A Call to Duty (SPOILERS)

I really don't know what I think of the book. It was pleasant enough in its way, I suppose, but I don't know if I really warm to Travis Long very much. It has been set in a kind of flat period in Manticoran history; there can only be one attack on the system in the time frame, according to the Wiki, and the short story 'A Call to Arms' is already set then. That's one of my problems, CD ends in PD 1533 and CA must be set in 1543 but Travis doesn't seem to have grown very much as a person in between and is still blind to the consequences of his predilection for slavishly following the rules. Maybe it wasn't the best choice to set CD so long before CA, or indeed, before it at all. One hopes the next book will be post 1543, so the character development isn't restricted so much by the original short.

In a pre-Prolong society we can’t really posit an active service career of more than about 60 years max, and even then only if he gets to fairly senior rank. Even that would only take us up to about 1589, so we aren't going to see much of the effects of the development of the junction on Manticoran society (discovered 1585). Actually, we will only get the search and discovery if the authors burn through his whole naval career in the announced trilogy and preclude follow-ups. I don’t think it’s very likely our authors will do that. YMMV

I’m kind of concerned they have boxed themselves in and the series isn't really going to fly very well.

Randomiser wrote:I really don't know what I think of the book. It was pleasant enough in its way, I suppose, but I don't know if I really warm to Travis Long very much. It has been set in a kind of flat period in Manticoran history; there can only be one attack on the system in the time frame, according to the Wiki, and the short story 'A Call to Arms' is already set then. That's one of my problems, CD ends in PD 1533 and CA must be set in 1543 but Travis doesn't seem to have grown very much as a person in between and is still blind to the consequences of his predilection for slavishly following the rules. Maybe it wasn't the best choice to set CD so long before CA, or indeed, before it at all. One hopes the next book will be post 1543, so the character development isn't restricted so much by the original short.

In a pre-Prolong society we can’t really posit an active service career of more than about 60 years max, and even then only if he gets to fairly senior rank. Even that would only take us up to about 1589, so we aren't going to see much of the effects of the development of the junction on Manticoran society (discovered 1585). Actually, we will only get the search and discovery if the authors burn through his whole naval career in the announced trilogy and preclude follow-ups. I don’t think it’s very likely our authors will do that. YMMV

I’m kind of concerned they have boxed themselves in and the series isn't really going to fly very well.

I've wondered much the same thing since I heard, more or less simultaneously, "based on the career of Travis Long, the hero of Call to Arms" and "set amidst the changes precipitated by the discovery of the wormhole junction." The two events are just not chronologically compatible from a single character POV. Unless he gets caught in some sort of cryo-suspension, or very high fractional C transit.

dreamrider

In some snippet of canon history somewhere, or some quasi-official timeline of Manticoran history, I have seen reference to another system threatening confrontation that occurred pre-wormhole junction.

As I recall, it involved a fleet of 'interstellar nomads' (ala Battlestar Galactica, I guess) who were discouraged from predation in the vicinity of the Binary System by the nacent RMN.

I cannot find the reference now.

Does anyone else recall this historical note, know when it was, and/or know where to find the original mention?

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:In some snippet of canon history somewhere, or some quasi-official timeline of Manticoran history, I have seen reference to another system threatening confrontation that occurred pre-wormhole junction.

As I recall, it involved a fleet of 'interstellar nomads' (ala Battlestar Galactica, I guess) who were discouraged from predation in the vicinity of the Binary System by the nacent RMN.

I cannot find the reference now.

Does anyone else recall this historical note, know when it was, and/or know where to find the original mention?

dreamrider

That was much earlier, before Manticore became the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Still the timeline doesn't necessarily list every single engagement fought in the Manticore system, much less thoe fought by the RMN in other systems during this era.

And there is only about 40 years between A Call to Arms and the discovery of the first wormhole of the Manticoran Junction. Also do we know what the Mantcoran Average Life Expectancy was pre-prolong? Its probably slightly higher then ours so a young officer who made the military a career could still be in service when the junction is discoverd

Yup, "the Free Brotherhood" (often just "the Brotherhood"), who were active against Manticore and others in the region from 1433 PD to sometime before 1473 PD, when the (proto-)RMN stopped expanding.

