last Colony are both awesome as well.

If your looking for just a one-off read, the novel Armor was quite good as well.. very starship trooper esque, without most of the philosophy.

I can honestly suggest "Embedded" by Dan Abnett.

It was a pretty damn good read.

Kanluwen wrote:I can honestly suggest "Embedded" by Dan Abnett.

It was a pretty damn good read.

Hmm... I had considered reading that, but put it down for the Dresden Files. As I'm just about wrapping those up (SO F'ING GOOD), I'll check that out next I guess

Embedded was good. I so love the ending lol

Enders Game is another good one. Old Man War was right up there with it

Armour was quite excellent and . Ending was quite good lol

Horst wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:I can honestly suggest "Embedded" by Dan Abnett.

It was a pretty damn good read.

Hmm... I had considered reading that, but put it down for the Dresden Files. As I'm just about wrapping those up (SO F'ING GOOD), I'll check that out next I guess

Have you read "Ghost Story" yet?

Holy crackers, Butcher's gone mad.

Runner, I can't recall the authors name atm....

John Steakley's Armor is an excellent read.
Robert Heinlien's Starship Troopers is another in the same vien, I saw both above me already.
Anything from Asimov.
Frederick Pohl's Gateway
I'm a fan of David Weber both his Honor Harrington and his newer Safehold series are especially interesting if you are interested in naval history. The books get rather long and fall into the genre "Space Opera"
The Laumer Bolo books are excellent if you can find one and the follow on written by the aforementioned Weber.
Orson Scott Card's Enders Game and Shadow of Ender series but NONE of the original sequels.

Some of the Halo books are pretty good to read...

Glasslands was absolutely epic (IMO), though it dealt more with ONI(Office of naval Intelligence) then with the actual army.

Contact Harvest is about first contact with the Covenant, and seen almost solely from a human soldiers perspective if memory serves me right.

Rosenberg's Not for Glory
Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War, and Familias Regnant books
Dickson's Dorsai books
Mike Stackpole's early Battletech stuff (Warrior trilogy and Blood of Kerensky trilogy). Stackpole also wrote the Rogue Squadron series of Star Wars books, which I've heard good things about. In addition to being the author of the famous Pulling Report, for which every D&D player should applaud him.
Bob Charrette's Wolves on the Border and Heir to the Dragon were also enjoyable Battletech books, before (IMO) they went downhill.

Heinlein's short story The Long Watch is possibly the most moving military SF story I've ever read. I swear I tear up every time I read the damn thing. It's in his collections The Green Hills of Earth and The Past Through Tomorrow.

Tanya Huff's "Valor's" series is fun, though kind of light and fluffy. Starts with Valor's Choice & The Better Part of Valor (available as a collected paperback, A Confederation of Valor).

AustonT wrote:John Steakley's Armor is an excellent read.

This. The Forever War was written in part because Haldeman wanted to react to pro-military sentiments in Starship Troopers. Armor was written in part because Steakley was bummed that Heinlein didn't write good/descriptive action scenes. It's a really good book though, not just an action/adventure story.

AustonT wrote:Orson Scott Card's Enders Game and Shadow of Ender series but NONE of the original sequels.

Ender's Game is a serious classic. The first sequel (Speaker for the Dead) is an even better book, but it's not about or set within the military; when I first read it as a teenager I didn't like it nearly as much but it grew on me as I grew up. The third book (Xenocide) is also quite good. After that they get dumb.

My best friend DOES NOT READ. I recommended Ender's Game to him when we were like 12. 9 years later out of nowhere he goes, "hey man that book you told me to read was totally awesome!" I just stared at him for like 5 minutes trying to remember how high I must've been to ask him to read, let alone what it was.
I distinctly remember thinking Speaker for the Dead was ok, and downhill from there. I thought xenocide was interesting but I think it's too far out there for most readers, and Children of the Mind...blocked from my memory.

The Rogue Squadron books by Stackpole are great. It's Star Wars, but also pretty serious military sci-fi, especially at the beginning. The biggest character in it is Wedge, but the new characters are good and the action sequences are exciting.

