David Drake

Essays, Comments, Book Introductions, etc.

“Accidentally and By the Back Door”The New York Review of Science Fiction, 2004. 17:3(195): p. 17-18.
————– The Complete Hammer’s Slammers v.1. 2006, San Francisco CA: Night Shade Books.

“Afterword” The Cold Equations & Other Stories, by T. Godwin. E. Flint, ed. 2003, Riverdale, NY: Baen.

“Alien Landscape with Figures” The New York Review of Science Fiction, 2005. 17:11(203): p. 6.
————– Warriors of the Steppes, by H. Lamb. H. A. Jones, ed. 2006, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

“Appendix (Afterword)” The Tank Lords. 1997, Riverdale, NY: Baen. continue reading…

Written for the Tor/Forge May 2010 Newsletter

THE MOTORCYCLE WAY TO COMPLEX PLOTTING

Writers use various tools in their work. One of my tools is my motorcycle.

Well, plural: my motorcycles. Bikers learn quickly that if they expect to ride every day, they’d better have two. (And that’s if they’re Japanese, as both of my current rides are. More exotic bikes tend to be two-wheeled versions of owning a Lotus Elan.) continue reading…

Dave’s Introduction to a volume of August Derleth short stories titled That is Not Dead: Black Magic and Occult Stories, volume 3 of 4 being produced by The August Derleth Society in conjunction with Arkham House Publishers, February 2009.

A BELATED THANK-YOU

Eugene Olson, my 11th grade American Literature teacher, read and wrote fantasy fiction. I really wanted to read fantasy, but in 1961 the genre was hard to find in Clinton, Iowa. (I didn’t dream of writing professionally at the time.) Over the Christmas holidays, Mr Olson loaned me a copy of the September, 1950, issue of Weird Tales (a legendary magazine which I’d never seen). continue reading…

Written August 2009 for posting at SF Signal’s web page MIND MELD: Books That Hold Special Places in Our Hearts and On Our Shelves

THE FORGOTTEN PLANET

When I was 13 in 1958, I was enrolled in the Teen-Age Bookclub (TAB) in my 8th grade speech class. TAB sold mass market paperbacks in regular publishers’ editions through a monthly catalogue distributed in schools. One selection each month was SF; and it was through TAB that I found The Forgotten Planet by Murray Leinster.

Though the book I bought was published by Ace, it was nonetheless a school edition: one half of an Ace Double. It had ads more Ace SF in the back, however, and gave an address from which to order an Ace catalogue–which I promptly did. continue reading…

AFTERWORD: WHERE I GET MY IDEAS

If you decide to write about far-famed Achilles, make him active, hot-tempered, inexorable, and fierce; let him deny that laws were made for him, let him think his sword rules all. –Horace, The Art of Poetry (lines 120-2)

My undergraduate double major was history and Latin, and I continued to take Latin courses while I was in law school in a laughable attempt to stay sane.  Reading Latin centers me. (Note “laughable” in the previous sentence.) continue reading…

Photo by Roger Brownell.

This picture was taken in July of 1970 when I was in the field with the 1st Squadron of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. I was at a firebase somewhere in Military Region III. The place didn’t have a local name that I ever heard; it was just a chunk of jungle bulldozed open to hold maybe fifty armored vehicles including six 155-mm self-propelled howitzers. I was an enlisted interrogator, part of the six-man Military Intelligence team accompanying the squadron.

The greatest single influence on my life was the Vietnam War. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.  continue reading…

Dave’s original introduction to the Hammer’s Slammers Role-Playing game rules for Mongoose. The version as printed drops the title and was edited for length.

FIVE FIREBASES

I was very pleased when I got the materials for the Hammer’s Slammers role-playing game. The text had been written by someone familiar not only with my fiction but also with life in the military (which to me is a much more important consideration).

I like the art as well, but that leads to a different question: does it look the way I meant it to? The truth is that I write from the mental pictures I formed in the field in 1970 with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and I wasn’t thinking much about US equipment then.  continue reading…

Cover art: Steve Hickman

COMING HOME BY THE LONG WAY

A few years ago I collected my humorous stories in All the Way to the Gallows.” In my introduction I admitted that I wasn’t best known for writing humor.

This is what I’m best known for writing.

The impetus for this book was a fan suggestion that with surveillance cameras becoming increasingly prevalent all over the world, it would be a good time to get the Lacey stories back in pring.  I thought about the notion.  continue reading…

Dave’s Trip to England April 2004
Accompanies Photos of England and Photos of Salute War Gaming

April 18: We left for RDU Airport at 3 PM for a 6 PM flight. Better safe than sorry, and I was nervously reading various things to keep from thinking about what was ahead. (Basically, the nebulous discomfort. I’m not a good traveller.)

Just before leaving, Jo checked the weather channel. It said we could expect seven days of rain. John Lambshead e-mailed that we should have a fast flight because a gale had just blown in from the southwest. I sighed and said we were going anyway. continue reading…

INTRODUCTION: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

I’m a very organized writer–insanely organized, one might say, and we’ll get back to that in a moment. I take extensive notes before I start plotting, and I do very detailed plots (usually in the range of 5-15,000 words per plot, though a few have been much longer).

Occasionally I hear a writer say something along the lines of, “My hero went off in a direction I didn’t expect.” I shake my head: my heroes don’t do anything of the sort. It turned out, however, that they could still surprise me. continue reading…