ACtA chapter two: “I’m sure you know the RMN’s history,” Breakwater said, turning back to Winterfall. “From the four frigates that the Trust had waiting when the colony ship arrived, it grew to nineteen by the time of the first skirmish with the Free Brotherhood, seventeen years later, then to a total of thirty-four warships over the next forty years.”

House of Steel Landing & Early History: "The first battle occurred in the uninhabited Megan System, 8.4 light-years from Manticore, when two Manticoran frigates on a survey mission were attacked by advance scouts for the Brotherhood. MSNS Triumph was destroyed with all hands, but her gallant resistance bought time for the badly damaged MSNS Defiant to escape back to Manticore. When an aroused Manticore proved to be a much tougher customer than their normal victims, the Brotherhood moved towards the Haven Sector in search of easier prey."


And I agree that a series set late enough to include the era of discovery where the RMN could have been active as 'a diplomatic tool toward the establishment of the Junction's Secondary Termini as falling under Manticoran Sovereignty."

Great fun could have been had by all (long as they were Manties at any rate ), if the first book was based on the short-story ACtA, with a shortened ACtD forming the first half of the book, and with the 2nd and 3rd books set during the discovery and initial exploration of the WHJ, where the RMN is still trying to launch new construction to meet all the new obligations respectively during the transition to the era of their (given later hull-number presumably "BC-enforced") Mercantile Hegemony.
(Ok, so not 'enforced' and 'hegemony' ... but I would expect there to be a faction in parliament that was leaning that way at the time, complete with uniformed allies in the RMN).

That would have been a much more active era to set the story on. And one can only hope that a second, follow-on, trilogy will be set there; either again written by Zahn, or by some other worthy.
Pretty please with celery on top, David.

Roguevictory wrote:

dreamrider wrote:In some snippet of canon history somewhere, or some quasi-official timeline of Manticoran history, I have seen reference to another system threatening confrontation that occurred pre-wormhole junction.

As I recall, it involved a fleet of 'interstellar nomads' (ala Battlestar Galactica, I guess) who were discouraged from predation in the vicinity of the Binary System by the nacent RMN.

I cannot find the reference now.

Does anyone else recall this historical note, know when it was, and/or know where to find the original mention?

dreamrider

That was much earlier, before Manticore became the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Still the timeline doesn't necessarily list every single engagement fought in the Manticore system, much less thoe fought by the RMN in other systems during this era.

And there is only about 40 years between A Call to Arms and the discovery of the first wormhole of the Manticoran Junction. Also do we know what the Mantcoran Average Life Expectancy was pre-prolong? Its probably slightly higher then ours so a young officer who made the military a career could still be in service when the junction is discoverd

Roguevictory wrote:That was much earlier, before Manticore became the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Still the timeline doesn't necessarily list every single engagement fought in the Manticore system, much less thoe fought by the RMN in other systems during this era.

And there is only about 40 years between A Call to Arms and the discovery of the first wormhole of the Manticoran Junction. Also do we know what the Mantcoran Average Life Expectancy was pre-prolong? Its probably slightly higher then ours so a young officer who made the military a career could still be in service when the junction is discovered

43 years. Travis Long will be somewhere on the order of 70 - 75.

Probably the best evidence we have on pre-prolong lifespan is Adm Jonas Adcock, Roger III's brother-in-law. From the various references in House of Steel, we know that he was just slightly too old for prolong. Per textev, as of 1855 PD his life expectancy was just under a century. He actually died in 1913 PD at the age of 116 - still in service, yet! (although due to both position and connections he was a special case.)

Queen Samantha II, Roger III's mother, died in 1857 PD at the age of 81, which was apparently considered to be somewhat early for those of her generation with top notch medical care.

So, allowing for incremental extension in lifespan for the medically well-supported in the intervening 300+ years, at age 75 Travis Long should be viewed as pretty long in the tooth to still be a serving officer. If he is, he'll be very senior, flying a desk, making policy decisions, perhaps envisioning how the RMN will have to change to adapt to the pressures of the MWHJ, but not part of the generation that will be executing those changes.

