This is not a joke, this is an actual branch of their military.
This should be alarming because it’s only a matter of time before they start fielding troops in space.
This is not a joke, this is an actual branch of their military.
This should be alarming because it’s only a matter of time before they start fielding troops in space.
Don’t you worry, Science Messiah Musk will deliver! Aaany day now! He has rockets that land on little boats!
Not familiar with those, TL;DR, please?
It’s actually the best point, the longer they waste time and money on him, the more time China and Russia get. Imagine what would happen if USA actually did funded NASA properly since 70’s.
Most famous for his Honor Harrington cycle which is basically Horace Hornblower but in space. In short, good space british empire (minus most racism, their royal family is black, though they are also genemodded to be superbly intelligent). Plus their smallish ally Grayson - basically the evengelical fanatic murica spending 90% budget on weapons, but so idealised you wouldn’t belive. Some tropes there are actually subverted like the evil People’s Republic being actually the murica on UBI and inert Solarian League being actually murica, but i think those are orwellian mistakes and the guy have political and social views oscillating between XVIII century british monarchist and austrian cultist. He’s pretty damn good writer though, definitely best of this bunch, especially his technobable is one of the best for space operas ever.
Two pretty untalented guys writing run of the mill classic murican supremacy retrofuturist novels, but together they managed to write something actually pretty readable, even if still very imperialist, the “General” cycle.
Nothing special, just usual muricans in space military novels. He is clearly paid by the word though because he’s witing them one after another in pretty stakhanovite tempo lol.
Yet another “british empire in space” type, this one is actually funny for the “fuck it, let’s just make it a boarding with literal cold steel sabers”. Also have space rats and space dolphins lol.
This one is just murican fash. Rest are more or less readable but this one is bad.
Thank you! I did hear about Harrington series, it keeps getting recommend on Reddit and the like, but I got put off by reading the description of the first book.
First book goes like “a new and unremarkable but actually competent officer comes to the distant post where she is plagued by stupid politics, but she manage to fix everything, strenghten the kingdom, massacre few dozen thousands of unruly natives and kick ass the commies delivering weapons to them (and drugs, of course anglo lover would not miss to write that projection).
Britannia rules the waves!Manticore rules the stars!”Few books later you notice that the commies aren’t really commies and you start rooting for the best antagonist, a revolutionary leader hilariously named Robert Staunton Pierre, yes, in case if dense murican readers miss it, he’s usually written as Rob S. Pierre, and his chief of (you cant make this shit) Secret Service, named Saint Just.
There’s also literal Space Prussian Empire, but entirely ethnically Chinese, monarchist W.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X equivalents and transhumanist capitalist slaveowner New World Order pulling the strings of nearly everything. Their struggle sessions after they take yet another beating from the brave monarchists are seriously brilliantly funny.
Unfortunately author don’t even pretend to be “neutral narrator”
JFC how do people read this?
Not having any historical knowledge except what they get in school, as usual per libs.Also as i said Weber is a good writer, so if you ignore the monarchist prattiling and long self righteous speeches that are usually easily skippable, it’s not bad read. Finally the politics in his books are so hilariously bad as a marxist i had nice fun deconstructing that steaming pile of shit.
And now comes the best part: Polish translation is even worse. Translator literally invented anticommunist things that weren’t in the original.
For example, Secret Service, SS, in polish translation is Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB. Which have absolutely no sense but UB was the polish version of KGB, heavily smeared by now in polish media and historiography.
Next: people in People’s Republic of Haven (the big bad commie state that after just short read is revealing itself as the archetypical imperialist nation straight up from the pages of Lenin) are calling each other “Citizen” in the original, but in polish it’s “Towarzysz/ka” - “Comrade” and there is even added fragment about “Citizen” being ultimately refused.
Also in polish version they are using plural version of “You” - “Wy” while formally speaking to single person. You know, the very common honorific present in most slavic and germanic languages. But that form is nonexistent in english where the singular and plural is the same “you” and as such isn’t particularly honorific or rather it’s honorific all the time. So that is clearly something translator added again to make them sounds more like communists. And he even added a fragment where he says it’s not correct grammatically! Which is even more weird since in-universe language for both Haven and Manticore is english and the books author being American naturally also wrote them in english too. He also routinely misgender characters despite them previously appearing multiple times.
Well now that’s just purposefully agenda pushing, come on
This is small example how books are getting published in Poland. They take the already anticommunist book and it’s never anticommunist enough so they add more on their own volition (oddly enough the original is not actually very directly anticommunist, author rather whitewash monarchy than bash communists, but the polish edition make it quite different in tone, as if the Haven was mix of revolutionary France and PRL). And i shudder to think what they are adding along the way to other books, in this case i just got it because i happened to read the original version too.
Another example is the “People History of United States” by Zinn. Zinn was a succdem that basically did not wrote anything about communism in his book, he nearly completely omitted both american communist movement and the relations between USA and socialist states (except Vietnam). Polish publishing house (soccdem, the lefternmost we have) did not changed the text, but added, to a book that nearly continously bash USA, a preface that is entirely anticommunist.
Is that some kind of Maoist monarchist?
No, that was a typo, i suck at typing and usually correct my posts multiple times, fortunately lemmy have best edit option.
It seems i instinctively write “a” after “o” by now. it’s supposed to be “monarchist”
I wish I was good at editing images, because now I really want an image of Mao dressed as a king and caption it “Maonarchy”.
Hahaha i tried to search for it, but nothing, AI also refuse to draw Mao as a king. It seems he is ultimate antimonarchist. Closest i can get is this:
I found some pics of Xi Jinping as the Manchu emperor, like wtf?