| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 843.1 | The first was real good.... | SNDCSL::SMITH | Powdered endoskeleton | Wed Nov 29 1989 17:38 | 10 |
| It's in there somewhere, as I know we've discussed it... Yes he did a
great job on the hardware in his first books, but lately his books are
just another excuse for a bloodbath.
I'm more into the 'small group winning against overwhelming odds by
using their brains' than I am the recent Hammers-Slammers "using an
antiaircraft weapon to murder unarmed civilians locked into a sports
arena".
Willie
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| 843.2 | | TJB::WRIGHT | She dies, you die, we all die.... | Thu Nov 30 1989 16:27 | 25 |
|
Willie -
From reading Drakes books, especially the hammers' series, I have to disagree
with you about the "just another excuse for a blood bath", the only time he
has resolved something in a blood bath has been that one hammers story.
Those civilians, if i remember correctly, were locked into the arena, AFTER
they tried to storm and takeover the Hammers position, which was in the
arena... If drake started writing stories about the slammers rounding up
the populace for mass executions, I would agree with you, but he doesn't.
What he writes about is situations that have happened to military forces
since military forces were first created. for an idea of where the story
you cited came from, look at the taking of the bastille - basically it was
unarmed civilians against the french army/police...
Drake tends to look at "common" situations (common to war/terrorist settings)
and tries to work them thru to a conclusion from the point of veiw of a
commander with limited resources...(if you had 200,000 mad civilians locked in
with you, and you were part of what they were mad at, what would you do?)
grins,
clark.
|
| 843.3 | "The Greeks had to go imperial, that was clear..." | MINAR::BISHOP | | Thu Nov 30 1989 17:32 | 8 |
| The story about the arena is a direct re-telling of the Nike revolt
(Byzantine Empire, about the year 400). Only it wasn't the Hammars,
but some other bunch of foreign mercenaries (Goths? Scyths?).
Fletcher Pratt did an essay on the Nike revolt, I belive, in his
_The_Battles_That_Changed_History_, a (good!) non-fiction work.
-John Bishop
|
| 843.4 | More Slammers? | VIRGO::CRUTCHFIELD | | Fri Dec 15 1989 10:10 | 5 |
| Where can I find other Slammers stories? I've read the original
_Hammer's_Slammers_ and I've started _Rolling_Hot_. Are there more?
I have yet to come across a stadium incident.
Charlie
|
| 843.5 | Fuzzy memory... | 39225::TASCHEREAU | Caught with my windows down... | Fri Dec 15 1989 15:07 | 7 |
|
_The_Forlorn_Hope_ is one of Drake's Hammers (I think) books.
Its been a while since I've read Drake, but I believe there is
another one that pits the Hammers against a race of beings that
can move through rock (I forget the name though).
-Steve
|
| 843.6 | | MILKWY::JLUDGATE | Anarchist Evening Entertainment | Mon Feb 26 1990 13:30 | 4 |
| there is also another book (Across the Stars ???) about one of
the Slammers going home.
|
| 843.7 | cyan flashes... | ROULET::RUDMAN | Always the Black Knight. | Wed Mar 07 1990 14:20 | 3 |
| re: .5 AT ANY PRICE
Don (a major Slammers fan)
|
| 843.8 | The Voyage | MTWAIN::KLAES | Houston, Tranquility Base here... | Tue Jul 19 1994 18:44 | 49 |
| Article: 637
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Drake: The Voyage
Sender: [email protected] (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 04:39:19 GMT
David Drake's "Voyage" is set in the universe of Hammer's Slammers, which
means that it involves hard-bitten professional soldiers doing a lot of
damage. Just as "Cross the Stars" was based on the Odyssey, "Voyage" is
based on the story of Jason and the Argonauts: Lissea Doorman has been
promised her rightful heritage (a seat on the Board of Directors) if she
can retrieve a long-lost treasure (an invention which teleported to a now-
isolated planet), so she recruits a shipful of heroes (big-name mercenaries)
who stop at a number of planets on the way, having an adventure of sorts
at each one.
The parallels are very heavy-handed. For example, instead of harpies
snatching food from a table, we have teleporters snatching food as it
comes out of the automatic food dispenser. The monsters guarding the
treasure are tanks, which can be lulled into 'sleep' with a device which
they receive from the son of the local ruler. (Lissea may be luckier than
Jason in her Medea.) And so forth.
The plot structure doesn't lend itself that well to a novel: Each stop
(and most of the stops are unconvincingly motivated) becomes the setting
for a separate, isolated (and often pointless) incident. Most of the
incidents involve far more blood-letting than the law of averages would
require, but I suppose that's why carnophiles read carnography. The book
is probably not bad mind-candy, for those readers whose favorite mind-candy
comes in the form of bloody gobbets. I wouldn't recommend it else.
%A Drake, David
%T The Voyage
%I Tor
%C New York
%D January, 1994
%G ISBN 0-312-85158-8
%P 415 pp
%O US$23.95
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected] [email protected]
Should 'anal retentive' have a hyphen?
-- unidentified passing t-shirt
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