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Military Science Fiction is a subgenre of both Science Fiction and Military Fiction, commonly sliding into the Space Opera territory. At its most basic, Military Science Fiction is Science Fiction that focuses on the military, but the genre has more specific nuances than that.
The Protagonist in this genre is normally part of the chain of command (or becomes part of it in progress), while an ensemble cast is The Squad. The story is usually set against the backdrop of a large-scale (space) war but war is optional. The Science Fiction part mostly manifests in futuristic weaponry and vehicles (first of all, Cool Starships), while the organization structure is mostly based upon contemporary US or Commonwealth military. It should come as no surprise that a high percentage of MSF writers are military veterans.
Often, the writers would cheat a little by having a Mildly Military organization instead of realistic military for the sake of good story. One particular subgenre of MSF in Video Games is A Space Marine Is You. Another that's especially particular (but by no means exclusive) to anime is the Real Robot Genre.
Tropes commonly used in MSF (in addition to most Military and Warfare Tropes):
- Air Jousting
- Alien Invasion
- Apocalypse How
- Arm Cannon
- Attack Drone (rapidly becoming Truth in Television)
- Boarding Party
- Boarding Pod
- Bug War
- Death Ray
- Drop Pod
- Drop Ship
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom
- Escape Pod
- Forgotten Superweapon
- Galactic Conqueror
- Humans Are Warriors
- Humongous Mecha
- Hyperspace Arsenal
- Kill Sat
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
- Nuke 'em
- Person of Mass Destruction
- Powered Armor
- Putting on the Reich
- Real Robot Genre
- Rock Beats Laser
- Space Cadet
- Space Fighter
- Space Marine
- Space Navy
- Standard Sci-Fi Army
- Standard Sci-Fi Fleet
- Standard Starship Scuffle
- Super Soldier
- The War of Earthly Aggression
- Ye Olde Nuclear Silo
Works with notable Military Science Fiction elements include:
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Multiple Media Franchises
- Alien
- G.I. Joe.
- Gundam, pretty much every incarnation of it, except G Gundam, Gundam X, Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G, and Gundam Build Fighters.
- The Halo games, books, comics, anime mini-series, etc.
- Mass Effect
- Resident Evil
- Space Battleship Yamato and her various spinoffs and adaptations, such as the live action movie and Space Battleship Yamato 2199.
- Stargate-verse
- Starship Troopers
- Star Trek drifts in and out of the subgenre; later entries in the franchise tend to make it more explicitly military, a tendency which its original creator violently opposed.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the most militaristic canon series.
- Star Trek Online is very militaristic, so much so that it took fan outcry to get the developers to patch diplomatic solutions into missions.
- Star Wars, obviously. Maybe not typically considered as prime an example as Trek, but consider how many main characters are generals, diplomats, or both, and how much attention is given to battle sequences and combat vehicles.
- In the EU, the "mainline" series that fits best is Black Fleet Crisis, which is very much a Tom Clancy military/political thriller IN SPACE!
- In the Prequel Era, there's the Republic Commando Series series, following the lives of clone commandos during the Clone Wars.
- The Star Wars themed Star Wars Conquest Game Mod for Mount & Blade.
- Many of the class' stories in Star Wars: The Old Republic count, from an spy infiltrating the enemy to a smuggler making a profit from the conflict. However, it's the Republic Trooper, an elite soldier in the Republic Army, that plays this trope the straightest.
- There's also the "tangential" (that is, not featuring Han, Luke, or Leia as main characters) X-Wing Series, following the life, career, campaigns, and relationships within the elite starfighter squadrons of the universe.
- Wing Commander, particularly the novels by William Forstchen, and Wing Commander Academy.
Anime and Manga
- Armored Trooper VOTOMS
- Flag
- Legend of Galactic Heroes
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, which takes the franchise's Gundam influences to its logical conlcusion as the title character grows up to become a captain in Mid-Childa's military.
- Martian Successor Nadesico
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, though less so when the Alien Invasion premise began to play second fiddle to the psychology and introspection.
- Robotech
Comicbooks
Fan Works
Film
Light Novels
Literature
Special mention must be made of Baen Books, which publishes Weber, Drake, Ringo, Pournelle, and Bujold, among others. Baen is probably the foremost Military Science Fiction publisher in literature. Many of Baen's authors, including Drake, Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson, and more, are former or current military.
- Aeon 14 by MD Cooper
- Alexis Carew by J.A. Sutherland
- Angel in the Whirlwind by Christopher G Nuttall
- Antares by Michael McCollum
- Armor by John Steakley
- The Aux series, by David Gunn.
- Ball Lightning
- Bolo series, originally by Keith Laumer
- The Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson, notably Dorsai! and Tactics of Mistake.
- Cilva
- The CoDominium series is the best-known of Jerry Pournelle's works, but is hardly the only example of the exquisitely well-researched military SF he writes. His bibliography also includes the lesser-known but no-less loved Janissaries series, co-authored with Roland Green.
- Confederation of Valor by Tanya Huff.
- David Drake does quite a bit of MilSF. Like with Ringo, below, he's also written in the Honor Harrington series (Drake's Honorverse short story "A Grand Tour" influenced what became the RCN series, with the dashing Captain and his librarian from Hell friend/sidekick as the primary focus). Notable Drake series (an incomplete listing):
- Dirigent Mercenary Corps by Rick Shelley.
- Dread Empire's Fall Trilogy, by Walter Jon Williams.
- Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
- The Flight Engineer
- The Forever War
- Galactic Marines series
- The Genesis Fleet
- Hellburner by C. J. Cherryh focuses on a moderately realistic Space Fighter and its crew.
