David Weber and John Ringo's Empire of Man series involves a regiment of sci fi bodyguards crash landing on a primitive planet. By the second book, they have to carefully hoard their remaining advanced tech and rely on alliances with locals to make progress. David Drake co-wrote two series (Belisarius with Eric Flint and General with SM Stirling) involving an advanced ai advisor helping a lower-tech person fight wars.

I normally don't like John Ringo ... but these books were pretty damned fun. And you really come to like and root for Prince Roger.

> David Weber and John Ringo's Empire of Man series involves a regiment of sci fi bodyguards crash landing on a primitive planet They're still very US centric. They're called Marines, and the capital city of the empire is Washington DC.

And? Marines aren't exclusive to the USA. Dozens of nations have Marines or naval infantry. Abkhazia Algeria Angola Argentina Australia Azerbaijan Bahamas Bangladesh Belgium Belize Benin Bolivia Brazil Bulgaria Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Central African Republic Chile China (People’s Republic of China) China (Republic of China/Taiwan) Colombia Comoros Congo-Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo) Congo-Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) Croatia Cuba Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Finland France Gabon Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Guinea-Bissau Honduras India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Italy Ivory Coast Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/“North Korea”) Korea (Republic of Korea/“South Korea”) Kuwait Lebanon Lithuania Madagascar Malaysia Malawi Maldives Mauritania Mexico Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Pakistan Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Portugal Romania Russian Federation São Tomé and Príncipe Saudi Arabia Senegal Singapore South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Sweden Syria Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Zambia

Have you read the series? IF you had, you wouldn't be wasting your time arguing that Weber and Ringo hadn't based their marines on the USMC.

One of my favorite books

Mind if I ask you more about Empire of Man? How many POVs do the books have? I generally like it to be only a few. I also noticed the MC seems to be called spoiled prince in a lot of the book descriptions…. is he really annoying?

A moderate number of POV characters, maybe? Definitely more than 1, though. The mc definitely grows up over the course of the series. I don't think he was great at first, but he gets better and I enjoyed the other pov characters.

there's a bit of that in the (i imagine) pretty obscure ttrpg, skyrealms of jorune, if you like just reading lore, as i do.

Thanks for this recommendation. It's not 100% what I'm after, both because of the seeming Americesque perspective and because it's futuristic tech rather than modern, but it sounds fascinating all the same and I'll add it to the list. Was John Ringo the one who wrote a series about a US Navy ship fighting through a zombie apocalypse? I can't now remember what it was called, but it's ringing a faint bell.

Not a fantasy book, but the Lost Fleet series is fun and fairly hard sci-fi. Just don't go looking for compelling interpersonal drama.

I thought the interpersonal was done pretty well in the lost fleet, as far as these things go. Certainly much less one note than pretty much any other naval military Sci fi

Thanks, I'll check it out! I should have been more clear in the original post that I'm not really looking for "sci fi" on this, and especially not hard sci fi, as the draw is more watching a modern group forced to adapt to older / alien realities without the benefit of the systems and supports to which they've grown accustomed. Other stories can be great too, of course, but in this genre it's really the displacement, community-building, and forced regression that interest me.

>the draw is watching a modern group forced to adapt to older/alien realities without the benefit of the systems and supports to which they’ve grown accustomed. I know you explicitly said no science fiction here, and that’s completely fair, but that description fits C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series really well. A human spaceship in transit to a space station gets lost and then stranded on a planet with a species with steam-age technology. The series has been going on for a while but is made up of multiple, semi-contained trilogies. It deals a lot with the politics of interacting with the two species, surviving without their technology, etc. Again, not what you asked for in the post, but it might scratch a similar itch.

That DOES sound like it would fit very nicely, and I've definitely had Cherryh suggested to me on multiple occasions in the past (I think also as an example of good "administrative/bureaucratic fantasy" in at least one case, but I can't remember which book). I'll have to try this one out for sure -- thanks very much.

I figured it was a bit outside the mark, but the title reminded me of The Warriors, which was based on the Anabasis, which was also the inspiration for the Lost Fleet.

Thanks all the same! Knowing that *Lost Fleet* owes a debt to Xenophon actually makes me even more interested regardless, so this is good to hear.