Perhaps the answer to this dichotomy can be found in this (abbreviated) passage from the history section of House of Steel:

"The same examination {of the ships captured in 1543} also revealed the true reason for the attack: Axelrod had realized the Manticore Binary System was almost certainly home to a major wormhole junction. ...the Navy grasped both the potential benefits (and drawbacks) almost immediately. ...the attack proved the need for a strong Navy and reawakened public support...the first major naval buildup in over a century began only a few years later."

dreamrider

Anyone want to bet that we are going to see Travis Long involved in some early, friendly Manticore - Haven cooperation against that new sociological horror, the genetic slave trade?

<grin>

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Anyone want to bet that we are going to see Travis Long involved in some early, friendly Manticore - Haven cooperation against that new sociological horror, the genetic slave trade?

<grin>

dreamrider

That would be cool.

I'm hoping at some point some of the frigates in the era play enough of a role in the story that we get detailed spaces on them. I understand the logic behind RFC reducing them to ships only fourth or fifth rate navies and pirates or privateers (Torch uses them because it doesn't have enough larger warships to replace them, and the frigates in question were originally intended for a form of privateering or piracy. Privateering or piracy in service of a good cause certainly but privateering or piracy nonethless IMO.) use them in the main era but as early as the Travis Long books are set in the timeline I'm pretty sure they take place long before the frigate became an outdated subclass, given that the last RMN frigates were retired more then three centuries after A Call to Arms took place. I was surprised that none appeared in A Call to Arms

Roguevictory wrote:...I'm pretty sure they take place long before the frigate became an outdated subclass, given that the last RMN frigates were retired more then three centuries after A Call to Arms took place. I was surprised that none appeared in A Call to Arms

No frigates appeared in ACTA because the RMN didn't actually have any in service at that time. The two remaining after the initial skirmish against the Brotherhood were transferred to MPARS almost a century earlier.

Frigates in this era have a lot of similarities (in role, not armament) as light cruisers do in the modern Honorverse. They tend to be longer-legged than destroyers, and are often seen as remote pickets and scouts, engaging in "show the flag" missions and other missions far from home. Given that nobody in the RMN expected to spend much time all that far from home until the Axelrod/Volsung attack, the RMN had little use for them as a platform.

That changes pretty quickly after the battle however, and there have been (will have been) just over 1000 in service in the RMN by the time they were falling into disfavor in 1900 PD.

As for the comments about potential scope, all I can say is that there is a reason the "Travis Long Trilogy" was rebranded the "Manticore Ascendant Series" before the first book was even published.

tpope wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:...I'm pretty sure they take place long before the frigate became an outdated subclass, given that the last RMN frigates were retired more then three centuries after A Call to Arms took place. I was surprised that none appeared in A Call to Arms

No frigates appeared in ACTA because the RMN didn't actually have any in service at that time. The two remaining after the initial skirmish against the Brotherhood were transferred to MPARS almost a century earlier.

Frigates in this era have a lot of similarities (in role, not armament) as light cruisers do in the modern Honorverse. They tend to be longer-legged than destroyers, and are often seen as remote pickets and scouts, engaging in "show the flag" missions and other missions far from home. Given that nobody in the RMN expected to spend much time all that far from home until the Axelrod/Volsung attack, the RMN had little use for them as a platform.

That changes pretty quickly after the battle however, and there have been (will have been) just over 1000 in service in the RMN by the time they were falling into disfavor in 1900 PD.

As for the comments about potential scope, all I can say is that there is a reason the "Travis Long Trilogy" was rebranded the "Manticore Ascendant Series" before the first book was even published.

I knew about them filling a role like that of the light cruiser though I thought they were all retired by 1900 PD and had been falling into disfavor since Roger III started focusing on building a navy to fight a war with Haven rather then one geared for anti-pirate missions. My mistake.

I knew the original Manticoran Victory class Frigates were almost certainly retired by A Call to Arms but I thought there would have been more modern frigates in the RMN at the time.

It would still be surprising IMO if the Volsung didn't have any since IMO the long legs of the class would be very attractive to buyers for a mercenary fleet at the time though I'm not certain if every ship in their fleet was in A Call to Arms or if all the ones there had their type identified