Schlock Mercenary
Welcome to Tagon's Toughs, a mercenary company whose newest recruit is almost as much trouble as the new owners. They want to revolutionize space travel. Schlock just wants to hurt people and break things. This 240-page volume takes the reader back to the very start of Schlock Mercenary, and then some. It opens with nine pages of all-new strips telling the story of how Schlock came to enlist, and then forges onward chronologically from the very first strip. It also includes concept sketches, commentary, excellent guest art, deck plans for the Kitesfear. --From
Stats for nerds
7recommend
11mentions
10people
2013–2026years
73% recommend27% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Schlock Mercenary https://www.schlockmercenary.com/ dealt with this particular theme quite thoroughly. One of the protagonists invents a "Teraport", and promptly a "Teraport Area Denial" is invented to protect against it. Recommended read, though the archive is huge.
- There's a great concept that I found out about reading Schlock Mercenary (a sci-fi webcomic), about using a gas giant as an interstellar spaceship [1]. It probably originates elsewhere, but it was nicely explained there. You build a "candle" (huge tube) that is inserted into the gas giant on one side, then ignite the gases inside it (iirc the comic uses fusion reactors on both ends, and an intake in the center of the candle). Both ends of the candle are open, "inner" end counteracts the gas giant's gravity to keep the candle from sinking into the core, the other end produces thrust. You put your payload on moons that orbit around the gas giant, and steer by moving the candle. The "thrust end" of the candle also doubles as a light and heat source for the moons, replacing the sun while in interstellar space. There are... some risks involved into the whole operation.
- Fixed, thanks.
And, credit where due: I stole the term from Howard Tayler's wonderful "Schlock Mercenary" webcomic. It may not be original with him, but that's where I got it.
- Schlock Mercenary is a sci-fi webcomic with a fun thread about sapient dinosaurs fleeing Earth pre-impact.
There's no good way to read just those strips, but it starts here:
- Schlock Mercenary does a great job handling the nature of consciousness boundaries and death in a post-Singularity world (technologically speaking - digital minds retain their own personalities in this story), as well as some of the ethical concerns.
It really takes off in the book "A Little Immortality":
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-12-05
but the core ideas leading to that book go back much further in the comic's archives.
- I gather I'm pretty unusual among sf fans in not enjoying the Culture novels, which I find maybe a little sere in their prose and a little too far gone in their post-Singularity space opera to really resonate. I do like the ship names, though.
I also suspect that series plays a heavy role in inspiring Howard Tayler's webcomic Schlock Mercenary, whose very humble beginnings I've had the distinct pleasure of watching it far outgrow over the years. Definitely worth a look for any sf fan, mil-sf fans especially.
