Today we interview John G. Hemry (A.K.A. Jack Campbell) a military SF writer with a military background. John is a retired U.S. Navy officer. His father (LCDR Jack M. Hemry, USN ret.) is a mustang (an officer who was promoted through the enlisted ranks), so John grew up living everywhere from Pensacola, Florida to San Diego, California, including an especially memorable few years on Midway Island.

I pestered John about his latest book, the influence his military experience has had on his writing as well as a nerdy question on space battles.

JH Black Jack grew out of thinking about tales such as those of King Arthur, in which the legendary hero from the past is supposedly sleeping, to awaken in the time of their country’s greatest need. I wondered how that hero would feel when he or she awoke, especially if they were indeed a real, fallible human being whose exploits had been embellished and exaggerated over time. John Geary is a capable officer who when confronted with a losing battle did his duty as best he could, just as so many other individuals do. The Alliance, reeling from surprise attacks by the Syndicate Worlds, was desperate for heroes and inspiring battles. Black Jack’s Last Stand filled the bill. When Geary awakens, he’s dealing with the physical stress of prolonged hibernation and even worse the mental stress of knowing everyone he once knew is long dead. He’s also appalled to be seen as a figure of heroic myth. But he’s in the classic horrible position of Xenophon’s March, with the fleet trapped in enemy territory and the senior leadership dead. Geary has to rise to the occasion, even though he’s often shocked by the cultural changes wrought in the fleet and its sailors by a century of ugly warfare. The concept of honor has been twisted by back-and-forth atrocities over the course of a hundred years so it now justifies things Geary can’t believe are right. He’s going to follow his old-fashioned concepts even if they seem quaint in the brutal future he’s entered. Fortunately, aside from his own stubborn sense of duty and tactical skill, Geary also has knowledge of how to fight space battles which had been lost in the intervening century as trained personnel died. Like a Roman general awakening in the Dark Ages, he knows how to fight much better than the people around him. Geary also hates the idea of becoming the legendary figure of ‘Black Jack,’ who he doesn’t see as having anything in common with who he really is. But in order to get the fleet safely home, he’s going to have to be ‘Black Jack’ whether he likes it or not.

We love our spaceships, can you tell us a bit about the starships in Lost Fleet operate (propulsion, weapons, etc.)?

JH There are two means of faster-than-light travel known to humanity. The old system jump method which Geary is familiar with allows travel from star to star within a certain limited range. The newer system is the hypernet, in which huge gates are constructed in systems wealthy or unique enough to justify the expense, and which is far faster and allows direct travel from any one gate to any other gate.

The ships use an unspecified propulsion method in normal space which requires fuel cells. They are subject to relativistic effects in normal space, which places limits on how fast they can travel. Generally they don’t exceed point four light because accelerating past that costs ever higher amounts of fuel. Just as importantly, relativistic distortion warps their view of the outside universe, and a warship that can’t accurately see the universe outside it can’t engage enemies. In practice, fleets hold their speeds to the range of point one to point two light so that the relativistic distortion is limited enough to allow hits on the enemy. In order to slow down, ships have to pivot so their thrusters face aft, and tactics have to take that into account. Inertial dampers help the crews and ships withstand the strain of maneuvering at such speeds. Given the distances involved, a fleet can easily refuse battle, so as in the old age of sail on earth fleets only fight when both sides want to fight.

Sensors are overwhelmingly passive, referred to as optical even though they collect radiation along the full spectrum. Active sensors such as radar wouldn’t make sense, as the signals would have to travel to the target at the speed of light and then return, whereas passive viewing of light from the target only has to travel once across the intervening distance. Because of the distances involved, commanders have to deal with time delays in what they can see. Information on an enemy force ten light minutes away tells the commander what those enemies were doing ten light minutes ago, not what they’re doing now. Communications suffer from the same delays, so a commander has to factor in all the varying time delays and guess what the enemy will be doing and where they will be at critical moments.

