All your base, are belong to us.
Space Force by Jeremy Robinson is a 2018 humorous Military Science Fiction novel.
Captain Ethan Stone slept with the daughter of a general and has spent the past five years Reassigned to Antarctica as part of Space Force. Under the new administration, they have been defunded to the point of nonexistence and soon find out they are about to be discharged with the organization dissolved completely.
This is okay by Stone but not his partner, Jennifer Hale, a Native Hawaiian First Lieutenant who joined Space Force in hopes it would allow her to see the stars. Embarrassed by her naivite, she contemplates a relationship with Stone post-discharge when aliens invade. Aliens who are huge gamers and have decided Space Force will be the champions in a massive battle royale to determine who owns the Earth.
It is not to be confused with Space Force (2020).
Tropes:
- The Ace: Ethan Stone, despite being assigned to Space Force, is a former Navy SEAL and Tier One operator. He is the best fighter in Space Force, good-looking, and a gamer with millions of livestream followers.
- Action Girl: Jennifer Hale, upon discovering aliens have invaded, cuts a swath through both foreign spec ops as well as the Chote to the latter's mothership. She is also an Ace Pilot as well as master of gōngfu.
- Affectionate Parody: The book mocks big-budget action scifi action movies like Independence Day and Battleship where America Saves the Day and a Ragtag Band of Misfits comes together to save the world. Our protagonists are the absolute last people in the world who would be chosen to defend the Earth and bumble through the situation mostly through luck. They also get a substantial amount of help from other nations that are better qualified and more capable. Also, who would have been able to have helped greatly if our heroes hadn't killed most of them.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Chote are stereotypical online trolls and the worst sort of gamers, except they also invade planets and kill people for real in their games.
- Alien Invasion: The Chote invade the Earth but insist on a battle royale to determine who will control the planet.
- Asian and Nerdy: Jian is a Chinese hacker who is the physically weakest, a huge anime fan, and a massive gamer who knows Stone by his gaming livestreams versus special operations credentials.
- Battle Royale Game: The aliens put sixty humans up against sixty aliens with an ever shrinking Advancing Wall of Doom around them.
- The Cracker: Jian is one in the service of the Chinese government. He, sadly, points out this skill is useless against the aliens since their computers will undoubtedly use their own programming language.
- Did Not See That Coming: Space Force would have been massacred if not for the fact that they had a superpowered female robot on base. Neither the Chote nor Space Force itself knew about her existence.
- Driven to Suicide: The Chote hate their own appearance so much that if seen naked, they will kill themselves rather than suffer the shame of it.
- Evil Is Visceral: The Chote are a brutal force of conquerors with no respect for life. They also look like penises under their armor.
- Genre Savvy: Stone and Taylor survive primarily due to their familiarity with Battle Royale Game style video games.
- Got Volunteered: Taylor accidentally volunteers Space Force, which consists of about four people, to be the champions of Earth. He was just trying to check his cellphone.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Loretta plans to detonate the pocket nuke by hand in order to destroy the alien mothership and allow the others to get away. It proves unnecessary as Hale and Stone teleport her away at the last second.
- Hidden Depths: Loretta the Bus Driver is an easily confused and somewhat goofy bus driver caught up in the Chote attack. She later reveals she lost both of her children to war and is willing to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the alien mothership.
- Insufficiently Advanced Alien: The alien Chote have incredibly advanced technology created by their most advanced minds but most of them are only able to work simple machinery. Indeed, the climax of the book has the protagonists struggling to work their devices because they're too simple and designed to be worked like an assembly line.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Hale frequently wonders what kind of sadistic weirdo would come up with such a cliche and bizarre premise. Later, she is interviewed by Jeremy Robinson alongside Stone.
- Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Ivan Petrovich is easily the toughest individual in the book aside from Captain Stone and attributes this to his Hilariously Abusive Childhood in Russia. This includes being shot three times by his parents for stealing cookies and having to kill his rabies-infected father with a flamethrower.
- New Media Are Evil: Played with. The Chote define themselves with the worst sort of gaming behavior found online (rudeness, racism, looting, mayhem, and teamkilling). So much so that they actually respect humanity for coming up with their games. Hale actually points out this means video games are not evil because humans keep that in the realm of the fictional.
- Poor Communication Kills: The Canadian, Russian, and Chinese Special Forces units come to fight the aliens only to mostly kill each other off. All of them want Space Force's experimental space fighter and its sole pilot, Hale, who ends up killing most of them herself.
- Puny Earthlings: Played With. The alien Chote are far stronger and more technologically advanced than humanity. Their armor is also immune to Earth weapons. However, the average Chote is much stupider than the soldiers of Space Force.
- Renaissance Man: Billy Forte constructs a superpowered Robot Girl, Gerty, all by himself. This includes programming her, assembling her, and making all the various parts for her body. He is also a astrophysicist and the chief tactician of Space Force.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Everyone in Space Force, except for Hale, was apparently on someone's shit list and sent there to destroy their career.
- Robot Girl: Gerty is a super advanced female android that appears to be a stunningly attractive blonde.
- Shipper on Deck: Colonel Lauren Jones says that Stone and Hale should hook up since they're about to be discharged, are obviously attracted to one another, and they aren't likely to find better prospects.
- Skewed Priorities: Hale discovers the local news networks are more interested in whether she's going to marry Stone than the alien invasion that just began around them.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Hale believes all of the Russian Ops soldiers are conscienceless killers they don't help their case by gunning down the unarmed Canadian soldiers attempting to talk with them. Averted by Ivan who is a pleasant individual despite his odd qualities.
- Take That!: The novel is quite irreverant to many subjects.
- Jian is a hacker employed by the Chinese government to infiltrate the alien mothership and upload a computer virus like in Independence Day. He points out this is insane and stupid since aliens wouldn't be using a human operating system.
- Space Force itself is depicted as a place to reassign problematic members of the US military, has no actual purpose before the alien invasion, and is a colosssal waste of everyone's time as well as talents.
- The "former President" is obviously Donald Trump (who created Space Force in RL) and created Space Force with no clear agenda, a bloated budget, and ridiculous demands like making a functioning starfighter as well as a Sex Bot.
- The new President, which doesn't appear to be Joe Biden but is a fictional Democrat, is a religious fanatic who ignores all the warnings about the imminent alien invasion due to his belief America Saves the Day.
- Toilet Humor: Quite a bit.
- Stone drops his cell phone in a full toilet and it is rendered useless.
- One of the Chote is caught using the bathroom by Stone and Taylor. He's more embarrassed by being seen naked than angry over being killed.
- The audio guns designed for use in space result in whoever is struck with them shitting themselves. This includes the Chote.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Russia, China, and Canada all sent Special Forces to fight the aliens but they end up killing each other or being killed by Space Force except for two other survivors.
