#armor by john steakley

[bloodgulchblog]

I just wanted you guys to know that Armor got bisexual for a minute here

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Armor | Author: John Steakley | Publisher: DAW (2020)

[nozomijoestar]

I went to try and buy back a book I sold because I changed my mind but it's already gone 😭 cover on my edition was ugly anyway

[doom-nerdo-666]

I thought of reblogging this because someone on Doomworld made an observation: This armor could've inspired the Praetor suit in 2016.

Because some also assumed that Pacific Rim was another key element.

I felt like researching this a bit about this art because like most sci-fi novels, i assumed Armor would have different covers over time.

Cool story, true story…sad story.

So I did this fan art above of John Steakley’s amazing book, ARMOR and mocked it up as a cover. LOVE THIS BOOK.

I put this fan art on the author, John Steakley’s blog/forum about 5-6 years back. (WOW I can’t believe it’s been that long. I need to paint more.) Anyways, Mr. Steakley ended up seeing it and he emailed me.

NICE.

I was flipping out cause the book really struck a cord with me. I was tearing up like a baby and cheering after finishing the book…it’s that good. And here was the creator emailing me. I was hyped.

HYPED.

Not only did he like the art but he wanted a poster sized version and wants to put it in the running to be the cover for the 25th anniversary edition of Armor AND maybe even I could do the cover for Armor 2.

Holy shit…..there’s going to be an ARMOR 2!!

This was during the time I was battling for a contract with DC Comics under their online branch ZUDA to get Goldilock going. John Steakley goes to the Zuda contest pages, votes for me and leaves a freaking comment too. This dude is bad ass. 

Then…THEN he mails me 2 signed copies of his books, Armor and Vampire$ (John Carpenter made that one into a movie with James Woods and Daniel Baldwin…it has it’s moments but I hear they cut the budget in half last minute and it kinda shows.) AND sends me the script for Werewolve$ and wants me to do some concept art. WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING. Just sitting in Virginia and having my mind blown.

John Steakley is my BRO.

Unfortunately that was the last time I heard from him. I wasn’t even aware but the whole time we were talking he had been battling liver disease. He soon passed away and the world lost a great mind. But I’ll neeevvvver forget my bro.

Now, go read Armor.

[phantastische-illustrationen]

John Steakley - Armor (James Gurney)

[biblicallyaccuratepigeons]

37, 34, 27 for the ask game :p

I see you've not only asked them in descending order, but also order of ascending difficulty

37. Dogs or cats?

I like well-behaved dogs to visit, and cats to live with

34. Favorite flower?

My answer is very normie and I'm sorry

I always thought black flowers were cool-looking because they're so iridescent and interesting to look at.

Symbolically, my favorite is the hyacinth.

If we take aesthetics and symbolism together and meet in the middle, I'd say gardenias.

As for usefulness, I really love dandelions; they're also pretty in a very nonconventional way, and they carry dreams with them on the wind so. Dandelions are just the ultimate flower.

27. Favorite book?

You know I have trouble with these kinds of questions Ciphey-wiphey

My favorite "adult" book is Armor, by John Steakley (pronounced "steek-ly," which I just learned today; been pronouncing it "steak-ly" forever). It's a great military sci-fi that my dad leant to someone so I can't read it anymore and I'm so fine with that really it's not a big deal- anyway it's about a lot of things, including the effect of violence on humans and it's very good and everyone should read it

I also really liked Dracula, but because of Reasons I still haven't finished it, so I don't count it as a favorite. Yet.

My favorite "children's" book is. Well, see, it's complicated. When I was little, it was Little Pilgrim's Progress. When I was a little older than that, it was The Chronicles of Narnia. After that, it was, on paper, Warriors by Erin Hunter; but in secret it was a comic series called Bone by Jeff Smith. I was... going through a lot. After that, I was reading a lot of library fantasy books, my favorite of which were Children of the Lamp and Peter and the Starcatchers (I was very upset when Pan came out. Still haven't watched it).

And then I discovered Percy Jackson, and lemme tell you, that was the most obsessed with a book series I ever was, for a few reasons:

1. It was a Greek mythology fanfiction. During the time that I was reading Bone, I was also poring through all of the mythology books I could find in the school library, most of which were Greek. This meant that Rick Riordan had reawakened in 14-year-old me a hyperfixation that had lain (almost) dormant for... *counts on fingers* nine years (edit: i was wrong i counted wrong i'm sorry it was five). And he did it well (I will fight anyone who says otherwise).

2. It was about a guy who'd switched schools a lot, and had nowhere to call home really, finding a place where he belonged with people who were like him. It was a literal power fantasy for me.

3. Even though he'd found a place, he was still very different from his new extended found/actual family. This was something else with which I could connect, as someone who'd often felt like a stranger in my own home.

