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Well, I'd order them all, but Sword Staff and Crown is apparently $355.00 for a Kindle edition, and while I like supporting you, Wordsmith, that's a bit rich for my blood.

Kindle Price: 355.00inclusive of all taxes

https://www.amazon.in/Sword-Staff-Crown-Lee-Hadan-ebook/dp/B07XVT4P1G

Thank you for the links.
The wiki one actually helped quite a bit, which is honestly a rare thing for wiki articles to do ;)

Got some more questions, if you don't mind:

Is information transfer possible between something traveling near speed of light, and something else?
Say we have a "room", and inside it a person is traveling at the speed of light, in what ways, if any, could people outside the room interact with the person inside, and vice versa?
I guess what I'm asking is: Is it possible for the traveler to detect events outside the room and/or is it possible for people outside the room to detect changes/events inside the room?

If information can't be exchanged; in the same scenario of the near lightspeed room:
Every X minutes in the travelers reference he stops, and exchanges information with people outside the room, then goes back to near lightspeed for another X minutes.
Wouldn't this effectively be a time machine? Since every time he'd stop, a much longer timeframe would've passed by outside the room?

What I'm getting at is:
If everyone is in such a room, wouldn't that effectively eliminate things like, say, processing speed for a computer? Just let it take as long as it wants, travel faster to counteract the effect?
So if an operation takes a year in "normal" time, pop into the near lightspeed room for a second, and a year will have passed outside it, but only a second for you?

And if everyone is traveling at near lightspeed, but separately? Kind of a reverse lockstep society?


Sorry if I'm being stupid, I just find the idea fascinating.

Or head to amazon and buy the book!

If there is ever a day I won't take the opportunity to encourage people to support u/Squigglestorystudios it is not this day.

Sorry for the late reply! I have the link to the Amazon page at the bottom of the chapter, or, alternatively, you can click this handy link!

Edit: thank you so much for considering buying it, it means the world to me!

Buy the book HERE

This isn't exactly what you asked for but "On Evolution's Shore" and it's sequel (and short stories) by Ian McDonald are amazing and criminally under-known. It has to do with people investigating a crisis in Africa caused by an alien "spore" crashing into jungle and terraforming it into "Chaga." I don't want to spoil things but, the Chaga isn't as hostile as is first believed (the gov version is that it's like the Chtorr). It tailors itself to maximize the habitat volume of it's occupants and allows them to make biotech. It eventually pits humans using Chaga derived / hybridized tech against "Mech" Tech. Sort of like the Yuuzhan Vong.

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Shore-Ian-McDonald/dp/0553374354

Do you have any plans to add some of the lesser known/connected Jverse entries? Guttersnipe by /u/Crocodilly_Pontifex, Stranded by /u/Exotic_fish, Silence and Ravenous by /u/Mister-Book, and any others I may have missed could make a cool collection of side stories like this. Provided, of course, that /u/Hambone3110 approves.

I'll need to look those up. Also fun is The Human Chronicles by T.R. Harris. I really like Part I, but Part II is too God Mode Sue for me.

Kinda reminds me a little of What I've Become

I hope there's going to be more of this.

You might like Seeds of Terra.

The first part of the Transcripts series Amazon link. It's by /u/squigglestorystudios

I don't think there's a book of this yet, 5 parts seems kinda small for a book.

As far as I know there's the two major parts of Transcripts by /u/squigglestorystudios, part one which is done, and posted here, and that's what the book covers, Part 0 (prequel) is in progress now.

This arc is new to me, but I'll take my Transcripts hits anyway I can!

I think you are looking for Seeds of Terra by u/elevendog but he took it down to publish. The link is to the book on Amazon.

Ironically enough one of the songs on there by Leslie Fish also inspired a book of short stories,

https://www.amazon.com/Carmen-Mirandas-Ghost-Haunting-Station/dp/0671698648

Unfortunately it is out of print and was never released as an ebook.

He did publish a story on Amazon here

Book 1 of Transcripts by u/squigglestorystudios / Michelle Kathleen Hodgson was recently published on Amazon here. The rest of the story is available here on Reddit.

