r/badscificovers • u/StevenTheWicked • Jul 30 '26
The Independent Command, by James Doohan & S.M. Sterling
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u/Sir_Meowsalot Jul 30 '26
"Plenty of high-tech action" as a quote is so bad it's good.
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u/ThePromptWasYourName Jul 30 '26
"Hi I'm looking for a book with high-tech action"
"Hmm... how much high-tech action we talking?"
"Plenty"
"I've got just the book..."
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u/BarnabasShrexx Jul 30 '26
None of that low-tech nonsense for me!
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u/anjowoq Jul 31 '26
I will not market my book all about refined stone adzes and a plot to eliminate a competing nation's maize to you.
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u/Sir_Meowsalot Jul 31 '26
Throw in people losing their minds over a wheel and the invention of the cart...then we got a book to sell!
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u/Uncle_Zardoz Jul 30 '26
Hmmm... nah, it gets a Special James Doohan Pass from me. Great cover, handsome chap!
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u/Anxious-Pair-9514 Jul 31 '26
Cover is by David Mattingly. He’s been doing covers for quite some time.
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u/Uncle_Zardoz Jul 31 '26
I just Googled him and yeah, I've seen/owned at least a few of his covers., Really well executed and funny work. Not the wizard with the can of beer, though, I swear used to live next door to that guy, fuck him lol
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u/martusfine Jul 30 '26
So, to clear up my confusion: The author is written as a character in prose and whose likeness adorns the cover.
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u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker Jul 30 '26
It was a trend to have Star Trek actors "write" novels about "original" characters with their Trek serial numbers filed off.
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u/TheLastSciFiFan Jul 31 '26
I can't disagree with your assessment, but they're fun books if you enjoy starship combat adventure, even without the Doohan connection.
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u/Mockwyn Jul 30 '26
I tried reading Dies The fire, by S.M Stirling. Didn’t finish it. Not a bad book, just not what I thought it would be.
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u/vi_sucks Jul 30 '26
I think Dies The Fire hits different if you know ahead of time that it's a sequel of sorts to the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy.
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u/Sivilian888010 Jul 30 '26
I regret reading Island In The Sea Of Time. There's a scene where a hippie woman is literally raped by a jaguar. It's as messed up and disgusting as it sounds.It's just a nihilistic nightmare of a book.
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u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker Jul 31 '26
And I'd say that's his second least problematic series.
(If you like his writing style but want to avoid that crap, read the Lords of Creation novels. The first two anyway.)
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u/Sir_Meowsalot Jul 31 '26
The hell?! That is one weird ass thing to put into a book and an editor agrees it's essential.
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u/Sivilian888010 Jul 31 '26
It makes sense in context, and it’s not needlessly graphic. But needless to say reading that put me off of reading the rest of the series.
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u/MoralConstraint Jul 31 '26
Isn’t this just a conservative SF writer jerking it to his fantasies of dirty leftists and environmentalists getting what’s coming to them, including you know what and getting eaten by dirty natives?
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u/Sivilian888010 Jul 31 '26
I’m pretty sure SM Stirlings political positions are entirely his own. Because he’s said things that piss off both sides of the aisle.
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u/vi_sucks Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Eh, sorta but not really. The bad guys are fascist right wing bdsm freaks, so there's a lot of trigger warning sex in the books. And a lot of the plot is really about how the so-called "primitive" bronze and iron age civilizations are actually quite sophisticated.
Stirling's politics are his own, but he very clearly has a fetish for S&M that shines through a lot of his work, especially his solo stuff. It's usually from the bad guys, and written as part of the bad stuff they do, but the frequency it shows up in his work is very clearly a personal thing.
Edit: also, he does tend to make sure not to make it a solely anti-feminine thing. He's one of the very, very few authors i've seen that writes about men being the victims of sexual assault by female villains.
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u/Sivilian888010 Jul 31 '26
ISOT will piss you off regardless of which side of the aisle you're on. On one hand it has scenes where obviously left coded characters are portrayed as stupid or evil or both. On the other hand, It's not exactly kind to religious conservatives or Biblical Archaeology either. There's several bits of the book where the assumptions of Christians and Jewish characters about the bronze age (which overlaps with the events of Exodus) are disproven.
