The red
"There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere" Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive--because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him--but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger...as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear. (Hazard Notice: contains military grade profanity.)
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
3people
2021–2024years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- coincidentally explored by sci-fi quite extensively. e.g: The Red, by L. Nagata.
- In The Red: First Light Linda Nagata posits an AI that tries to help people maximise their potential, because by earning more they consume more. The AI escaped from Amazon (the web store), it is theorized.
(Nice MilSF if you like that kind of thing.)
1. https://www.amazon.com/Red-First-Light-Trilogy/dp/1481440934
- One person's decent is another's rubbish.
I have fairly low standards. If the author can (or can hire an editor to) put together decent sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, these days, I'll settle for that.
However, I cannot abide fiction that is "only you can save the universe" or anything that childish.
I also can't abide worldbuilding with hereditary elites (political, magical, whatever) or slavery in it -- the idea that some people are better than others because of who their parents were is anathema.
For MilSF, try Linda Nagata's The Red: First Light--although the main character is a man. For light ent, try M.C. A. Hogarth, or Julia Huni, or Becky Chambers.
For lots more suggestions, sift James Davis Nicoll's review site.[1]
- Linda Nagata's The Red Trilogy Series (an excellent read, IMO) explores some of the consequences of technologies that help manage a person's brain-state in extreme environments (sleep deprivation, trauma, PTSD, etc.): https://g.co/kgs/HK1KoT
- Linda Nagata's excellent trilogy 'The Red's is predicated in large part on this sort of brain-computer interface, with the caveat that the particles are also capable of manipulating your brain activity (primarily to keep soldiers from getting, or suffering from, PTSD), except that these interfaces get hacked and hijinks ensue.
