Imaginary Worlds - On The Front Lines of Fantasy

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

The military shows up in a lot of sci-fi and fantasy stories but the subgenre of military SF depicts soldiers holding their own in fantastical situations without needing superheroes to save the day. Many military SF authors have served in the armed forces and bring a sense of verisimilitude to depicting their experiences, even if the stories are about futuristic high-tech or alien invasions. I talk with authors Myke Cole, Linda Nagata and Taylor Anderson about whether military SF has a mission beyond entertainment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection, free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body.

Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.

I'm Eric Malinsky. Until recently, I didn't realize that military science fiction is a sub-genre on its own. Which is interesting because the military shows up in science fiction all the time. Although usually they just make a brief cameo before the big alien or monster wipes them out and the superheroes come in to save the day. And if the hero is in the military, there's no guarantee the military will be portrayed with any sense of accuracy. And most civilians wouldn't really know the difference. I mean, for the last 10 years, I've been reading stories about veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan feeling like the rest of us just can't understand what they've been through.

And I think it's no coincidence that the genre of military sci-fi took off in the early 70s, when the draft was ended and the all-volunteer army was established. Now, some authors had direct battlefield experience, and that was part of the genre's appeal, that sense of versamilitude. And then there are writers like Linda Nagata, who just did a lot of research for her Red trilogy, which is very high-tech, near-future military sci-fi. I didn't want to do the galactic empire faster-than-light travel. I was just far more interested

in what's going on in the world today. And some people expressed surprise that I got, quote, unquote, military life that accurate, which is always nice to hear. Because you didn't serve in the military, is that why? I did not serve in the military. That's right. Did that ever give you any pause? Because there are definitely a lot of authors out there that did serve in the military, and that's often mentioned in their bio.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, when I first started, I was a little hesitant about it for that reason. But at the same time, I ran it by my son-in-law, who was Army infantry for a number of years. So I felt like I had somebody to vet it for me and let me know if I was doing any foot-and-mouth problems. But she wanted to write military sci-fi because she was interested in the basic themes of like honor, duty, and the moral questions that soldiers always face. As writers, that's what we're here for, is to try to imagine, you know, what people might actually be doing under these circumstances. Now, her books are critically acclaimed. They've been nominated and won many awards, but she often has to self-publish. In fact, her latest novel, which is called The

Last Good Man, was turned down by 14 publishers. She's not exactly sure why, but she thinks that publishers might be attracted to the very cliches that military sci-fi was supposed to avoid, because those cliches are marketable. I mean, my newest novel, people will tell you it's action from beginning to end. And yet that's not what traditional publishers say. I think they kind of want to start almost in the middle of a battle. What they're looking for is somebody starts off in boot camp and, you know, they have adventures there and then they go on to a wider field of experience. And then I read somewhere that you said that you sort of wish sometimes that you took a more gender neutral name. Yeah, but it's kind of too late to change for me, I feel.

But do you feel even specifically military science fiction that they see that, you know, a woman's name that they're going to immediately discount that you couldn't possibly write it the same way a man could? I, you know, it's hard not to have that suspicion. And that said, I'll also say easily a majority of my readers are men. But I did have one experience when the Red Trilogy came out, and that I got an email from a gentleman who said that he had picked up one of the books at the library. And it was the first book by a woman he'd read in 20 years. Wow. So, yeah, I think there might be still a little bit of an issue out there.

Yeah. Well, today I'm going to be talking with writers that are wrestling with the issue of how to use fantasy and science fiction to bridge that gap between what we think the military is and what it's really like. There's a lot more after the break. Taylor Anderson is a jack of all trades. He's a military historian with a focus on Texas history. He collects antique firearms and makes perfect replicas. is a jack-of-all-trades. He's a military historian with a focus on Texas history.

He collects antique firearms and makes perfect replicas. He also served as a consultant on the 2004 film The Alamo. Anytime a cannon fired, I had to be there. And it was pretty grueling in a lot of ways. He also had a lot of downtime when he was on set. So one day he was talking with the crew about other famous last stands in history. After several discussions of different examples, I said, well, what about the U.S. Asiatic Fleet? And nobody knew what I was talking about.

