Niggling Background Details
This is Steven Petrick Posting.
I am currently reading a series of books titled "The Lost Fleet". I am on the third book of the series. I am reading it, I will admit, more because I find the command problems interesting (motivating people to do what the commander wants, solving command issues, etc.) more than anything else. Outside of the command issues, I have found the background repetitive (I am old, I have read stories of "force trapped behind enemy lines that must fight its way out" before. I mean this was done in "Xenophon's Anabasis" although that latter is at least a true story even if we cannot at this juncture confirm the details). And the idea of the "hero long thought dead but now found to be alive" is also an old one, although there have been some variations. (There was even as short story in which a modern human race losing a war defrosts a man who was frozen in the distant past, only to learn that he was himself a pacifist. However, faced with having to save the human race from being defeated by the aliens, he remembers enough about the military he abhorred in his "past life" to teach the modern humans to be warriors, thus turning the tide of the war. Like I said, I am old and have read a lot of stories so a lot of plots are familiar to me in one way or another.)
The thing is that in this series I am constantly running across what seem, to me, disconnects in the background. I read at one point that the Bad Guy's Government has such tight control that it is virtually impossible for a piece of information in one system to cross over into another system. But then there is a flat statement elsewhere that despite the tight control the bad guy government has, it cannot prevent information moving from system to system. Both statements are in conflict, but both are made at times and places where it is convenient to the plot that they be "true".
There are larger background factors I have problems with (if the two sides are technologically equal, and one side is constantly suffering from poor discipline such that ships are breaking formation to hurl themselves at the enemy who maintains formation, why are casualties presumed to have been about equal up to the point where the hero starts imposing formation discipline on the good guy fleet? Should not the enemy have been better able to cover the withdrawal of damaged ships, maintain levels of training better because it would have suffered fewer absolute losses at all levels?
As I have noted, I find the series interesting from the standpoint of the command decisions that have to be made, but I also find a lot of little inconsistencies that just nag at me. On the other hand, there are some "horrors" I was expecting the good guys to find in the bad guys' territory that they have not found (at least so far).
Currently I am at a point where the author is having the good guys conduct an operation, and I am trying to figure out why the bad guys are not responding how I would respond (were I the bad guy commander with the general "bad guy mindset" as has been established so far in the books. I have read what the good guys are doing, an why, and being me (I am used to trying to figure out how an enemy will react to something I do, including how he expects me to react to something he does, so that I can try to achieve as much surprise, and be as prepared as possible for what he may do, as possible) I have figured out with the stated technology levels and stated enemy background just what I would do were I the enemy commander. And am baffled that the Good Guys have not addressed what they would do if the bad guys did what I would do, or explained why the bad guys cannot do what I would do were I the bad guy commander.
I am currently reading a series of books titled "The Lost Fleet". I am on the third book of the series. I am reading it, I will admit, more because I find the command problems interesting (motivating people to do what the commander wants, solving command issues, etc.) more than anything else. Outside of the command issues, I have found the background repetitive (I am old, I have read stories of "force trapped behind enemy lines that must fight its way out" before. I mean this was done in "Xenophon's Anabasis" although that latter is at least a true story even if we cannot at this juncture confirm the details). And the idea of the "hero long thought dead but now found to be alive" is also an old one, although there have been some variations. (There was even as short story in which a modern human race losing a war defrosts a man who was frozen in the distant past, only to learn that he was himself a pacifist. However, faced with having to save the human race from being defeated by the aliens, he remembers enough about the military he abhorred in his "past life" to teach the modern humans to be warriors, thus turning the tide of the war. Like I said, I am old and have read a lot of stories so a lot of plots are familiar to me in one way or another.)
The thing is that in this series I am constantly running across what seem, to me, disconnects in the background. I read at one point that the Bad Guy's Government has such tight control that it is virtually impossible for a piece of information in one system to cross over into another system. But then there is a flat statement elsewhere that despite the tight control the bad guy government has, it cannot prevent information moving from system to system. Both statements are in conflict, but both are made at times and places where it is convenient to the plot that they be "true".
There are larger background factors I have problems with (if the two sides are technologically equal, and one side is constantly suffering from poor discipline such that ships are breaking formation to hurl themselves at the enemy who maintains formation, why are casualties presumed to have been about equal up to the point where the hero starts imposing formation discipline on the good guy fleet? Should not the enemy have been better able to cover the withdrawal of damaged ships, maintain levels of training better because it would have suffered fewer absolute losses at all levels?
As I have noted, I find the series interesting from the standpoint of the command decisions that have to be made, but I also find a lot of little inconsistencies that just nag at me. On the other hand, there are some "horrors" I was expecting the good guys to find in the bad guys' territory that they have not found (at least so far).
Currently I am at a point where the author is having the good guys conduct an operation, and I am trying to figure out why the bad guys are not responding how I would respond (were I the bad guy commander with the general "bad guy mindset" as has been established so far in the books. I have read what the good guys are doing, an why, and being me (I am used to trying to figure out how an enemy will react to something I do, including how he expects me to react to something he does, so that I can try to achieve as much surprise, and be as prepared as possible for what he may do, as possible) I have figured out with the stated technology levels and stated enemy background just what I would do were I the enemy commander. And am baffled that the Good Guys have not addressed what they would do if the bad guys did what I would do, or explained why the bad guys cannot do what I would do were I the bad guy commander.
posted by Federation Commander at 3:59 PM
<< Home