Re: Printed works of future combat

> > Please bear in mind I'm looking for background material and written
>> > examples of how authors see space and future ground combat.
>> > So I'm not into character interaction and complicated plots. I'm
>> > looking for detailed descriptions of combat and tactics.
>

If you are looking for combat and tactics you couldn't go very wrong
looking either at modern military books.  There are a number of books
written from an infantryman's perspective (one that springs to mind is
A.F.N. Clarke's 'Contact', written by a Para Lt who served in Northern
Ireland in the 70's).  Another popular genre in this field is the
Vietnam
War book.  There has been a veritible library of books written by
infantrymen who served there, rather than pick out individuals (and risk
upsetting folks if I don't pick out thiers) have a look in a decent book
shop, a good start point may be 'Bloods', or 'Chickenhawk' (OK so its
about
a helicopter pilot, so what, I'm partial to helicopters !).  In more
modern
times there are books written by soldiers who served in the Falkland
Isles
(for example Vince Bramley's book which I've forgotten the title) and in
the Gulf war (no, not Bravo Two Zero as it's total toss !).

OK, so my point is that generally (and I feel reasonable confident
saying
this) sci-fi combat is poor on tactics and heavy on gizmos, whereas
modern
novels, especially in the genres that i've metioned tend to be weak on
gizmos and very strong on the thoughts and actions of the individual
soldiers.  I personally think that future war, at least in the timescale
GZG espouses will not be too dramatically different from modern war,
save
for the gizmos, and lets face it, an infantryman will always feel the
same,
dirty, tired, and shot at !

As far as future space warfare goes I've read a few books with space
battles and while I don't feel as confident as i do writing about
infantry
based novels I can't say I'm too impressed with most of the books I've
read.  One of the better sources I've seen is a section in the 'Colonial
Marine Handbook' by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood.  In a nutshell this guy
desribes
space warfare as akin to submarine warfare, a case of hunt for your
enemy,
control your emissions and get the first shoot in as the first volley
will
in all likelyhood be the last.

Oops, time's up I've got to go get my media out of the autoclave....

I hope some of thie ramble has been useful, if not a diversion from
Sci-Fi
stuff.

Stuart.

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Stuart Murray

Department Of Molecular Genetics	     Tel: (718) 430 4289
Albert Einstein College Of Medicine	      Fax: (718) 430 8778
1300 Morris Park Avenue 			  email:
smurray@aecom.yu.edu
Bronx
New York 10461

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