SciFy AU?

[dasmims]

For years now I've been thinking in vague terms about Hornblower in Space. That's mostly born out of a discussion about Hornblower influences on scify media like Star Trek and Honour Harrington, my personal feeling that scify usually doesn't have the vibe I love about age of sail and for some reason the abandoned fic The (unexpected) Return - I don't know if I have a point here. But I'm very curious if anyone else has some thoughts on this?

Comments

[sanguinity]

Vorkosigan Saga also has Hornblower influences. (And the rice ship shows up explicitly -- but in spaaaaaaaace!)

I think you have an unfinished sentence there: The (unexpected) Return what? Does or doesn't have the vibe? (And are you reccing it?)

Does Treasure Planet have the vibe for you? I did have strong Captain/Loyal-Second feelings about their Smollett and Arrow for a hot second there.

And while Firefly has more Wild West vibes than Age-of-Sail vibes, I did have Captain/Loyal-Second feelings about Mal and Zoe, too.

Neither of those, though, have the "stiff formality, pretending they're not besties" part of it, though.

Have you seen the tumblr art series for Hornblower space AUs? There are at least two artists who have done them. Chiropteracupola and... I don't remember the other, I'll have to do some digging when I have time.

[dragoness_e]

Well-known scifi series that I'm familiar with and were attempts to do Hornblower in Space with the serial numbers only lightly sanded off:

1. David Drake's Lt Leary series.
   
2. David Feintuch's Seafort Saga. He's the only author I know of who made his hero as angsty and self-doubting as Hornblower. I personally think he went a bit overboard with it, as he piled on tragedies and took the angst well beyond Hornblower levels to "Jeez, let the poor guy catch a break!"
   
3. The above-mentioned Honor Harrington series was intended to be "Hornblower in Space", but it rapidly diverged into "WW2 in Space".
   

[yourlibrarian]

I would love to read a fic about Hornblower in space. It could even be a fusion with other well known space sagas. I remember reading a Merlin fic set in the Star Wars verse that worked very well because it was its own story but just using the conventions of that verse. I could see Hornblower working for the old Republic.