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How do you visualize the Honorverse?

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.

How do you visualize the Honorverse?

Tom Clancy-style military-fiction/techno-thriller.
10
34%
Current Sci-fi video game (e.g. Mass Effect).
4
14%
30's and 40's space opera (e.g. Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon).
0
No votes
Other (please describe)
15
52%
 
Total votes : 29
How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by 61Cygni   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 3:01 pm

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With all the current discussion of how the Honorverse comics and movie may not match people's idea of the Honorverse, I'd thought it'd be fun to see how fans actually DO visualize the "look snd feel" of the Honorverse. This isn't about any one specific person or thing, but the overall visual model you use when reading the books, and what direcion Evergreen and Top Cow should go in. I gave a few options, feel free to add your own.

Personally, I visualize the Honorverse as current military fiction rather than science fiction, and specifically Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October and Red Storm Rising. In some ways Weber's writing shares similiarity with Clancy's techno-thrillers, especially with all the detailed descriptions of techonology, ships and weapons. The similiarity is strong enough that I simply use today's militaries and the Cold War political situation as my visual mocel and frame of reference. Even though the Honorverse ships are an Age Of Sail analog, they also feel much like today's nuclear submarines. So things like uniforms, ships' bridges and characters' demeanor are straight out of the US or Royal Navies, not some chrome-heavy "future techy" look. So I want the Honorverse movie(s) and comics to look like the movie version of Red October, not Star Trek, not the game Mass Effect. The comic covers that have been released so far to me are just plain YUCK, but I think that look actually appeals to some people.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by Star Knight   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 3:24 pm

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Well, i dont see what would be wrong with Mass Effect if we are talking the Alliance Military and ignore the indoctrinated Nimitz from the cover art. Granted, you don’t see that much of it in the actual games but I think they did a pretty decent job with visualizing a relatively low tech terrestrial military gone to the stars.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by pokermind   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 3:27 pm

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Other. The way David Weber wrote it the story of a female Naval officer with a unique partner a Sphinx treecat.

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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by Northstar   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 3:55 pm

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Other. Band of Brothers in space. Major Winters is closest to Honor I can think of in flicks. Not in looks, of course. In competency as an officer and a human being.

I think you can do whiz bang or you can go for serious war flick and that would be awesome. There are a lot of serious war flicks that have become immortal movies. I wish the HH movie could be of that caliber. eh
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by Hutch   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 4:24 pm

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Other. It may share some of Clancy's stuff (albeit the MWW does make changes the story now and then, unlike Clancy's later books), but Clancy's stories were tech-driven, while DW's relies on us caring about the personalities as much as the cool toys (and if you don't believe we care about the people, see comments on the art threads)... :shock:

I categorize it as 21st Century Space Opera, telling an Epic tale of Mighty people doing Heroic things, but with an attention to detail and characterization and acceptable (albeit arguable) physics and a notable lack of 'superweapons' (see Doc Smith's Lensman series for some really big Space Opera guns...).

IMHO as always. YMMV.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by JohnRoth   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 5:09 pm

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Since I haven't read Tom Clancy and don't play video games, the only thing on the list that I could compare it to is old-style Space Opry. Holy Klono's Selenium Skin! Um, no.

As far as I'm concerned, it is a thing in itself. Old-style space opera may have had huge backgrounds, but it was almost always a Hero (and very rarely a Heroine - think Red Sonja) against the Big Bad, and in a lot of cases degenerated into DiD.

This is much more realistic in terms of a setting that is at least marginally plausible, with multiple players, most of whom are acting at least somewhat rationally.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 5:55 pm

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Oh - it defnitely has the parts of the Techno-Thriller genra that Tom Clancy created. No one can argue that with the infodumps that either draw or repulse readers.

