When President Donald Trump started talking about establishing the U.S. Space Force, a lot of people — myself included — thought it was an idea whose time had not yet come.
But as I learned while doing the following email interview with C. Stuart Hardwick, the editor of the new short story and essay anthology Tales Of The United States Space Force (paperback, Kindle), the Space Force’s roots actually go all the way back to the Cold War, albeit under other names, including President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
In the following email interview, Hardwick discusses how this anthology came to be, as well as how it reflects both the truth and the possible future of the Space Force, while not shying away from the snarky comments of us doubters.
To start, what is Tales Of The United States Space Force?
Tales Of The United States Space Force is a collection of articles and science fiction stories illustrating the need for, and dispelling misconceptions about, the new U.S. Space Force. We have brand new stories from some of today’s best, a few relevant classics, and brief, well-researched articles about the mission and origins of the force.
Who came up with the idea for Tales Of The United States Space Force?
The idea came from a chat between me and Lt. Col. Peter Garretson, an instructor at the Air Force Command and Staff College, or as he likes to call it, “the real Starfleet Academy.” I knew from a panel I’d moderated at FenCon in Dallas that a bipartisan commission under President Obama had recommended creating a Space Corps. In fact, the idea had been around since Reagan, and when I met Peter a few months later at the 2018 International Space Development Conference, where I’d been invited to accept an award, he said it’s time had finally come. He’d been thinking of putting together an anthology as a recruiting aid, and we talked about it for a few months till his retirement from the college.
So how did this anthology come to be?
A year later, Congress really did finally add the Space Corps to the annual defense authorization bill. The new president had changed the name and taken credit, which made no difference at all except to attract ridicule from those who didn’t care for him and didn’t know their taxes had already been paying for space defense since the ’80s.
When the new USSF announced its graphics and uniforms, they reminded some people of science fiction and social media had a field day. Which was unfortunate. Today, fewer then 7% of Americans have ever served in the military, and that makes it easy to see headlines about cost overruns and policy miss-steps and dismiss the military as a bunch of expensive chest thumping. To be sure, there is some of that, but as an Air Force brat and student of history, I knew the reality is more complex.
The reason the U.S. Military is so big and expensive isn’t boondoggles and unneeded sword rattling. It’s that we learned the lessons of two World Wars, that if you don’t want war, you have to make sure aggressors know you’re prepared to stop any trouble they start, and military readiness is how you do that. Expensive weapons systems and the training to use them are what preserve the peace with only half a percent of our population in uniform.
Yes, there are mistakes, abuses, and excesses, but the ability to keep tabs on potential adversaries, deploy and control force on short notice, and hit targets the size of windows instead of carpet bombing cities, is what deters the sort of military adventurism that led Hitler into Poland. Space is critical to each of those things, and also to our entire modern economy and way of life. Other nations know that, and some have already taken alarming offensive steps in space.
When I saw memes blaming Donald Trump for the militarization of space — something that started with Khrushchev and that’s now a growing danger we need to catch up to — I could see there was a PR problem, and that I was in a position to do something about it.
I’ve had some success both as a science fiction writer and science communicator, and I was looking for a more ambitious editing project. And, as a former Writers Of The Future winner, I have pretty good industry contacts. So I canvased them for interest and advice and tried to get funding, which Baen stepped in to provide.
Now, in terms of the stories, how did you decide what to include?
I knew from the start this project would be a little different, a mix of fiction and fact in the Analog Magazine mold, but with more illustrative stories. You never want to hem in your authors too much, though. After all, job one is entertainment, and the appeal of science fiction lies in imagination. So I spent a lot of time on the writer guidelines, getting the balance right between the harder, less speculative focus needed for illustration and more expansive flights of fancy. In the end, what my authors delivered, I think, shows that investment of time was well worth it.
Fortunately, I’m friends with a lot of the writers who regularly publish (and win awards) in the hard and military sci-fi space. So I reached out to them, and to seasoned pros I thought might be a fit. Then I put out an open call to fill the balance. Reading slush is one of the hardest parts of any such project, and it was here too. I had to pass on a lot of good stories just because they weren’t a good fit, and it helped tremendously having a core of solid writers I knew could be counted on to deliver appropriate stories on time.
So, what genres of stories are included in Tales Of The United States Space Force? You mentioned military sci-fi, but are there also hard sci-fi stories? Space opera?
