Aside from some differences in opinion over how a Navy ship is run (which can be ascribed to artistic license, differences between sea-faring and space-faring Navies, and the oddities of a monarchy-driven civil and military structure), quibbles over his descriptions of the ships in question and how the technology permeating them functioned (which is probably just a function of my unceasing curiosity at how people solve many of the questions surrounding space-based transportation and combat), and a leading character with seeming-unassailable hero complex (but I just have a thing about flawlessly perfect characters), I rather enjoyed the opening novel of the Honor Harrington
series, On Basilisk Station, as written by David Weber. The foreshadowing was a bit thick in places, and his ship design seems intentionally geared to produce combat scenarios much like 18th-century sailing vessels (even though that technology could lend itself to a surprising number of other ship constructions), but it was a decent read, used my very-favoritest futureweapon, and kept me entertained throughout. I cannot really ask for a whole lot else.
been reading that series for a while now. It’s pretty good, drags in some spots and some of the space battles get repetitious in later novels, but overall a great series.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I’m waiting for the chance to run to get the latest release from the library — that way I don’t have to wait for the soft cover version.
Once I finish with the Looking Glass series, I might have to return to this one… The differences between Navy styles irked me a little, but I can probably get over it with time.
That said, I am not sure if this has the most-recent book available on it, but you might want to take a look at this: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/22-MissionofHonorCD/MissionofHonorCD/
Mission of Honor is the one I need to get. I want to read it NOW but I’m cheap. Libraries make it possible to do both.
Mr. B turned me on to the Safehold series by Weber. Excellent books but as he told me, you have to slog through the first two chapters of the first book–after that it totally takes off.
Mission Of Honor is indeed the latest one, but the version on the CD is the Advance Reader’s Copy (think “mostly-edited galleys”). The finished novel is available here:
http://www.webscription.net//p-1191-mission-of-honor.aspx
This is entirely deliberate. From a conversation with Weber at a convention, the one-sentence original description of the idea to the publisher was “Horatio Hornblower in space.” Fortunately for Weber, Baen, and all of us happy readers of the series, Jim Baen was looking for someone who wanted to write “Horatio Hornblower in space.”
@Bob S. – Well, I steered you wrong, but it appears as though Hardin put us both back on the right track. Might get you a little reading material ahead of schedule (assuming it is worth the $6 to not wait for the library
).
@Midwest Chick – I may have to dig those up once I am done with Ringo’s stuff and then the Honor series… So many goodies out there, and now that they are increasingly online, so much easier ot read now
.
@John Hardin – Thanks for the link!
@JohnOC – Called it!
I am certainly not complaining, but it does seem more than a little contrived, and I would definitely have appreciated if he had included a diagram or schematic or something of how all the fields and walls overlapped (and did not) on the ship, because his written descriptions just have not yet done it for me…
This page (wikia.com) links to two illustrations. The first one (photobucket.com) is very close to one I know David Weber has seen and said “yep.”
Incidentally, if you’re interested in a bunch of the world-building and tech bible details for the Honorverse, the “More than Honor” anthology collection has a section (thefifthimperium.com) devoted to that.
Huh. Nope, that is not at all what I was envisioning, and certainly not at that scale. In that case, “contrived” is an absolute understatement
.
Thanks for the direction to the tech bible, though… Things like that always intrigued me.
I don’t think its been mentioned yet, but its touched on in a later book, the ship is a very small minnow inside its wedge and sidewalls, and it does not have to be precisely centered. This is used to some good effect to generate misses from missiles that are approaching from “above” or “below”, since there is a very small engagement window for the warhead to localize and target the ship with the lasing rods.
Nope. That was not at all explained in the first book, though I can definitely see tactics like that becoming relatively useful in combat scenarios… Still a little contrived, especially given that it seems like one could set up a sidewall at the bow and stern of the vessel, to at least provide a little coverage, but such is the nature of fiction – how much can you get away with and still have your audience believe you?
@Linoge –
Not disagreeing that it is anything but ‘contrived,’ it was deliberately designed – as mentioned before – to make space analogies to 2-d age of sail tactics, formations, and limitations, including the wall of battle (vice the line of battle,) and “blinding walls of gunsmoke.”
Again referencing later books, if either the bow or stern aspect of the wedge is closed, the impeller drive isn’t able to do any work.
Its a little spoiler-riffic, but I’ll note that later in the series, the ship design people start thinking that including the option to make that tactical trade-off is sometimes worthwhile. Only sometimes, though. If your opponent can accelerate, and you can’t, you’re a sitting duck for him to position himself where it doesn’t matter that your sidewalls are interposed.
Sorry, just the engineer in me. I definitely agree that it works, but I also see where the same ideas could be implemented in different ways, and the ideas that are used leave some glaring questions laying out in the open (like why the sidewalls in the front disrupt the drive bands, but not the sidewalls on the side – after all, when the ship turns, those sidewalls will be on the ship’s vector).
I do give him credit for addressing the dV problems associated with space combat, and, yeah, immobilizing your own vessel would definitely fall under the “only if you have to” category.
I guess my mental model of the impeller drive is based a little more on what its name implies. It is a tube, open at both ends, that gets narrower and can impart energy to its contents. In water, a jet-ski uses this. It sucks water in through a big opening, and propels it out a smaller one faster (both because of the opening getting smaller and because of the increase in energy) and the vehicle moves. The ship’s impeller drive sucks in *hand-wave* space… stuff… *hand-wave* and moves the ship the same kind of way.
The above hand-wave is one of the short list of things in the Honorverse that you have to program into your willing suspension of disbelief. Incredibly high power storage densities in capacitors are another, and technology that has a direct effect on local gravity within a reasonable energy budget is the third main one – for technology.
For sci-fi of this scope, that is a pretty short list. Again, for technology only. Sentient telepathic small cute fuzzy hexapod critters that act like cats with prehensile tails are another thread entirely.
So if you close off either the intake or the exhaust completely… you can’t move.
I was envisioning the impeller drives as just that – impellers (though without the “blades”, per se, but I guess the Alpha and Beta nodes take their places). The only catch is that modern interpretations of impellers need that steerable nozzle at the end, and the sidewalls kind of get in the way of that – that is what I was trying to say.
Really, the thing they suck in could be space, in the same way warp drives pinch off a piece of space and accelerate it, rather than the ship in question. That kind of “physics”, Einsteinian as it is, gives me a mother of a headache, though.
Fusion bottles that actually produce enough energy to power interstellar warships… and the whole “interstellar wave-riding-with-energy-sails” are also a couple of other “close your eyes and go with it” things
.
And I am a cat person, so the treethings are definitely a high point for me
.