The Best Defense (near-future HFY)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

For millennia, two galactic empires have been locked in an interstellar cold war. Dissent to each empire's ideology is considered treason, and neutrality is incomprehensible. As each empire has expanded, newly-discovered sentient species have always joined one side or the other -- whether they want to or not.

In the year 2028, Earth is the latest planet in the path of expansion. It has barely any space capability, no system defenses, and no allies. The nations of Earth therefore must volunteer to be subjugated, or become the latest battleground in a war that began before the construction of the pyramids. There is no hope of any effective resistance. No species has ever succeeded before.

Except humans have a saying. The best defense . . .is a good offense.

Discordlink.

Cover by Cedar Sanderson.

The Best Defenseis a science fiction web serial in the HFY subgenre -- a story niche that, first and foremost, describes humans being awesome because they are human. You can expect:

- Multiple POVs, including humans, aliens, and AI characters.

- Significant near-future space exploration concepts.

- A dash of real physics next to the ray guns and snarky AI, and a greater scale than what is normally seen in sci-fi.

- A gradual build of humanity from planet-bound to star-faring, eventually resulting in giant space battles.

- Humans shattering the status quowithoutbeing OP. Humans have HFY-style advantages, but they are grounded in reality and don't guarantee a win.

Content warnings are limited to Profanity, which will still be light.

This story is also mirrored in the r/HFY subreddit under u/OGNovelNinja.

SHOUT-OUT POLICY: I don't do many shout-outs and I never ask for them. I do make recommendations when I think my fans will like something. If you want me to give you a shout-out, there's a forum thread for recommendations for stories likeThe Best Defense. Anything I think looks good will get mentioned to my readers.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2024
Author: NovelNinja

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 4,431
Views: 662,477

Chapters(28 total)

What readers say about The Best Defense (near-future HFY)

“The story is well written, and I enjoy the fact it is slow. It gets the point across that, even when unknown hostile aliens shows up, we can't just go "Need space fleet" and in a few months have dozens or hundreds of ships armed up in space. Also interestin…”
xotos750Royal Road5.0 / 5
“While it’s still early yet only being seven chapters in I really like the direction the seems to be heading. A lot of stories that deal with a rising humanity have aliens directly gift humanity with some type of construction tech or vehicle and this doesn’t…”
GreenSpace40Royal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

xotos750Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story is well written, and I enjoy the fact it is slow. It gets the point across that, even when unknown hostile aliens shows up, we can't just go "Need space fleet" and in a few months have dozens or hundreds of ships armed up in space.
Also interesting is how the aliens seem to function socially, and a believable reason as to why aliens with FTL, existing for a very long time have not yet colonized the entire galaxy.
GreenSpace40Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
While it’s still early yet only being seven chapters in I really like the direction the seems to be heading. A lot of stories that deal with a rising humanity have aliens directly gift humanity with some type of construction tech or vehicle and this doesn’t seem the case here, at least directly. Which is a refreshing change and even if it turns out aliens did gift some tech I’ll still like the way the author has started the story. The characters seem like real people alien or human and the author also does changes in POV well. The story itself flows well and I’m not a grammar nazi so in my opinion it’s well written. Science fiction stories are rare on royal road so that’s why I’m doing an early review because I think more people should read this story. It’s a 5 star story so far and it’s in one of my favorite micro genre of science fiction, a rising humanity, so I really encourage the author to keep up the good work.
Kimchy0007Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
There is not much more I can say other than wow. This story is absolutely amazing; it is exactly what I’ve been looking for in the sci-fi genre. My favorite book at the moment is The Expanse, and this story has all the elements I love about The Expanse. It has science (fiction), multiple POVs (because nothing is really achieved by just one person), character building, and what I imagine will be badass space battles. So I definitely will be following this story for as long as new chapters come out. I started reading it last night, and it was probably a good thing I ran out of chapters because otherwise, I would have stayed up all night reading. Although reaching that final chapter and seeing it had been 30-ish days since an update was no less heartbreaking. Even as I was trying to sleep, I kept on wondering what was going to happen next. I would very much like to see this story continued, and I’d love to support the author in any way I can to do so. I could go into so much detail about what I love about this story, but I don’t want to spoil anything for future readers. All I can say is that if you like hard sci-fi (HSF), you will definitely enjoy this story.
The only thing I could complain about (which I am definitely not) is the one or two typos or mistakes, but Royal Road makes it really easy to point those out.
rrthornt09Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Hey Y'all, I just binged every chapter that is up and I can honestly say NovelNinja has hit this one out of the park. The story is engaging, the characters are believable, and I did not spot any grammer/spelling issues. This one is well worth the read. My only complaint is that at the end of what is uploaded. I have been left wanting more, a lot more. This one is going on my follow list.
saldagmacRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Really enjoying the handling of AGI and how both the aliens and humans are approaching their 'First' contact, keep up the great work! I'm usually a bit leery of HFY stories because some of them can.... excessively fawn over how great humans are, in particular by making aliens incomprehensibly stupid in comparison, but so far it's been great.
Pacifest_Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Love the author's take on a first contact space opera. Each chapter has me hooked, and character development feels really good. Not every sci-fi takes this approach to story telling, it's quickly becoming my favorite style of story telling. Looking forward to what comes next, and hope to see this through to completion.
RenilasRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This novel brings me back to my formative reading youth with Baen Books. This novel is closer to hard sci-fi with grounded explanations of mechanics that flow well. The utilization of multiple viewpoints to establish the series of assumptions that flow from both sides are well written and engaging. I care for multiple characters and can't wait to see how the story develops.
This feels like how I felt reading John Ringo, David Weber, and Timothy Zahn as a young kid. Keep up the excellent work!
Grammar is also excellent and the utilization of translational difficulties highlights some of the realistic challenges of inter-galactic travel.
StubertRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Well written with good character/world
building and pacing. Enjoying this story a lot especially given the trials and tribulations the author is going through in the real world, it shows real dedication to his craft and audience. Well done sir!
Some spurious additional words to hit the mandatory word limit!
LiviWebRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I think I can say I have read more fiction than most people and find it very difficult to find a story that has a new angle, however writing a story that shows the beginning of a space force or space capability and not just glossing over that part of the story is very interesting. I have only just found my way to RoyalRoad but stories like these from authors that are generous enough to spend their time writing to provide an entertainment for us is great.
CaptainbooshiRoyal Road
★★ 1.5
Definitely feels like the story had potential, but was just let down by the pacing and the characters, both of which just made reading it feel like a drag.
Style: Perfectly acceptable style of writing, nothing special that stands out, but nothing that detracts either.
Story: The plot seems like it could be interesting, but the author really needs to work on their pacing - the story feels like it advances slower than a snail. There are frankly too many different viewpoints, and then the author goes over the same part of the story from multiple viewpoints. This is something that can work occasionally, to highlight a really special moment, but it just keeps happening again and again, drags the plot out, and was boring to read.
Grammar: I couldn't find anything wrong with the grammar.
Character: Unfortunately, I found the characters even worse than the pacing. So far everyone, human and alien, has been a generic, boring stereotype, with way too many words spent on just demonstrating how stereotypical they are.
In the end, the pacing and the characters compound each other's flaws. I feel like if it moved really fast, it wouldn't matter that the characters were boring and bland, or if the characters were really interesting and fun to spend time with, it wouldn't matter that the plot was super slow. Unfortunately, these two things add up to make a sum that's worse than its parts.