How do I plan military science fiction?
- Readers in the subgenre often include serving and former military personnel.
- Chain of command, logistics, and rules of engagement need to be right.
- Technology should generate tactical problems, not remove them.
- Casualties and consequence separate the subgenre from action adventure.
- Series structure is common, often following a unit across a campaign.
Military science fiction rests on getting the military part right: command structure, logistics, orders that make sense, and consequences that stick. Design technology that creates tactical problems rather than solving them, because a weapon that ends every engagement ends the story too.
Chapter i·Why it matters
This readership includes people who have served, and they detect a wrong detail instantly. More importantly, the genre's real subject is people inside a hierarchy making decisions with incomplete information and living with the results. Logistics and command are not background, they are the mechanism of the plot.
Chapter ii·What to include
- An accurate or coherently invented chain of command.
- Logistics: supply, transport, maintenance, fatigue.
- Technology that creates tactical constraints and countermeasures.
- Rules of engagement and the political frame around them.
- Casualties with weight, including on the other side.
- A unit with distinct individuals rather than interchangeable soldiers.
Chapter iii·Example
A writer's fleet engagement turned on fuel margins and a resupply that did not arrive. Two former officers who read it said the logistics were what made the battle believable, not the weapons.
Chapter iv·Related questions
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