Good sci-fi war novels
 

Can anyone recommend some good science fiction war novels.
I really liked Starship Troopers, Forever War, Ender's Game and Battle Royale.
Anyone have any favorites?

oh man, do I ever!

Armor by John Steakley....People tend to either love this book or think it's crap. I'm of the former opinion, of course. The book tricks you though, because at the end, it's got little to do with war at all.

The Parafaith War by LE Modesitt Jr....Changing pace here, this book examains the causes, effects, and morality of war closely.

the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Space opera through and through here, the series gets progressively better as it goes on, although it begins to focus a bit much on politics in the last book.

the Conquerers trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Excellent light reads about war at first contact.

I've heard good things about Hammers Slammers by David Drake, but haven't gotten around to picking up a copy yet.

Hope that helps a bit.

Try Ender's Shadow... that was pretty good

Also Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard

I also kind of enjoyed EON by Greg Bear as well

I liked the Gap series by Stephen R. Donaldson. There're some space battles in that.

There is a serious bit of spacewar in the second book of "Protector" by Larry Niven. (It's published under one cover now, but it was originally two short novels.)

I loved that book! It's been twenty years since I read it though. :)

Enders Game was awesome!!! I also loved Starship Troopers. Or even...kinda sorta....The Stainless Steel Rat joins the Army. :)

Charles Ingrid's Sand Wars series started good.... some good reading in the first few books, at least there was when I read it about 12 years ago...

There's a series also by the guy who does Honor Harrington Series, David Weber, with Steve White that’s very good. The Harrington book are basically Horatio Hornblower update in space, and it’s a chick. It about 12 books if you count all the supplementals.

Amazon for
<a target=new href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1CTCQFHO6QUK1/qid=1084567088/sr=5-3/ref=sr_5_3/103-5822094-0877408"> Harrington Books LINK</a>

Steve White & Dave Weber – these are huge space warships battling it out, its also a series so get them I the right order
Amazon - ALL LINKS
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Im in the group that loved Steakleys Armor. Wonderful book.

The Slammers books are good if you like futuristic tank fights.

Vinge had some pretty good fights in some of his books too.

Sheesh, how could I forget this??

http://www.baen.com/library/

All kinds of free books for download, including the first Honor Harrington book.

I'm much more into the Sci-Fi Fantasy then the war novels. However, there have been some GREAT novels out there war oriented that were just outstanding. Ender's Game is one of those series.

I second that. Great series!

On my way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton

Another vote to Ender's Game and Shadow being a few of the best sci-fi novels of all time. Other than that, I'm afraid I don't know of any good ones to recommend..

Ender's Game/Shadow, while being excellent books in their own right, were overshadowed (pun unintended) by Speaker For The Dead (The second Ender book). That book was crazy nuts.
Anyways, the recommendation for Timothy Zahn sounds reasonable to me. I used to be really into Star Wars books back in middle school and loved his follow-up Star Wars books. They had good space battles with well fleshed out and interesting characters. At least, so they seemed to my 13 year old mind.

Another Armor fan here.

The Doomfarers of Coramonde and the Starfollowers of Coramonde were a couple of fun books by Brian Daley. They combined Sci-Fi and Fantasy. The books start in a fantasy setting, where a mage has just summoned a Vietnam era armored personnel carrier. They take out the dragon with grenades if I remember correctly. Fun stuff.

I also have a Sci-Fi series (ok, series is stretching it, it's 4 books) called GammaLAW by Brian Daley. I've only read the first one, so I don't know how good they are.

personnaly i really enjoyed the first 3 battletech novels.

enger's saga is excellent
i read 2 of them in 2 days
1.ender's game
2.speaker for the dead
next is xenocide (1mb txt format :P)

To people talking up anything in the Ender's saga beyond Game(and I guess Shadow, since it's apparently the same book); can I have some of that weed you are smoking? Speaker was awful. Even the ending to Game is downhill. It's like the man ran out of steam and never got it back.

Iain M. Banks has written some very imaginative stuff. Try Use of Weapons, or Feersum Enjin for a kick-off.

I second the recommendations for Honor Harrington and Hammer's Slammers (there are a bunch of Slammer's books).

W. Michael Gear has two trilogies I'd also recommend:
The Spider series and the Forbidden Borders series.

Spider:
The Warriors of Spider
The Way of Spider
The Web of Spider

Forbidden
Requiem for a Conqueorer
Relic of Empire
Countermeasures

Other great series:
William C. Deitz's "Legion of the Damned"
Dan Crag and David Sherman's "Starfist"

(gotta get back to work)

Since no one has mentioned it:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein (same guy who wrote Starship Troopers), a great novel about lunar rebellion.

Beyond another nod towards the Honor Harrington books, I have to give a couple "Hell Yeah's" in the direction of another David Weber series. The Roger Ramius series, consisting currently of March Upcountry, March to the Sea and March to the Stars, is an excellent collaboration between Mr. Weber and John Ringo. It is a sci-fi, future Marines series focusing on the coming of age of a spoiled young imperial prince, as well as his growing into the warrior ancestry he always derided.

Also by John Ringo is the Posleen War series -- A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front, When the Devil Dances, and one other I can't remember the title to. This is also another good series, focusing more on power armor troops, but it peters out near the middle of the last book. Too bad--it was a very good series up to that point.

Hammers Slammers- incredible- strangely enough, reminds me a lot of the Black company, by Glen cook, which I also love- both authors were vietnam vets, and their views on war are very simmilar, but one series is fantasy and the other hard sci fi- neat how the same feeling is evoked from different angles...

If you're looking for pure infantry, take a look at Rick Shelly's books:

Dirigent Mercenary Corps Series:

Officer-Cadet
Lieutenant
Captain
Major
Lieutenant Colonel
Colonel

Follows a soldier's career in the DMC. Good tale. Has a human side.


Spec Ops Squad Series:
Spec Ops Squad: Holding the Line
Spec Ops Squad : Deep Strike
Spec Ops Squad: Deep Strike

Nice series. Good action, less talk ;-)


And this triology whose name I have forgotten:
The Buchanan Campaign
The Fires of Coventry
Return to Camerein

The last set is a rough tale and more like reality than I cared to remember. A vastly depressing tale of victory.