It's been published on Amazon: Seeds of Terra

surprisingly well written, part two is already out and part three is out in january

http://www.amazon.com/Libriomancer-Magic-Ex-Libris-Book/dp/0756408172

it has a few odd relationship parts but it doesnt take from the book in my opinion.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Become-Humanity-Within-Book-ebook/dp/B07JK65325

It's adapted from a fanfiction that is a bit further along.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QL1QX5C ;D

http://www.amazon.com/Steel-World-Undying-Mercenaries-Series-ebook/dp/B00FCXPC94

Ala this series I am assuming

not necessarily - Johnny Comes Marching Home from the Must Read section is on amazon. Mind you, he specifically made it DRM-free, but I believe that was out of personal preference (Here is the link where he discusses it).

Note also that just because it is being published DRM-free doesn't mean that he isn't getting money for it either.

/u/bellumaster could probably PM /u/semiloki about what he did

The Human Chronicles by T.R. Harris is about as HFY as you can get

This should be it... I think. My search-fu has been spotty lately.


Transcripts https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980714193/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_M0HXDbJW2EWFB

Here's the first book.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Dragon-Donn-Kushner/dp/0380707691

Couldn't find a source online.

The book "Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" by Joel Woodard is one I enjoyed. It was actually authored on this subreddit. Just a warning, it's very depressing.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Comes-Marching-Home-Again-ebook/dp/B010KWD9KU/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?keywords=johnny+comes+marching+home&qid=1559318937&s=books&sr=1-12

Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/371u4n/oc_johnny_comes_marching_home/

Not exactly what you are asking for, but Rapter Red is amazing. It is a POV of a Utahrapter living its life.

I actually haven't rad it in near 15 years now, but suddenly right back there. This was up with my favorite books growing up, along with Have Spacesuit Will Travel, and a book where a kid found a time travel device, and joins a guy and girl to stop the "evil" version of themselves from killing the "good" timeline that I can't remember the name to :( (of course, hero falls for bad girl, saving her by hiding her in the past) .

Which one? I think Salvation War was cancelled after someone uploaded it on a torrenting website. You can find the third Worldwar book on amazon, though.

https://www.amazon.com/Upsetting-Balance-Worldwar-Harry-Turtledove/dp/0345402405

At least one of my favorite HFY authors got his story published so i have to link it.. its required!

Supper Villainy and other poor career choices!

I purchased 2 copies of it when he first posted it i loan them out alllll the time :P

Undying Mercenaries series. HFY as all hell. Literally about humans going around kicking alien ass. /plot.

B. V. Larson, starts with Steel World

There's also some political nonsense mixed in.

Look, if you thought the out of the way industrial center of Stalingrad was a difficult fight then Moscow would have been an apocalypse. The Soviets had the place trenched and defended on a scale that would have eaten and spit out entire army groups. It was a preface for what would be prepared for Kursk. We look back on the sewers of Stalingrad as the apex of urban warfare hells? Imagine all the subway tunnels in Moscow. There was in no possible conception a way for the Soviets to lose Moscow unless it was the Germans getting supplied by the US and even then its a big if. Also, "Japanese assaults in the East". Do you...what...what? Did you forget that the Japanese had tried that, got stomped because the IJA high command had deluded itself and had to sign an accord with the Soviets? They were also far more preoccupied with China and couldn't have been arsed to spare the men. It was actually the fresh recruits from that non-front that revitalized the Soviets (where did you think Zhukov was the first months of the war? Gulag?).

Also as a note, Germany stumbled into a lot of luck to get as far as it did. The French and British spent the previous two decades in detante and reducing military expenditures (Germany on the other hand put 10% of its domestic budget towards the military). They sat on their hands when Hitler had all of his forces in Poland and then proceeded to act with all the speed of a geriatric panda when Germany took weeks to switch focus and bring it down on them. As sad as it is to say, the Germans were much more willing to bite the bullet and fight than the Franco-British Alliance. This gave the Germans all the initiative and they used it to its fullest.

