David Drake: Difference between revisions

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{{creator}}
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{{quote|"''The use of force is '''always''' an answer to problems. Whether or not it's a satisfactory answer depends on a number of things, not least the personality of the person making the determination. Force isn't an attractive answer, though. I would not be true to myself or to the people I served with in 1970 if I did not make that realization clear.''"|'''David Drake'''}}
 
One'''David Drake''' is one of the current gods of Military SF, along with [[CoDominium|Jerry Pournelle]], [[S.M. Stirling]], and [[David Weber]] -- in spite of not writing any military SF anymore. (Unless you count Naval [[Space Opera]].) Known for his explicit and graphic depictions of the effects of warfare on both human bodies and human societies.
 
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[http://www.david-drake.com/ David Drake] is the author of several sci-fi series, and has a major fantasy series, ''[[The Lord of the Isles]]'' which finished in late 2008 with ''The Gods Return''. Has numerous other works.
* [[RCN Series]]
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* "His stint at Duke University Law School was interrupted for two years by the U. S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the [[wikipedia:11th ACR|11th Armored Cavalry]] in Vietnam and Cambodia."
 
* From [https://web.archive.org/web/20100520123243/http://www.david-drake.com/north.html Notes on Northworld] on David Drake's website: "I made what I thought was a pointless change from my normal procedure by adding a short afterword to ''Northworld.''...Lo and behold, all the reviews of ''Northworld'' noted the intricate play of Norse myth in the novel. Well, yes; I'd precised the ''Elder Edda'', the ''Prose Edda'', and the ''Volsungensaga'' before I even started to plot. But I always work that way: I'd outlined all of Procopius' works save for ''The Buildings'' before I started plotting my first novel, ''The Dragon Lord.'' The only difference with ''Northworld'' was that I told the reviewers what I'd done; and, being told, they were able to see what I in my innocence had thought was obvious. Live and learn. I frequently write explanatory essays now."
 
Anecdote on book covers from [https://web.archive.org/web/20100520123243/http://www.david-drake.com/north.html Notes on Northworld] at David Drake's website:
* "While I was writing Northworld, Beth called to ask what the book was about because they needed to put a cover on it. I sent her a scene of people dueling in powered personal armor. Beth called back in a week. "We had a cover conference on your book," she said. "We're going to put a tank on the cover. Is there a tank in the book?" I told her that there would be, now that I'd been told about the cover. And there is."
 
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** ''The Chosen'' - World War 1.5 on another world. Crammed with references to real-world military events. "The Chosen" themselves are expies of Stirling's own ''Draka.''
** ''The Reformer'' and ''The Tyrant'' continued on yet another world in the same Universe with Raj existing as a computer simulation. This time it's the Roman Civil War(?). ''The Tyrant'' was co-written with Eric Flint in 2002 and seemed to have ended the series until...
** ''The Heretic'', co-written with Tony Daniel, came out in 2013. The setting here is geographically reminiscent of ancient Egypt, although there's no enormous resemblance in the society. Complicating matters is that another computer like Center, but not as advanced, is maintaining "Stasis" by periodically encouraging barbarian invasions. Concluded by ''The Savior''.
* The [[Belisarius Series]] with Eric Flint. The life of the Byzantine General Belisarius as an alternate history, where the two great powers from the far future have each sent an emissary to alter the past in Belisarius' lifetime.
* ''Northworld'' series. ''Northworld'', ''Northworld Vengeance'', and ''Northworld Justice''. Retelling of selected [[Norse mythMythology]] as sci fi using powered armor. The name's a pun.: North for a cold world like the frozen north of Norse myth. ("Norse" itself probably ultimately derived from Middle Dutch ''nort'' for, what else, "north."). Also for "North's World" forbecause the expybooks' [[Expy]] of Odin, who in the books is named North; andhe commanded a team sent to explore the planet.
* ''The Reaches'': ''Igniting the Reaches'', ''Through the Breach'', and ''Fireships''. Set a thousand years after the collapse of an interstellar government, and based on the period when Spanish and British exploration and exploitation were colliding in the New World, with particular inspiration from the exploits of Sir Francis Drake (no relation). The planet Venus fills the role of Britain (ruled by [[The Virgin Queen|Governor Halys]]), while Spain is played by the Canada-based government of North America.
** The first book mentions (in a derogatory way) the mostly-disregarded "authority" of the Administration of Humanity, based in Brisbane, Australia. Despite its secular title, it appears to be playing the part that the Papacy did in history.
 