All of the above, though mostly toward the hard-sci-fi end of the spectrum. We ended up with a table of contents starting out with the more near-term, down to Earth stories, then becoming generally more speculative, more expansive as we go. Along the way, we have police work, battles, espionage, drone combat, good old fashioned puzzles, and even aliens. We also have honor, duty, romance, regret — everything you’d expect from the best sci-fi authors of our day.
And are the stories new, are they old, a mix, were some written for this collection? Because one of the contributors is Arthur C. Clarke, who died in 2008, eleven years before the U.S. Space Force was commissioned in 2019. I know that guy was prescient, but seriously…
He was indeed. The story you are talking about is “Superiority,” a somewhat tongue-in-cheek cautionary against over-reliance on military technology. Relevant, I think, when we’re talking about defending expensive, precision space assets that will always be vulnerable to anyone who can get a slingshot or a can of spray paint into orbit.
Most of the stories are new, but his is one of four reprints in the anthology, a common practice that helps sell the book and make room for newer, lesser known voices who aren’t yet booked up two years in advance with contracted novels.
In this case, though, I specifically wanted the stories by Clarke and Larry Niven for their fit, and Karl Gallagher’s for that reason and because his is a delightful little romp that deserves a wider audience than it had previously. But we didn’t need any padding. We were fortunate to get new contributions by Harry Turtledove, Greg & James Binford, Jody Lynn Nye, and a host of award winners.
Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven
As you mentioned, when the U.S. Space Force was announced, it was greeted with a lot of snarky jokes. And then you had that TV show, Space Force. Are any of the stories in Tales Of The United States Space Force humorous?
Absolutely, and the snark was part of the impetus for this project. But humor can be in good taste, and it can help bring real issues to light. I actually liked the Netflix series quite a lot, and found it pretty respectful of military culture, which, coming from a service family, I appreciate. One of the silliest scenes though was when a Chinese satellite snipped the solar panels off a new U.S. spy satellite with giant scissors. It was silly, but it’s also a real capability that China has tested under the guise of orbital repair.
Humorous sci-fi is too rare these days, and was definitely on my radar early on. That’s one reason I wanted Larry Niven’s “The Return Of William Proxmire,” about a time traveling congressional bean counter famous for opposition to the space program who finds history to be ruinously resilient, and Karl K. Gallagher’s “Zombie,” about careful mitigation of, shall we say, potentially flatulent orbital debris.
And of course we dealt directly with the snark. We got permission to use two of the best syndicated cartoons on the subject, and the inside scoop on the real origins of the new Space Force iconography and uniforms. TLDR, it wasn’t Star Trek. We even addressed the little known truth of the Roswell incident.
The other reaction to the U.S. Space Force is that it’s premature. Is that something addressed in Tales Of The United States Space Force?
Yes. It’s actually kind of odd that so many think that, including Trump’s defense secretary, who originally shot down the proposal saying it needed more study. It didn’t. The DOD created Space Command, a cross-branch joint command focused on space defense back in 1985, and for at least that long, various experts in the Pentagon and congress have complained that space defense activities were too dispersed, poorly coordinated, and generally given short shrift by the Air Force. Meanwhile, Russia, China and others have moved ahead with their offensive space capabilities — and have started harassing our satellites.
As you said, the Space Force has been around for a while, albeit in a different form. But as the technology advances, so too will their responsibilities. Which means it could be a military force, like the Navy, but it might also be a rescue force, like the Coast Guard. Does Tales Of The United States Space Force have stories of both, or is it just stories of it being a military division?
Wherever people go, the law and the military must follow, and in that event, a Coast Guard in space is the model you’d expect. But that sort of talk really is premature. Contrary to what some people may think, the Pentagon spends money to do a job, not the other way around. Right now, Space Force’s job is improving coordination of space related launch, defense, and management activities between all branches and improving space situational awareness. It’s bad if some aggressor blows up your satellite. It’s worse if they sneak up and replace its firmware and put a remote controlled kill switch (or anything really) where you won’t find it till the worst possible moment.
So the anthology runs the gamut. Most of the stories are more “down to Earth” if you will, closer to what space defense is really about today, but as I say, later stories foresee a day when it may become more of a Coast Guard in space, and beyond.
Tales Of The United States Space Force also includes non-fiction essays. How did you decide who would write those, and how much of that decision was based on the positions they said they would take?
When it comes to non-fiction, the only position is truth, backed up by evidence. By the time I had Baen [the book’s publisher] on board, I mostly knew what articles I wanted — something about the history and mission, the new uniform and insignia, and had done about half the research needed for these just to get the project off the ground.
