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Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional novella

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Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional novella
Post by Saknussem   » Sun Feb 18, 2018 5:23 pm

Saknussem
Ensign

Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 3:17 pm

Greetings all,
I've been out of touch (and out of the world) for a long while. But now I'm back home. At last. And permanently! My brother gave me the reissue of "Oath of the War God" with the add-on novella by Brian Dal . . . oops, I mean David Weber. LOL

Unsure how often Mr. Weber reads the boards, but, and if I'm incorrect, please correct me, there was no mention of Brian Daley's wonderful novel "The Doomfarers of Coramonde" as the inspiration for the novella "Sword Brother". Mr. Daley passed away many years ago, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and managed to write several truly excellent pieces of fantasy before he moved on.

Best,
Saknussem
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by Robert_A_Woodward   » Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:24 am

Robert_A_Woodward
Captain of the List

Posts: 537
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:29 pm

Saknussem wrote:Greetings all,
I've been out of touch (and out of the world) for a long while. But now I'm back home. At last. And permanently! My brother gave me the reissue of "Oath of the War God" with the add-on novella by Brian Dal . . . oops, I mean David Weber. LOL

Unsure how often Mr. Weber reads the boards, but, and if I'm incorrect, please correct me, there was no mention of Brian Daley's wonderful novel "The Doomfarers of Coramonde" as the inspiration for the novella "Sword Brother". Mr. Daley passed away many years ago, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and managed to write several truly excellent pieces of fantasy before he moved on.

Best,
Saknussem


I believe this came up before and, IIRC, David Weber said that he hadn't read _Doomfarers..._. Besides, I believe that the idea wasn't original to Daley.
----------------------------
Beowulf was bad.
(first sentence of Chapter VI of _Space Viking_ by H. Beam Piper)
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by Saknussem   » Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:42 am

Saknussem
Ensign

Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 3:17 pm

"I believe this came up before and, IIRC, David Weber said that he hadn't read _Doomfarers..._. Besides, I believe that the idea wasn't original to Daley."

Do you have any notion from where the idea might have originated? Not that I'm doubting Mr. Weber's statement that he hadn't read "Doomfarers", but it's super-coincidental:
1. VERY powerful wizard -- good in nature, not really from the place he's defending.
2. Casts a summoning spell seeking a war machine that will aid him/his proxy in defeating mega-bad juju monster -in DoC a dragon, in SB, a demon
3. Both get not-the-best-war-machine for the job (both are APCs, one an M113, the other a LAV-25). Tanks would have been better, no?
4. Both get American! Why not Chinese? Israeli? Russian? British?
5. Both get a war machine & crew from an active war zone with a unit on the front line. Why not a crew down for R&R or one in the reserves?

So. Again, I don't doubt Mr. Weber, and it IS a fairly common idea out there. There have probably been about twenty gazillion tabletop RPG campaigns out there based on this very idea.

But if you know or can find out where the idea may have originated, I'd be grateful.

Thank you,
Saknussem
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by thanatos   » Tue Jul 10, 2018 8:30 pm

thanatos
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Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:29 pm
Location: United States

Saknussem wrote:"I believe this came up before and, IIRC, David Weber said that he hadn't read _Doomfarers..._. Besides, I believe that the idea wasn't original to Daley."

Do you have any notion from where the idea might have originated? Not that I'm doubting Mr. Weber's statement that he hadn't read "Doomfarers", but it's super-coincidental:
1. VERY powerful wizard -- good in nature, not really from the place he's defending.
2. Casts a summoning spell seeking a war machine that will aid him/his proxy in defeating mega-bad juju monster -in DoC a dragon, in SB, a demon
3. Both get not-the-best-war-machine for the job (both are APCs, one an M113, the other a LAV-25). Tanks would have been better, no?
4. Both get American! Why not Chinese? Israeli? Russian? British?
5. Both get a war machine & crew from an active war zone with a unit on the front line. Why not a crew down for R&R or one in the reserves?

So. Again, I don't doubt Mr. Weber, and it IS a fairly common idea out there. There have probably been about twenty gazillion tabletop RPG campaigns out there based on this very idea.

But if you know or can find out where the idea may have originated, I'd be grateful.

Thank you,
Saknussem


I agree. Why not have soldiers from any army besides the US armed forces? I actually favor Israeli soldiers from the 1973 Yom Kippur War ending up in a fantasy world.
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by Louis R   » Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:58 pm

Louis R
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1293
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:25 pm

Actually, Wencit was _not_ summoning a war machine - he didn't know such things existed. He said he was hoping for a griffin, but didn't know for sure what he'd get. Apparently he made the spell a little _too_ none-specific.

