The Lost Fleet

The Lost Fleet is a military science fiction novel series written by John G. Hemry under the pen name Jack Campbell. This one is bit of an unusual book post on the blog as I read the whole series, all six volumes of it, before having a chance to write anything about it. The novels were quick and easy reads: they're your standard 300-page books (in English; slightly more in Finnish) and there's only one viewpoint, that of Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's.

Premise

Geary was an Alliance commanding officer in an early battle of a galactic war against Syndicate Worlds. Now, 100 years later, a huge Alliance fleet on its way to Syndicate's home system to end the very same war, happens to find Geary's escape pod in which he's been frozen the whole time after his last stand.

The fleet's mission ends in a catastrophe; it arrives right into a devastating trap. Before boarding a shuttle with the rest of the Alliance's admirals to go negotiate the terms of surrender (and get executed), the fleet's commander places Geary in command since his century-old "posthumous" promotion predates all the other captains' in the fleet which makes him the senior officer. As his last command, Admiral Bloch wants Geary to try return the fleet back to the safety of Alliance space.

Geary is suffering from the effects of prolonged cryosleep and the defeat he "recently" experienced but takes the task as is his duty. Geary manages to retreat the remaining fleet largely intact out of the Syndicate home system and a long and treacherous journey back to Alliance space begins.

Geary discovers multiple things hampering his job. His last actions 100 years ago have been completely overblown: "Black Jack Geary" is nearly worshiped as a mythical hero, now returned by the stars to perform a miracle to save the fleet. The war has also changed how the navy operates and many of the fleet's other commanders don't consider Geary's position rightful and his methods appropriate. He ends up fighting his own people as much as the Syndics they encounter on the way.

I have to say that I wasn't impressed by the premise: it seemed such a simple and cliche fantasy plot (though in a space setting). And honestly, it was. The series has some merits, few interesting points, but overall it's not anything you could call innovative or a must read. Hemry admitted that the series was inspired by Xenophon's Anabasis -- I personally found the whole thing reminding me very much of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica show (that started airing in 2003 while The Lost Fleet: Dauntless was published in 2006). I mean there's similarly even a female vice president, Victoria Rione, aboard the fleet's flagship Dauntless, giving Geary advice from a civilian and politician perspective. Geary and Rione are like Admiral Adama and President Roslin. I'm also pretty sure the protagonist is an author self-insert by the retired US Navy officer Hemry, John G. (Geary?)

Themes

The book universe's technology is on typical level for a science fiction novel with advanced space travel; it's not as down-to-earth like in The Expanse, for instance. Spaceships have gravity and shields. Travel between planetary systems happens within days' time by jumping from a star's gravity well to the other. The start and end of jump happen at 'ramps': specific locations where a leap between two systems is possible. Within planetary systems, ships travel at sub-lightspeed: I think 0.2 or 0.3 light was the highest velocity mentioned.

There is also hypernet gate technology that was developed after Geary's time. Hypernet gates allow even faster travelling than system jumping, although not quite from any one to gate to another, I believe. Syndicate forces block the Alliance fleet from ever retreating into the gates, and Geary has to resort to using the old, slower jump tech. He also does not want to get ambushed by a superior force in Syndicate space and chooses a long, unpredictable route. Thus the journey takes at least a year in-universe and six novels to reach its conclusion.

Even though ships can perform faster-than-light jumps, communications and visual information still travel only at the speed of light. That creates interesting tactical scenarios. A ship or fleet arriving to a planetary system starts immediately receiving data of the system's status (like ships situated in there) but anyone a meaningful distance away from the jump ramp will not even know someone has arrived until hours later.

Like in The Expanse, kinetic bombardment is used as a weapon. The novel notes how politicians and civilians like building stationary orbital and planetary defensive structures because they bring a sense of safety. The navy however considers them a futile effort. A spaceship can simply hurl a bunch of rocks from a safe distance at extremely high speed to wipe out anything that cannot move.

The books series touches numerous subjects such as the importance of the rule of law, particularly within a military organization. Hemry presents most of his arguments by creating a contrast between Captain Geary and the current Alliance navy. Geary is from a time when the Alliance military still followed ethical and sensible practices while now the 100 years war has degraded their morality.