The Asiatic Fleet was a division of the Navy that disappeared in the Pacific about a year after Pearl Harbor. I was kind of disappointed and stunned, in fact. And I thought, well, you know, I've always enjoyed writing, but I never had, you know, well, finished anything, to be honest with you. I had too many other things I had to do. And by writing, he means writing fiction. But he couldn't stop thinking about that lost fleet. And he wondered, what if they didn't all die? What if they ended up in a parallel dimension? And that's when he began writing his series, The Destroyer Men. Now,

as a military historian, the thing he finds so endearing about the Asiatic fleet, the reason why he really wanted to write about them, was that they were relics from World War I. Those ships should have been decommissioned, not sent back into battle. They didn't have very good sound equipment for detecting submarines, and they had virtually no anti-aircraft capability. When they were confronted with the cream of the Japanese Navy, which was the most modern Navy in the world, arguably by any account, they were at a distinct disadvantage. And it was a harrowing ordeal. And several of those ships literally did disappear without a trace. It's funny how you save them through fiction in a weird way. Well, I guess so. And I specifically deliberately didn't use

any ships that actually saw service in World War II because they have real wartime records. And I figured that doing such a thing would disrespect that. Although he did not send them to a cozy, cushy parallel universe. He sent them to a world where the dinosaurs were not wiped out by an asteroid. And life on Earth evolved very differently. And so these humans from World War II team up with the highly evolved primates from this dimension, a species called Lemurians, who are like a combination of

humans and lemurs. And this from the perspective of people in the 1940s that didn't know nearly as much about, you know, dinosaurs, for example, as we do today. do today, even to this day in the series, they have come to the conclusion that, yeah, things are really tough here and we have a lot to deal with, but we were dead back there. Maybe we're here for a reason. When it comes to the ship itself and the crewman, he is meticulous in terms of the historical, technical details. He also wants to debunk a cliche you see in a lot of mainstream science fiction, that if the military were to face this fantastical enemy they didn't train for, there'd be no way they could adapt or improvise. Or the cliche that they're always seeking to engage in combat or to dominate. And that's

not the case at all. The warfighters are the people on the front lines. They're the ones that are most affected and are generally going to be the least inclined to engage in combat if it can be avoided. Because the underlying theme in the story, in the whole thing, is to do the right thing as you see it, even when nobody's looking. Absolutely nobody's looking. As you can tell, he's a pretty deep reverence for the military. Many of his relatives were veterans. But because he had an old football injury, he wasn't able to make it past ROTC.

And that's one of the biggest regrets in his life. In fact, if there's another parallel timeline that he thinks about, it's what his career would be like in the military. You know, I think about it because all my friends that either went on to serve and some, you know, have now retired from the military, you know, I think of the time that I would have had, you know, with them or in the same service. But at the same time, you know, I think of the time that I would have had with them or in the same service. But at the same time, I think of all the other experiences that I've had and wouldn't have had that have brought me to this point. And I certainly wouldn't have had my daughter.

And his daughter is now in the Army. I'm so proud of her. I almost burst all the time. I'm so proud of her. I almost burst all the time. Now, I was curious about the feedback that Taylor gets, because military science fiction usually isn't this fantastical. Well, it turns out the first group of fans that were attracted to his work were furries, you know, people that dress in animal costumes. They were posting all these drawings they had done of his Lemurian characters,

you know, the highly evolved primates from the alternate universe. And until they found him, Taylor had never heard of furries before. They would actually start arguing with each other on my website and having fights and things like that. And I finally asked, look, I'm perfectly fine with y'all dressing up as critters. I mean, I dress up in different uniforms and things like that when I'm demonstrating our artillery pieces. I have no problem with people dressing up, but I'm not one of you. If I was a creature in the woods, I would probably be a predatory creature that would eat most of you. Now, the feedback he got from people who were serving the armed forces was more what he expected. You know, like everybody else, they want to see versions of themselves they recognize in fiction. I get so much feedback from the military, guys that are reading my books that are deployed.

from the military, you know, guys that are reading my books, you know, that are deployed. And one particular guy that we've become friends just emailed me out of the blue that he'd been blown up and had traumatic brain injury and was relearning to read in the hospital by reading my books. And it just, it's been very, very humbling. But to answer your original question, yeah, there's quite a contrast between different people, but so many of them are fascinating. There's people that, you know, role play in that universe.

There's people that have come up with board games and painted thousands of miniatures and they'll send me pictures of them. And I think that's just wonderful. But, you know, every person's experience in the military is different. And those differences play out within the genre. In fact, let's leave rural Texas and come back to New York City, where Mike Cole lives. Mike served three tours in Iraq, and today he works for, actually, it's kind of a top-secret job.