4. Cool action and magic and fighting and blood and hero complexes and swords and secret swords and secret magic swords and did I mention the swords and also there was Nico di Angelo, my son, my everything, my favorite boy-

Right. Back to the question. Um. What was it again? Right! Favorite book: there are too many throughout my life for me to decide.

[abbynormall]

The book is Armor by John Steakley and it’s really good!

[bloodgulchblog]

Update: I think the part of Armor that everyone hates is somewhat better written (somewhat) but holy shit I can’t stand our first person narrator.

[actionbastard1]

"It was then, for Felix, it began. The hatred for the briefing officer had expanded to include his superiors, the captain of the ship, the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick-headed idiot humans who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, then vanished. From somewhere inside came a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet. What replaced the loathing and fury was something very different, something cold and distant and . . . only impersonally attentive. It was an odd being which rose from Felix and through him. It was, in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature. The Engine, Felix thought. It’s not me. It’s my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act. It will do all this while I cower inside." 'ARMOR' (1984) - JOHN STEAKLEY

[doctor-amazing]

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski Armor by John Steakley Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic The War Against Chtorr by David Gerrold

i am once again asking for book recs. my last 4 reads have been ummmm not good

[adamlucasart]

I really enjoyed your story about John Steakley! I've seen your artwork of Armor for years, nice to find who finally did it and to see such a cool story involved in it! It's a shame he never got to finish Armor 2! - Dave

Awesome! Thanks and yeah he was gone way too soon. Appreciate the good words!

[howtofightwrite]

Selecting Firearms for Hunting Monsters

What is the best equip choice for a monster hunter (urban, in modern days)? Such as: shotgun, rifle middle-distance, precision rifle long-distance, handgun?

All of the above, and then some.

Honestly, the distinction between mid-range and long-range rifles is a bit misleading in an urban setting. You’re probably not engaging at ranges where an intermediate cartridge is going to start falling off, but at the same time, you could be dealing with creatures that justify anti-material rounds.

Shotguns are excellent tool for dealing with large creatures (or humans) at ranges up to around 100 meters. These are not the melee range weapons that a lot of pop culture (especially video games) presents them as. They’re also an excellent option for specialized rounds. Shells like Dragon’s Breath (a mix of metals that ignite on contact with air), flares, and FRAG12s all come to mind off hand. Though there’s also things like beanbag rounds and riot slugs, which may be relevant if you’re dealing with something immune to metal bullets.

Shotgun gauge is an archaic measurement system. It’s based on fractions of a pound. If you were to take a 12th of a pound of lead, and form it into a perfect sphere, you’d get the muzzle diameter of a 12 gauge shotgun. A 20th of a pound would get the muzzle diameter of a 20 gauge and so on. There is one hickup, .410 shotgun shells, aren’t 410 Gauge, they’re 11.43mm, and that’s because .410 is actually a caliber, from back before caliber was just fractions of an inch, and was still a ratio.

Assault rifles use intermediate cartridges (usually, 5.56mm NATO, or 5.45mm for Warsaw Pact weapons) and are theoretically effective at up to 300 meters. The two largest families of Assault Rifles are the AR-15 pattern rifles (this includes the American M16 and M4, but also a legion of other rifles by many manufacturers), and the AK family (primarily the AK47, which I’ll come back to in a second, and the AK74, but, again, there are many rifles in this family.)

Assault Rifles are generally the domain of military, police, or similar groups. If your monster hunters are government sanctioned, they may be able to get access to and use assault rifles without issue. However, if they’re not, then these weapons may not be available to them.

There’s another class of Assault Rifles that predate the modern ones. Sometimes referred to as battle rifles, these are high power .30 rifles. They have significantly more recoil, but also have considerably longer ranges. These include the FN FAL, the M14, and the H&K G3. These have experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, with rifles such as the FN SCAR.

For extreme situations, there’s the anti-material rifles. These are frequently chambered in .50 (12.7mm) or something similar. They’re intended for neutralizing armored vehicles and can deliver a lot of destructive force at over a kilometer. Worth noting that explosive .50 rounds are a thing (but don’t reliably detonate if they hit a person, as the impact is insufficient to trigger the payload.)

Handguns have a much more narrow application. They’re most useful when dealing with humans, or monsters that aren’t much more durable than a normal human.

As for, “what’s best?” That’s going to heavily depend on the situation at hand and what your characters are fighting.

If your monster hunters are basically supernatural vigilantes, the best things they could get their hands on may just be handguns, hunting rifles, and pump-action shotguns.

If they’re professional monster hunters, they may have access to hardware that isn’t readily available, such as automatic rifles, or winch mounted crossbow bolts.

There’s also solutions that may not relate to weapons at all. In the John Steakley novel Vampire$, the hunters preferred method is to roll up in the middle of the day and demolish the vampire’s nest around them, letting the sun actually finish off the creatures inside. (Honestly, I much prefer John Carpenter’s film adaptation, even if it strips out the logistics of monster hunting.)

