The Honor System. Author David Weber brings you Hornblower in Space.

Best-selling fantasy author Stephen Hunt reviews the creative works of David Weber.

How do you pick the books your read? I don't know about you, but I don't read too many SF novels by authors I don't know anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I have my favorites; authors like William Gibson, Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, Bruce Sterling and the like, the ones whose works I will go out and buy religiously - often in hardback.

For the rest, I rely on reviews by trusted sources, personal recommendations, and last and definitely least, the bookshop charts.

One author - and a certain series in particular - I have recently discovered took me a long time to get around to.

Why?

Simply because (a) the books looked quite trite on a face-value dust jacket reading and (b) the author always seemed to get to the top of the US book sale charts, a sandy arena littered by the bodies of works like StarWars The Continuing Adventures, X-Files the Literary Mystery and even worse, fantasy with fluffy cats and dragon-slayers called Brad, Pete, or Bob.

Don't hold it against me if you are called, Brad or Bob, but let's face it … Conan The Barbarian. Good name. Brad The Barbarian? Get out of my bedroom, you ficking hack, and take your talking fluffy fey sodding elfen cat with you.

I won the WH Smith Award for a fantasy novel I wrote in 1994, by the way, so no fantasy-fan vs sci-fi fan hate mail, please, I love both genres (when executed well).

David Weber's Honor Harrington series features a fluffy cat sidekick for the main character. It's telepathic, or empathic or something, and it was enough to put me off the series for a couple of years. A mistake I now freely admit was a bad error. It's an alien tree-cat, has six legs, sits on the owner's shoulder, and the cute factor overwhelmed every sense of good taste I have ever developed watching and reading very bad SF.

Weber has written dozens of Honor Harrington novels it seems, and the series has lately become one of the most popular (as defined by best-selling) of the science fiction genre.

It's a simple enough premise. There's a female naval officer, called Honor Harrington, who is a commander of the Royal Manticoran Navy, a human empire - one of many - that's split off from the powerful Solarian League .. AKA Earth and her direct colonies.

The premise David Weber has used is to transplant the rough history, society and technologies of the Napoleonic Age to the far future. I did the same in my novel, For The Crown and The Dragon, although my contribution to the fantasy genre was to kick off the 'flintlock fantasy' niche, rather than do anything SF-related - and therefore intrinsically more noble and worthwhile. Sorry.

Anyway, I enjoyed the first Honor novel - On Basilisk Station - so much, I went out bought two more, The Honor of The Queen and The Short and Victorious War, and am now waiting to wade through Echoes of Honor and In Enemy Hands.

With title likes these you know you are going to be reading some fast-paced space opera.

In the series opener, Honor has just landed her first command, an antique light cruiser that has had most its armament removed and replaced by an experimental gravity lance. Among the ranks of the Manticoran navy, this is one step up from a garbage scow, and to make things worse, Honor is being assigned to the fleet's dead-end posting, Basilisk Station.

Basilisk Station is an out-of-the-way trade post that's been manned by incompetents and banished & disgraced officers for many a year.

Unluckily for her, it also the point of the Manticoran Kingdom that has been picked for invasion by the Republic of Haven. Haven is the 'France' of this Napoleonic analogy, while Manticore is Nelson's 'England' of course.

The Republic is led by a wicked repressive class of Legislators (read nobility), who are riding the tiger with their own people, a lazy dole class of HoloTV-watching hedonists who demand regular bread and circuses in return for not rioting that day.

To fund the non-productive benefit drawing masses, the Republic has launched on a program of territorial expansion, picking off her single-system neighbors until her empire now abuts that of Manticore.

The later novels sketch out this universe in more detail. The second book, The Honor of The Queen, has Honor drawing ambassadorial duty at a system at war with its immediate neighbor.

Both planets are male dominated theocracies settled by right-wing fundamentalist Christians, and naturally, regard the appointment of a female office by the Queen as an insult.

Manticore and the Republic are both vying for influence in the system, cold-war style, although it doesn’t take long for the impetuous Honor to heat things up a notch.

The third novel, A Short Victorious War, has The Republic launching an all-out assault on the plucky Kingdom of Manticore in an attempt to distract the lazy masses, close to revolt over the collapsing benefit economy.

This time, of course, they're up against good old Honor, who is going to give them a war that's far from short … and anything but victorious.

The series if definitely one for the fans of military science fiction, with large swathes of David Weber's novels featuring engagements between ships and fleets … in detail. While lesser authors would have reduced this to a tedious control panel-reading exercise - hey, I've read a few of those in my time - Weber manages to keep the battles tense and page-turning, no matter how drawn out they are.

These war scenes are some of the best I have ever read, and for all that the ship maneuvers are mired in Napoleonic tactics, the crew lingo is, I suspect, rooted in modern sub and ship combat, with missile programming on the fly, and ECM measures galore.

As a fellow Napoleonic history buff, I can only marvel at the skill at which he's shifted the ship tactics of Nelson to the far future. It's done largely by technological conceits. For instance, Manticore's fleet have shields that don't give 360 degree coverage, necessitating Napoleonic ship-to-ship tricks such as delivering broadsides, breaking the line, and crossing the T.

There's also some clever use of sails for hyperspace travel and relativistic drive mechanics that further reinforce the Hornblower-like antics of the crews.

Three books down, and plenty to get through, and I have to admit, I am a big fan of the series. Enough so I can ever forgive David Weber the word game he played with the Republic's new leader at the end of the third novel.

Rob S. Pierre.

Hmmm. Pronounce that name real fast.

I suspect the laser guillotine may be featuring heavy in the fourth Honor novel (only available in its US edition currently).

You may keep your head, citizen, but I have already lost mine to the beautiful charms of Manticore's leading naval officer.

I am sure I will be Honoring my local Borders with my presence some time soon.

Browse for the latest books by David Weber

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NEWS ARCHIVE

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The Honor System. Author David Weber brings you Hornblower in Space.

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Fina Nolan. 01/02/2001
I'm not normally a big fan of military science fiction, but David Weber brings the characters alive and really makes you care what happens to them.

Patti Taylor. 02/02/2001
Weber does a spectacular job creating wonderful characters, believable battles, and decent plots, something that can be hard to find all in one place. And there are 8 books so far, all of which live up to the great standard Weber set in the first book.

Frank. 02/02/2001
Would love to see you include a current listing of new scifi available in eBook format, especially for the new RCA eBook (Gemstar/Rocket) format. Thanks.

Bill Graham. 16/02/2001
NO Hornblower in space is More like A Bertram Chandler and his Grimes series... a LOT more like it. The Honor Harrington series doesn't even come close. Pure schlep.

Gareth Dart. 28/02/2001
Just read books 1 and 2, and although I'm not a great fan of space opera per se (the central characters always seem to be such goody two shoes, just an opinion, don't get huffy) Weber's won me over. Also he's not afraid to kill off characters who've played a central role and with whom the reader has identified, and doesn't limit himself to eliminating the bit part characters. Great pair of books. If you're reading, nice one Dave.