David Drake RIP
Legendary military science fiction author David Drake has passed away at the age of 78.
David Drake was born in Dubuque Iowa in 1945. His studies at Duke Law were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army. He served with the “Black Horse Regiment.” in Vietnam and Cambodia. After the war, he finished his legal studies and became an Assistant DA in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He eventually quit the law to become a bus driver.
In 1978, he shook the foundations of military science fiction when he published Hammer’s Slammers for Ace Books. The field had been dominated by Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, which bluntly was a military sci-fi novel for the left. While not on the right himself, veterans found an integrity in Drake’s work that was non-existent in Haldeman’s.
He retired from both law and public transportation in 1982 to become a full-time author. I tried to tally the number of books he’s written by himself or was either a coauthor or contributor to and finally gave up at “a lot.”
Something suspected by the liberty con writing community became public knowledge in late 2021 when Drake announced his retirement from writing due to an unspecified degenerative cognitive impairment.
Word was quietly put out tonight that he had finally passed.
David Drake
RIP
1945-2023
