Interested in a little Sci-Fi?

If you can use real physics and your battle scenes are depicted in an intelligent interesting way, I'm sure you will get a following. I love sci-fi novels as well. But usually find the scientific explanation and explanations of why a weapon works or how it works and why tactics are used is usually lacking. Your right. Glossing over battle scenes is like watching star wars... its pretty, but leaves the reader with a hollow feeling. It usually equates to 500 pages that can be written in one line "we attacked and hey, we won somehow". Sure it might be a little more detailed than that, but usually not really.

Timothy Zahn's explanations of star wars combat are the only things that come remotely close to making the series more than "hey we attacked and we won". 

Honor Harrington Series - David Weber 

Safehold - David Weber - Off Armageddon Reef - what I am reading now

This series is great fun off youtube, if you want to know about the basics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7mwIHCBrjo&feature=related

Yea I agree. And most definitely agree about the physics (which I have studied a little along with some chemistry). There are some explanations in the book but i'll put more elsewhere for more advanced enthusiasts (perhaps on a website as I have some I.T. training as well) as most physics bamboozles the average person. 

The "LightDrive" is an invention of my own but several elements run in tandem with 'FISIP' theory (alternate model for gravity, light and magnetism). The concept, very basically, is that a force (in the form of a infinitesimally small particle) is 'holding back' light much the same as wind resistance or friction. Using a device that repels some of these particles away allows light to speed up a little, allowing for greater inter-system velocities.

A lot of that stuff will be available in the glossary however, and won't play a large part in the text as this will lessen the target audience. 

The novel deals with lots of the action. It gets really into the nitty-gritty of warfare in the 2700's including technology and the sacrifices soldiers make to be the best.  

Um, I hate to nitpick but Prophesy is a verb.  You want Prophecy, I think.

Looks interesting to me.

Thanks Volt, I actually thought I would get more response on a forum that is tied to such an intense action sci-fi game.

Perhaps there are a lot less sci-fi novel fans here than I thought.

lol, well you've at least found a fellow Sci-Fi writer (me) 

Then it is a pleasure! What style do you write? Do you have a manuscript already down on paper?

Working on it anyways.  I'm on page 80 or so.  And I'm probably somewhere within space opera.

I can appreciate Sci-Fi novels, and I have been trying to write a few short stories, a Sins of a Solar Empire story set at Agamemnon's Bounty, and a canon respecting, technical mistake clarifying, Star Wars short story set in 25 BBY just before the Yuuzhan Vong War (New Jedi Order era) depicting the Viscount, lead ship of the Viscount-class Star Defender, during her battles against Imperial holdouts (something that is currently only mentioned in passing on Wookieepedia), but I haven't gotten very far with either story yet.

Tis not an easy road but a very rewarding one. I remember writing the climax and feeling thrilled at finally being a able to put down the ideas I had had for so long finally on paper (figuratively of course, I would not have been able to write the 125,000+ words on actual paper in the time frame I did).

I like to mix space opera with brutal in-your-face combat alongside some fun tech. I also have a talent with poems, and so included some 'prophecies' that foretell future events.

Here's a teaser:

"Under stone scorched by flame,
Re-begun shall be the game
Caused again by the desperate need,
Drawn deeper by terrible greed,
The Sleeper who set the trap,
Stirs again from its long nap."

Yeah, the opening chapter of mine switches between the two main characters: an unimaginably wealthy and powerful CEO meeting with the United Human Republic's Senate to discuss some recent security threats during a the first civil war in nearly a thousand years and a half-breed Extuli (homo Sapiens subspecies with genetically modified intelligence and strength) soldier that plays an integral role in the final battle of the civil war.  This puts him on the radar of the CEO as he gets dragged into a conflict no one except the CEO had ever anticipated that threatens to wipe out the human race.

In this regard, it switches between space opera, political war (focusing on the conflict between politicians rather than their ideals), individual combat, and a good deal of tech (the primary conflict deals with a series of advances in superluminal travel and how those drives can be weaponized).

