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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. It should come as no surprise that a high percentage of MSF writers are military veterans.
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
- Boarding Party
- Boarding Pod
- Clone Army
- Death Ray
- Drop Pod
- Drop Ship
- Escape Pod
- Forgotten Superweapon
- Galactic Conqueror
- Hyperspace Arsenal
- Killer Robot
- Kill Sat
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
- Nuke 'em
- Ye Olde Nuclear Silo
- Person of Mass Destruction
- Powered Armor
- Proud Warrior Race
- Putting on the Reich
- Rock Beats Laser
- Space Battle
- Space Cadet
- Space Fighter
- Space Marine
- Space Navy
- Standard Sci-Fi Army
- Standard Sci-Fi Fleet
- Standard Starship Scuffle
- Supersoldier
- War from Another World
- The War of Earthly Aggression
Works with notable Military Science Fiction elements include:
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Multimedia Franchises
- The Alien/Predator/AVP franchise(s) sometimes flirt with military science fiction, depending on the movie or work.
- Although the Alien series never involves warfare in its storyline at all, as they are more like monster movies set in outer space; however soldiers still end up serving as major characters in a few installments anyways.
- Aliens started the trend, with Space Marines (a very iconic fixture of military sci-fi) showing up to try and fight the titular Alien monsters.
- Alien: Resurrection takes place on a secret military research station orbiting over Earth.
- Alien Trilogy
- Aliens: Colonial Marines
- Meanwhile the Predator series is much more consistently militaristic, with the protagonists in all but the second movie consisting mostly of experienced soldiers who are pitted in combat against the titular Predators, who are deadly alien warriors that enjoy hunting and killing other warriors.
- Although the Alien series never involves warfare in its storyline at all, as they are more like monster movies set in outer space; however soldiers still end up serving as major characters in a few installments anyways.
- G.I. Joe.
- Gundam, pretty much every incarnation of it, except G Gundam, Gundam X, Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G, and Gundam Build Fighters.
- The whole Halo franchise revolves around a galactic war between humans and aliens in the distant future.
- Mass Effect
- Resident Evil
- Space Battleship Yamato and her various spinoffs and adaptations, such as the live action movie and Space Battleship Yamato 2199.
- Stargate-verse
- Starship Troopers
- 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: Deep Space Nine is the most militaristic canon series.
- 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 is obviously this; just as the title suggests, it's mostly about epic warfare in space. Many main characters are soldiers, diplomats, or both, and much attention is given to extensive battle scenes in all Star Wars movies and most other works.
- The Terminator franchise's backstory involves a post-apocalyptic future conflict, in which Skynet (a rogue military computer network) triggered a global nuclear war to destroy human civilization, and then deploys an army of killer robots in a genocidal war to exterminate the last human survivors. Skynet and the Human Resistance then both make frequent use of time travel in efforts to change the pre-war past (and thus the outcome of the future war).
- Wing Commander, particularly the novels by William Forstchen, and Wing Commander Academy.
Anime and Manga
- Argevollen
- Armored Trooper VOTOMS
- Flag
- Legend of Galactic Heroes
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, which takes the franchise's Gundam influences to its logical conclusion as the title character grows up to become a captain in Mid-Childa's military.
- Martian Successor Nadesico
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, though less so when the Alien Invasion premise began to play second fiddle to the psychology and introspection.
- Robotech
- Robotech II: The Sentinels
Comicbooks
Fan Works
Film
Light Novels
Literature
- Aeon 14 by MD Cooper
- Alexis Carew by J.A. Sutherland
- Angel in the Whirlwind by Christopher G Nuttall
- Antares by Michael McCollum
- Armor by John Steakley
- Ashes Of Empire series, but Eric Thomson.
- Ball Lightning
- Bolo series, originally by Keith Laumer
- The Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson, notably Dorsai! and Tactics of Mistake.
- Cilva
- 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.
- Confederation of Valor by Tanya Huff.
- The Chronicles Of Old Guy features a society of intelligent super-tanks a la 'Bolo'' and the adventures of one amongst their number, "Old Guy".
- David Drake does quite a bit of MilSF. Like with Ringo, below, he's also written in the Honor Harrington series (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):
- Combat K Series.
- Death's Head series, by David Gunn.
- Dirigent Mercenary Corps by Rick Shelley.
- The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook
- Dread Empire's Fall Trilogy, by Walter Jon Williams.
- Embedded, by Dan Abnett
- Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
- The Extinction Cycle by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
- First Colony
- The Flight Engineer
- The Forever War
- The Four Horsemen Universe
- Galactic Marines series
- The Galaxy on Fire series, by Joe Kassabian:
- The Genesis Fleet
- Hellburner by C. J. Cherryh focuses on a moderately realistic Space Fighter and its crew.
- The Helmsman Saga.
- Here Be Dragons by Craig Alan.
- Kris Longknife series, by Mike Shepherd
- Tom Kratman's MilSF works, in addition to his work in Legacy of the Aldenata:
- The Lacuna series by David Adams is basically this.
- 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
- The Mako Saga
- The Man-Kzin Wars novels set in Larry Niven's Known Space.
- The Nameless War trilogy by Edmond Barrett
- New Kashubia Series
- Christopher Nuttall:
- Old Man's War
- 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
- Prince Roger series (aka Empire of Man, co-written with David Weber)
- Legacy of the Aldenata
- Troy Rising
- Remember To Always Be Brave
- Resident Evil
- Shadow Ops
- Siobhan Dunmoore
- Sixth Column
- Star Carrier
- Solar Warden
- 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.
