Space Opera Fans discussion

All those starship officers had to have some kind of training. Usually it’s an academy, either a military or quasi military one. Some series skip the experience there other than flashbacks, but there are some good books about being at the academy and the various things starship officers are expected to learn.

What’s one of your favorites? I’ll try to limit myself to one mention per day.

My first is Saltation by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It’s the sequel to Fledgling which we have already read as a group, but stands well enough on its own, IMO. That’s a quasi military academy training mostly pilots of various kinds, mostly Terran descent but some are Liaden descent. Theo gets in trouble of course.....

I suppose Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinleinis more "boot camp" rather than "academy".

If memory serves, there are chapters where he attends officer training, toward the end of the book.

I'm loving the Galaxy's Edge series, which starts with Legionnaire

The first book doesn't really cover their training, it's more a fictionalized memoir of a firefight akin to a space age version of The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

But, it's a great series to get into if you like military sci fi.

There were various Starfleet Academy YA novels published in the 90s when Star Trek: The Next Generation was at its peak.

There's the Orphanage series by Robert Buettner, which again is more "boot camp". But the central character ends up as an officer anyway via series of battlefield promotions

The Riss Gamble by C.R. Daems includes how the main character competes for acceptance at the naval academy, her time there, and early career. It needs a copy editor but I found it to be a page turner and reread it every couple of years. Not very believable but a fun read IMO, particularly since her alien symbiote has such a sense of humor. Large doses of extreme prejudice against the few humans chosen to host the symbiotes.

I have to call it Ender's Game Once stand alone but now part of the Ender Saga. Related to it also Ender's Shadow of course. Same academy Same time period, Different people and different perspective.
Academy is called Battleschool

Terms of Enlistment
Space Cadet

I still recall a lot of the plot for Space Cadet, but haven’t read it in twenty years.....

I find it interesting how different authors tackle the issue of students having wildly different educational backgrounds. In Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey there isn’t much about her experience at the academy but there is mention that she first attended a prep school to get her caught up. In Cadet by Catherine Beery the academy assumes wildly different levels of education and has placement tests in a lot of general subjects then provides individual tutoring for anything that is so lacking the student would be lost in their entry level course on that subject.

Here are two series that include some scenes of officer training but not in the first book of the series. In each of these the main character goes through boot camp (enlisted) first.

Take the Star Road by Peter Grant. In a further sequel the main character gets further command training later before getting command of a larger vessel.

A Call to Duty by David Weber. This series is in the Honorverse, several hundred years before Honor Harrington.

The fourth book in the "Seafort Saga" Fisherman's Hopeby David Feintuch is set at the United Nations Naval Academy.

So I always view the trope of coming of age story where child attends an academy with a bit of skepticism.

I had enough schooling of my own, I don't need to read about someone elses schooling experiences.

Also, I typically am looking for some action, and intrigue -- things you do get in the corridors of high school to some degree, but not really good stories.

With that said, there are some well executed versions of that genre.

Not space opera as such (still sci-fi though), but there's the Mega CIty 1 Academy of Law from 2000AD's Judge Dredd strip.

You enter at the age of five, and - assuming you survive the next fifteen years of training - graduate as a Judge at age twenty.

Dan wrote: "So I always view the trope of coming of age story where child attends an academy with a bit of skepticism.

I had enough schooling of my own, I don't need to read about someone elses schooling expe..."

If it’s a really different type of schooling I think it’s okay. Something like the Danger Room in X-Men comics or learning the ways of magic in Master of the Five Magics or in the movie Dr. Strange.

Space Opera and MilSF really seems to repeat the basic training trope a lot, which can go either way. It either becomes quite interesting or deadly dull. I generally like it when it’s used to infodump the worldbuilding, because those sorts of explanations are exactly how school works. Which is why authors use it so often.

In The Godfather-meets-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon novel Jade City, Fonda Lee employs the going-through-academy scenes for one of the secondary characters to fill out the world and magic system, which she applied judiciously to excellent effect.