The moral in the military

For years I resisted reading any military SF.  The idea of reading about massive space fleets killing each other just wasn't for me.  I come from a family with no real connection to the military, and I had this misplaced idea that military SF would glamourise and glorify war.

I still haven't read much military SF, but what I have read was written by women: Elizabeth Moon and Karen Traviss. Both these authors do have connections with the military.  Elizabeth Moon was a 1st Leuitenant in the US Marine Corps the 1960s.  Karen Traviss is a former defence correspondent and journalist.

I started reading both writers' works unsure if I would like what I found there.  My objection to reading military SF was the same as to reading violent crime.  I don't want to read about blood and gore.  I don't want to read graphic descriptions of people being killed, whether it's by a murderer or the latest military hardware.

I'm sure such graphic books are out there.  But the books I've read by Elisabeth and Karen aren't among them.  Both authors' books are multi-viewpoint, and what surprised me was that some of these viewpoints were civilian.  Far from being a glorification of war, both authors' books explore the consequences of war and the fall-out from military engagement.

In Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War books we're told that an ansible platform is under attack,  and that 4,000 people live on it.  It has to be defended to save those lives,

In Karen Traviss's Halo: Kilo-Five books the whole of the third book is in effect a moral examination of terrorism and the legality of government action.  We're told that the supposed good guys, the UNSC, abducted small children and bioengineered them into super-soldiers.  We're shown how devastated one of the fathers who lost his child is.  So when he becomes a terrorist to find out the truth about his daughter's disappearance, where does the moral high ground lie?

Both authors have used the military format to explore moral issues, and to examine why we must protect civilian freedoms.  And that's my kind of military SF.  One that has its moral heart firmly in place.