Sci-Fi Genre Trope: Powered Armor/Exoskeleton
I’ve shared some of my favorite sci-fi books in recent months and realized a common trope to several of them, what I call powered armor. A powered exoskeleton, also known as power armor, powered armor, powered suit, cybernetic suit, cybernetic armor, exosuit, hardsuit, exoframe or augmented mobility, is a mobile machine that is wearable over all or part of the human body. They are a real thing dating back to precursor apparatus for assisting movement developed in 1890 by Russian engineer Nicholas Yagin. But they are also a fantastic trope in sci-fi, particularly military sci-fi, stories.
I had mentioned Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in a recent newsletter. I hadn’t read the novel in many years, so I read it again this month. And there was powered armor again. Since the devices, though called different names, were common to many of my recent reads, I couldn’t help but ask, “Who did it first?” Before I answer the question, let’s look at some of my favorite books and series that feature powered armor with the names of their powered armor. (I include a few I’ve mentioned before in case you missed those newsletters).
The Expanse Series (Goliath Powersuit)
I’ve only briefly mentioned The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey in the newsletter before. This is one of my favorite sci-fi series, so I’ll save a longer discussion about it for a future newsletter.
The Forever War Series (Fighting Suit)
The Forever War series* by Joe Haldeman is a classic military sci-fi series written shortly after the author’s return from deployment to the Vietnam War. I’ve only read the first book in the series so far, but the remaining two books are on my must read list.
From the publisher:
Conscripted into service for the United Nations Exploratory Force, a highly trained unit built for revenge, physics student William Mandella fights for his planet light years away against the alien force known as the Taurans. “Mandella’s attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd, almost endless war is harrowing, hilarious, heartbreaking, and true,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz—and because of the relative passage of time when one travels at incredibly high speed, the Earth Mandella returns to after his two-year experience has progressed decades and is foreign to him in disturbing ways.
Based in part on the author’s experiences in Vietnam, The Forever War is regarded as one of the greatest military science fiction novels ever written, capturing the alienation that servicemen and women experience even now upon returning home from battle. It shines a light not only on the culture of the 1970s in which it was written, but also on our potential future. “To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is . . . as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I’ve read” (William Gibson).
What’s to love about this series and the fighting suits? The series is based on Haldeman’s personal experiences while fighting in the Vietnam war. He wrote the first book shortly after returning to the US and while still in the army. So, though the story is futuristic, the setting, characters, and battle accounts are completely believable. The fighting suits can be deadly, even to the wearer if improperly trained.
Here are a few Links to help you find the series:
Red Rising Saga (Star Shells)
The Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown follows the life of Darrow, a member of the lowest caste, the Reds, in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.
Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.
But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.
Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. (less)
What’s to love about this series and the star shells? The Red Rising saga is a modern classic dystopian story in epic form. The dystopian society and Darrow’s dedication to fighting it against all odds and at high cost are central to every chapter. The use of the word “brutal” in the publisher’s description is no understatement, though, so be aware that the series doesn’t gloss over this brutality and violence. The star shells are used like inter-space torpedoes, shot through the hulls of enemy ships to disable the ship and deliver a combatant in one shot.
Red Rising is also available as a card game from Stonemaier Games. I haven’t played it, but with Jamey Stegmaier as one of the designers and Jacqui Davis as one of the artists it is certain to be a beautiful and solid game. Definitely on my “want to play” list.
Here are a few Links to help you find the series:
Boardgame Geek (the card game)
Hell Divers Series (Exosuits)
The Hell Divers series* by Nicholas Sansbury Smith falls in the post-apocalyptic military SF category.
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers—men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.
When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past—something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.
What’s to love about this series and the exosuits? The Hell Divers series is not going to win any literature awards, BUT… Its thriller pace, fast action, high stakes stories, and interesting characters make it a very quick, entertaining, can’t-put-down read. If you prefer audiobooks, you are in for a special treat. The series is read by R. C. Bray, who is THE premier voice for this subgenre. The exosuits are used to deploy fighter/scrappers from space to a deadly planet surface. (Hmm, which planet might that be?)
Here are a few Links to help you find the series:
So, who novelized about powered armor first?
For many of you, this will come as no surprise. According to Wikipedia (which I know is not an authority on anything, but is a ready resource), it was Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers (initially a serial called Starship Soldiers), which was also the first novel-length work firmly in the military science fiction subgenre. Heinlein has his detractors, but with a hit film in 1997, forty years after the original work and establishing genre tropes like powered armor, there is no denying the impact of this novel on popular science fiction and military SF in particular.
Here are a few Links to help you find the series:
Wikipedia has a convenient list of films featuring powered exoskeletons. Unfortunately, they don’t host a similar list of written stories, but offer this short recap. The science fiction novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (1959) is credited with introducing the concept of futuristic military armor. Other examples include Tony Stark‘s Iron Man suit, the robot exoskeleton used by Ellen Ripley to fight the Xenomorph queen in Aliens and the Power Armor used in the Fallout video game franchise.
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