When you’re writing monster hunters, you can create a lot of tension between what your characters are facing, and the tools your characters can get their hands on.

A zombie outbreak isn’t going to be very threatening if your characters are well trained, well equipped, and have the authority to quarantine and summarily execute any suspected carriers. If anything, a scenario like that, where infections occasionally pop up and are put down, could lend a very mundane quality to something that sounds fantastical. “Zombie removal,” except it’s like animal control, or sanitation workers. (Ironically, this was a major thematic joke in the original 1984 Ghostbusters.)

Conversely, when your monster hunters are underequipped, lack the resources, and the support, necessary to track or deal with something, even a relatively non-threatening cryptid could pose a significant challenge.

Even if your characters gear up for one threat, they may be poorly equipped if they encounter something they weren’t expecting. For example: a group of vampire hunters could find themselves in a very bad situation if they instead find themselves dealing with a pack of werewolves.

In general, “best,” is always going to be situational. Pick the right tool for the right job, and familiarize yourself with the options. In a lot of cases, the answer may be a tactic or strategy rather than just bringing the right hardware.

-Starke

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Selecting Firearms for Hunting Monsters was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[forvagabondsfromclown]

"You are what you do when it counts."

But I, I'm like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, "won't go," or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

- John Steakley, Armor// May Sarton

[biblicallyaccuratepigeons]

I have a. few favorite books! It's hard to decide on a favorite series, but I can presently name three stand-alone books that I really love:

The Train To Impossible Places by P.G. Bell -- I actually forgot what this book is about except that a girl leaves her ordinary world for a bit on an adventure. It left me with a sense of nostalgia and bittersweet, because I had no hope then.

The Story That Cannot Be Told by J. Kasper Kramer -- a historical fantasy set in 1980, Romania. A 9-year-old girl has to flee to the mountains to live with her grandparents whom she's never met before in order to stay safe from the secret police. Stories are her blood and her strength, and ultimately her freedom.

Armor by John Steakley -- genuinely a masterpiece. Again, I don't remember all the plot points because I was depressed when I read it, but basically a space military guy is fighting a bunch of antlike aliens, and the other plot is that there's some scientists doing investigations and science stuff on an Earthlike planet that is explicitly not Earth, and the plots converge in a way that I forgot but is really genuinely very good. The writing style was my first real awakening to diction and punctuation as an art, and not just the story itself. Objectively, this should be my favorite.

Heyheyheyheyhey

I wanna talk to you but I'm bad at starting conversations with anything other than a compliment

honestly real. a conversation you want then? well you're in luck! you watch any good shows recently? do any crafts? favourite book? last thing you ate? or a question of your own devising of which to answer?

[publicopinionrp]

Xellen And The Creature

Wrote a little bit about one aspect of my character in our actual play stream, Tales of Harbor. Give us a follow over here: https://twitter.com/HarborTales

During the last session (VOD available here: https://youtu.be/V48o39bZVnY) I introduced the aspect of Xellen’s character she refers to as “The Creature” and wanted to get a little further into it from a meta perspective. The initial idea came from thinking about her history and the time period between being a bunch of WIP programs that would be developed into an AI and becoming fully aware and what the semi-consciousness of that period would be like. I figured Xellen would find her origin as mysterious and intriguing as humans regard theirs and would come to write her own “creation myth” about how she came to be.

Having her personify it and name it was a bit inspired by John Steakley’s Armor, where one of the main characters has such a strongly developed survival instinct that he regards it almost as a separate personality and names it The Engine. That character regarded it as a mechanical thing, a being that would crunch the numbers on how to survive and then make it happen by any means necessary (I read the book a long time ago now, don’t @ me if I don’t have the facts entirely straight on that). Xellen’s Creature also represents her will to survive and to exist, but she regards the will to live as a trait of animals. She depicts it as a lizard-like legged fish because she identifies her own ascent with the emergence of animals from the ocean. The Creature to her represents a form of kinship with flesh-and-blood people. She believes that she is alive because she desires life.

She regards the creature not as a truly separate entity but a thing that she is built on, like skin over muscle. Sometimes when she has trouble figuring out why she’s feeling emotions she’s feeling or when she recognizes she’s having emotions that run counter to the smart, logical reaction, she attributes it to The Creature.

I don’t intend for The Creature to be a literal truth or an actual entity. It’s a story Xellen came up with to explain the world around her. It’s partially her independently developed theory of the subconscious, partially her spirituality, partially a thing to blame when she has unwanted thoughts or emotions, and partially a cool logo.

[scifitalk]

The Stark Realities of John Steakley’s Military SF Novel Armor When I was a kid, John Steakley was an author I was immediately interested in for two reasons.