Prisoners of war are usually simply killed outright and civilian targets callously bombarded. Saluting senior officers has fallen out of habit, and the fleet's captains would want to vote about big decisions instead of simply following their commander's will.

Ships have been getting destroyed and crews lost at such a pace in the decades lasting conflict that officers have advanced in ranks quickly without having time to gather the experience that was previously needed. Commanders throw their ships against the enemy with barely any tactical insight. Blind bravery is respected above anything else.

Geary starts slowly bringing a change to the fleet, returning the navy back to the ways of their ancestors. In the early stages of his mission, he finds success and massive victories simply by keeping ships in formations and utilizing tactics he had been trained with. Syndicate military had clearly been affected by the war similarly to the Alliance: encountering a fleet commanded by Geary, Syndics find themselves completely outmatched.

Hemry wrote Geary's battle commands in meticulous detail, all the way down to numerical values in course changes. I always skimmed over the specifics instead of spending time trying to picture what exactly was happening. A two-layer horizontal disc and a rectangle clashing etc. was enough of a mental image for me. Having pictures of ship formations used in each battle would have added much to the novels.

I feel Hemry terribly underestimated the reader with the end of the series, slowly building a climax that most people probably figured out way before the protagonists. It takes ages for them to understand what has been going on with the non-human sentient species that was gradually introduced. Only in the final showdown Geary & Co. properly realized how they had been deceived, while I saw the ending coming in book 4 already.

Another weak aspect is the lack of world building. Alliance culture is left pretty much on the level of names for few energy bars. Hemy didn't even add a calendar system of any kind. You'd think that when telling from-cryosleep woken Geary that 100 years had passed they'd also mention what year it currently was.

Translation

I was confused by Geary's military rank. In the Finnish translation, his promotion is said to be to 'kommodori', which you would think to be commodore in English but apparently corresponds to captain in real life English navy ranks. (While English commodore would be the lowest admiral rank ('lippueamiraali') in the Finnish Navy.) Later Geary is mostly referred to as 'kapteeni' (captain) however and sometimes 'komentaja' (commander) -- of the fleet, I guess. Since the Dauntless has her own commander, calling Geary a captain (of a ship) seemed odd. Finnish navy doesn't even have just a 'captain' rank like the army does: there's kapteeniluutnantti (lieutenant senior grade) and komentajakapteeni (lieutenant commander).

Now that I've researched this a bit, it seems the translation is just inconsistent and the translator(s) thought that in the end it would be just simpler to make everyone 'kapteeni' like in English and not care how real life navy ranks correspond. It is a fictional setting too, after all.

The first three books of the series were translated by Matti Rosvall, and the rest three by Mika Renvall. The latter is a familiar name to me as he has done most of the Finnish translations of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels.

Renvall probably followed Rosvall's work but I don't think he either was bothered to produce the best translation possible. For instance, Renvall literally translated the English phrase big picture ('iso kuva'). It sounds so dumb in Finnish. Although he did then avoid doing the same thing with 'in the long run' ('pitkässä juoksussa') and used a proper Finnish expression instead ('pitkällä tähtäimellä'). I hate it when people needlessly use such Anglicisms. (Edit: I've later learned that even the latter is questionable, it coming from Swedish 'på lång sikt' whose sikt got mixed up with sikte for Finnish. The truly proper Finnish equivalent for 'in the long run' is 'pitkällä aikavälillä'.)

One perplexing translation was 'TapSaal' that appeared without any kind of explanation. First I thought it was some alien spaceship name. Then I understood it was short for tappaja-saalistaja (lit. killer-predator), a somewhat clumsy translation of HuK (hunter-killer), a light Syndicate warship. There must be a more elegant way to put it in Finnish.

Also, how is 'kalkyloida' even a legitimate Finnish verb? It doesn't respect Finnish vowel harmony as it has both, front and back ones (y ä ö - e i - u a o), making it annoying to pronounce without muddling it into kalkuloida or kälkylöidä. I would've used 'laskelmoida' as the translation for calculate instead in the places it appears in the novels.

Edited 2024-05-01: Corrected instances of  'star systems' to 'planetary systems'. A star system is a system of stars orbiting each other; not the system of things orbiting a star. A very common mistake to make. Also added a note about the correct translation of 'in the long run'.