Saknussem wrote:"I believe this came up before and, IIRC, David Weber said that he hadn't read _Doomfarers..._. Besides, I believe that the idea wasn't original to Daley."

Do you have any notion from where the idea might have originated? Not that I'm doubting Mr. Weber's statement that he hadn't read "Doomfarers", but it's super-coincidental:
1. VERY powerful wizard -- good in nature, not really from the place he's defending.
2. Casts a summoning spell seeking a war machine that will aid him/his proxy in defeating mega-bad juju monster -in DoC a dragon, in SB, a demon
3. Both get not-the-best-war-machine for the job (both are APCs, one an M113, the other a LAV-25). Tanks would have been better, no?
4. Both get American! Why not Chinese? Israeli? Russian? British?
5. Both get a war machine & crew from an active war zone with a unit on the front line. Why not a crew down for R&R or one in the reserves?

So. Again, I don't doubt Mr. Weber, and it IS a fairly common idea out there. There have probably been about twenty gazillion tabletop RPG campaigns out there based on this very idea.

But if you know or can find out where the idea may have originated, I'd be grateful.

Thank you,
Saknussem
Top
Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by runsforcelery   » Thu Oct 25, 2018 3:17 am

runsforcelery
First Space Lord

Posts: 2425
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:39 am
Location: South Carolina

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:
Saknussem wrote:Greetings all,
I've been out of touch (and out of the world) for a long while. But now I'm back home. At last. And permanently! My brother gave me the reissue of "Oath of the War God" with the add-on novella by Brian Dal . . . oops, I mean David Weber. LOL

Unsure how often Mr. Weber reads the boards, but, and if I'm incorrect, please correct me, there was no mention of Brian Daley's wonderful novel "The Doomfarers of Coramonde" as the inspiration for the novella "Sword Brother". Mr. Daley passed away many years ago, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and managed to write several truly excellent pieces of fantasy before he moved on.

Best,
Saknussem


I believe this came up before and, IIRC, David Weber said that he hadn't read _Doomfarers..._. Besides, I believe that the idea wasn't original to Daley.




I hadn't read Doomfarers then; I have since it was pointed out to me, and I can certainly see where the question arose.

I can't tell you where the idea for my own story originated any more than I can tell you where a great many of my story ideas originate. I doubt most authors could tell you that in every case. Sometimes I can, of course. For example, I well remember sitting on my front steps on a Fall evening and looking up at an absolutely stupendous orange moon near the horizon. And as I looked at it, I thought to myself, "Boy, wouldn't it be cool if Earth didn't really have a moon? If that was actually a giant alien starship up there, stuck in orbit for millennia? Ooooooh, shiny!" And we all know where that ended up. :roll:

In the case of "Sworsd Brother," there were certain things I wanted to get into Norfressa's DNA in case I ever got to write Sword of the South, and this is the way I chose to do it. I used Marines because I know a lot of Marines, I like a lot of Marines, and who else are you gonna send on an expeditionary force? And for reasons which are internally important (to my thinking, at least, even if I never get around to explicitly explaining all of it in the books) it was important to me that the character from our universe who I introduced had to be a professional combat soldier [forgive me Marines! I mean it only in the generic sense; I am not speaking of those souls how put USA after their names!]) who had some heavy karmic burdens of his own.

Actually, this isn't the first time I came up with a story idea that tracked really closely with another story/song. I wrote Path of the Fury back in 1989 only to discover later that many of the same story elements were involved in a filk song (which I cannot now track down, though I think it was by Leslie Fish) which is also about the survivor of a planet raid who was left for dead and stole a ship to go after the pirates. Indeed, IIRC, at the end, the heroine of the song fully intends to carry through with a suicide run on the flagship of her enemies. There are a lot of dissimilar elements in there, too, although I can't recall all the details of the song to mind right this minute. I do recall that I liked it --- a lot --- when my sister-in-law sent me a copy of it a year or so after Fury released. I don't have the copyright info on Leslie's song (hard to find it when I can't remember the durn thing's name!) and I don't know which came first. I know the book didn't release until late in '92, three years after I'd written it, but I'm hazy on the exact sequence. Even if I wrote the book first, though, I'm totally confident that she produced the song completely independently.

My point is that if you write enough stories, you're going to stumble across the same ideas from time to time. To me, the more interesting aspect of it is how the differing authors used the same ideas differently. For example, if I'm recalling correctly, the track commander from Doomfarers returns to the alternate universe later, which Gunny Houghton wouldn't even have considered, and I don't recall any deities being involved.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by bkwormlisa   » Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:59 am

bkwormlisa
Commander

Posts: 189
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2011 5:43 pm

runsforcelery wrote:I hadn't read Doomfarers then; I have since it was pointed out to me, and I can certainly see where the question arose.

