In Defense of David Weber's "A Rising Thunder"

The next Honor Harrington novel A Rising Thunder is out in ARC form. For those who don't know, "ARC" stands for Advanced Reader Copy, and is basically the pre-final form of the book, subject to perhaps some minor editing and proofreading before it sees print.

Let's jump right into it, shall we? A Rising Thunder certainly isn't as stellar or ground-breaking as On Basilisk Station used to be, but it's the first since a long time that the plot directly involving Honor was able to interest me (the last book was fine as well, just for the record...), having been more enthralled by the actions and plans of other characters for most part over the last five or so books.

That said, the book isn't the bad piece some of the initial and very critical commentators made it out to be. Most of the decisions taken by the protagonists (and antagonists) do make sense given the data and intel they are based on. And Detweiler of the Mesan Alignment seems to really grow into a competent villain. The novel's problems are less ones of content and more related to its structure.The Zilwicki/Cachat parts were, quite frankly, a total waste of space, adding nothing of substance to the narrative. And the drawn out ending of A Rising Thunder works to the novel's detriment: it takes away from the bang that Beowulf's decision to hold a referendum about secession should have been. The novel should have ended right there.

One more thing I found odd was Havenite officers easily using Honor's aristocratic titles and pronouns despite the previous book making a point of how uncomfortable it makes them.

Having said that, I feel obliged to come to David's defense (not that he needs it) with regards to some complaints leveled against his take on the Solarian League. Complaints, I tend to notice, brought forward rather often by people who don't read David's books anyway due to their own political leanings...

I, for one, don't find the Sollies to be too preposterous. They are a civilization and organization that has been on top of the game for longer than the friggin Roman Empire & Republic. For the history that matters to the HH universe, there has always been the League, and the League has always been the top dog! The League as it is isn't implausible. It's the result of hundreds of years of laissez-faire, relative and total prosperity, and the simple fact that for the populations that mattered it does (did) work.

The bureaucratic creep and cancer that has set in everywhere also aren't implausible or unheard of. Take the EU bureaucracy that has been grown over the past fifty years: a body with large regulatory power with literally zero effective oversight. Its last ten or so budgets haven't been constitutional. Repercussions: none. People who care: very few. Take that and add what? 1150 years of development to that. What do you get? The Mandarins. People who are genuinely competent in the way they run their own little empires, but are dangerously oblivious to everything outside.

Just as an example: How many people in, say, the US, know or do care about what happens in Taiwan? Sure, the elite does know a bit, but as a whole: Not many. There's probably a dozen wars or brushfire conflicts going on around the world right now. And yet we barely hear of them or care about them. And that's on one planet.

SOL in the HH-verse has in excess of 10 billion people spread over nearly all moons and rocks of the system. How much news - mainstream news - would reasonably reach and be watched by how many people? And what would these news primarily be composed of in the first place. They'd be local (continent, habitat, at best: planetary) or regional (system-wide). And even then we are talking about a sheer mountain of information that could probably be featured less fast than it actually happened.

Foreign policy - not in definition, but in effect - for the vast majority of the public would already be: what happens on Mars? What happens in the Belter habitats? I think somebody is seriously overestimating the amount of information people could and would digest, even those with an interest in the subject. Again, we're looking at a space of >3 trillion people (that'd just be the league) and thousands of star systems where stuff happens that'll be reported! And most of it will be way old news by the point it even reaches them.

In the public consciousness and that of its rulers, a war between some star systems in a universe of literaly thousands of settled systems would receive very little attention beyond the initial thrill. A war going on for 20 years? A weekly mention in some of the news faxes maybe. Because that's how the news cycle and the human attention span work. Sure, there'd be wargamer nerds and the like soaking up all the info they can get and debate that to death on the planetary info nets (pretty much the 40th century SB.com), but it's something akin to some war in Africa for us. As long as nothing we need is threatened, as long as none of "our" boys and girls are involved, neither the population nor the governments care.

