Military Science Fiction

Military Science Fiction is a subgenre of both Science Fiction and Military Fiction, commonly sliding into the Space Opera territory. At its most basic, Military Science Fiction is Science Fiction that focuses on the military, but the genre has more specific nuances than that.

The Protagonist in this genre is normally part of the chain of command (or becomes part of it in progress), while an ensemble cast is The Squad. The story is usually set against the backdrop of a large-scale (space) war but war is optional. The Science Fiction part mostly manifests in futuristic weaponry and vehicles (first of all, Cool Starships), while the organization structure is mostly based upon contemporary US or Commonwealth military.

Often, the writers would cheat a little by having a Mildly Military organization instead of realistic military for the sake of good story. One particular subgenre of MSF in Video Games is A Space Marine Is You. Another that's especially particular (but by no means exclusive) to anime is the Real Robot Genre.

Tropes commonly used in MSF (in addition to most Military and Warfare Tropes)

 * Air Jousting
 * Alien Invasion
 * Apocalypse How
 * Arm Cannon
 * Attack Drone (rapidly becoming Truth in Television)
 * Boarding Party
 * Bug War
 * Hive Caste System
 * Death Ray
 * Drop Ship
 * Earthshattering Kaboom
 * Forgotten Superweapon
 * Galactic Conqueror
 * Humans Are Warriors
 * Humongous Mecha
 * Hyperspace Arsenal
 * Kill Sat
 * Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
 * Nuke'Em
 * Person of Mass Destruction
 * Powered Armor
 * Putting on the Reich
 * Real Robot
 * Rock Beats Laser
 * Space Cadet
 * Space Fighter
 * Space Marine
 * Space Navy
 * Standard Sci-Fi Army
 * Standard Sci-Fi Fleet
 * Standard Starship Scuffle
 * Super Soldier
 * The War of Earthly Aggression
 * Ye Olde Nuclear Silo

