Someone has jumped the shark: women and military scifi.

UPDATE: There is a PART II to this article. If you have serious issue with what I've written here, I suggest reading the next one.

[Update: the Miriam mentioned below is no longer Ringo's girlfriend. She is now Ringo's wife.]

Just when I thought I ran out of material, someone on the internet goes and says something unbelievably stupid.

I don't know who set off one of the people at Tor books, but a recent blog focused on how women don't get a fair shake in military science fiction. Toward this end, they make a rather passing mention to David Weber's Honor Harrington, damning her with the faintest of praise.  They they follow it up with an attack on John Ringo, Tom Kratman, and David Drake, crying horror! Horror! at how women are treated in those novels.

Ahem ....

I'll start small, mostly by throwing David Drake under a bus. I've read some his stories, I found them as dry as dust. It could just be me, and my family, and my friends. Sorry friend, but it's true.

Now, onto some books I do know very well: those of Tom Kratman, John Ringo and David Weber.

While the Tor blogger does acknowledge that Weber's Honor Harrington is a good female character, an equal to the male characters around her, it immediate turns into a backhanded compliment, complaining that Honor didn't get laid for the first half-dozen novels -- even though it was pointed out in book one that Honor was sexually assaulted at the naval academy (well, "nearly" assaulted ... she completely trashed her attacker into next Tuesday. It was awesome).

And did I mention that she has a sword?

I'm sorry, but the rape victims I've read of and those I know personally (nine and counting) go one of two ways, nymphomania, or celibacy ... would the Tor blogger have preferred nymphomania?

Not to mention that the article focuses on Honor Harrington as if she were the only woman in the entire "Honorverse" series -- ignoring, for instance, that the heads of state of the major governments are both women. And, since she whined about everyone being white, the article seems to gloss over the fact that the ruling family of Honor Harrington's government is all black. One wonders if the blogger even read the Honor Harrington novels.

Anyway, after bitching about the "racism" in the Honor-verse, and Honor Harrington's lack of a sex life, they then go into how John Ringo's character Ghost treats women like sex objects.

I'm sorry, but who goes into a rant about over-sexualizing women after complaining that a woman lead isn't sexualized enough?  You know, aside from hypocrites. [more below the break]

Author Review: The Wrath of Zahn

Timothy Zahn will always be marked as the man who resurrected the Star Wars series from it's unholy grave. He wrote three books in the early 1990s, and the Star Wars book series was born.

Starting with Heir to the Empire, it was one of the few modern novels at the time I had encountered protagonists who thought. Not just a passing thought, covered in Italics, but whole paragraphs of tactical thought and maneuvering. And sometimes for entire pages. Shootouts in space and in infantry tactics had become chess games with lasers and missiles. And the antagonist of the piece was brilliant; the conversations between him and his side kick looked like Sherlock Holmes and Watson with a tactical manual.

 Though, to be honest, Zahn is the only person in the Star Wars world I'll read ever again.  There are only so many books about X-Wing pilots, and trashing the universe before it gets tiresome.  With Zahn, All of his books are well thought out, and no one is stupid. There are some cases you can probably say that everyone thinks too much, but a smart book is never a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. Every time George Lucas entered into the world of Star Wars, Zahn followed, and improved it.

Zahn created a planet called Coruscant -- which appeared in the first "prequel" movie. Lucas made droids with little shields, Zahn came up with a way to out-maneuver them. Lucas went back in time, Zahn went back in time, and, while Zahn couldn't make Anakin Skywalker interesting, everyone else around him was.

And, in true George Lucas fashion, he took everything that Zahn created, and promptly ruined it ... read the most recent Star Wars novels, and you'll see why. Zahn and an author named Michael J. Stackpole had come up with a concept to expand the Star Wars novels into a kind of Next Generation series ...

It went ahead without Zahn.

Let's just say that there's a reason Zahn's latest Star Wars novel is set in the past, before the first and second movies.  I would rather read his take on the rise of the most brilliant tactical leader the bad guys ever had, than read one more petty, pedantic, grim novel set around Lucas's regular Star Wars novels.  It also includes the funniest group of rogue stormtroopers you've ever seen, and possibly the only ones who have the ability to shoot straight.