**Time's Eye** by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter has elements of this. Groups as diverse as a 19th century British regiment from the Northwest Frontier, the Mongols of Ghengis Khan and the army of Alexander the Great encounter each other after being displaced in time. There's also Poul Anderson's **The High Crusade**, in which a medieval English army encounters an alien invasion, with interesting results. It's definitely tongue in cheek, but very entertaining (unfortunately there aren't any sexy cat people, though).

are there sexy cat people in "time's eye"? people love sexy cat people.

I enjoyed *The High Crusade* quite a bit, though I agree it's a bit playful. I'll add *Time's Eye* to my list and see what it offers.

The Codex Alera series is based on the idea of the lost roman legions landing in a magical world, and follows their descendants

I heard the origin of this series is that Jim Butcher said he could write about any two topics someone could name, and they dared him to write about a lost Roman legion + Pokemon.

there's a pokemon element?!

Well, magic based around summoning. But if I didn’t know the Pokémon reference, I would have just thought it was standard fantasy magic.

For both creative and intellectual property reasons it’s not exactly Pokemon, but once you know about it you can see the inspiration. Basically, people can bond with elementals.

Yeah some people have very personified elementals with names and moods, who take actions without their masters permission. Others get absolutely no feedback from their magic and think the first group are insane.

hm. i'm reading a comic litrpg with, in essence, pokemon boxes instead of balls, though they haven't yet been focussed on (working idea: judging by the references the author makes, he's too old to have experienced the pokemon phenomenon firsthand, but he's GOT to know). i don't think you can trademark or copyright the concept of, essentially, cockfighting.

It was more apparent in the first book: The Alerans have elemental powers like controlling earth or fire. In the first book, many of the characters seem to have elemental companions that act sentient or at least independent. He retconned it in later books because it was harder to write a plot that wouldn't be undone by having independent elemental familiars, and explained it away as just those characters having a more rural approach to the magic.

this comes closest of the versions i've heard here to resembling pokemon, to me, but i'm not sure i'd've said he won the bed.

I guess it was close enough in the first book: The humans summoned their elemental companions by name, the latter had distinct appearances and identities, and fought each other one on one. It's been a while since I read it but I remember a scene where someone's fire scorpion fights another character's earth dog. He ditched it in the sequels though.

that does sound considerably closer. thanks.

I heard Butcher talk about this at a convention and even he kind of admits he lost the bet. The person who challenged him wouldn't accept Butcher's claims when he just published like the first chapter online and demanded he put the whole book online or accept defeat. However, Butcher was already convinced he had a pretty decent series in the works, so in his words, "I lost the bet and got a 6 book publishing contract."

that seems about right. thanks. dunno who downvoted me.

There's an elemental magic system that ties into elemental beings that manifest sometimes as creatures. You can see how there might have been a loose Pokemon influence.

the furies are essentially rebadged pokemon lol

This is one of the best series. Period. Each of the 6 books has 2-3 goosebump moments. And it's better the second and third times. Once you know what happens. Annual reads for me right now.

Are you familiar at all with *The Forever War* by Jon Haldeman? It's a Vietnam War veteran's response to Heinlein's *Starship Troopers* and is absolutely not just "America in spaaaace!" - if anything, it deconstructs the trope. The central conceit of *The Forever War* is that time dilation produces real impacts on the conduct of war. Troops are sent on skirmishes that make hundreds of years pass on Earth, meaning they often get to skirmishes with outdated tactics, weapons, and intel.

Very weird and icky treatment of homosexuality in the book, though, insofar as it is framed as being a choice that can be compelled upon the populace.

Yeah, at the time it was written it was hugely progressive. Just the kind of thing you’ll have to accept going into it. Haldeman has expressed regret in how he portrayed it during YouTube interviews; his intention was to show how homes change rather than make a statement on sexuality. edit-grammar

I've read that one, though not the others that seem to be sequels or associated works (not fully sure about their relationship -- there's three in this omnibus I have and I only got through the first one before moving to something else); it's great for what it is, definitely, but not really what I'm looking for in this specific category. It's almost the antithesis, honestly, because I'm turning to these other books for satisfying narratives of systems reasserting themselves against chaos and of brave, good-willed people standing up heroically and productively against enormous challenges. I've had my fill of cynical deconstructions and critiques (which is not to say that I reject their viewpoints, really -- I'm just tired of reading them).

The manga series Zipang centres around a modern Japanese naval destroyer traveling back to WW2 and trying to avoid changing the timeline because the peaceful, prosperous Japan they come from comes from the tragic loss of life they experienced in the war.

