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.