The only "elite" factoring into the equation in the HH-verse is the Solarian bureaucracy, which is fractured and focussed on the inside. Hell, even the OFS is focussed on its protectorates and the racket it runs there, and that also makes sense: at some point, you're reaching an extent were you simply no longer can't grow as fast as the stuff you have to keep an eye on. They have their hands full with keeping the little fiefdoms compliant. Who the hell cares if two somebodies outside that sphere bash there heads in?!

And that doesn't even factor in the massive information lag inherent to non-FTL communications.

As for the ships... I loathe to keep using the Africa metaphor, but just as the Sollies didn't really pay attention to the tactics used in the Mantie-Haven war, the US isn't looking to Rwanda et. al. because it believes it can find new tactical clues in the wars they fight. Same for the Sollies: for the SL it doesn't make any difference - on the surface - that, as they see it, Space Ivory Coast and Space Rwanda are duking it out. What could there possibly be learned in a fight between such backwaters? Yes, it's shortsighted, yes, it's stupid, yes, it's careless. And sadly, that makes it rather realistic. 

I think people who believe this kind of moloch to be unrealistic have a very rose-tinted view of bureaucracies, governments, and humans in general.

If you read some of the additional stuff Weber comments on on his website as background info (about general wealth distribution on, say, Old Terra), problems have been building up in the League for quite some time. As for the Roman analogy... going by Bryan Ward-Perkins The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (contrary to its title its a hard-archeology book) it's unlikely that the Romans as of the early 5th century would have percieved their own empire as declining/falling, since mass consumer goods and a comparably high material standard of living were still available to the majority of the population even after the sacks of Rome itself. Neither Rome nor the SL are a case of 'BAMN! ARMAGEDDON!' type of collapse. In both cases the rot has set in and has been slowly chewing away until things come to a climax.

The League has heavy investment in Manticore, which was engaged in a massive hot shooting war for . . . how long? A decade? Two?

Some League members do. Specifically and disproportionally, Beowulf. The League has several thousand member states. As long as the termini aren't threatened directly (which Haven never did) they don't (and didn't) care.

Manticore is not Bumblefuck, Africa. It is, apparently, a cornerstone of League commerce and functionally right next door. The war between Haven and Manticore is as far as I'm aware also the largest space war ever in the Honorverse.

But the war never functionally affected any of that commerce, hence soon slipped out of focus! And the transportation is dependant on ships chartered in Manticore. So, for the average Leaguer, that makes Manticore the equivalent of a Panama not under the risk of endangering the canal.

Don't get me wrong: even in the immense avalanches of information the newsfaxes have to handle I'd think that at least specific publications like the equivalent of Janes' or some weekly magazines should have provided some continued/recurrent coverage. Then, however, we get questions like how large their circulation/audience are and who that audience constitutes/can influence?

The fact that the League ignored it utterly is just asinine.

My personal view is that they took a look at it when it first flared up, concluded it didn't constitute a direct threat, then went back to the task of running 2,000 star systems and governing the needs of >3 trillion people. That can kinda get in the way of focussing on two warring nations outside your umbrella.

Weber portrays the Sollies as bumbling idiots.

We could already see in this ARC that Weber is toning down the stupid w/regards to the SLN. Filaretta's training exercises and the propagated commerce raiding strategy both show that people are beginning to actually use their heads. Filaretta himself was no stellar officer, but he wasn't a dumbass either. He was only bad compared to people who had fought a shooting war for the better part of the last 20 years. Would he have achieved his rank without family connections? No, probably not. But he was no Sandra Crandall (sp?) for that matter. He went in with a decent plan based on what little he could know at the time and had trained his people expecting significantly worse odds against him than his intel and briefings suggested (which was still very optimistic compared to what he ended up facing, but at least he gave it his best).

So much from me.

Artwork by Genkkis (French HH-series covers).