What is Science Fiction, Baen Books?

A famous science fiction writer, when asked what makes a story science fiction said the following:

You know a story is science fiction if when you remove the science, the story is no longer a story with a plot or characters moving the plot along. Well he said something like that.


What I'd like to know is why the editors at Baen Books failed to apply this test to all of their author's manuscripts. Is it that they don't care about contents as long as the writer is popular? Or has the Baen Books editorial staff decided science is not a requirement for science fiction?

I've always considered myself an open minded reader, and accepted that some science fiction will not fall into the slot without some tweaking. For me, techno-thrillers fall into this category.

When I searched the bookstore for an author I'd not yet read, I spotted a line of titles by John Ringo. Since I'd purchased a book by him from the remainder table a month earlier that was the third in a series, I wanted to get the first of that series. Its title is Ghost, an alleged techno-thriller.

I purchased Ghost with anticipation of a good read. I've read it, or as much of it as I could, and now I'm stuck with a garbage book I wouldn't give away.

Mike Harmon, John Ringo's apparent ideal American hero, is interested in one thing first and foremost, sex from the young college age women around him. He rescues a plane load of girls who were kidnapped, stripped naked and taken to the Middle East to be used as bargaining chips in an awful human game of chess.

What is foremost on the hero's mind? How he would like to have sex with them, regardless of their situation! He mentally ogles their bodies, imagines what he could do to enjoy his own brand of brutal sex. This occurs while he watches one young woman physically tortured in ways too horrible to include here.

So far, not a techno-thriller.

The second section of the book is an expose' on bondage, S&M, male domination. This all begins in John Ringo's hero's mind while he is unaware of the victims ages, but is too aware of their gender.

So far, not a techno-thriller.

The third and worst part of this collection of wasted ink and paper, includes the rape and sodomizing of a 15 year old girl in a foreign country. Ringo's hero buys her at a slave market, enjoys her pain and terror, enjoys his brutality, enjoys an act of pedophilia knowing that Ringo's fictitious US president Cliff (created with too much similarity to our current President) will bail him out. I guess John Ringo believes pedophile behavior is a good thing as long as it's done outside the USA. I doubt the President does.

Oh, yeah, lest I forget, Mike Harmon found 3 atomic bombs, got exposed to enough radiation to make him impotent (but of course he isn't, how could he continue abusing women if he was?), and got paid millions by the government for his exploits.

Sorry, pal, this is not a techno-thriller, it's not science fiction. It's trash!

All readers of science fiction should avoid this author like the plague if he thinks promoting pedophile behavior, rape and sodomy in fiction or otherwise is good reading.

This is not a techno-thriller. Mike Harmon, were he a real person, would be in prison for a long long time.