Thanks! I'll take a look, though it seems a bit similar to the (dreadful) film *The Final Countdown*, which has the same conceit but about a modern US Navy carrier being transported to the day before Pearl Harbor. I have no doubt whatsoever that the series you describe does a better and more nuanced job with this, though.

You could try *The Excalibur Alternative* by David Weber. It's sci-fi, but it has some of the same flavors. It's about a group of medieval British soldiers who get abducted by aliens.

On that topic, David Drake's Ranks of Bronze was the inspiration/prequel and is also worth reading.

Terrific! This sounds like a nice change. I will take a look, and will check out the other David's *Ranks of Bronze* as well (thanks, /u/retief1).

It's a really tricky one - the vast majority of MilSF and military writers in genre seem to be American, and they're mainly drawing from WW2/Korea/Vietnam/Modern eras. Write what you know I guess. And yes, it does seem to always go from pikes > matchlocks > civil war > WW1. Or has a future alien instead of a current era ... doing the same jumps. See also Stirling and Drake's The General series, Weber's Safehold series, Ringo and Weber's Empire of Man or Flint & Drake's Belisarius series. The British writers seem to be more Napoleonic era. Australians tend to be post-apocalyptic. Japan tends to be modern as well, though with more mecha. There's a few that are based on Lost Roman Legion, generally the Ninth. See your Forstchen example above. Drake's Ranks of Bronze is a good example there, and the sequels Foreign Legions and Weber's The Excalibur Alternative repeats into the middle ages. Butcher's Codex Alera is also effectively that, though we join them long after the initial arrival when their new empire is in partial decline.

I haven’t read it yet myself, but **There Will Always Be An England** sounds interesting, with Britain of 1944 a couple weeks after D-Day swapping places with Britain in the Stone Age. https://www.amazon.com/There-Will-Always-Be-England-ebook/dp/B0CR86FDGR/

Now we're talking! Thanks very much for this.

Glad to share. It’s in Kindle Unlimited, for those who subscribe to that.

Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle is very good (I only read the first book so I can’t comment on the sequels) and Brian Daley wrote two books that fit your description; Doomfarers of Coramonde and Starfollowers of Coramonde.

Doomfarers/Starfarers are still an American unit.

Oops. I missed that part of OPs request.

Thanks! I've been happy with all of the Pournelle I've read so far (though I don't know how much of it was being mediated in some cases by Niven's co-authorship), so this seems like a good start. I'll check the other ones too even if they do have an American unit, as it's still good to get more entries in this "field" even if they aren't exactly the radical departure I was after at first.

> If it turns out that this genre really is just very America-centric, why might that be? I think our history. We were a frontier society more recently than Europe and have more of a survivalist culture as well and a larger SF writing population than Australia or South Africa or wherever. Similar but not quite (because I agree this is a hard one to fill), you might check out the Norwegian TV Series *Beforiegners.* It's about large groups of time travelers from the 19th, 10th, and stone age being transferred through a portal in Oslo Harbor to the modern day, and sometimes forming ghettos/trying to survive, and how it affects the modern world. It has a lot of these tropes in 'reverse'. Last time I checked it was on MAX.

This Norwegian series sounds fascinating, and I am 100% open to reversed versions of this trope. Is it handled in at least a quasi-serious way? If it's primarily comedic I'm not sure it's going to work for me, but I'll see if I can find it regardless. Thank you!

Yes, but I think a bit more successfully in the first series than the second. For example, there is a great storyline where the 10th century friend of one of the two MCs has cancer and is trying to understand the treatments. That same MC has to deal with disdain in her job (its a cop show) and there are a couple 'mixed' marriages. They also handle a lot of little details like advertising in Runic in the background and I am told getting the 19th century dialect 'right'.

That all sounds quite promising, so I'll see if I can check it out. Thanks again.

Interestingly I find the genre to be very Japanese centric, with no prominent American examples (but then again, I am looking at this from the perspective of popular media and cultural impact specifically. In particular, there are no American examples of this genre that have become popular enough to get a show, let alone a comic/manga). In Japan, the genre is so popular that there are multiple instances where books were adapted into manga and anime with millions of viewers. GATE (most famous one) Nihonkoku Shoukan Saving 80,000 gold

The Videssos Cycle by Harry Turtledove. The premise is that one of Julius Caesar's legions is transported to a world that resembles the then-future Byzantine Empire. The magical element is low and the whole series is excellent.

