If there's no future in a book's future, is it really science fiction? That's the question Rick Shelley poses in his latest "DMC" novel, Major.

DMC stands for "Dirigent Mercenary Corps," the interstellar mercenary army that counts series protagonist Lon Nolan as a member. Over the course of three previous books, he's risen from cadet to captain, and as this volume opens Nolan is in charge of a full battalion.

Less blood, more bookkeeping
The action isn't as exciting as the lurid cover blurb makes it sound. Nolan spends most of his time on the routine work of being an officer, presiding at a general court martial, planing training routines for his men and even spending leave with his family. There are no battles in the first half of the book, and the three combat scenes in the second half aren't much more than skirmishes.

On one level, the matter-of-fact realism of Nolan's military life is refreshing -- few real-life armies actually spend much time in combat, and Shelley is a good enough writer that he can make Nolan's day-to-day work interesting. Still, if you buy the book looking for the blood and thunder that the cover promises, you're going to be bitterly disappointed.

Even if you're enjoying the routine elements of the story, they can seem a little inconsequential. Some of that may be intentional -- Nolan is undergoing a character arc in which he questions his place in the Corps -- but it doesn't make the book any more exciting. There are no surprising plot twists, the supposedly mysterious raiders are revealed almost offhandedly at the end and Nolan's only emotional reaction to events is a gradually deepening malaise.

Is this the future?
With so little going on, it's also easy to notice how little science fiction the book contains. The series is supposedly set in the 29th century, but you'd never know it from the DMC's technology. Most of their equipment and all of their tactics come right out of today's U.S. Army.

That's not completely surprising, since Shelley is an Army veteran, but he's taking the realism a bit too far here. Substitute ships for spaceships and the book might as well be set on Earth today. As for planet Bancroft, it's so similar to the hills of North Carolina that Nolan remarks on the resemblance several times.

None of this directly affects the quality of the story, but SF is about change. In the last century alone, we've seen massive shifts in the ways armies and navies wage war, all of which have been driven by changing technology. Machine guns, tanks, airplanes, aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles -- every new technology has brought a new way of fighting with it.

Of course, the military is also about tradition and it's perfectly reasonable to argue that some things will never change. However, the futurist who predicts no change at all is as foolish as the admirals who thought World War II would be fought with battleships. Eight hundred years ago we fought wars with horses and lances -- if Shelley truly thinks the military will only use today's tactics and equipment 800 years from now, he's not much of a SF writer.

There's still one good reason to slap "science fiction" and a couple of guys in battle armor on the cover. Military SF sells, and it sells in highly reliable numbers. Unfortunately, Major is so unimaginative that it makes you wonder why.