I can't tell you where the idea for my own story originated any more than I can tell you where a great many of my story ideas originate. I doubt most authors could tell you that in every case. Sometimes I can, of course. For example, I well remember sitting on my front steps on a Fall evening and looking up at an absolutely stupendous orange moon near the horizon. And as I looked at it, I thought to myself, "Boy, wouldn't it be cool if Earth didn't really have a moon? If that was actually a giant alien starship up there, stuck in orbit for millennia? Ooooooh, shiny!" And we all know where that ended up. :roll:

In the case of "Sworsd Brother," there were certain things I wanted to get into Norfressa's DNA in case I ever got to write Sword of the South, and this is the way I chose to do it. I used Marines because I know a lot of Marines, I like a lot of Marines, and who else are you gonna send on an expeditionary force? And for reasons which are internally important (to my thinking, at least, even if I never get around to explicitly explaining all of it in the books) it was important to me that the character from our universe who I introduced had to be a professional combat soldier [forgive me Marines! I mean it only in the generic sense; I am not speaking of those souls how put USA after their names!]) who had some heavy karmic burdens of his own.

Actually, this isn't the first time I came up with a story idea that tracked really closely with another story/song. I wrote Path of the Fury back in 1989 only to discover later that many of the same story elements were involved in a filk song (which I cannot now track down, though I think it was by Leslie Fish) which is also about the survivor of a planet raid who was left for dead and stole a ship to go after the pirates. Indeed, IIRC, at the end, the heroine of the song fully intends to carry through with a suicide run on the flagship of her enemies. There are a lot of dissimilar elements in there, too, although I can't recall all the details of the song to mind right this minute. I do recall that I liked it --- a lot --- when my sister-in-law sent me a copy of it a year or so after Fury released. I don't have the copyright info on Leslie's song (hard to find it when I can't remember the durn thing's name!) and I don't know which came first. I know the book didn't release until late in '92, three years after I'd written it, but I'm hazy on the exact sequence. Even if I wrote the book first, though, I'm totally confident that she produced the song completely independently.

My point is that if you write enough stories, you're going to stumble across the same ideas from time to time. To me, the more interesting aspect of it is how the differing authors used the same ideas differently. For example, if I'm recalling correctly, the track commander from Doomfarers returns to the alternate universe later, which Gunny Houghton wouldn't even have considered, and I don't recall any deities being involved.

The song in question is probably Eumenides (YouTube). It's written by Mercedes Lackey and sung by Leslie Fish. The CD (Magic, Moondust, & Melancholy) is copyright 1989/1998, though I don't know what the song itself is. And I highly recommend the CD to anyone that likes filk. ;) This isn't even the best song on it.
What's packed in my hold
Is dearer than gold
Revenge is my cargo this day
Ya' think you have won
But when my job's done
The fury will force you to pay

My people weren't strong
They've done ya' no wrong
They just happened to be in your way
You take what you seek
Contempt for the weak
And your battle fleet came yesterday

Like the coward you are
You strike from afar
And death is the harvest you reap
For all we were brave
No warning you gave
My people ya' slaughtered like sheep

Alone in the dark
I lay near to my death
With hate in my heart and with my final breath
To whatever gods that
Would listen did pray
That they witness your crimes and they force you to pay

I'm Tera, long dead
Old gods it is said
Created the furies to fly
Win justice to seek
And revenge for the weak
On those whom the law had passed by

Those gods heard my plea
And granted to me
The means of achieving my goal
Oh I think they are just
For to do what I must
The fury they placed in my soul

Transformed by her hate
Now I am your fate
The Gods chosen weapon of right
The fury inside
Will not be denied
And I seek my vengeance this night

I've stolen this ship packed
With weapons of war
So you will not profit, as you have before
Eluding you fleet
Past your sentries I slip
And the fury has guided me straight to your ship

She steadies my hand
Her tools I command
Accounting you will not deny
Your ship is in sight
Of my fury lead flight
And the fires of my vengeance burn high

[breakdown]

What's packed in my hold
Is dearer than gold
As dear as my people who fell
When I ram in your side
At the end of my ride
This fury will send you to hell, to hell
This fury will take you to hell!
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Re: Trade reissue of "Oath of the War God" & additional nove
Post by Bahzellstudent   » Wed Apr 10, 2019 2:28 pm

Bahzellstudent
Lieutenant Commander

Posts: 100
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 4:13 pm
Location: Derbyshire, United Kingdom

Thanks for the link to Eumenides - I've read a lot of Mercedes Lackey over the years, and funny to see this potential link between her and the great RFC
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