
Honor Harrington
by David Weber · first published 2003
16mentions
7recommended by
16HN commenters
2010–2024first – last mentioned
44% recommend50% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Military space opera with realistic-leaning space combat and political depth. Character work is central, and the story suits fans of military science fiction who enjoy strategy, politics, and long series.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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As mentioned in the post, David Weber's Honor Harrington series operates very much like this. I've read a few of them and enjoyed it. Nuances in space combat in his stories tend to be important. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weber#Honor_Harrington_se...…
on “What future space combat would really look like” ↗The Honor Harrington series by David Weber might be of interest. A lot of the strategy revolves around how hard patrolling, monitoring, and communicating (due to the time delay) in space is, and there is a good bit of politics…
on “Tracking “Dark Ships” with New Satellite Technology” ↗For epic science fiction with huge space battles, depth of story and interesting characters you cannot miss books by David Weber, especially the Honor Harrington series
on “Ask HN: Do you know any amazing space epics?” ↗I'm surprised that in all this discussion nobody even mentioned David Weber's Honor Harrington series. He tries to make his space battles as realistic as possible.
on “Aircraft Carriers in Space” ↗These days I seem to prefer extended series of books that develop a detailed alternate universe. Three truly excellent series (Author-Series-1st Book): Eric Flint - 1632 - "1632" David Weber - Honor Harrington - "On Basilisk Station" Stephen Brust - Vlad Taltos - "Taltos"
on “Ask HN: Sci-Fi novels?” ↗This is an excellent series that has suspense and yet easy to digest. If you like the military SF sub genre you should also look at the Honor Harrington series by David Weber followed by the Safehold series and the March To The Sea series. Actually most stuff by David Weber is pretty good.
on “Ask HN: What are the best Sci-Fi books you've ever read?” ↗> Honor Harrington series by David Weber It's literally my favorite science fiction. I also recommend purchasing and reading at least the first half of the series. The latter half of the series go into a lot more political…
on “Tracking “Dark Ships” with New Satellite Technology” ↗The bad guys in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels are based on this idea. It's an interesting take on what might happen.
on “14 People Make 500K Tons of Steel a Year in Austria” ↗At least one story I know of that uses this plot device, at least in its backstory, is David Weber's Honor Harrington books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Kingdom_of_Manticore#Histo...
on “Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars” ↗…And how does that inform our reactions the next time we're presented with the same choice?" Side note: if you ever want to read something laughably bad, especially for how modern it is, read one of the Honor Harrington books from David Weber. I tapped out after 20 pages.
on “NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars” ↗This is a plot point in various SF works. For example, in the Honor Harrington books by David Weber, the Manticore system colonists traveled to their target a couple hundred years in hibernation. But as it was likely propulsion technology will advance before they reach their destination,…
on “The 100 Year Starship” ↗I wonder how much overlap there is in fan base between Flint and his occasional collaborator David Weber? I've read all the Honor Harrington books/stories and basically nothing else by either of them. Every now and then I read the phpbb forums (forums.davidweber.net) because it's interesting to see conversations by people who have a pretty…
on “1632 by Eric Flint (2000)” ↗> The bad guys in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels are based on this idea. Pedantically, the obvious “bad guys” in the earliest few, not the (so far, at least) principal bad guys of the whole series, who it turns out were also manipulating those…
on “14 People Make 500K Tons of Steel a Year in Austria” ↗In David Weber's Honor Harrington series, the original settlers of one of the planets (Grayson) found the soil was too polluted with heavy metals that they needed to create purified soil of their own for growing food. So amongst other…
on “Don't bury or cremate – soon you may compost your corpse” ↗David Weber "Honor Harrington" space battles go into some details like that, some few other authors try to think about the practicalities of technological limits, too. Often it strongly resembles sailboats in space. "Gratuitous Space…
on “Ask HN: How to model interplanetary light delays in a game?” ↗