Authors | Peter F. Hamilton, C. J. Cherryh, Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Timothy Zahn, David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, Larry Niven |
---|---|
Subgenres | |
Military science fiction Space opera Space Western | |
Related genres | |
Planetary Romance, Sword and Planet, Science Fantasy |
Space warfare is a main theme and central setting of science fiction that can trace its roots back to classical times, and to the "future war" novels of the 19th century. With the Modern Age, directly with franchises as Star Wars and Star Trek , it is considered one of the most popular general sub-genres and themes of science fiction. [1] An interplanetary, or more often an interstellar or intergalactic war, has become a staple plot device. Space warfare, represented in science fiction, has a predominant role, it is a central theme and at the same time it is considered parent, overlapping genre of space opera, military science fiction and Space Western. [2]
Usually, lasers are used rather than bullets. Willy Ley claimed in 1939 that bullets would be a more effective weapon in a real space battle. [3]
Destruction of planets and stars has been a frequently used aspect of interstellar warfare since the Lensman series. [4] [ better source needed ] It has been calculated that a force on the order of 1032 joules of energy, or roughly the total output of the sun in a week, would be required to overcome the gravity that holds together an Earth-sized planet.[ citation needed ] The destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope is estimated to require 1.0 × 1038 joules of energy, millions of times more than would be necessary to break the planet apart at a slower rate. [5]
Fictional space warfare tends to borrow elements from naval warfare, often calling space forces as space navies or simply navies. David Weber's Honorverse series of novels portrays several of such space navies such as the Royal Manticoran Navy, which imitate themes from Napoleonic-era naval warfare. [6] The Federation Starfleet ( Star Trek ), Imperial Navy ( Star Wars ), Systems Alliance Navy ( Mass Effect ), UNSC ("Halo") and Earthforce (Babylon 5) also use a naval-style rank-structure and hierarchy.[ citation needed ] The former is based on the United States Navy and the Royal Navy. [7] The United Nations Space Command in Halo fully echoes all ranks of the United States Armed Forces, even the pay-grade system.[ citation needed ]
Some fictional universes have different implementations. The Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica uses a mixture of army and navy ranks, and the Stargate universe has military spacecraft under the control of modern air forces, and uses air-force ranks.[ citation needed ] In the Halo universe, many of the ranks of the current-day United States Armed Forces are used in lieu of fictional ranks.[ citation needed ] In the Andromeda universe, officers of Systems Commonwealth ships follow naval ranking, but Lancers (soldiers analogous to Marines) use army ranks.[ citation needed ]
This section possibly contains original research .(March 2024) |
Though it can differ on the IP, classes of ships are most commonly based on those of World War II. Battleships, dreadnoughts and battlecruisers are generally among the largest types of ships, though the three terms are often used interchangeably. Dedicated carriers are rare in science fiction, though not non-existent, featuring prominently in few IPs, such as Wing Commander. Instead, battlecarriers, ships which combine elements of battleships and carriers, are very common, with prominent examples including the Star Destroyer from Star Wars and the titular starship from Battlestar Galactica. Cruisers also make appearances, with some IPs featuring them as the largest and most powerful ships. Prominent example is the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, occasionally referred to as a heavy cruiser. Destroyers and frigates are often seen as among the smaller ships of the fleet, though in many IPs, both classifications are not used. Corvettes are often the smallest ships in science fiction navies, though some do feature even smaller fast attack craft.
Many science-fiction series prominently feature starfighters operating together with larger ships. Prominent examples include the X-wing from Star Wars, the Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica and the Starfury from Babylon 5. While most fighters, like the aforementioned ones, tend to be multirole fighters, more specialized fighters do exist as well. The term interceptor, which in reality refers to fast fighters optimized to attack approaching long range heavy bombers, is instead primarily used to refer to fighters designed first and foremost to attack other fighters, generally at the expense of a capability to attack larger warships. Bombers are the opposite of interceptors and are primarily meant to attack enemy warships.
Some IPs also feature super-battleship vessels, which are massive warships several kilometers in length, dwarfing even battleships.
