Looking for future wars

Military science fiction is a topic that I'm personally interested in. Back in 2014, I co-edited War Stories: New Military Science Fiction with Jaym Gates, and I've written about it extensively over the years since, particular with an eye toward how militaries and leaders have used science fiction as a way to imagine the future of warfare.

One of the authors that we included in the anthology was Mark Jacobsen (you can read his story, "The Wasp Keepers" here), who's had an exciting and ecclectic career in the military since. He recently wrote an excellent paper about the growing trend of military fiction imagining a conflict between the US and China: "The Uses and Limits of Speculative Fiction: Three Novels about a US–China War."

Jacobsen looks at three recent books (and cites one of my pieces!): P.W. Singer and August Cole's Ghost Fleet, James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman's 2034, and Mick Ryan's White Sun War, and through them, looks broadly at the opportunities and pitfalls inherent in using fiction as a tool for imagining the future of war. It's a good, critical look at each book, and he notes that "if military speculative fiction authors wish to shape tomorrow’s military leaders and influence real-world policy discussions, the quality of their ideas matters." He points out some of the issues with each book in turn: it's a good reminder that these books and thought-experiments are tools, rather than proscriptions or roadmaps for what lies ahead.