So far, most of the posts that have been placed on this archive are those that I had made for one SF author. David Weber (an adventure SF writer of some energy, but with obvious infelicities in writing style) is working on an extended SF series (the Honor Harrington series, named after its principal character - currently at 13 novels plus 4 anthologies, I suspect that it will reach 20 novels plus 5-8 anthologies before he is finished).

Because of the length of the series, there are occasional scenes that don't serve much purpose for the novel they appear in, but serve as seeds of subsequent plot developments (e.g., a war is on, technological development occurs, but it is several years between prototype demonstration and general use or more specifically, there is an early mention of a belief that there was at least one undiscovered terminus in the Manticore junction but it wasn't found until the tenth novel, War of Honor). After the sixth title (Honor Among Enemies), I prepared a rather long post (which I extended somewhat a year later) on my guesses on what will happen in subsequent books. As it turns out, my guesses on technological developments were better than my guesses on plot (which were WRONG). I recently (May 28, 2000) finished up some commentary on that post which I have added to the archive. Just as an exercise, I made an attempt to estimate the size of the Grayson Space Navy; I ran into difficulties (chiefly over chronology), but I did come up with results that don't appear obviously wrong (other than the growth rate of the Grayson economy that Weber appeared to postulate - Feb 9, 2003 note: Judging from the force levels given in War of Honor I might have overestimated its size).

I have also posted commentary (chapter by chapter and some general comments) of several titles as they came out. Currently available are comments for the anthology More Than Honor and for the novels In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory, War of Honor, and At All Costs (Honor Harrington #7, 8, 9, 10, and 11). While waiting for EoH, I wrote a post on my guess on the first combat action of a new class of warcraft (Shrike class LACs), a post speculating about the escape from Hades, and a post on a PN offensive that was in the planning phase in a few teaser chapters of EoH. After the appearance of the second Honor anthology, Worlds of Honor, I created a post of something I noticed about Manticore's royal house. While waiting for AoV, I wrote a post on my speculations on plot elements that might appear. Also, in the same time period, I wrote a post with a list of books (by other authors) with either similarities to Honor Harrington or at least having some allusion to the age of fighting sail. Ashes of Victory was the first Weber title to appear under Baen's new Webscription plan (which allows downloading of the book in installments in the months before the release); after finishing three-quarters installment, I posted some observations. Right before then, I prepared a brief study on how I thought that the new LACs could be used in a fleet action.

David Weber has written other books as well; after reading the Colin MacIntyre titles, I wrote a brief post on parallels I noticed with other books.

Just for fun, I prepared a description of the Battle of Aboukir Bay (aka Battle of the Nile) for its 200th anniversary.

I have been posting on the newsgroup 'rec.arts.sf.written' as long as I have had access to Usenet (for that matter, several of the older posts on Weber appeared there instead of 'alt.books.david-weber' which might not have existed at the time). Here is one post I saved (I had misgivings over Leguin's criticism of Kurtz's Deryni Rising when I originally read it).

Baen Books has been bringing back to print material that has been out of print for decades. A recent (April 2003) example was The Cold Equations and Other Stories that included the novel The Survivors (aka Space Prison). I wrote a brief post for the Baen message board that compared The Survivors with the earlier (and much shorter) story "Too Soon to Die".

I have added to the archive two posts that I made some time ago on the Bujold mailing list. One is a description of visions I had on Vorkosigan portraits. The other has several observations I made when reading the five sample chapters for Komarr (in 1998) when they were put up on the Baen website.

I post on the newsgroup 'soc.history.what-if' on occasion as well. The oldest such post in the archive is a review I made of Gurps Alternate Earths (a supplement to the roleplaying module GURPS Time Travel). Another old post is one I made concerning the timeline of Steve Stirling's Draka series (just the first few years as described in the appendix of Marching Through Georgia - this series is alternate history with exiled Tories in southern Africa creating a high-tech, heavily industrialized, psychopathic martial nation that eventually conquers the world). After the 2000 election, I suggested several what-ifs for it (covering more than just a Gore victory). I also did a post on Harry Turtledove's Sentry Peak, a book that is more an example of cleverness than of imagination. I did a review and summary of the stories in the anthology Alternate Generals. Another post was a reply to a request for alternate history games.

Besides replies to other contributer's posts on 'soc.history.what-if' and comments on books by various authors, I have tried to put together alternate history scenarios, but this post describes some of the problems that I encountered in my two unsuccessful attempts to do this.

Still another newsgroup that I have posted on is 'rec.games.board' - my participation is not very high, but I have placed on the archive a post on the railroad game 1835 that I prepared in 1994.

Last updated November 15, 2005 by Robert Woodward