- The Helmsman Saga.
- Here Be Dragons by Craig Alan.
- Kris Longknife series, by Mike Shepherd
- Tom Kratman's MilSF works, in addition to his work in Legacy of the Aldenata:
- The Lacuna series by David Adams is basically this.
- The Lensman series, by E. E. “Doc” Smith, is mostly about the adventures of individual Lensmen, but it also features major military actions involving enormous starship formations (usually laden with an overexuberant description of the scale of energies being hurled back-and-forth).
- The Lost Fleet series
- The Mako Saga
- The Man Kzin Wars novels set in Larry Niven's Known Space.
- The Nameless War trilogy by Edmond Barrett
- New Kashubia Series
- Christopher Nuttall:
- Old Man's War
- John Ringo's writing currently spans multiple genres, but he started his literary career writing Military Science Fiction. The MilSF works:
- Council Wars
- Into the Looking Glass
- Prince Roger series (aka Empire of Man, co-written with David Weber)
- Legacy of the Aldenata
- Troy Rising
- Remember To Always Be Brave
- Resident Evil
- Shadow Ops
- Sixth Column
- Star Carrier
- The Sten series, written by two men who are (respectively) ex-CIA and ex-military, craft a very cool saga about a Space Marine who eventually graduates into an Ambadassador.
- Stone King
- Takeshi Kovacs series, particularly Broken Angels.
- The Tau Ceti Agenda Series, by Travis S. Taylor
- Tour of the Merrimack, a series by R. M. Meluch
- Valhalla by Ari Bach features a chapter in the military of 2230 and eleven more chapters in a pseudo-military more militaristic than the main military.
- Theirs Not to Reason Why by Creator/Jean Johnson is a rare example with a female protagonist and an abundance of women in the supporting cast.
- Lucifer's Star by C.T. Phipps combines this with Space Opera. A story of The Empire's best pilot after his side loses.
- The War Against the Chtorr novels by David Gerrold.
- David Weber's work is primarily in this genre, though he has written pure fantasy works. The MilSF works:
- Empire from the Ashes
- Hell's Gate
- Honor Harrington
- Manticore Ascendant, a Spin-Off prequel series of Honor Harrington co-written by Timothy Zahn.
- Out of the Dark
- Safehold
- The four Starfire novels with Steve White (Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection).
- Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold, has many elements of this, though it varies from book to book.
- Timothy Zahn has played heavily in this field. In addition to his Star Wars Expanded Universe work (his biggest claim to fame in that field probably being The Thrawn Trilogy), he's done, among others, The Cobra Trilogy and The Conquerors Trilogy.
- The History of the Galaxy series by Andrey Livadny. Most books deal with fights between human governments, factions, corporations as well as against aliens. Most protagonists tend to be members of the military (usually the Confederate fleet).
- Spots the Space Marine
- The Osmerian Conflict
- The Machineries of Empire
- Victoria, by military theorist William S. Lind, is a near-future example, following an ex-Marine staff officer and military consultant through several wars between various of the Divided States of America in the 2030s.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5 had its fair share of various nasty conflicts
- Crusade, spinoff series to Babylon Five, and whose Troubled Production is the stuff of legends.
- Battlestar Galactica
- seaQuest DSV
- Space: Above and Beyond
Machinima
Tabletop Games
- AT-43
- BattleTech
- And by extension, the BattleTech Expanded Universe.
- Beyond The Gates Of Antares
- Mutant Chronicles
- Traveller RPG series. A large part of it has to do with the military aspects.
- Warhammer 40,000, and most of its spin-off literature, notably Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain.
Videogames
- Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator
- Battle Zone 1998 and Battlezone II
- Battlefield 2142
- Call of Duty
- Command & Conquer:
- The Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series drifts in this direction, beginning Twenty Minutes In The Future and ending with all manner of sci-fi trappings.
- The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series is Denser and Wackier than Tiberian, focusing on a world altered by time traveling.
- The Contra series. At first it isn't assumed to have sci-fi elements, but the plot involves an alien invasion.
- DUST 514, a Gaiden Game of EVE Online whose backstory has capsuleer technology applied to Powered Armor instead of starships.
- Einhänder
- Empire Earth, in the later epochs.
- First Encounter Assault Recon
- Fracture
- Front Mission
- The Gears of War games, books, and comics.
- Heavy Weapon is a more humorous, cartoony take on the genre.
- Helldivers
- Iji
- Intrusion 2
- The MechWarrior series, set in the same universe as BattleTech.
- Metal Gear. The series involves rogue AIs, clones, as well as the titular walking tanks of the same name.
- Metal Slug. While the series doesn't start off as sci-fi, it becomes this in later sequels, which involve alien invasions and future soldiers.
- Metroid, occasionally. Samus is established as having been in the Galactic Federation Army, and Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3, and Metroid: Other M feature GF soldiers and marines as characters.
- Out Zone
- Section 8 series
- Shadow Complex
- StarCraft
- Starsiege, and its pre-/sequels.
- Star Citizen, chiefly the "Squadron 42" storyline section.
- Steel Battalion
- Templar Battleforce
- Time Crisis, especially the second game which involves trying to stop a Kill Sat.
- Titanfall
- Universe at War
- The X-COM series, which has you commanding a multinational military force to combat alien invaders.
- Xenonauts
- X-Mercs
Web Comics
- Schlock Mercenary
- XRS A military sci fi webcomic about a deadly new super-weapon.
Western Animation
