Reddit reviews Wasp

This is the book, if anyone's interested: Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. It's a brilliant and darkly humorous novel. Let's just hope terrorists never read it, because it's basically a handbook in how to fight an asymmetric war. If you ignore minor technical details like the punch card thing, it has aged very well indeed.

I don't exactly recommend it, but there's Out of the Dark, by Weber,. It's a bit derivative of other works, but it has a twist ending that I'll admit I did not see coming as it is so out of character for what I've come to expect from Weber. If you don't want to read the whole novel, apparently there is a short story version of this one.

I DO recommend The Human Edge, by Gordon R. Dickson, which is an anthology about conflicts between humans and aliens... not so much about aliens attacking the planet per se, but about how humans have powers that, while banal and seemingly weak from our perspective, are terrifying to the aliens... In one story, the human power that makes them devastating to the point of warranting extermination is Morality... in an other it's Denial. :-D

Wasp, by Eric Frank Russell, is a short but excellent read detailing a human surgically altered to pass as alien as he infiltrates an alien planet to sow chaos in advance of a human invasion. The Aliens are not very well... ALIEN... but this little novel is an excellent primer on infiltration, espionage, and asymmetric warfare techniques.

Finally, the short story Superiority, by Arthur C. Clarke,, while not about aliens, the two warring parties are both human, is a must-read for military science fiction fans.

I'll got a list I think is reasonably obscure.

Coils by Fred Saberhagen.

Tactics of Mistake by George R Dickson. Interstellar politics and the warrior of the future. A little bit stiff at times.

Wasp by Eric Frank Russel. The original one man against the planet story. This is probably the most well know on the list.

Fires of Paratime by LE Modesitt Jr. Time travel society done well with a bit of Norse mythology thrown in.

All of an Instant by Richard Garfinkle. Time travel done oddly. And well.

Metaplanetary by Tony Daniel. Stross before Stross. Unfortunately the last book of the trilogy was never published.

Wyrm by Mark Fabi. One of the better books on computer virus and early internet shenanigans.

Thanks for posting this. Someday I will find a battered copy of his masterpiece Wasp and read it someday.

Wasp, by Eric Frank Russel is a clasic spy-fi novel.

http://www.amazon.com/Wasp-Eric-Frank-Russell/dp/0575070951

Quite enjoyable and "pulpy".. it has an early Heinelein/Doc EE Smith wibe about it.

There is a science fiction book based on this scenario.

The "agency" says that a wasp inside salon of a car can cause a huge damage comparing the size of a wasp to a human. So they send one man to be a "Wasp" inside the enemy lines...


Erick Frank Russell - Wasp


BTW The book is great(!), funny I really enjoyed it.