Friday, June 19, 2015

Sucker Punch, by Eric S. Raymond

Published in Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House, December 2014

Eric S. Raymond is a 2015 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

This is a perfectly competently written MilSF...vignette. It's not a story. It describes a couple of important and unfortunate advances in military weapons and tactics, and presents the resulting dilemma quite poignantly.

It also starts off with a good deal of weapons porn. That's off-putting for me; for its intended audience, it's very much wanted.

I'm left with the feeling that this one very short piece is not enough for me to assess Mr. Raymond as Best New Writer, but I haven't found anything else by him. I don't have much to say except that if this is the kind of story you like, you will like this story, and it might count as a point in favor of buying this collection.

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