Note: After the discussion of Myke Cole’s Sixteenth Watch, there’s a request from me for your help. So please don’t click off before the page jump. It’ll be painless, I promise. Thanks.
I confess, I have a soft spot for military fantasy and science fiction from way back, partly because I like well-constructed mousetrap-style plots when I want a vacation from thinking too hard. I’ve shared the pleasure with my son, who as he grew gravitated more to true-life military memoir. But I had the privilege of introducing John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series to him, and we’ve argued extensively which is Tom Clancy’s best novel. (For the record, it’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin, not Red Storm Rising.) In general, I find the sub-genre a distraction and quick side-trip out of reality.
I was quite surprised, therefore, when I picked up Sixteenth Watch and found it was not your average military SFF, but it tackles and dismantles some classic military tropes, breathing freshness into what is too often well-ploughed territory.
I’m going to make this as spoiler-free as possible, and so here goes:
In the near future, the moon supports limited colonies for mining, with the principal nations in competition for resources being the United States and China. Tensions among miners on the moon are beginning to draw in interventionary forces both from China and the United States. The military forces from both sides are anxious to throw their weight around. Itchy trigger fingers abound, and it’s only a matter of time before something irrevocable happens.
The situation is not improved by the attitude among the Naval forces that form the bulk of military response. With commanders who eye their personal advancement above national interest and young Jarheads who are gonna Jarhead, war seems inevitable.
What starts in space will have reverberations on Earth.
Not that the Navy is really worried. The Marines “know” their victory will be swift and decisive. They will be greeted as liberators. Mission Accomplished, and all that.
The Coast Guard knows better, but the top brass is disinclined to listen to the Coasties, who serve as the first responders in trouble, taking their historic Search and Rescue mandate to space. The protagonist, Jane Oliver, means to be listened to.
That’s all you need to get going on with. “Sixteenth watch” refers to any deployment in space, named for the sixteen sunrises in a day that the astronauts on the old International Space Station would observe.
It’s not the plot that’s remarkable — it’s actually rather straightforward; what makes the novel a standout is that the plot is a fine palette for a parade of rich characters, and the perspective that is unique.
When was the last time you read a military novel where the protagonist was intent on averting war? Protagonist Jane Oliver is a career Coast Guard officer. She and her chain of command are committed to the Semper Paratus mandate — search and rescue, intervention to keep the peace, defuse tensions, guard borders. The main antagonism in the novel comes not from the Chinese, the ostensible “bad guys” — no, the antagonists are the Navy and Marines, and a military command that sees force as the solution for every diplomatic problem.
Not often does military SFF take the military itself as the antagonist. It’s a refreshing change. In addition, TV comes in for a satiric pasting that’s more elegant than anything this side of Being There. The idea that television warps reality, politics, and culture is treated often in literature, but rarely does it take the form of a contrived tv competition in the style of American Gladiators substituting in the public mind for real armed conflict. What happens if made-for-tv becomes so powerful that it warps the judgment of JSOC, as well?
Okay, now add characters, and here Cole accomplishes something I don’t ever remember having seen a male writer do: get inside the head of a female protagonist and depict her convincingly. Oliver is not simply, as has been said frequently of Tom Clancy’s female characters, a man with boobs, nor is she an idealized simplicity, but a layered and complex figure, as driven by commitment to her mission as she is by her instincts as a parent. I wondered if a man could ever write a woman as neither caricature nor victim nor psychopath. Now that Cole has proven it can be done, the rest of the dudes will have to up their games.
And I simply cannot explain how refreshing it is to read a hero who is not an ingenue, not a virgin on the cusp of adulthood, a powerful mature woman with her own command, approaching retirement age, and dealing with mundane problems like zero-g motion sickness and the limitations of her gear. All the characters easily pass the Bechdel Test. Not a whiff of romance. Even the assholes (and there are many assholes) have reason to act the way they do. The conflict in the novel rises from the circumstances the characters find themselves in, in their perception of and reaction to risk.
Sixteenth Watch is like a brisk Icelandic wind—unexpected, bracing, and refreshing. Pick it up.
Now for my part 2: I’m doing a bit of research. If you would, leave me a comment with the following:
- Your favorite 5 fantasy/sf books (or series) of all time
- Your favorite 5 fantasy/sf published since 2000
- Your favorite 2 fantasy/sf published in the past 2 years.
And then: same list, but in general reading, not genre. Thanks. It’ll be a help.
PS: For the record, my son wants a weigh-in: which is better--Red Storm Rising or The Cardinal of the Kremlin? Domestic tranquility rides on your decision.