taennyn: (dabbler)
It would be interesting at some point to read a novel (or series of novels) that examined a war between two cultures (archetypically something like the Rebel Alliance vs. the Empire in Star Wars, or the Independents vs. the Alliance in Firefly). And having the rebel/pioneer culture actually hold its own (if not win) against the more heavily stratified/industrial culture not so much because the author wanted them to win or through archetypical heroic gestures and sacrifices, but because they were able to adapt. Able to make use of unfamiliar/foreign technology, able to step into the role of command if no-one else is there, able to made do with very minimal technology, etc.

It would, I imagine, be an utter bastard of a story to research and tell, but it would be a fascinating read.

Date: 2007-01-09 03:26 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] larathia.livejournal.com
You *almost* got that when reading the Riftwar books. (Both cultures had degrees of adaptability, but the more adaptable culture ultimately won, and thanks to a cowriter both sides of the war got told.)

However, I'd hardly call it very well researched.

Date: 2007-01-09 03:43 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] larathia.livejournal.com
Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riftwar) books.

The first...oh, four or so, aren't bad. Unfortunately when he ran out of war, he went downhill very quickly. He cowrote some with another author who was interested in exploring the other side of the war in more detail, so the totality comes out rather well.

Date: 2007-01-09 11:35 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] klgaffney.livejournal.com
he's the author of faerie tale, isn't he? or am it thinking of someone else?

Date: 2007-01-10 01:23 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] larathia.livejournal.com
Yeah, I think he wrote that, though I didn't read it. Feist is one of those authors that I quit reading after meeting him online and going "yah, what a putz."

Date: 2007-01-10 08:30 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] klgaffney.livejournal.com
it was a pretty good read, altho i hold him completely to blame for a number of other stories i read afterwards that also syncretized the erlkonig with herne.

Date: 2007-01-10 04:59 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] celeloriel.livejournal.com
Janny Wurtz, IIRC. She's sorta wanky, too, but together they worked well. She was the driving force between the Mary-Sue series "Mistress of the Empire", about the Scarlett O'Haraesque chick who Rises To Power By Being Nobler And Good-er Than Her Evil, Evil, EEEEVIL Enemies.

(Needless to say, at 13, I ate this stuff UP.)

Date: 2007-01-09 03:30 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] youraugustine.livejournal.com
It would probably need to not be a space-opera, tho.

Date: 2007-01-09 03:35 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] youraugustine.livejournal.com
Well, that and "I can destroy you from orbit" trumps "I am MacGuiver with a knife!" any day.

Date: 2007-01-10 06:12 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] coastal-physics.livejournal.com
though, a proper revolution, against a not-so-evil government can get around that card, by being part of the population...

they just can't own planets... small things, like astroids, and what-have-you that are either too small to generate gravity wells, or are close enough to friendly things that big damage to them will hurt the friendly things.

admittedly it's a stretch... but space is big, and you can hide lots in it.

Date: 2007-01-11 07:38 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] nagasvoice.livejournal.com
Actually, "I am MacGuiver with a knife in your orbital station which is atmospherically vulnerable to penetrative objects" could be really effective space opera. Possibly suicidal, too, but hey, there's a great dramatic gesture for you.
The problem would be to set up such a story so that the plot manages to avoid current cliches about suicide bombers, although suicide attacks are a perfectly valid military method of waging guerilla warfare against a more technologically powerful and numerous enemy. Guerillas don't have to give up so long as they can sneak in, hit, and either die as martyrs who attract more resistance fighters to their cause, or run away to fight another day. They'll never actually lose unless they stand and fight pitched battles, but they also won't control a tterritory unless they do so, and *get the other guy to give up*.
At what point is it necessary to abandon low-level aggravating guerilla nagging methods and finally face the enemy and make them *admit* that they've lost?
Where is that point, in any given strategic situation?
Stories like this have to address questions like that in the world-building they do.