The Gaunt's Ghosts series is pretty good. (I've only read the first 2)

Mannahnin wrote:Rosenb
Ender's Game is a serious classic. The first sequel (Speaker for the Dead) is an even better book, but it's not about or set within the military; when I first read it as a teenager I didn't like it nearly as much but it grew on me as I grew up. The third book (Xenocide) is also quite good. After that they get dumb.

Card says in one of the prefaces that he feels that Ender's Game really only sets up the better story in Speaker for the Dead. I think that as literature, Speaker is a better book. It's very "classic" scifi, in which a mysterious world's puzzles are slowly revealed. I also think that as an adult, the concept of being eulogized by a Speaker for the Dead is simply too cool to let go.

It's not a surprise that Ender's Game is more popular though. I think that nearly every kid that reads it can relate to Ender in some, if not many, ways.

For space Military scifi, David Weber is very good.

Honor Harrington and the Safehold series have been mentioned, but IMO his best "pure" military scifi was the Starfire series...this consists of Crusade, In Death ground, and the Shiva Option...they are complied into anthologies called the Stars at War I & II...awesome stuff...pure battles basically with some great characters.

I recommend Peter F Hamilton's 'The Reality Dysfunction' and it's sequels, a real epic space opera. A lot of it isn't fighting, but the bits which are are superbly written.

Not sure if it has been mentioned already, but 'Forever war' by Joe Hadleman. I've heard that a movie is on the way, but the writer was excluded from the creative process (which doesn't bode well).

I recommend "Grunts"....Its orks...that got mixed up with a dead dragon hord....dragon was acquiring "objects" from multiple dimensional portal....for them to use these objects they had to be trained...actually they trained themselve...training was based off USMC....and they acted accordenly and orkish...

Jihadin wrote:I recommend "Grunts"....Its orks...that got mixed up with a dead dragon hord....dragon was acquiring "objects" from multiple dimensional portal....for them to use these objects they had to be trained...actually they trained themselve...training was based off USMC....and they acted accordenly and orkish...

That was pretty funny...
I recomend The Forever Trilogy by Joe Haldeman.
The first sci-fi books i ever read.
The last one is a touch odd compared to the other two but what can you do?

Anything by David Weber, John Ringo, William Dietz (I think that's his name) and David Drake. The Deathstalker series by Simon R. Greene is good if a bit different. Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet is alright, not amazing but worth a mention.

I think the real questions is how military Sci-Fi do you want. Because there are a lot of series set way in the future with weapons and militaries that don't in any way look like ours and then there are basically military fiction on a different planet and a space ship that took them there .

Oh and a side note: Grunts was genius, I've probably read it 10 times since I was a teenager. Still funny!

I don't see it mentioned yet, but I like Iain M. Banks' sci-fi stuff a lot. The 'Culture' novels are really good, and I enjoy the one-offs too. A lot of space opera.

If you enjoyed A Song Of Ice And Fire by GRRM, you might also enjoy his novel Dying Of The Light, which is also kind space opera in style.

kronk wrote:The Gaunt's Ghosts series is pretty good. (I've only read the first 2)

Yes it is but I think that might qualify as GW.

Well, you started out on a good note. +1.
"Good military SF" (because GW stuff is neither good military or good SF).

Gruntz is good.

The Author is a gamer.
She playtested Stargrunt II.

+1 to all those mentioned above by these writers.

Hammer's Slammers by David Drake (he also has some contemporary stuff and the Jed Lacey stories and the Northworld "fantasy" SF trilogy (available as a free ebook from Baen books).
Armor by John Steakley.
(His "vampires" novel is also immensely superior to the John Carpenter movie based on it - and Jack Crow turns up in Armor, too).
Mike Stackpole's Battletech stuff.
Bob Charrette's BT stuff is also good.
(I sold my sets of these two last year).

How about some Fiction, and not Sci Fi.

The Black Company by Glen Cook.

Starship Troopers and The Forever War.

Dreadwinter wrote:How about some Fiction, and not Sci Fi.

The Black Company by Glen Cook.

This is an excellent book.

Another book you might read, although it's non fiction, is Guns Up by John Clark. Or fiction by the same No Better Way to Die.

cheers guys will give them a look .

Legend of the Galactic Heroes?

Opps, you said no GW stuff.

*edit.