I’ve sold enough articles to Analog, I know how to write non-fiction quickly and clearly and at a consistent and approachable level, so it made sense to write some myself instead of both editing and fact-checking someone else’s work. But when Michael Morton, a retired space defense insider, offered to write about the Space Force mission, I was glad to give him a shot. He did a great job, and it’s always good to have the horse’s mouth. That’s why I was so happy to get a foreword from Bill Otto, a high-ranking project manager and space laser weapon expert from the SDI program, and the chance to interview Tracy Roan and Cathy Lovelady, who headed up creation of the new USSF uniform.
Now, unless I’m mistaken, Tales Of The United States Space Force is the first anthology you’ve edited…
Yes and no. This is my first gig editing for a major publisher, but the fourth anthology I’ve actually worked on. When I won Writers Of The Future, Mike Resnick gave me grief for not belonging to my local writer’s guild, so I came home and joined. That led to an invitation to help edit an anthology for the guild. Then I started my own imprint, Got Scifi, to publish an anthology with other Writers Of The Future winners just so we — early career writers with no backlist — would have something to sell at appearances. That worked out well, so we did Final Frontier, full of uplifting space sci-fi to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Astronaut Stan Love wrote the forward and Spider Robinson contributed, and we turned it out on Audible.com. Very cool. Along the way, I was learning and getting feedback from anthologists Alex Shvartsman and Bryan Thomas Schmidt, who I’d both known for a while.
My apologizes. So, how did editing those anthologies influence what you did with Tales Of The United States Space Force?
It all came in handy here, because even though I didn’t have to do all the page layout, I had a lot more research to do, not only for the articles, but to find, reach, and coordinate with marquee authors and an ever changing network of Pentagon contacts and web pages to get needed information. For example, I spent days just getting a definitive answer about reproduction of the Space Force Delta and the Seal. And the Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs office was efficient and gracious in helping set up the interviews, but that was after months of run around as Air Force personnel shuffled about during reorganization. It was a very different project, and a lot more work than your typical anthology, so I’m very glad it wasn’t my first.
On the flipside of that, you had a story in an anthology called Surviving Tomorrow. Do you also have a story in Tales Of The United States Space Force?
That was “A Love Monstrously Grateful,” about a line of human cancer cells that replace life on Earth in their own image — Genesis planet style. And yes, I put my own story, “A Fair Defense,” about a science fair project that helps the Space Force protect the U.S. constellation of global positioning satellites, in the anthology.
As a working author who usually has to run the same slush gauntlet as everyone else, I had my reservations about that. But its a common enough practice, and for good reason, too. As editor, you start with a vision, tone, and direction, and you want at least one story in the lot to solidly reflect that. So, I just wrote as if I was writing for Analog, which usually works out fine, and long before I knew how many good stories I was going to buy or from whom, I knew I had at least one good fit. It seems to have worked out; early readers have said they think it ties all the others together.
Hollywood loves turning short stories into movies. Are there any stories in Tales Of The United States Space Force that you think would work especially well as a movie, and are stories that Hollywood would consider making into a movie?
Hmm…well Sylvia Althoff’s “Bubbles From Beneath” comes to mind. It’s a sort of police procedural in space and beyond the immediate reach of the authorities, which situation lends itself to drama.
But for my money, I’d love to see the Benfords’ “The Lurker” on the silver screen, though it would need quite a bit of expansion. Imagine a giant rock hurtling toward Earth and the Chinese and the Space Force rushing to investigate — only to realize it’s some sort of automated surveillance platform left behind millions of years ago. Now that’s movie fodder.
Of course, most short stories are just that — too short to fill out a movie, while most novels are too long. Movies map better to novella length works generally, though there are of course many exceptions. Personally, I’d love to see all these stories realized dramatically just as they are, in an old fashioned anthology series in the Twilight Zone mold.
Finally, if someone enjoys Tales Of The United States Space Force, what novel about the U.S. Space Force or a Space Force-like organization would you suggest they read?
Sure. How about Ghost Fleet: A Novel Of The Next World War by P.W. Singer and August Cole. It’s about a new Cold War in space.
And while we’re at it, I can recommend Wil McCarthy’s Rich Man’s Sky trilogy [Rich Man’s Sky, Poor Man’s Sky, Beggar’s Sky], which is great. I say that even though he was one of those too busy with his novels to send me a story for the anthology, the scoundrel.