I work for a large metropolitan police department. I'm not allowed to tell you where it is, but if I move out of the five boroughs of New York City, I lose my job. But that should not give away where it is I work, that I have a First Amendment right to tell you where I work. Now Mike grew up in the suburbs outside the city, which sounds pleasant, but it was rough for him.

I grew up a nerd, and when you grow up a nerd, I couldn't get dates, and I got my ass kicked a lot, and I had a hard time making friends, and I was super isolated. So he spent a lot of time at the gym. And then, like, your body's changing anyway when you're that age. time making friends and I was super isolated. So he spent a lot of time at the gym. And then like your body's changing anyway when you're that age. And so I suddenly developed violent power overnight. A violent power? Violent power. Like I suddenly had the ability to project myself violently, which I had never had before. Because if I ever tried to throw my weight around before that, you know, people would

have laughed in my face. And when you're not really raised, which I wasn't, I kind of turned into a monster. I turned into a bully. I turned into a bad kid. And I think back on who I was and I kind of shudder. And it wasn't until, shoot, you know, really right around 9-11 that I had figured out that professional violence was a thing that I had an aptitude for and that I wanted to participate in. And that there was a way I could do it was just and good and that served other people. Mike says he enlisted because he believed a lot of stories that weren't true. Like that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11 because he was in league with Al-Qaeda. And once he got to Iraq, he had a rude awakening. Maybe someone else, maybe someone smarter than me would have just pulled stakes and walked,

you know, send me back home or I'm not doing this or whatever. But I was part of the reason that that war started. I stumped for it. I supported it. I wanted it. And by God, if I broke it, then I bought it. And it was going to be my ass down there in seeing it through. And it wasn't until the third time I went back that my brother and my dad and my best friend, they all said, Mike, it's enough. Whatever you had to pay for, you paid for it. Don't go back again. And I still tried to go back again. Fourth time. I tried to, yeah. The fourth time I tried to get an Afghanistan tour.

At the time, there was this weird reservist program where O2s, at the time I was in O2, could just sign up for these essentially suicide missions like MRAP commander. You drive around the Korengal Valley until someone blows you up. He was also feeling frustrated because during this time, he was working on his first novel. But publishers kept rejecting it. I wrote under fire. I remember sitting at 4 o'clock in the morning, you know, on no sleep, you know, writing on my laptop, and then having to, like, collect all my work and run for a bunker because we were getting rocketed.

Like, I kept at it. And I developed this really unhealthy sense of entitlement, right? I'd risked my life. I'd, you know, been a good guy. I'd worked hard. Surely I deserved a book deal, right? Which is such an insane way to think. That was when, by the way, I volunteered to do that tour in Afghanistan I was telling you about.

What stopped me is I got a book deal. Now, that series of books is called Shadow Ops. And he came up with the idea pretty early in his military career, when he was working a desk job at the Pentagon. I don't know what experience you or your listeners have had dealing with the military, but people think of firepower and force when they think of the military. It's not what I think of. I think of rules. The military is the greatest rule-generating institution in the world. They were a rule for everything. But I'm walking around the Pentagon, and like every good nerd, I'm thinking,

well, what if there were elves? What if there was magic, right? And I know exactly what the military would do. They'd make rules. They'd cover it in rules. They'd make it every aspect of using magic or interacting with magical creatures so rule-bound that they would

manage to make magic boring. They would cover it in red tape. That's actually why I like the series. It feels like such an American response to magic. I mean, this isn't the world of Harry Potter, where magic is left to these elite academic institutions. Well, you know, the prime minister doesn't want to have anything to do with it. Now, his world of magic is regulated, top to bottom. And people throw around acronyms like SOC, which stands for Supernatural Operations Corps. He really wanted to capture the way the military and the law itself try to project the sense of authority and control when dealing with wildly uncontrollable things. Because life doesn't give a fuck about rules, right? Inevitably, some good person would fall into cracks between the rules and get crushed.