=== Selected Other Works ===
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{{quote|[[Curse Cut Short|"Holy sh--" Finch screamed]].
There was a loud plop. A brown geyser spouted above the floor and sank back.}}
* ''[[The Books Of The Elements]]'': [[Roman Empire|Ancient Rome]] [[Recycled in Space|With Magic]]! Except that the name "Rome" is replaced with "Carce," a nod to ''[[The Worm Ouroboros]]''. Other place, ethnic, and in some cases personal names remain the same; so for instance, [[Gaius Julius Caesar]] was a great '''Carcean''' general who defeated the Gauls and became dictator. Though the Emperor's name is never stated, references to him being very paranoid and spending most of his time in a villa on the island of Capri, together with an Author's Note comparing the events to those of 30 A.D., make him clearly based on Tiberius.
* [[Redliners]]: Science fiction story of a burnt out elite unit assigned to guard involuntary colonists on a [[Death World]]. In a weird way, it mixes a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] with [[High Octane Nightmare Fuel]] by taking [[War Is Hell]] to its logical conclusion--what do you do with, and how can you help, the [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]], when the war is over?
* ''The Forlorn Hope'': Sci-fi foreign mercenaries fight their way out of encirclement and then fight their way off-world when their employers betray them. [[Xenophon]]'s ''[[Anabasis]]'' a.k.a. ''The March Up Country'' [[Recycled in Space]].
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** "Mom and the Kids" with [[Larry Niven]].
** "The Noble Savages", a sci-fi sendup about special operations police operating under [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]].
** "A Very Offensive Weapon" is a novella in which Fantasyfantasy Questquest tropes are mercilessly slaughtered. Includes a reference to the saying, "If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will come to the mountain": there's a mountain '''moving''' through the desert, occasionally moaning, "Mohammed...." It's '''trying''' to come to him!
* ''Vettius and Friends'': Short stories of gritty fantasy around the time of Ancient Rome.
* ''Killer'': [[Alien]]-like aliens come up against a retired veteran of the Roman Gladiatorial games. Veteran trained killer vs natural born killers. Think ''Predator vs Aliens'' without the sci-fi equipment.
* ''The Dragon Lord'': Gritty retelling of the story of [[King Arthur]]; Drake described the personality of his Arthur as a cross between Alexander the Great and [[Adolf Hitler]].
** This novel was originally intended as a pastiche novel of Robert E. Howard's historical adventure character Cormac Mac Art. Drake re-wrote it when the pastiche was declined.
* ''The Spark'': Another retelling of Arthurian legends, this time following the collapse of an ultra-technological civilization, which has left reality itself warped. The equivalent of wizards are "Makers" who can somehow see into the internal structures of surviving technological artifacts and figure out how to rebuild or even improve them. Much more idealistic than ''The Dragon Lord'' or ''Northworld''; [[Word of God|Drake himself]] described it as a culture that's '''attempting''' to make itself better and more decent. A second book, ''The Storm'', is scheduled for release January 2019.
 
[http://www.david-drake.com/bibliography.html Full Bibliography] at David Drake's website. Not quite up to date at the time of this writing (Mar, 2009).
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* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: Many, perhaps most of Drake's books feature at least some degree of this. His heroes are admirable in some ways, but almost never in '''all''' ways; they often express and act on attitudes and values which Drake, in Author's Notes, calls "very regrettable."
** In ''The Reaches'', the first book's viewpoint character is disgusted by the way Americans allow women "in positions of danger" including as starship crews; it "would be offensive to any decent man." Several of the other "good guys" display a strictly intolerant Protestantism that won't accept Catholics as fellow Christians at all. The narrator of the second book has to restrain a subordinate from murdering a woman because her response to '''very''' good news was to exclaim, "Oh, thank God!" and kiss the crucifix she held. [[Sarcasm Mode|How dare she display her idol-worship in front of Christians!]]
* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: Adele Mundy from the [[RCN Series]], Joachim Steuben from ''[[Hammer's Slammers]]'', Hussein ben Mehdi from ''The Forlorn Hope'', Stephen Gregg from ''The Reaches''.... And that's not counting how, in ''The General'' and its follow-ons, Center can augment someone's marksmanship to levels that leave hardened soldiers staring in awe.
* [[Man-Eating Plant]] / [[When Trees Attack]]: Drake has a rather phobic thing about killer plants. In particular, ''The Jungle'' and ''[[Redliners]]'' both feature lots of trees, bushes, grasses, and fungi that will try to kill you in one way or another. There are several different ways a tree can kill in ''Redliners'', including exploding to fling out armor-piercing spikes, spraying those who come too close with a fast-hardening (and acidic) sap, the bark turning out to be tentacles.... Few of the non-tree plants can swallow you whole, but they'll sure suck the nutrients out of you. The vampire honeysuckle in ''The Jungle'' is [[Nightmare Fuel]] -- literally so for a character whose [[Catapult Nightmare]] seems to have psychically linked him to one of its victims. Several people in this and other books die because plant life grew '''into and through''' their flesh [[Paranoia Fuel|while they slept]].
* [[The Quiet One]]: Tovera, Adele Mundy's aide. Subverted in that she's a tiny female. So self-effacing that in ''Lt. Leary, Commanding'', police responding to murderous violence at a society garden party ignore her, despite the fact that she's holding a sub-machine gun. Deadlier than her mistress, the [[Badass Bookworm]]. ''Much'' deadlier.
* Occasionally drops [[Shout-Out]]s to modern culture into his work. A punning one was in ''The Sharp End'' when a ship from the Marvelan Confederacy was known as the ''[[Silver Surfer|Argent Server]]''.
* [[Take That]]: Critic Charles Platt described ''Hammer's Slammers'' as, to quote Drake's summary, "queasy voyeurism," and said that if David Drake had ever seen war, he wouldn't write such things. Drake is a Vietnam veteran; see the quote at the top of the page. If you're a character in one of Drake's books and your name is "Platt," about the best you can hope for is to be stupid; financial corruption and/or unsavory sexual tastes may feature as well.
** Possibly the vilest Platt ever got his "sexual" jollies by [[Would Hurt a Child|torturing children to death]]; it was suggested that [[RCN Series|the brutal dictator Porra]] might have assassins assigned to off this fellow [[Even Evil Has Standards|'''just''' because of that]].
 
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