In his second-century satire True History , Lucian of Samosata depicts an imperial war between the king of the Sun and the king of the Moon over the right to colonise the Morning Star. It is the earliest known work of fiction to address the concept. [8]
The first "future war" story was George T. Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking," a story about a British defeat after a German invasion of Britain, published in 1871 in Blackwood's Magazine . Many such stories were written prior to the outbreak of World War I. George Griffith's The Angel of the Revolution (1893) featured self-styled "Terrorists" armed with then-nonexistent arms and armour such as airships, submarines, and high explosives. The inclusion of yet-nonexistent technology became a standard part of the genre. Griffith's last "future war" story was The Lord of Labour , written in 1906 and published in 1911, which included such technology as disintegrator rays and missiles. [9]
H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds inspired many other writers to write stories of alien incursions and wars between Earth and other planets, and encouraged writers of "future war" fiction to employ wider settings than had been available for "naturalistic" fiction. Wells' several other "future war" stories included the atomic war novel The World Set Free (1914) [9] and "The Land Ironclads," which featured a prophetic description of the tank, albeit of an unfeasibly large scale. [10]
More recent depictions of space warfare departed from the jingoism of the pulp science fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War , was partly a response to or a rebuttal of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers , wherein space warfare involved the effects of time dilation and resulted in the alienation of the protagonists from the human civilization on whose behalf they were fighting. [11] [12] [ clarification needed ] Both novels have in the past been required reading at the United States Military Academy.[ citation needed ]
Science fiction writers from the end of World War II onwards have examined the morality and consequences of space warfare. With Heinlein's Starship Troopers are A. E. van Vogt's "War against the Rull" (1959) and Fredric Brown's "Arena" (1944). Opposing them are Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (1945), Barry Longyear's "Enemy Mine," Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," Connie Willis' "Schwarzchild Radius," and John Kessel's "Invaders." [12] [ clarification needed ] In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game , the protagonist wages war remotely, with no realization that he is doing so.
Several writers in the 1980s were accused of writing fiction as part of a propaganda campaign in favour of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Ben Bova's 1985 novel Privateers has been given as an example. [12] [13]
The modern form of space warfare in science fiction, in which mobile spaceships battle both planets and one another with destructive superweapons, appeared with the advent of space opera. Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 newspaper serial "Edison's Conquest of Mars" was inspired by Wells and intended as a sequel to "Fighters from Mars," an un-authorized and heavily altered Edisonade version of The War of the Worlds [14] [ full citation needed ] in which the human race, led by Thomas Edison, pursues the invading Martians back to their home planet. David Pringle considers Serviss' story to be the very first space opera, although the work most widely regarded as the first space opera is E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space . It and its three successor novels exemplify the present form of space warfare in science fiction, as giant spaceships employ great ray guns that send bolts of energy across space to shatter planets in a war between humans and alien species. [15] [16]
David Weber's Honorverse novels present a view of space warfare that simply transplants the naval warfare of Horatio Nelson and Horatio Hornblower into space. The space navy battle tactics in the Honorverse are much like those of Nelson, with the simple addition of a third dimension. [17]
Several subsets of military science fiction overlap with space opera, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons. At one extreme, the genre is used to speculate about future wars involving space travel, or the effects of such a war on humans; at the other, it consists of the use of military fiction plots with some superficial science-fiction trappings. The term "military space opera" is occasionally used to denote this subgenre, as used for example by critic Sylvia Kelso when describing Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga . [18] Other examples of military space opera are the Battlestar Galactica franchise and Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers . The key distinction of military science fiction from space opera is that the principal characters in a space opera are not military personnel, but civilians or paramilitary. Military science fiction also does not necessarily always include an outer space or multi-planetary setting like space opera. [19]
Westerns influenced early science-fiction pulp magazines. Writers would submit stories in both genres, [20] and science-fiction magazines sometimes mimicked Western cover art to showcase parallels. [21] In the 1930s, C. L. Moore created one of the first space Western heroes, Northwest Smith. [21] Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were also early influences. [22] After superhero comics declined in popularity in 1940s United States, Western comics and horror comics replaced them. When horror comics became untenable with the Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950s, science-fiction themes and space Westerns grew more popular. [21] : 10 By the mid-1960s, classic Western films fell out of favor and Revisionist Westerns supplanted them. Science-fiction series such as Lost in Space [23] and Star Trek presented a new frontier to be explored, and films like Westworld rejuvenated Westerns by updating them with science-fiction themes. Peter Hyams, director of Outland , said that studio heads in the 1980s were unwilling to finance a Western, so he made a space Western instead. [24] Space operas such as the Star Wars film series also took strong cues from Westerns; Boba Fett, Han Solo and the Mos Eisley cantina, in particular, were based on Western themes. These science fiction-films and television series offered the themes and morals that Westerns previously did. [25]
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction media franchise created by Glen A. Larson. It began with the original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel series, Galactica 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. A reimagined version aired as a two-part, three-hour miniseries developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick in 2003, followed by a 2004 television series, which aired until 2009. A prequel series, Caprica, aired in 2010.