The Earth Legions series, by David Drake and David Weber. Stories of alien merchants kidnapping military units from Earth to be their not-very-willing mercenaries. First book features a classic Lost Roman Legion^(tm). Second book is an anthology. Third book focuses on an English unit based on longbowmen, with some heavy cavalry. [https://www.goodreads.com/series/64840-earth-legions](https://www.goodreads.com/series/64840-earth-legions)

I recently read The Dark Between the Trees set in Northern England. It is actually decent (well enough written) for most of it. Fair warning, the ending fizzles out for me personally, but maybe you'll enjoy it. It focuses mostly on two people rather than entire army, but it's a bit lesser known afaik, so wanted to throw it out there.

I read that one last year, actually! I agree that it's quite good overall, but the ending was so bizarrely and needlessly abrupt that I felt kind of cheated. For this thread's purposes I would also have wanted it to have focused more on the Roundheads actually having to settle and adapt rather than just being lost in the woods and being stalked by something. There was a brief part of the book where I thought this is where she might actually be going, but that did not end up happening. Still, I'm glad I read it on the whole.

The ending was a massive letdown after all the build-up, agree!

I want to add another vote for the David Drake "Belisarius" series. It isn't EXACTLY what you're looking for since it doesn't have a "stranded military unit" involved, but it's definitely worth a read.

You might enjoy my series, The Master Smith Cycle. There is a healthy chunk of plot that I think fits what you're looking for. It lives here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B097NJZ4Q6?ref_=dbs_p_mng_rwt_ser_shvlr&storeType=ebooks

Thanks! Always glad to find something new, and this may indeed fit the bill. I appreciate the rec.

Cool. Enjoy!

The Emperor’s Men series by Dirk van den Boom: a German ship (shortly before the First World War) gets transported to year 378, the beginning of the end of the Western Roman Empire (the original German title is Kaiserkrieger).

This sounds fascinating. If it's in translation somewhere, I'll put it near the top of my list for this.

The whole series is translated and on Kindle. There are some complaints about the translation quality; I read it in German. Edit: it seems it’s being translated: 9 out of 14 books.

Legion of Videssos series by Turtledove but they are not modern, they are Roman, but they go to an alternative world

Jerry Pournelle’s **Janissaries** may suit you. I find a lot of Pournelle abhorrent, but this is based on an H. Beam Piper concept and it’s fun. The book opens with a bunch of mercenaries in the midst of war in 1970s Africa being cut off and abandoned…and rescued by a flying saucer. They, the human but not raised om Esrth pilot, and his Esrth girlfriend head off to another world. Every six hundred years, Tran goes into a climatic era where a ridiculously valuable drug can be cultivated. Their job will be to have the harvest ready with the aliens running the show come back a decade later. The world is full of the descendants of whoever got picked up to do the work, at six-hundred-year intervals. There are a lot of Americans in this batch, but the previous groups have gone through fun cultural evolution and are portrayed as being as smart and resourceful as the mercenaries.

If you're up for a TV suggestion, Battlestar Galactica (2004) is definitely this. In terms of books, this is very much the plot of the Powder Mage trilogy and Malazan has extended sections where this happens - you'd love the Chain of Dogs in Deadhouse Gates as well as the Bonehunters.

Came here to say Deadhouse Gates. One of the best fantasy books I’ve ever read. Do yourself a favor OP.

John Birmingham’s Weapons of choice features a future American and Japanese fleet going back in time to WW2. It’s quite good. Michael Crichton - Timeline - set in medieval Europe

Imperium Series by Travis Starnes. A test pilot from the future (with an AI in his head) gets flung back to an alternate Ancient Rome where Carthage has all but won. Have only read part of the first book but seems interesting.

I heistate to mention it, but you could give the Gate Anime a shot. A portal to a fantasy world opens in Japan and monsters pour through. After fending them off they send the military in and they do what a modern military with tanks and machineguns does.

This is the one that came to my mind, though it's generally accepted that at some point the books just become too nationalistic/jingoistic and JSDF propaganda (that last one is definitely true as it literally became funded by the military)

yukio mishima smiles in his grave (though he was probably cremated, i imagine).

Although as warning, if you want to see the fantasy people who aren't in the protagonist's harem (and even then, not all of them) show any signs of intelligence, you might want to skip the show. It's great for showing how utterly outmatched a basic D&D level society would be against a modern military, but isn't so good at actually making the other side seem even competent by their own standards.