And that is his main character, Oscar Britton. He starts out as a model soldier who works alongside government-approved sorcerers to take down rogue sorcerers. And then Oscar discovers he has magic within him. rogue sorcerers. And then Oscar discovers he has magic within him. He panics and runs and learns the hard way how the military neutralizes and co-ops magic users. It did upset a lot of my readers. I got a lot of hate mail about him. Yeah, saying this guy would never have made it in the military. He's not a real military officer. He doesn't seem real. And I was like, no was like no motherfucker like this is

exactly who he is and i don't know who you know in the military but like if you want steven seagal you know go watch hard to kill that's not the character i'm gonna write into a shadow ops novel that's not the story i wanted to tell i also think that part of this has to do with the dominant voice in military science fiction um there's a publisher called Bain, which is sort of the main purveyor of military science fiction, or at least has been in the past. And they have a pretty wide range of authors and they produce a lot of great stuff. But there's a community of authors that I feel have really dominated military science fiction for a long time that have a particular viewpoint on the military and the military's role and who the military is it's unusual that a dissonant note be sounded and when a dissonant note is sounded

i think a lot of fans from that bane school who have certain expectations from their fiction come because they're drawn by the military covers they're drawn by the military themes and they read and they don't get the same experience and you know you know, that upsets them. And so you get some dissonance that way. But, you know, it's art, man. I didn't come to rubber stamp stuff. You know, I'm going to do it my way. I asked Mike if he thinks this genre could help bridge that gap between people who served and people who didn't. But Mike thinks this gap is just in our minds. The military is made up of civilians. It's just as diverse as the population it's drawing from. And they're not living in a parallel dimension.

They're dealing with all the same stuff we do, from mortgages to traffic jams. And what gets frustrating to me is I'll meet people who want to write military stories, who want to write about the military and don't feel they have the right to do it. And they do. I feel like we miss out on great voices that way. And the worst part about it, too, is it isolates me. This issue of isolation came up a lot in our conversation. It comes up a lot in his work.

Mike doesn't want to be seen as different. In fact, sometimes when people call him a hero, he gets upset because he feels like it reduces him to a caricature. But he was never able to fully return to his old life because he came back with PTSD. What I experienced was a sense of profound disconnection, of being alone in a crowd, of being unable to feel plugged into my closest friends, my loved ones, because I had had this experience that they hadn't. I lost my fiance after my second tour, which was really hard. She, you know, she signed up for a comedy and she got a drama. Each time I came back from Iraq, I was a little bit different, a little bit sadder and a little bit not that it wasn't what she had signed up for.

a little bit sadder and a little bit not that it wasn't what she had signed up for and that's nobody's fault that's how it goes sometimes but i'll never forget that this was the person i loved the most in the world man this was not you know some you know pro forma engagement i love this woman she was my best friend she was the person who i didn't have to explain things to i could just say what i felt and she would just understand, right? That's what you get when you're really connected to someone. And I'll never forget reaching this point where I couldn't. God, man, it felt like dying. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my life. And then, of course, watching her slowly decouple and leave. Ugh. I mean, it was just awful. So if you look at my fourth novel, Gemini Cell, the main character is an undead Navy SEAL. He's killed. He's a SEAL.

He's risen, raised from the dead, and run on missions again. And his wife and child are still there. He finds his way back to them. But just because he's found his way back to them, he's still dead. and she's not. And that is not even a subtle allegory for PTSD. It is a bald-faced hammering of the experience I had losing Ting Wei, my fiance. But what did help was for me to frame it and express it in a way that if years down the road someone asked me and really cared

what was it like losing her, I could hand them this book and say, I don't have to explain it to you. Read this. Yeah. And it also sounds like, too, a common theme with your characters is this kind of accepting of change. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Oscar Britton is a guy whose the army is his whole life, and he loses it through no fault of his own. He wakes up one day and he's different. He didn't do anything. So yes, it is absolutely about sudden, traumatic, and permanent change and having to reinvent yourself in the face of it, for sure. And whether we've served or not, we all have our own wars to fight. Some are personal, some are political, some are physical, psychological.

And if this genre can help us bridge those gaps in our lives, then I think it's fulfilled its mission. Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Linda Nagata, Taylor Anderson, and Mike Cole, who says the military really does have a rule for everything. There is an authorized sneeze. I'm not exaggerating in the Coast Guard. What does it sound like? It sounds the same as a normal sneeze.

But if you're doing it correctly, you're maintaining three feet of social distance. You are turned away from the nearest person, and you are sneezing into the crook of your elbow. Not your hand, not your wrist, not your forearm, your elbow. Hadoop! It's actually a pretty good rule in general. Imaginary Worlds is part of the PandaPlay Network. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emalinski. And my website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.