- Stone King
- 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
- Valhalla by Ari Bach features a chapter in the military of 2230 and eleven more chapters in a pseudo-military more militaristic than the main military.
- Theirs Not to Reason Why by Creator/Jean Johnson is a rare example with a female protagonist and an abundance of women in the supporting cast.
- Lucifer's Star by C.T. Phipps combines this with Space Opera. A story of The Empire's best pilot after his side loses.
- Worldwar
- 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
- Manticore Ascendant, a Spin-Off prequel series of Honor Harrington co-written by Timothy Zahn.
- Out of the Dark
- Safehold
- The four Starfire novels with Steve White (Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection).
- 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 Legends 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.
- The History of the Galaxy series by Andrey Livadny. Most books deal with fights between human governments, factions, corporations as well as against aliens. Most protagonists tend to be members of the military (usually the Confederate fleet).
- Spots the Space Marine
- The Osmerian Conflict
- The Machineries of Empire
- Victoria, by military theorist William S. Lind, is a near-future example, following an ex-Marine staff officer and military consultant through several wars between various of the Divided States of America in the 2030s.
- Who Needs Men? sees a high-tech Lady Land fighting a Vietnam-like war against guerrillas from a more normal, but primitive society.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5 had its fair share of various nasty conflicts:
- Crusade, spinoff series to Babylon Five, and whose Troubled Production is the stuff of legends.
- Battlestar Galactica
- "Men Against Fire", an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror.
- seaQuest DSV
- Space: Above and Beyond
Machinima
Tabletop Games
- AT-43
- BattleTech
- And by extension, the BattleTech Expanded Universe.
- Beyond the Gates of Antares
- Mutant Chronicles
- Planet Mercenary
- Traveller RPG series. A large part of it has to do with the military aspects.
- Warhammer 40,000, and most of its spin-off literature, notably Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain.
Video Games
- Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator
- Battle Zone 1998 and Battlezone II
- Battlefield 2142
- Bio Lab Wars
- Call of Duty: while the series is largely historical or modern, some installments feature futuristic elements like doomsday weapons (from Kill Sats to bio-engineered plagues), exosuits, fully automated robot armies, cyborgs, railguns, zombies, and even aliens
.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III: also an example of Cyberpunk.
- Call of Duty: Ghosts
- Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare: the best example of these, as it has all of the above plus space warfare with the plot concerning a war between human-colonized Mars and Earth.
- Command & Conquer:
- The Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series drifts in this direction, beginning Twenty Minutes In The Future and ending with all manner of sci-fi trappings.
- The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series is Denser and Wackier than Tiberian, focusing on a world altered by time traveling.
- The Contra series. At first it isn't assumed to have sci-fi elements, but the plot involves an alien invasion.
- Crysis
- Defenders Of Ekron
- DUST 514, a Gaiden Game of EVE Online whose backstory has capsuleer technology applied to Powered Armor instead of starships.
- Einhänder
- Empire Earth, in the later epochs.
- Fallout
- First Encounter Assault Recon
- Fracture
- Front Mission
- The Gears of War games, books, and comics.
- Girls Frontline
- Heavy Weapon is a more humorous, cartoony take on the genre.
- Helldivers
- Iji
- Intrusion 2
- Killzone
- The BattleTech video game series:
- Mercs of Boom
- Metal Gear is a series of stealth-action games that revolve around military espionage and geopolitical conflicts in modern-day Earth, so there are no aliens or spaceships. But it does involve genetically-engineered clones and mutant/cyborg soldiers, rogue computers and weaponized robots, oh and of course the titular bipedal walking tanks of the same name.
- Metal Slug. While the series doesn't start off as sci-fi, it becomes this in later sequels, which involve alien invasions and future soldiers.
- Metroid, occasionally. Samus is established as having been in the Galactic Federation Army, and Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3, and Metroid: Other M feature GF soldiers and marines as characters.
- Out Zone
- Quake
- Resistance
- Section 8 series
- Shadow Complex
- Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, while still a JRPG like the rest of the series, ditches the Urban Fantasy and Coming of Age elements in favor of Space Marines from 20 Minutes into the Future exploring an alternate dimension infested with angels and demons.
- StarCraft
- Starsiege, and its pre-/sequels.
- Star Citizen, chiefly the "Squadron 42" storyline section.
- Steel Battalion
- Templar Battleforce
- Time Crisis, especially the second game which involves trying to stop a Kill Sat.
- Titanfall
- Universe at War
- The X-COM series, which has you commanding a multinational military force to combat alien invaders.
- Xenonauts
Web Comics
- Schlock Mercenary; while the main cast is a complement of Mercenaries, they tend to become more organized as the stories progress and move away from the Gag-A-Day format. Also, various governmental militaries have been featured, either as background/secondary characters, or as the people hiring the main characters.
- Star Fighter is an erotic romance between soldiers on a Space Navy, who are engaged in a war against the Insectoid Aliens the Colterons. In addition to the romance plot, the story also deals with the tide of war and political machinations within the miliatary hierarchy.
- XRS A military sci fi webcomic about a deadly new super-weapon.
Western Animation
- Beast Wars
- Exo Squad
- Evil Con Carne
- "War Is the H-Word" is an episode of Futurama that parodies various war movie tropes, with Fry and Bender joining Earth's military just to get a store discount on chewing gum, only to be deployed to another planet to fight a pointless war against a species of ball-shaped aliens.
- Any episode with General Zapp Brannigan will involve some sort of humorous militaristic misadventures in space. And the overall Futurama show really likes to parody both Star Trek and Star Wars.
- Invasion America
- Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles
- Some episodes of Love, Death & Robots, such as:
- Shadow Raiders
