Stunning stuff.

Still some of the bet depictions of space combat in any medium.

Panels from this page are used on the Kinetic Weapons page on Atomic Rockets. :p

The concepts of space combat here always impressed me. It makes a lot of sense, from a hard science fiction perspective, considering the vast distances and high velocities involved. Most combat is something that a biological crew would never see directly, because of the extreme ranges.

And this was my first introduction to the concept of a Jump Drive. When I saw it employed in the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series, this is what immediately came to mind.

Well there's avoiding running smack into a planet to be aware off too.

Your stories always reminded me a bit of C.J.Cherryh's novels from around that time - Merchanter's Luck, Downbelow Station, Tripoint - the war between Union and Earth that the Merchant ships and stations got caught up...as well as the feline race in the related Chanur saga etc - did you ever read any of those? If not i recommend them - a bunch of books about the Earth/Union/Merchanter war - the conflicts that spilled over into alien Compact Space...the Mri war trilogy that was written the same time as Dune -similar setting mood, but not dirivitive..Anyhoo - Cherryh - think you'll like here works from back then. (Her current "Foreigner" series is rather slower, less hard sf, but the earlyt stuff is knock-out!)

Many years ago I took a peek at one of her books, was not impressed at the time and haven't gone back.

My mental soundtrack for this sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozc2vCbgpR8

Ghaaa, wrong section.

Funnily enough, I always half-jokingly set Albedo in the Alliance-Union Universe in the distant future of the setting - FTL has similarities, and the Mass Annihilator shows similarity to one of it's failure modes.

The Arras Charcans are a Union experiment - Cloning up a bunch of genemodded humans, then giving them amnesia would be Tuesday for ResuneLabs - least difficult part of the entire job - the experiment is something I could see an iteration of Ariane Emory authorizing if she needed a testbed for some of her societal psychological studies. Those modded humans on the derelict could well be a future form of azi, with a born-woman Supervisor.

The only real thing that we've never seen in AU in Albedo is AI - and I'd set Albedo some time inna setting fure, so I can overlook it.

All writers have a few clunkers – please do try her again as noted below she isn't a fluff writer, 3 Hugo awards, etc. Her work is rather similar to yours – the social/political/tactical ramifications of conflict in cultures removed in space and time distances – political and military conflicts.

Try “Downbelow Station” for a space station struggling during the war years – lot of the same issues with current refugees...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downbelow_Station

“Finity's End” is a coming of age story of a ship's family boy left behind on station forced to “return” to a family ship he never knew and want's no part of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finity's_End

“Devil To The Belt”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_to_the_Belt

“Tripoint”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoint_%28novel%29

i do think you will like these books..they are some of my all time faves...check ot the wiki articles...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh :

Awards and honors
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer—1977
Hugo Award
Best Short Story
1979—"Cassandra"
Best Novel
1982—Downbelow Station
1989—Cyteen
Locus Award
Best Novel
1988—Cyteen
New England Science Fiction Association
Edward E. Smith Memorial Award (The Skylark)
1988—C.J. Cherryh
Oklahoma Book Award
Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award
2005—C.J. Cherryh
Asteroid 77185 Cherryh, discovered March 20, 2001 and named in her honor.

"In 1965, she received a Master of Arts degree in classics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was a Woodrow Wilson fellow.
After graduation, Cherryh taught Latin, Ancient Greek, the classics, and ancient history at John Marshall High School in the Oklahoma City public school system. While her job was teaching Latin, her passion was the history, religion, and culture of Rome and Ancient Greece. During the summers, she would conduct student tours of the ancient ruins in England, France, Spain, and Italy. In her spare time, she would write, using the mythology of Rome and Greece as plots for her stories of the future. Cherryh did not follow the professional path typical of science fiction writers at the time, which was to first publish short stories in science fiction and fantasy magazines and then progress to novels. In fact, Cherryh did not consider writing short stories until after she had several novels published."

I rad the charnr and down below station liked it and some of its concepts. :3 tho I'm a novice at reading (brain malfunctions) and only recent TTS software has opens books to me. it's nice to know others read chanur I loved the fact they didn't know English and they had to learn on the go thing :) tho lot of writing herself into corners to move on tho

Yep, that's space-combat for you, a mix of agonized waiting and flurries of combat! Good stuff!

Thousands of kilometers a second?

So I'm guessing they're going about 2-3% of C.

Man, that's hummin'.

I'll add to the chorus that this is probably one of my favorite depictions of space combat, and when ever I'm in charge of the game table covered with funny looking dice it's what I have in mind for describing the situation to the players.

Yup, definitely one of the best depictions of space warfare I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Had a huge impact my imagination of such things.

The science of science-fiction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpoq27ykAKw

Light Show of force.