9 books like Planetside

We need more characters like Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, the daughter of a sheep farmer who joins a mercenary company to avoid an unwanted marriage. Moon, who served as a Marine in Vietnam, gives us a perfect hero’s tale. Paksenarrion (“Paks” for short) doesn’t set out to garner fame and glory, but she works hard at what she does, and her moral compass is firmly attuned to a sense of justice and truth. Paks captures everything we want in a hero, and Moon’s understanding of infantry, siege, and melee tactics filters through in subtle yet powerful ways, from details like foot soreness on the march to how most sieges end with rebellion within the gates. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter literally has it all. Go read it today. 

I’m going old-school, back to one of the grandfathers of science fiction, Robert Heinlein.

Not only is his book a masterful example of character-driven storytelling, but it takes a critical eye to many of the things our current society takes for granted as being “true” and “right,” finding them wanting. It’s also been a huge influence on me in my writing, as have many of Heinlein’s other works, and I couldn’t not put it in here.

Drake served in an armor unit in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, so it’s no coincidence that Hammer’s Slammers, a collection of short stories, revolves around a tank unit. So many military SFF stories focus on knuckle-dragging ground-pounders, so it’s refreshing to see war from a tank turret. Drake has been accused of writing gun porn, but I find a lot of nuance in his writing, especially on combat motivation and small-unit leadership. He was one of the first military SFF authors to write an openly gay character, and women fight right alongside men without the misogynistic or objectifying undertones that sometimes afflict the subgenre. To get a sense for Drake’s writing, “But Loyal to His Own” and “Caught in the Crossfire” are two of my favorite stories.

I liked this book because it examines the role loyalty and social customs play in our lives. As soldiers are transported from location to location, the laws of relativity step in to move the characters decades into the future.

In that time, social customs have changed, and things that we thought were important no longer are. It shows how vulnerable we are to custom and tradition. In the end, it is the personal that is important, not the bigger cause.

Fergus Ferguson is an ordinary man who just happens to be good at one thing – finding stuff. So he becomes an intergalactic repo man, and when the book starts he’s been tasked with finding a stolen starship, as one does. 

He’s also found himself wrapped up in a civil war and a possible alien invasion.

This book is a little darker than the others on the list, in that Fergus has a lot of personal baggage to deal with, the people behind the civil war aren’t nice, and it’s really hard to figure out what the aliens want. But the darkness is leavened by Fergus’s humor and strong moral code. 

It’s also book one of a (very nicely tied-up) trilogy.

We’ve all read and seen stories where the old hero comes out of retirement to save the day one last time. 

But what if the “hero” really wasn’t a hero, but rather the product of somebody’s marketing department?  That’s the premise of this book.

Captain Dash Drake is famous, but fame has not brought fortune. When the evil invaders he “defeated” the last time come back, he’s ready to give up. His latest trainee, girl genius Kenzie Washington, thinks her hero will save the day. Watching the two of them misunderstand each other was amusing. Also standalone. 

(You should detect a pattern on my list – I’m not fond of never-ending series.)

Star Trek is a great series, but you expect the flagship of the Federation to be able to handle pretty much anything. I’m much more interested in how ordinary people deal with extraordinary situations. 

Michael Mammay, who like me, is former military, has a very ordinary hero in this story - Sergeant Gastovsky (“Gas” to everybody he knows). Gas’s one superpower is he knows everybody and can make a deal with anybody.

The Misfit Soldier is very enjoyable. The first half of the book is basically the plot of the movie Kelly's Heroes which is a WWII heist movie. It’s well-told and moves quickly. The second part, also based on Mammay’s personal experiences, is how his future military deals with the aftermath.

It’s a standalone, which is also a plus.

My mother has a service dog, and I’ve inherited a disability or two. The heroine in The Spare Man didn’t let her dog or her physical limitations stop her. She even used them to her advantage when she could.

I also loved how the book was an old-school Nick and Nora style murder mystery told in the far future on a space cruise ship. The author mixed those genres like she was mixing a tasty cocktail.

It was glorious fun from first page to last. And like all the stories on my list, it showed how much a hero can shine, no matter what gender or lack of gender she is, no matter how big or how small, what sort of personality or capability she has. It might be more of a mark of courage for a hero to find a friend than storm a castle, but that’s okay because… show more.

I’m also a personal friend of Jim C. Hines, but we became friends because I was a fan of his work. 

This book is the first of a trilogy (which is different than a never-ending series) and takes a new, different, and funny spin on the zombie apocalypse.

Earth was hit by a plague that zombie-fied those humans it didn’t kill. Then the aliens came and cured some humans, who had to join their space fleet. Mostly as janitors and other menial laborers. Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos goes from head janitor to captain of the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish.  She can barely fly the ship, but now must fight it.

Definitely a case where an ordinary person gets put in an extraordinary situation.