Each side uses basically the same three primary weapons. For longest ranges, autonomous missiles (called Specters by the Alliance) are used. Closer in, charged-particle ‘spears’ called hell lances are used like cannon. In addition, there’s grapeshot, the same sort of metal ball bearings used for centuries. Fired in tight patterns, the grapeshot are kinetic projectiles which do a lot of damage if enough score hits. Because distance causes the patterns to disperse, grapeshot is useful only close in. All ships have shields of varying strength. Combat consists of trying to knock down the enemy’s shields in enough places to get shots in on the enemy hull to take out critical systems. Long distance duels don’t occur because it would be impossible to hit an enemy ship hard enough and fast enough to knock down its shields and do damage.

Besides this, the Alliance has a weapon called a null-field projector, which is very short range and mounted on the largest ships. The projector fires a field which dissolves atomic bonds and is devastating at short range, but takes a long time to charge. Both sides also have mines, which use stealth methods to try to remain undetected. However, given time the sensors on warships can spot anomalies which betray the presence of mines . . . if the warships aren’t going so fast their view of the outside universe is too distorted. The last major weapons are bigger kinetic projectiles used to bombard planets or other objects in fixed orbits.

Logistics is critical. Aside from the need for fuel cells to keep the ships moving, Specter missiles, grapeshot, and mines are all expendable weaponry that needs to be replaced. Add on that the need for spares to keep the ships working. Enemy weapons and equipment are deliberately designed to be non-compatible with Alliance ships. The only thing that gives Geary’s fleet a chance of surviving is that it is accompanied by several fast fleet auxiliaries (which aren’t nearly fast enough in a crisis). These are essentially self-propelled repair-shops and factories which can manufacture everything the fleet needs and repair most damage. But they need enough of the right raw materials to do the job, so the fleet has to spend time getting those materials. The fact that the auxiliaries are critical to the fleet’s survival makes them the Achilles heel. Geary has to devote a lot of time to protecting those ships.

Ships are described in traditional terms. Battleships have the heaviest shields and weaponry, but aren’t as nimble as lighter ships. Battle cruisers trade some shield capability for better acceleration. Heavy cruisers accompany the bigger units, or act as the main firepower among smaller formations. Light cruisers and destroyers screen the bigger ships, though in numbers they can wear down even the biggest unescorted battleships. Because of fuel requirements, shield requirements and the weight of weapons, no small ‘fighter’ or ‘bomber’ craft could hope to survive in this environment.

Yet because the ships are fighting in an unconstrained three-dimensional space, their battles and formations bear a resemblance to things like heavy bomber boxes in World War Two.

How has your experience in the Navy informed your science fiction?

JH It gave me a tremendous exposure to different things that would have been hard to encounter otherwise. Obviously, it allows me to project a shipboard environment onto spacecraft, with believable individuals and actions. I believe that the traditions and practices developed over millennia for surviving far from home on ships will also be used in ships sailing among the stars. In other words, sailors will always be sailors. Ship-handling taught me how much momentum matters, while dealing with a three-dimensional threat environment helps visualize space battles. It also showed me the difference between what equipment is supposed to do and what it actually does, and the difference between plans and what actually happens. I learned the virtues of simple, robust engineering compared to complex, sensitive equipment, and the tremendous differences people make in anything you do. On a broader scale, I met a lot of people and saw different cultures and places. Some quiet nights while standing watch on ships far from land I could look up and see the stars and the moon so bright they were blinding. Some other days spent on a ship being battered by storm waters pointed up how small people can be next to the forces of nature, and yet able to withstand those forces with skill, luck and intelligence. And working with things ranging from nuclear weapons to operational war plans helps focus on the consequences on actions. One event that stands out is a day when my ship pulled into Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with some other ships. We tied up with the USS Arizona memorial visible on side, and on the other side was the USS Missouri (then on active duty), on whose deck the surrender of Japan had taken place. Nearby were two Japanese warships operating with us, allies and friends now. A lot of history there, and lessons about how history doesn’t have to rule the present or the future, but always bears on it.

What are you working on now?

JH The next volume in the Lost Fleet series (THE LOST FLEET: FEARLESS) is already at the publisher, so I’m working on the volumes after that. In addition, I have a young adult science fiction series that my agent is currently sending around. It features a young female engineer as one of the main protagonists and is in the mode of the Heinlein juveniles or one of Andre Norton’s science fiction novels. In between working on those I write short fiction when ideas come to me, most of which appears in Analog Magazine, and have contributed to four of Benbella Books’ Smartpop series on topics like Superman, Star Wars and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

John’s Website

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