A ship prefix is a combination of letters, usually abbreviations, used in front of the name of a civilian or naval ship that has historically served numerous purposes, such as identifying the vessel's mode of propulsion, purpose, or ownership/nationality. In the modern environment, prefixes are cited inconsistently in civilian service, whereas in government service a vessel's prefix is seldom omitted due to government regulations dictating that a certain prefix be used. Today the common practice is to use a single prefix for all warships of a nation's navy, and other prefixes for auxiliaries and ships of allied services, such as coast guards. For example, the modern navy of Japan adopts the prefix "JS" – Japanese Ship. However, not all navies use prefixes. Among the blue-water navies, those of France, Brazil, China, Russia, Germany, and Spain do not use ship prefixes. NATO designations such as FS, FGS, and SPS can be used if needed.
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction and military fiction that depicts the use of science fiction technology, including spaceships and weapons, for military purposes and usually principal characters who are members of a military organization, usually during a war; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets. It exists in a range of media, including literature, comics, film, television and video games.
The Honorverse is a military science fiction book series, its two subseries, two prequel series, and anthologies created by David Weber and published by Baen Books. They are centered on the space navy career of the principal protagonist Honor Harrington. The books have made The New York Times Best Seller list.
Ralph Angus McQuarrie was an American conceptual designer who worked in film and television. His career included work on the original Star Wars trilogy, the original Battlestar Galactica television series, the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and the film Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award.
Space warfare is combat in which one or more belligerents are situated in outer space. The scope of space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth; space-to-space warfare, such as satellites attacking satellites; and space-to-ground warfare, such as satellites attacking Earth-based targets. Space warfare in fiction is thus sub-genre and theme of science fiction, where it is portrayed with a range of realism and plausibility. In the real world, international treaties are in place that attempt to regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of space weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.
A sick bay is a compartment in a ship, or a section of another organisation, such as a school or college, used for medical purposes.
U.S. television science fiction is a popular genre of television in the United States that has produced many of the best-known and most popular science fiction shows in the world. Most famous of all, and one of the most influential science-fiction series in history, is the iconic Star Trek and its various spin-off shows, which comprise the Star Trek franchise. Other hugely influential programs have included the 1960s anthology series The Twilight Zone, the internationally successful The X-Files, and a wide variety of television movies and continuing series for more than half a century.
Ronald Dowl Moore is an American screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for his work on Star Trek, as well as on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series, for which he won a Peabody Award, and on Outlander, based on the novels of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. In 2019, he created and wrote the series For All Mankind for Apple TV+.
Battlestar Galactica is a fictional space battleship based in the science fiction television series of the same name. In the series, the Twelve Colonies built about 120 Battlestars during the thousand-year war with the Cylons, whose battleships are known as Basestars.
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series created by Glen A. Larson that aired on the ABC network from September 17, 1978, to April 29, 1979. It stars an ensemble cast led by Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch, and Dirk Benedict. The series follows a group of humans fleeing the destruction of their homeworlds aboard the titular spacecraft, searching for a new home as they are pursued by the Cylons.
A space dock is a hypothesised type of space station that is able to repair or build spacecraft similar to maritime shipyards on Earth. They remove the need for new spacecraft to perform a space launch to reach space and existing spacecraft to make an atmospheric entry and landing for repair work. They currently only exist in fiction, however concept work has been undertaken on real space dock facilities that could be built with current technology.
"Saga of a Star World" is the pilot for the American science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica which was produced in 1978 by Glen A. Larson. A re-edit of the episode was released theatrically as Battlestar Galactica in Canada before the television series aired in the United States, in order to help recoup its high production costs. Later, the standalone film edit was also released in the United States.
The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and the Solar System are a staple element in many works of the science fiction genre.
Doug Drexler is an Oscar winning visual effects artist, designer, sculptor, illustrator, and a makeup artist who has collaborated with such talents as Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, Meryl Streep, and Warren Beatty. He began his career in the entertainment industry working for makeup artist Dick Smith on such films as The Hunger and Starman. He has also contributed to Three Men and a Little Lady, The Cotton Club, FX, Manhunter and Dick Tracy. Dick Tracy earned Drexler an Oscar, as well as The British Academy Award and the Saturn Award for his special makeup effects on characters such as Big Boy Caprice and Mumbles. Two Emmy nominations in the same field followed for three years working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he performed such tasks as aging Captain Picard for "The Inner Light". His final make-up job for the series was the Mark Twain makeup worn by Jerry Hardin in the two part episode "Times Arrow"
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term does not refer to opera music, but instead originally referred to the melodrama, scope, and formulaicness of operas, much as used in "horse opera", a 1930s phrase for a clichéd and formulaic Western film, and "soap opera", a melodramatic television series. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Star Trek: