SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Foreword

SNAFU.

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.

That, I think, says it all when it comes to military horror. Soldiers fighting for their lives, and at times for the lives of innocents, against supernatural or unearthly creatures.

Military writing has been around for as long as the written word, and likely for longer, although we only have a few surviving examples of such.

The idea of military speculative fiction (specfic) may seem like a subject not worth spending a whole lot of time talking about. After all, doesn’t it seem rather self-explanatory? It’s about the military, any branch, and it’s about horror, fantasy, or science fiction. However I believe military specfic is deeper than that. While it may very well be escapist literature to characterise all of the romanticized visions we have of the military, it can also be a hard-hitting commentary on current events and politics.

Beowulf and Homer’s Odyssey are both examples of early recorded military speculative fiction, although I’m not sure they were designed to be this. The cultures of the time believed in the gods, and sometimes the monsters, of Odyssey.

Precursors for military specfic can be found in ‘future war’ stories dating back at least to George Chesney’s story ‘The Battle of Dorking’ (1871) which was a speculative fiction piece, describing a successful German invasion of Britain.

Other works of fiction followed, including H.G. Wells’s “The Land Ironclads.” Eventually, as science fiction became an established and separate genre, military science fiction established itself as a subgenre. One such work is H. Beam Piper’s Uller Uprising (1952). Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), more recently a series of films, is another work of military specfic, along with Gordon Dickson’s Dorsai (1960), and these are thought to be mostly responsible for popularising this sub-genre’s popularity among young readers of the time.

The Vietnam War resulted in veterans with combat experience deciding to write specfic, including Joe Haldeman and David Drake. Throughout the 1970s, works such as Haldeman’s The Forever War and Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers helped increase the popularity of the genre, as did Harry Harrison with the Deathworld series. Short stories were also popular, collected in books like Combat SF, edited by Gordon R. Dickson. This anthology includes one of the first Hammer’s Slammers stories as well as one of the BOLO stories by Keith Laumer and one of the Berserker stories by Fred Saberhagen.

This anthology seems to have been the first time specfic stories specifically dealing with war as a subject were collected and marketed as such. The series of anthologies with the group title There Will be War edited by Pournelle and John F. Carr (nine volumes from 1983 through 1990) helped keep the category active, and encouraged new writers to add to it. I wanted to add more.

When I started Cohesion Press, I already knew I wanted to publish SNAFU. It was in my mind before anything else. I’ve always loved this style of book, with a strong emphasis on plot and action.

Our first anthology, simply titled SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror, was released just over a year ago. I asked four writers I repected. Four writers whose work mirrored my vision. A year later, Jonathan Maberry, Greig Beck, James A. Moore, Weston Oche, and a great collection of emerging writers made up that inaugural volume. We hoped it would do well when we set it free in the world, and it did. Now, three SNAFUs later, comes Survival of the Fittest. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll leave the series co-editor to talk about the stories within.

As far back as I can remember I’ve had a fascination with monster stories, of the things that hide in the shadows waiting to pounce. I loved that rush of fear, of being forced to push past it to discover what lay ahead and whether the protagonist would defeat the monster, whether they would survive. Who would be the victor?

When you add a keen interest in military documentaries and military fiction, I jumped at the chance when Geoff asked me to come on board as co-editor for the SNAFU series. Who wouldn’t want to work with authors on stories that combined two of the best genres of fiction that would have readers wondering ‘what fresh hell is this?’

Wars and conflict are a part of our world, of humanity’s history whether we like it or not. No matter your culture or creed, combat sits and weighs heavily in our past. Even before the written word there are pictorial and oral records of battles, some of which are woven through our mythos.

SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest takes the warfare between monsters and military to the next level. Being reduced to that heart pounding, sphincter-clenching fear when facing a monstrous unknown; with your ammo dwindling and next-to-no options… how do you survive? At what cost?

The monsters here have been pulled from the abyss, summoned by dark magic, or are those that have lain dormant just waiting for the opportunity to wreak havoc. Pitched against elite forces and your (not-so) ordinary grunts, what will some sacrifice to save themselves, their brothers and sisters in arms, humanity? That’s the soul of the stories that lay ahead.

Each takes a different look at war, police actions, black ops and para-military, but with each taking place in different eras (epochs even). It’s both modern warfare and historical hostilities that make up this edition, of the finality of an epic battle when there is seemingly no way out… or back. It’s that thread of determination and sacrifice that binds these stories together. Whether it’s fighting one’s way through a gamut of nightmares made real, the horror-filled realisation of battling against an inconceivable and perhaps indestructible creature, or finding yourself up against something you thought was a work of fiction, it’s the fealty of the combatants, their courage and vulnerability, that highlights the best of humanity (regardless of how ‘human’ those soldiers are).

Now don’t get me wrong, the monsters in these tales hold their own, often with their own stories to tell, and our authors have taken these horrors from all spectrums of imagination and mythos – so much so that like the warriors facing off these foes, I was unsure what awaited me. What you think you may know, what these soldiers think they may know pales in comparison to the truth of what lurks in the shadows, what hides beneath your feet, or what awakens when the bell tolls.

And toll it does. SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest is just that. The question you have to ask yourself, is that soldier or hellion?

So sit back, keep your weapons close, and let our authors unleash their monsters...