Every once in a while I recall reading this series, which was mostly notable for the number of trope and genre mashups it crammed in, and for diverging into silly fantasy territory at the end. I cannot remember the name of the series, of any of the books, or of the author. I consumed a lot of junk sci fi in high school and undergrad, along with the good stuff, before life got busy and I became discerning :-)
Here's what I remember:
- The series opens with a POV of near-future humanity desperately defending itself from a very stereotypical ravenous biomechanical hive mind. The POV character is, I believe, a dropship pilot involved in a Normandy landing-esque effort to retake Mars. A man, obviously, with the stereotypical worldview and family troubles of schlocky military sci fi. We hear a lot about politicians who will doom humanity to further their own careers, etc.
- The hive is narrowly defeated, or humanity wins a reprieve. I recall that the main character is promoted, ends up leading some sort of extrasolar expedition, probably with an experimental warp drive, and contacts aliens. He returns with aliens to fend off the hive as it pushes past Earth's last defenses. To drive home that humanity is a small fish in a big pond, galactic civilizations consider the Zergish species to be on the level of feral hogs. The rescue fleet is more engaging in target practice than engaging in an actual fight. I may be messing up the sequence of events and details, here; this is so common in bad military sci fi that dozens of stories like this have blended together in my head.
- Here's where it gets a little interesting. The lead character heads off on galactic explorations, because of course he does, or maybe heads up Earth's newly created galactic navy, because of course he would. Humans turn out to be unusually good at creative thinking in warfare and technological advancement, because of course we are. Over the course of the series, it is revealed that the big bad event or entity is, relates to, or comes from the sum total of history and/or multiverse iterations kind of lurking out there in whatever medium supports hyperspace travel. This has either been building up over time, or everyone's method of FTL travel is making it worse, but it's about to spill over into the Real World and consume galactic civilization. I recall some passages where the hero ship is flying through subspace, or whatever they call it, and firing off Super Clever Human Weapons at baddy ships that are the intergalactic version of the Flying Dutchman.
- The hero from the first few books dies at the end and is either memorialized via a huge statue, or dies because he is turned into a statue via subspace (or whatever) shenanigans while striking a heroic pose (and not grimacing in pain or terror). Eye roll, snort.
I don't want to read it again and wouldn't recommend it, but this multi-year itch needs scratching. Hope me?