BTW - I love the info dumps. I literally cannot get enough of them. When people go off on the info dumps, I want to go off on them. But then again I have Engineering and Physics degrees. At my core I WANT - no - NEED - to know how everything works in the smallest detail. I cannot read or watch shows with bad or inconsistant physics rules - it has no joy for me (and then for anyone in the room with me.)

David might stray from physics and science as we know it, be he stays VERY consistant - more so than most other writers (let's face it, the series is 20 years old; physics has grown by leaps and bounds in that time and many things that might have been thought plausable when the series started, have been ruled out or conclusively proven.)Even his magic series are limited by a physics - this keeps them believeable and rarely suffers from deus-ex-machina.

But that being said, the stories ARE also character driven. You care what happen to the characters. The Villians ARE believable, even likeable in their own way. Everyone has flaws (even Honor, but I do agree, she is bordering on superhuman) and you love them for them.

On top of that, The Honorverse is still the hard sci-fi, where we can examine issues we either are or could encounter in the future in a nice safe environment of a futuristic story that "has nothing to do with us". Genetic manipulation, religous bigotry, genetic slavery, social rights, gender roles/rights, warfare, social stratification, welfare states, politics, aging reversal, political media manipulation/propoganda, economics, etc. - are all dealt with in a way that allows the reader to take something from it.

So it is a bit of everything, Sci-Fi, Techno-thriller, Political intrigue/spy thriller, drama, military Thriller. I find it hard to quantify.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by 61Cygni   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:09 pm

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Hutch wrote:Other. It may share some of Clancy's stuff (albeit the MWW does make changes the story now and then, unlike Clancy's later books), but Clancy's stories were tech-driven, while DW's relies on us caring about the personalities as much as the cool toys (and if you don't believe we care about the people, see comments on the art threads)... :shock:


The two aren't 100% the same, but they DO share some key characteristics, which is why I think Clancy is the best fit for the Honorverse. For instance, with OBS you could simply subtract the Medusans (or substitute some 3rd-world Earth nation for them) and the story could take place in the Napoleonic Era--or during the Cold War. That's what I like about the Honorverse, it's very much more like military fiction with blessedly little of the usual sci-fi silliness like Star Trek-style "aliens" and psionic or "Force" powers. True, it does have my two pet peeves, "magic" artificial gravity (couldn't it at least be a centrally-generated force reaching out to circular decks?) and magic counter-gravity, but those seem to be Standard Space Opera Tech, and Weber gives the constraints, so I let them pass.
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by 61Cygni   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:20 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:Since I haven't read Tom Clancy and don't play video games, the only thing on the list that I could compare it to is old-style Space Opry. Holy Klono's Selenium Skin! Um, no.

As far as I'm concerned, it is a thing in itself. Old-style space opera may have had huge backgrounds, but it was almost always a Hero (and very rarely a Heroine - think Red Sonja) against the Big Bad, and in a lot of cases degenerated into DiD.

This is much more realistic in terms of a setting that is at least marginally plausible, with multiple players, most of whom are acting at least somewhat rationally.


The first thing that I thought of when I saw comic cover #1 was the 70's Buck Rogers TV series. Something about the whole look of that artwork--like the heavy use of chrome and the goofy outfit and ship--brought that show to mind. Then that other cover appeared, the one with the big-ass gun and the demonic alien lizard Nimitz, and I then thought of Flash Gordon and the Lensmen and the whole gamut of schlocky sci-fi space movies/series.

Do peaple REALLY want the Honorverse to look like that?
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Re: How do you visualize the Honorverse?
Post by Greentea   » Fri Jan 24, 2014 7:36 pm

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I fall into the other category. I see the Honorverse as having elements of a space opera and of a military epic. I also view the Honorverse as having one of the qualities that I loved from Futurama. It is a believable future. It isn't a utopia, it isn't a dystopia, it's just the modern day with different tech. All of the conflicts are believable and could exist today, and most of the characters have understandable motivations for their actions. The number of death planets is also believable. Humans are settling planets that they didn't evolve with, and some are easier to settle than others.
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