On the Soviet front there are two huge reasons benefiting the Germans in their successes. The first is that the Soviets were still in the process of moving their defensive positions to the new borders after Hitler and Stalin had split the continent. Thus when Germany invaded much of the Red Army was in disarray and able to be outmaneuvered fairly easily. Secondly, the Soviets had also decided to embark on one of the most ambitious and comprehensive rearmament and upgrade programs. This left them with not enough of the new stuff and not enough replacements for the existing material. People will often say "oh, Germany should have waited a year!" or some other such bollocks but the fact of the matter is that the timing of Barbarossa was one of the few things they got right. It was the Red Army at its weakest and they couldn't afford to wait. Their failure laid more in the fact that the Germans did very little in the way of studying Soviet tactics and thus were wildly surprised when they ran into the third echelon of Soviet forces (Deep Battle dictated that they be three echelons deep, the Germans expected two, smashed those two, then got roundly stalled when they ran into the third).

Also, the Germans were still using horses for transport. Good god that was a terrible way to try and supply an army whose supply was expected to run in the hundreds of kilometers.

Hey there. So I wanted to reply to your statement and maybe compare your research experience to my field experience, and maybe expand a little bit on some of the points you made, or refuted.

BTW, I don't know anything about your background other than your writing here, so please don't misconstrue what I say as a judgment on you or our experiences. My perspective comes from 8 years as a US Army soldier, with a few overseas tours, and 4 years as a LEO.

I think a good insight into the original OP's comments is LTC Dave Grossman's book On Killing. Grossman breaks down his own research into the killing impulse, conditioning, and how killing affects the individual's psyche. I would recommend reading both of his books (On Killing and On Combat) if you haven't done so already.

Although I'm not really qualified to speak to the vast socio-cultural implications of large-scale conflicts (you mention that "War is a contest of wills"), I can talk a little about the process of getting one person to kill another without creating massive psychological trauma. (FYI, my experience is US centric, so I'm not remotely qualified to opine on the traditions of other countries.)

Paramount to this process is the concept of "dehumanizing" the enemy. Common slurs used to refer to the enemy throughout our history (kraut, charlie, hajji, raghead, VC, sand-nigg*r, japs, chinks, etc) exist as a way to dehumanize the enemy, making them much easier to kill from a psychological perspective. Humans, as a default, are social creatures. From an evolutionary standpoint, any true violence between groups is a threat to their survival, hence the prevalence of posturing, ceremonial battles, proxy fighting, etc.

I think it may be helpful to step away from a discussion that centers around "soldiers vs warriors" and focus more specifically, and fundamentally, on "humans that can kill without suffering crippling emotional trauma vs humans who can't." If we recognize that basic distinction, then we can begin identifying the underlying characteristics that separate these groups from one another.

The main traits trained into a group of individuals that are expected to kill another person as part of their duties (military, law enforcement, etc) are:

• the ability to dehumanize the enemy,
  
• the ability to overcome the physiological response brought on by imminent interpersonal violence,
  
• the ability to sustain an appropriate response after the act of violence has been committed, and
  
• the ability to consistently engage in this behavior without an exceptional extrinsic motivator (like somebody threatening your life or your loved ones' life, a heightened emotional state like anger or hatred, etc).
  
  I think it would be fair to say that many people can exhibit one of these behaviors, but the application of all of these together requires extensive training in desensitization, stress-response control, and muscle memory.
  
  Killing is an unnatural state of affairs for most people, especially in our fairly evolved social behavior models. That is not to say that people are incapable of violence when presented with no other choice; and also not to imply that there are way more confounding factors than can be explored in a Reddit comment (mental illness, cultural tendencies, extreme hunger/poverty/trauma, etc). But I think it is important to recognize the common threads that tie violent acts together.
  
  I'm definitely not going to try and refute every single point you've made, since
  
  

1. I'm not a sociologist, just a former cop/soldier, and
   
2. This debate is very far from being resolved within the professions that perform this type of research.
   
   I just read an article that contradicts much of what I've read on the topic (and what I've said here!), but the argument is still quite heated and lively.
   
   So, anyhow, this is my opinion, and I'm glad we can discuss this openly. Cheers!
   
   ^(BTW I love your writing.)