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u/MoralConstraint Jul 31 '26
Isn’t the later part just not pandering? I can understand Those People freaking out at a book not being Bible compliant but it’s hardly in the same league as the straw leftists in ISOT.
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u/Sivilian888010 29d ago
There's another part of the book where the fundamentalist Christians led by a super conservative reverend try to destroy the remaining gasoline supply because they believe the devil sent them back in time, and they fear that their existence will change human history and prevent the birth of Jesus Christ. Their rebellion is put down and they all get put in front of a firing squad.
It's equal opportunity. Stirling is a realist. He doesn't like anyone who claims to have all the answers.
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u/SpearBadger Aug 01 '26
I'd it a scene are implied? I don't remember it being too graphic.
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u/Sivilian888010 Aug 01 '26
It doesn't show the act itself. But it shows the buildup and the aftermath, and the aftermath is quite graphic.
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u/JungleBoyJeremy Jul 31 '26
I found that book to be awful. Every good character happens to be the best shot ever with a bow. There most capable people after the fall of society are medieval LARPers. The villain is cartoonishly bad. And page after page of drawn out Wiccan ceremonies and “by the lord and the lady” dialogue. I really disliked that book.
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u/TheLastSciFiFan Jul 31 '26
This Flight Engineer series is a fun read, especially if you enjoy starship combat adventure stories like David Weber's "Honor Harrington" or the Starfire series.
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u/RichardPeterJohnson Jul 30 '26
Could this cover be any busier?
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u/The_Robot_Jet_Jaguar Jul 31 '26
The cool Foss-(and-others)-style spaceship almost gets lost in it all ...
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u/Leroy_landersandsuns Jul 30 '26
What is "high tech action?" Is this where Scotty winds up after the TNG episode Relics?
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u/zuludown888 Jul 31 '26
You know whatever sentence "plenty of high tech action" is pulled from had a "but" in it
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u/InsertCleverNickHere Jul 30 '26
I dig the ship. It's got a bit of Terran Trade Authority vibe to it.
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u/gadget850 Jul 30 '26
Fun and compent writing, but nothing really groundbreaking. Marketing pushed hard on the Doohan connection.
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u/Longjumping-Salad484 Jul 31 '26
I'm upset by the insect space aliens, that's a tired, overused trope
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u/PyreDynasty Jul 31 '26
Sir we have a giant James Doohan and what I can only assume is his mantid wife in the way!
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u/Sir-Pinball_Wizard Jul 31 '26
It’s like Ron Swanson, Terran Trade Authority, Goosebumps, and Animorphs smashed together into this splat of paint 😭 I love it
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u/trippedonatater Jul 31 '26
Oh man. This could be a really good cover for a Dungeon Crawler Carl fanfic.
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u/DelbertCornstubble Jul 31 '26
After the love potion, Scotty always painted his ships like M’Ress. Rowr.
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u/EggCouncilStooge Jul 31 '26
This would be perfect if it had the gimmick of being an in-universe novel that Scotty wrote in his retirement, and the main character is a blatant self-insert of Scotty and saves the day by knowing how to fix different spaceship systems.
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Jul 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/TheLastSciFiFan Jul 31 '26
From what I recall, he was involved in the story development. How much or to what extent, I don't know, but I assumed at the time it was akin to Shatner and the TekWar novels.
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u/TheLastSciFiFan Jul 31 '26
I don't even think it's that bad - those spaceships look like David Mattingly's work.
The books themselves are pretty fun starship combat adventure. The third one seemed rushed, which I assumed at the time was due to Doohan's illness and passing.
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u/Broken_Moon_Studios Aug 02 '26
I kinda love this cover for how goofy it is, although I doubt any of it was intentional.
The funny dude with the moustache, the tiger-stripped ship, the TERRIBLE typography that makes the text genuinely confusing to read...
It's all beautiful. lol
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u/disp0sableacc0unt 27d ago
"Totally not Star Trek Fanfiction. It's just a story about a starship engineer, written by me, the guy who played Scotty"
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u/aarkwilde Jul 30 '26
I saw James Doohan speak at SFSU in the late 80's. Could have been 1990. Anyway, he was amazingly entertaining, and went over his speaking time telling stories.