On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 3:13 AM, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 3:01 AM, Leslie Bates (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com> wrote:
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I'm trying to write a military SF novel and I want to create an in-universe version of the Dorsai as adversaries:

For Carl Grant the journey to Freya had been the latest link of a long chain of personal humiliations.

[snip of a lot of fictional future stuff]

Not quite seeing the connection?

The implication I get from what I snipped is that Grant's "Future Force" was to be essentially an interstellar Delta Force: highly trained troops with a minimum of intergral heavy equipment.

But isn't that pretty much exactly what the Dorsai are?

--
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

Unless . . .

You're saying that Grant is going to be *creating* a Dorsai/Delta force, as part of the central plot of your work?

Not sure how well that would play, in the modern marketplace, if you were to stick too closely to the "actual" Dorsai. The idea at the core of the Dorsai was that they were genetically better - more purely martial - than other humans. In fact, the original novel "Dorsai!" was also published under the alternate title "The Genetic General." Characters in modern works are usually a bit leery of being supermen. If your Opposition is going to embrace this concept, they're likely to come across as one-dimensional villians.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester