THE ABILITY to make war appears to have been in mankind’s blood from the moment we first began to evolve, violence being an integral part of our heritage. Picture a caveman and invariably we imagine him holding a spear or a club. Yet we call our species Homo sapiens, Intelligent Man, while some have even suggested that Homo faber, Man the Maker (of everything from ploughs to radiotelescopes) might be more appropriate. Perhaps both are misguided. Glance at our history, taking in the past few thousand years right up to the present day, and it would be hard to argue that Man the Warmaker isn’t the most fitting designation of all. Have we outgrown war? Have we left it behind? No, and it’s doubtful we ever will.
Some of the stories in this collection suggest that our warlike tendencies (which of course we all regret, don’t we?) might come in rather useful in the future, supposing we encounter non- benevolent aliens. Just to be on the safe side, of course. After all, it’s perfectly feasible that only general-purpose predators become fully sentient and claw their way to the stars.
As if to demonstrate that even this coin has a flipside, four of our twenty-four tales feature peace or peacekeeping in their titles – fittingly, since this is surely what we really want, or so we like to tell ourselves.
The truth is that there is something about warfare, about Conflict, about violence, that sets the heart racing and the blood singing. Our genre has been responsible for some of the most thought-provoking, challenging, edifying and intelligent fiction of the past century, and doubtless it will continue to be so; but there is another side to science fiction. The tang of weapon-oil, the sleek slide or the grind of metal on metal, the sizzle of an energy beam, the raw ferocity of explosion, and the cunning of a black ops specialist, are just as important an aspect of science fiction as the virtual futures, cybernetic implants, and the nature of the multiverse. The brilliance of a ship’s commander who triumphs against all odds (despite being heavily outgunned and tactically disadvantaged) will raise a cheer as surely as the flash of insight that casts light on a puzzling aspect of the human condition. In fact, the chances are that it was just such stories of bravery and derring-do that drew many of us into science fiction in the first place. We like big explosions and impossible missions, men and women pitted against aliens or against other men and women. We like to read of nobility, treachery, and sacrifice, of triumph and loss. And that’s what this particular Mammoth is all about. Humankind pushed to the limits in every conceivable way.
A problem with tackling a subject as vast as “war” in a genre that has been fascinated by the subject for many, many decades is that there are a whole lot of stories to choose from. No single collection can ever encompass all that merit inclusion and no anthology can hope to satisfy everyone. There are bound to be those who glance down the contents list and think, but what about this story or that one? If we’ve missed out your favourite we apologize, but hope you’ll take a look in any case and discover a few new favourites in the process. As with any anthology, not everything has gone absolutely to plan. Some of the stories we had hoped to include proved to be unavailable, while, despite initially promising signs, Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 proved one universe that was closed to us; alas, the company lawyers declined any reprinting in a non-GW publication.
Thankfully, our successes have far outweighed our disappointments, and we are delighted with both the quality and diversity of tale we have gathered together in The Mammoth Book of SF Wars. We only hope that you, the reader, are too.
Ian Whates and Ian Watson, 2012