SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Edited by Geoff Brown, Amanda J. Spedding

Publisher’s Note:

This book is a collection of stories from writers all over the world.

For authenticity and voice, we have kept the style of English native to each author’s location, so some stories will be in UK English, and others in US English.

We have, however, changed dashes and dialogue marks to our standard format for ease of understanding.

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This book is a work of fiction.

All people, places, events, T-rexs, Triceratops, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to persons or dinosaurs living or dead is purely coincidental.

Foreword

SNAFU.

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.

That, I think, says it all when it comes to military horror. Soldiers fighting for their lives, and at times for the lives of innocents, against supernatural or unearthly creatures.

Military writing has been around for as long as the written word, and likely for longer, although we only have a few surviving examples of such.

The idea of military speculative fiction (specfic) may seem like a subject not worth spending a whole lot of time talking about. After all, doesn’t it seem rather self-explanatory? It’s about the military, any branch, and it’s about horror, fantasy, or science fiction. However I believe military specfic is deeper than that. While it may very well be escapist literature to characterise all of the romanticized visions we have of the military, it can also be a hard-hitting commentary on current events and politics.

Beowulf and Homer’s Odyssey are both examples of early recorded military speculative fiction, although I’m not sure they were designed to be this. The cultures of the time believed in the gods, and sometimes the monsters, of Odyssey.

Precursors for military specfic can be found in ‘future war’ stories dating back at least to George Chesney’s story ‘The Battle of Dorking’ (1871) which was a speculative fiction piece, describing a successful German invasion of Britain.

Other works of fiction followed, including H.G. Wells’s “The Land Ironclads.” Eventually, as science fiction became an established and separate genre, military science fiction established itself as a subgenre. One such work is H. Beam Piper’s Uller Uprising (1952). Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), more recently a series of films, is another work of military specfic, along with Gordon Dickson’s Dorsai (1960), and these are thought to be mostly responsible for popularising this sub-genre’s popularity among young readers of the time.

The Vietnam War resulted in veterans with combat experience deciding to write specfic, including Joe Haldeman and David Drake. Throughout the 1970s, works such as Haldeman’s The Forever War and Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers helped increase the popularity of the genre, as did Harry Harrison with the Deathworld series. Short stories were also popular, collected in books like Combat SF, edited by Gordon R. Dickson. This anthology includes one of the first Hammer’s Slammers stories as well as one of the BOLO stories by Keith Laumer and one of the Berserker stories by Fred Saberhagen.

This anthology seems to have been the first time specfic stories specifically dealing with war as a subject were collected and marketed as such. The series of anthologies with the group title There Will be War edited by Pournelle and John F. Carr (nine volumes from 1983 through 1990) helped keep the category active, and encouraged new writers to add to it. I wanted to add more.

When I started Cohesion Press, I already knew I wanted to publish SNAFU. It was in my mind before anything else. I’ve always loved this style of book, with a strong emphasis on plot and action.

Our first anthology, simply titled SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror, was released just over a year ago. I asked four writers I repected. Four writers whose work mirrored my vision. A year later, Jonathan Maberry, Greig Beck, James A. Moore, Weston Oche, and a great collection of emerging writers made up that inaugural volume. We hoped it would do well when we set it free in the world, and it did. Now, three SNAFUs later, comes Survival of the Fittest. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll leave the series co-editor to talk about the stories within.

Geoff Brown — August 2015

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As far back as I can remember I’ve had a fascination with monster stories, of the things that hide in the shadows waiting to pounce. I loved that rush of fear, of being forced to push past it to discover what lay ahead and whether the protagonist would defeat the monster, whether they would survive. Who would be the victor?