It also makes it mroe tactically interesting whne you show the larger context where they are fighting in other areas besides just poking holes in space stations--possibly the same or different people fighting entire different sorts of sites with quite different tactics. Again, this is all in the world-building matrix in which the story happens. It doesn't necessarily have to be an infodump story, but it might be pretty demanding to do a good job of it.
I think it'd be something like showing Hornblower setting up cannons on a cliffhead after a horse ride, and showing how he dislikes being on land, but it doesn't stop him doing the necessary tactical analysis and getting the job done competently, although this is far from his normal milieu.

Date: 2007-01-09 03:47 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] youraugustine.livejournal.com
Which is to say you'd have to come up with a pretty convincing reason why the larger, better-equipped culture didn't simply obliterate the other, either early on, or even somewhat later, when it became obvious that the other side wasn't going to give in and give their planets over nicely, and (metaphorically speaking) Congress started to want to know where the money was going. Some reason why the Empire-esque one didn't finally go " . . . fine, you know what? ROCKS FALL, EVERYBODY DIES."

(Firefly doesn't do this because, well, the Independants lost. And it was probably clear they were losing pretty early on, at least to the Alliance admiralty; Star Wars . . .well, it's either evidence of bad storytelling, or of the Force pwning everyone for its own purposes, depending on how you'd want to spin it.)

Date: 2007-01-09 04:08 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] larathia.livejournal.com
Nice touch in the Riftwar books for that problem - the Empire of Kelewan had comparable armaments but much much greater resources and the will to win. What penned them was politics at home (so that only two or three of the most warlike clans were actually fighting, not the whole Empire) and the bottleneck effect of transporting troops across the worlds. (Which is to say, they had rifts but only a few of them, and only so many could come through at a given time.)

Date: 2007-01-09 06:52 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] youraugustine.livejournal.com
Oh, it's easy enough to do if you get out of classic space-opera tropes, which, by the sound of it, that series qualifies (space opera being very much the world of Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly, ships and interstellar travel and big weapons/bombs/etc and colonisation and so forth). Just . . . not so easy within it, particularly not if you're talking about the Empire-Rebel archetype. (If you want to ditch that archetype, it again gets easier, but not before.)

Which is why DfS is the story of two evenly matched and evenly entrenched powers scrabbling it out, rather than the Plucky Pioneer/Rebel Heroes.

Date: 2007-01-09 05:04 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] tearsofscarlet.livejournal.com
I have nothing constructive to add to this conversation. All I am here to do is write one meaningful word. Geek ;)

Date: 2007-01-09 11:33 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] klgaffney.livejournal.com
the real reasons why established governments here-and-now lose wars, or at least, sometimes fare very badly against guerillas and rebels and barbarians and the like. ...that is a lot of research, but there's a lot of real-world examples to poke at, afghanistan, vietnam, various conflicts in africa, south america, and the west indies.

Date: 2007-01-10 12:46 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] coastal-physics.livejournal.com
could make a good alt-history piece too...

Date: 2007-01-10 06:15 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] coastal-physics.livejournal.com
yeah, very true... it doesn't need to be so drastically alt though. it could be as simple as... something simple. (my words are broken... but thinking things like horses falling, or a single key general failed to live through an early battle... I can't think of specifics though.)

Date: 2007-01-10 05:05 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] celeloriel.livejournal.com
Alien Invasion In Renaissance Italy.

I'll pause to let you laugh. :P

Seriously, think about it: the aliens are limited in that Wellsian sense of biology and can't come out of their artificial life support; the humans are limited by the technology of the period, but are damn well not going down to Satanic Bugs From Outer Space. Also, Renaissance Italy is cool as hell and had a lot of infighting that helps with Plot. :)

I've been thinking about writing something like this for a while, though I'd set it in Switzerland, simply because this (http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case485.htm) picture's always intrigued me and made me think "what if?"

Date: 2007-01-11 07:41 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] nagasvoice.livejournal.com
Harry Turtledove was doing a nice job with World War II in a similar context.

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