Works with notable Military Science Fiction elements include

 * Alien—Primarily the second film, although the fourth had some elements of this.
 * All You Need Is Kill
 * Antares by Michael McCollum
 * Armor by John Steakley
 * The Aux series, by David Gunn.
 * Babylon 5 had its fair share of various nasty conflicts
 * Ball Lightning
 * Battlestar Galactica Classic
 * Battlestar Galactica Reimagined
 * BattleTech
 * And by extension, the BattleTech Expanded Universe.
 * Bolo, originally by Keith Laumer
 * Carreras Legions, by Tom Kratman
 * The Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson, notably Dorsai!! and Tactics of Mistake.
 * The CoDominium series is the best-known of Jerry Pournelle's works, but is hardly the only example of the exquisitely well-researched military SF he writes. His bibliography also includes the lesser-known but no-less loved Janissaries series, co-authored with Roland Green.
 * The Command & Conquer Tiberium series of games drifts in this direction, beginning Twenty Minutes in The Future and ending with all manner of sci-fi trappings. Especially in fic; double-especially in Tiberium Wars.
 * Confederation of Valor by Tanya Huff.
 * Crusade, spinoff series to Babylon Five, and whose Troubled Production is the stuff of legends.
 * David Drake does quite a bit of MilSF. Like with Ringo, below, he's also written in the Honorverse (Drake's Honorverse short story A Grand Tour influenced what became the RCN series, with the dashing Captain and his librarian from Hell friend/sidekick as the primary focus). Notable Drake series (an incomplete listing):
 * Hammers Slammers
 * RCN
 * The General
 * Belisarius Series.
 * He's also done a respectable number of shorter novels
 * Ranks of Bronze
 * Redliners.
 * Dread Empires Fall Trilogy, by Walter J. Williams.
 * Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
 * Exo Squad
 * First Encounter Assault Recon
 * The Forever War
 * Gears of War
 * Gundam, pretty much every incarnation of it, except G Gundam and Gundam X
 * The Halo games, books and comics.
 * The Helmsman Saga
 * Iji
 * Kris Longknife series, by Mike Shepherd
 * The Lacuna series by David Adams is basically this.
 * Legend of Galactic Heroes
 * The Lensman series, by E. E. "Doc" Smith, is mostly about the adventures of individual Lensmen, but it also features major military actions involving enormous starship formations (usually laden with an overexuberant description of the scale of energies being hurled back-and-forth).
 * The Lost Fleet series
 * Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S, which takes the franchise's Gundam influences to its logical conlcusion as the title character grows up to become a captain in Mid-Childa's military.
 * The Man-Kzin Wars novels set in Larry Niven's Known Space.
 * The Mass Effect series is a mixed bag: part one is pretty clear cut, with military regulations and chain of command playing a major role in the story. In part two, however, Shepard cuts all ties to the Alliance military and goes rogue with the Cerberus, who give their agents full autonomy and only care that the job gets done—the whole "military" aspect of sci-fi quietly leaves the room. In part three, Shepard is back with the Alliance but with the Reapers attacking the galaxy, s/he is left to run around unsupervised, only occasionally reporting back to Admiral Hackett, like s/he did to the Illusive Man in the previous game.
 * Metroid, occasionally. Samus is established as having been in the Galactic Federation Army, and Metroid Prime 2, Prime 3, and Other M feature GF soldiers and marines as characters.
 * New Kashubia Series
 * Old Man's War
 * Red vs. Blue
 * Red vs. Blue the Blood Gulch Chronicles
 * Red vs. Blue the Recollection
 * John Ringo's writing currently spans multiple genres, but he started his literary career writing Military Science Fiction. The MilSF works:
 * Council Wars
 * Into the Looking Glass
 * Posleen War Series
 * Prince Roger Series (aka Empire of Man, co-written with David Weber)
 * Troy Rising
 * Rogue Trooper
 * Schlock Mercenary
 * Sea Quest DSV
 * Shadow Ops
 * Sixth Column
 * Space: Above and Beyond
 * Spots the Space Marine
 * Starcraft
 * Stargate, and its spin-offs, first of all, Stargate SG-1
 * Starship Troopers
 * Starsiege, and its pre/se-quels.
 * Star Trek drifts in and out of the subgenre; later entries in the franchise tend to make it more explicitly military, a tendency which its original creator violently opposed.
 * Star Trek Online is very militaristic, so much so that it took fan outcry to get the developers to patch diplomatic solutions into missions.
 * Star Wars, obviously.
 * The Sten series, written by two men who are (respectively) ex-CIA and ex-military, craft a very cool saga about a Space Marine who eventually graduates into an Ambadassador.
 * The Takeshi Kovacs series, particularly Broken Angels.
 * The Tau Ceti Agenda Series, by Travis S. Taylor
 * Tour of the Merrimack, a series by R. M. Meluch
 * Traveller RPG series. A large part of it has to do with the military aspects.
 * Warhammer 40000, and most of its spin-off literature, notably Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!.
 * The War Against the Chtorr novels by David Gerrold.
 * David Weber's work is primarily in this genre, though he has written pure fantasy works. The MilSF works:
 * Empire From the Ashes
 * Hell's Gate
 * Honor Harrington
 * Out of the Dark
 * Safehold
 * The four Starfire novels with Steve White (Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection).
 * Wing Commander, particularly the novels by William Forstchen, and Wing Commander Academy.
 * X Wing Series
 * Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold, has many elements of this, though it varies from book to book.
 * Timothy Zahn has played heavily in this field. In addition to his Star Wars Expanded Universe work (his biggest claim to fame in that field probably being The Thrawn Trilogy), he's done, among others, the Cobra trilogy and The Conquerors Trilogy.

Special mention must be made of Baen Books, which publishes Weber, Drake, Ringo, Pournelle, and Bujold, among others. Baen is probably the foremost Military Science Fiction publisher in literature. Many of Baen's authors, including Drake, Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson, and more, are former or current military.