Interesting. Gotta say the Extuli is a nice touch. I play around with some genetic engineering as well.

I've got this character who is the heir of an extremely wealthy inter-stellar freight company who is basically a bored badass who jacked an expensive black market, neuro-system upgrade up his spine to augment his fighting skills. It allows him to travel to some of the worst places in the Confederation to create havoc. He is so fun to write as he is always getting into terrible situations and usually ends up talking his way through it either with words or the persuasive tip of a knife   

lol, that sounds like the CEO when younger lol.  I'm writing the first of what will be a series of three books which occur when he's already an immensely powerful politician and businessman when the guy's in his 200's (400's if you count being in cryostasis), but I hope to write a prequel to all of them to show how he develops.  He is born into a family so wealthy and powerful, the Extuli-Human Empire (the UHR doesn't rise until a few years after the Empire falls) considers them critical to their security as their company is the sole provider of superluminal drives (at the time, only warp drives are possible).

Unfortunately, it's not all unicorns and lolipops for the kid born in the early 3000's to Johnathan and Rachel Tesla.  In the first (and last) test of a manned superluminal flight in-atmosphere, Mrs. Tesla gets shredded in a malfunction just over a year after her son is born.  Being raised more by robotic butlers and money than parents, the kid becomes a problem.  Eventually, Johnathan is assassinated by an anarchist while the son is in his early twenties and leaves the entire inheritance to his son with the condition that he is able to answer satisfactorily a series of questions to a beta-level AI of Johnathan.  It takes more than a decade, but their son Nicholas ultimately takes the reigns of the largest company in history.  After nearly seventy years of success and wealth, he decides to begin testing on new mechanisms that would allow near-instant transit between two arbitrarily distant points in the universe and the release of a line of sentient robots.

The combination of these leads to what becomes known as the Holocaust, a near-extinction of the human race that also turns the overused idea of robots killing all humans on its head.  The Holocaust involves the glassing of Extuliani, the homeworld of the Extuli and the imperial capital, and after a few years of chaos, Nicholas finally stabilizes the core worlds enough to create the United Human Republic which defends the last few dozen remaining systems until a final climactic battle in which Nicholas's ship is destroyed and he throws himself into cryostasis in an attempt to survive until a rescue party comes for him (this is the end of the prequel).  Unfortunately, he's not found for two hundred years at which point a group of anthropologists is looking through the wreckage and happen to stumble across him.

He never loses his sarcastic and sardonic nature that he grew up with, making him by far the most entertaining character to write in my book simply because despite the book seeming to center around the soldier, if you also look at the prequel, the entire series centers around him.

Yea that does sound like him. You gotta love a character who is both extremely talented and yet extremely flawed. Look at Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and you have a wonderful case study of this. Makes for a very entertaining read. 

Methinks you've been reading Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series.

I've read it. I like some of his ideas but his writing style made casual reading difficult.

Some good stuff tho.

Methinks those are some of my favorite books   In the book I won't actually call it a beta level, I just did that because it's faster than explaining what it actually is.

Interesting how several of us are into creative writing here. I am currently working on the outline for the first novel of a series. It is science fiction, 2nd edition AD&D fantasy, a bit of Lovecraft, maybe a smidgen of Gamma World as I remember it, and an element that you guys would find extremely offensive. It does not violate US Law at all. It is loosely based on "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H.G. Wells.

The society is highly Spiritual. There is no and has never been Religion. You don't find the Intolerance of, Lies about, and Hatred of all that is different, that we are stuck with here.

It begins on a Parallel Earth and Earth will have to be evacuated. The hook for this is a super volcano, the caldera itself is 4 times the size of Toba, and the magma chamber is 4 times the size of the caldera. Extinction of all land based and avian life is assured. Earth will not be habitable for at least 100,000 earth years. The society is already interstellar, with 10 colonies.

However, the story is character driven and the technology and some other things are literary devices that don't need to be described in detail.