Since the convention is just two days away, I figure I better get this done now, because I promised I would. Our second set of Ancestors is smaller than the first and a bit more narrowly focused, being mostly authors who were major contributors to combat/military SF.
The first of these is Gordon R. Dickson, whose first novel in the Dorsai seriesChilde Cycle, The Genetic General (later retitled Dorsai!) was published in 1959. Most of the published novels of the cycle focus on the Dorsai, tough, highly skilled mercenaries, who are frequently opposed by the strongly religious cannon-fodder of the Friendlies, although other novels deal with the evolution of and eventual unification of the Splinter Cultures that make up humanity in the 223rd-24th centuries. Gordy is generally credited with getting combat/milSF off the ground with his anthology Combat SF (1975) which included stories by Gordy himself, Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Gene Wolfe, Joe Haldeman…and Jerry Pournelle.
Jerry Pournelle, like a lot of milSF authors, was a veteran, serving in the artillery during the Korean War. In addition to writing the stories that became Falkenberg’s Legion (a later edition including the Helot War novels he co-wrote with S.M. Stirling, was titled The Prince), Jerry also edited a series of milSF/science anthologies with John F. Carr, There Will Be War. It wasn’t until the 1980s that I found out he’d been a prolific writer on computers for BYTE magazine, with the slogan “I do these things so you don’t have to.”
David Drake is best known for the Hammer’s Slammers stories, which are based on his experiences in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment; originally published in Galaxy magazine before its demise and collected by Ace Books into a surprisingly successful anthology. Drake went on to write six more novels about the Slammers, plus three more novels set in the Hammerverse and a bunch of short stories. In addition, Drake wrote a lot of horror, several fantasy novels, and the RCN series of space opera novels which are basically Aubrey & Maturin IN SPACE! He would have been our Guest of Honor last year but unfortunately died literally a week after accepting the invitation.
Last but certainly not least, there’s Gene Roddenberry, who wanted to do “Wagon Train to the stars” and instead wound up creating one of the great space opera franchises. You may have heard of it, a Desilu production called Star Trek.