War Stories: New Military Science Fiction

Foreword — Gregory Drobny
"Graves" — Joe Haldeman

Part 1: Wartime Systems
"In the Loop" — Ken Liu
"Ghost Girl" — Rich Larson
"The Radio" — Susan Jane Bigelow
"Contractual Obligation" — James L. Cambias
"The Wasp Keepers" — Mark Jacobsen
"Non-Standard Deviation" — Richard Dansky

Part 2: Combat
"All You Need" — Mike Sizemore
"The Valkyrie" — Maurice Broaddus
"One Million Lira" — Thoraiya Dyer
"Invincible" — Jay Posey
"Light and Shadow" — Linda Nagata

Part 3: Armored Force
"Warhosts" — Yoon Ha Lee
"Suits" — James Sutter
"Mission. Suit. Self." — Jake Kerr
"In Loco" — Carlos Orsi

Part 4: Aftermath
"War Dog" — Mike Barretta
"Coming Home" — Janine Spendlove
"Where We Would End a War" — F. Brett Cox
"Black Butterfly" — T.C. McCarthy
"Always the Stars and the Void Between" — Nerine Dorman
"Enemy States" — Karin Lowachee
"War 3.01" — Keith Brooke

Andrew Liptak earned his Master of Arts in Military History from Norwich University, and has written extensively about military science fiction for io9 and SF Signal, and has written for such websites as Kirkus Reviews, and Strange Horizons, as well as Military History for magazines such as Armchair General and the Norwich Record. He is currently an editorial assistant for Lightspeed Magazine. His first story, 'Fragmented', is set to be published by Galaxy's Edge Magazine.

Jaym Gates is the editor of the zombie anthology Rigor Amortis, which was a Barnes and Noble Top 10 pick in 2011, and short fiction author, published in The Aether Age: Helios, Goldfish Grim and Heroes! She has a strong background in organizing, supporting, and launching Kickstarter projects, such as Geek Love, the highest-funded anthology in Kickstarter's history. Her fiction has been published in The Aether Age: Helios, Goldfish Grim, and M-Brane SF. She is the Communications Director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

From: "In the Loop" by Ken Liu

When Kyra was nine, her father turned into a monster.

It didn’t happen overnight. He went to work every morning, like always, and when he came in the door in the evening, Kyra would ask him to play catch with her. That used to be her favorite time of the day. But the yesses came less frequently, and then not at all.

He’d sit at the table and stare. She’d ask him questions and he wouldn’t answer. He used to always have a funny answer for everything, and she’d repeat his jokes to her friends and think he was the cleverest dad in the whole world.

She had loved those moments when he’d teach her how to swing a hammer properly, how to measure and saw and chisel. She would tell him that she wanted to be a builder when she grew up, and he’d nod and say that was a good idea. But he stopped taking her to his workshop in the shed to make things together, and there was no explanation.

Then he started going out in the evenings. At first, Mom would ask him when he’d be back. He’d look at her like she was a stranger before closing the door behind him. By the time he came home, Kyra and her brothers were already in bed, but she would hear shouts and sometimes things breaking.

Mom began to look at Dad like she was afraid of him, and Kyra tried to help with getting the boys to bed, to make her bed without being asked, to finish her dinner without complaint, to do everything perfectly, hoping that would make things better, back to the way they used to be. But Dad didn’t seem to pay any attention to her or her brothers. 

Then, one day, he slammed Mom into the wall. Kyra stood there in the kitchen and felt the whole house shake. She didn’t know what to do. He turned around and saw Kyra, and his face scrunched up like he hated her, hated her mother, hated himself most of all. And he fled the house without saying another thing.

Mom packed a suitcase and took Kyra and her brothers to Grandma’s place that evening, and they stayed there for a month. Kyra thought about calling her father but she didn’t know what she would say. She tried to imagine herself asking the man on the other end of the line what have you done with Daddy?

A policeman came, looking for her mother. Kyra hid in the hall so she could hear what he was telling her. We don’t think it was a homicide. That was how she found out that her father had died.

They moved back to the house, where there was a lot to do: folding up Dad’s uniforms for storage, packing up his regular clothes to give away, cleaning the house so it could be sold, getting ready to move away permanently. She caressed Dad’s medals and badges, shiny and neatly laid out in a box, and that was when she finally cried.

They found a piece of paper at the bottom of Dad’s dresser drawer.

“What is it?” she asked Mom.

Mom read it over. “It’s from your Dad’s commander, at the Army.” Her hands shook. “It shows how many people he had killed.”

She showed Kyra the number: one thousand two-hundred and fifty-one.

The number lingered in Kyra’s mind. As if that gave his life meaning. As if that defined him—and them.