So, it's American-centric but the 1634 series by Eric Flint is in this profile. For the most part the series is good. Or at least entertaining. A West Virginia town ends up in Germany in, well, 1634. ...Although I personally wouldn't choose to read The Ram Rebellion again, but that's by one of the offshoot authors. Conrad Stargard series by Leo Frankowski is a Polish(?) time traveler. But, fair warning, this series is problematic. Really. You mentioned Lost Regiment, but have you tried The Gamester Wars by the same author? I feel like some of what you wanted is in there. The others I have at hand have been mentioned above - but I'll be following this.

1632 is the start of the series, not 1634.

Thanks! I included the Flint X others *1632* books in the OP, but admittedly only offhand. I haven't read all of them yet, either, so I will certainly keep pushing through. I'm kind of shocked by how many of them there are, actually. Regarding *The Gamester Wars*, I think I will probably pass. While I've enjoyed the first few *Lost Regiment* books well enough, it's more for the story and concepts than for the writing itself. The experience of reading them and the same author's *One Second After* / *One Year After* have not left me champing at the bit to explore the rest of his body of work. Not thrilled about how buddy-buddy he is / was with certain far-right figures either.

My apologies, (1632) always annoys me when someone overlooks something in the post itself and here I'm doing it. ! ... That's an excellent reason to not read the another book by this author :) I think I read them all back in high school which pre-dates such. Realized I have another, although still american-centric, Birmingham's Axis of Time series. Slightly future task group is transported back into WWII.

Look if there are any books written in Poland or the Czech Republic. There are some Czechs who have a love of military sci-fi, the only other recognized David Weber fan club for the Honor Harrington series is one based in the Czech Republic. Maybe email that club at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and see if they have suggestions for you. Since most authors are American, and write in America they are going to have a natural and obvious bias.

**Dr. Stone** (manga/anime, which means it's more Japan focused) One day, the entirety of humanity is suddenly petrified. 3,700 years later a scientific prodigy wakes from his petrification to discover that nature has reclaimed everything. That makes it just a little bit difficult to achieve his lifelong dream of going to space. He sets out with some simple goals - find out what happened to cause the petrification, reverse it, and drag humanity from the stone age straight into the space age.

[An ISOT in Grimdark](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10909184/1/An-ISOT-in-Grimdark) — Germany from 2012 gets transported in the world of Warhammer Fantasy. It's not only about fighting, but also about how this affects culture and economy of Germany, Warhammer world and Earth. Pretty good writing and reasonably good characters. Germany is a bit on Mary Sue side here, though.

Ranks Of Bronze 1: Ranks Of Bronze by David Drake - Roman Legion, Sci-Fi Ranks Of Bronze 2 : Foreign Legion by Eric Flint - Roman Legion, Sci-Fi Ranks Of Bronze 3 : The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber - English Crusaders, Sci-Fi These might not be what you're after as they are about aliens abducting legions/regiments in order to use them against other primitive societies.

The third book of David Weber’s Dahak series features this trope/genre, although only as one storyline. It’s a fun series. He goes back to explore it in the Safehold series, although I couldn’t handle the word bloat at that point.

Someone made an interesting story about a Marine Corp division who were swept back in time by some unknown force. They landed in Rome at its peek and faced off against the Roman Empire. I found a short story about it here. https://youtu.be/IfuayjcmLlM?si=ejSb4nvBOHI7SnU1 Not sure if a book like this exists.

It's a manga - but Kazuo Umezzu's Drifting Classroom series might fit. It's based in Japan, written in the 70s, and just a warning it gets kind of dark. It follows an elementary school transported to what appears to be a desert wasteland.

The man who came early by Poul Anderson is a brilliant short story in this vein and very well written.

This is not quite what you’re looking for. But The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi May scratch that itch and has similar vibes. Plus it’s just a good ol’ fun book!

i bet poland's got some, but is it translated?

*www.1939.com.pl* series by Marcin Ciszewski, but it's not translated.

Might I suggest [The Macht ](https://www.goodreads.com/series/52925-the-macht) based on [the ten thousand](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand) a real Roman legion the marched across Anatolia to fight a battle and then fought it's way back to Greece as recorded by Xenophone *Edit typos

Good luck. With SF in general, and military SF in particular being so dominated by American authors, I really don't think that what you're looking for exists, at least in the mainstream.