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''Note: This is the 'Main' article for the Honor Harrington related book series and sub-series by David Weber.
The Honorverse is the semi-official name for the setting of a military science fiction series of stories by David Weber featuring Honor Harrington, the Nelsonesque heroine in a series reminescent of Forester's Horatio Hornblower book series. The books are popular and new releases regularly make the New York Times best seller list. The universe first explored in On Basilisk Station has a detailed diasporal historical "background" for the initial storyline, in which (over several thousand years) mankind migrated first to stars near Earth by "slow-ships" (See: Cryogenics and Suspended Animation) and then, as a means of faster than light travel was discovered and gradually developed, rapidly beyond.

The hypothesized FTL system is a richly detailed hyperspace mechanism, with some unique features such as the ability to "sail" along "gravity waves". One important feature of the hypothesized physics behind the tales is that there exist rare wormholes, by which properly equipped ships can travel virtually instantaneously between wormhole terminuses, vastly speeding interstellar travel along such routes. In practice, these are akin to choke point naval stations (fortified ports, cities, etc in the Age of Sail in the Caribbean, around the horns of Africa and South America, or places in the Far East like India, Ceylon, The East Indies or places near strategic straits like many in today's Indonesia) or man-made routes such as the Panama and Suez canals. Possession of a wormhole provides the owner star nation an important revenue source from tariffs and increased trading opportunities relative to star nations without such access.

The analog to our world's extant nation states is the star nation, which in the case of central protagonist Honor Harrington is the Star Kingdom of Manticore. This is located in a binary star system that has three inhabited planets and the unique status of having not just one terminus of a wormhole junction, but six (to the stars: Sigma Draconis, Matapan, Gregor, Basilisk, Trevor's Star, and Phoenix) as of the events in the first book of the series On Basilisk Station. In the tenth novel of the series, War of Honor, a seventh terminus is discovered and explored and it is found to lead to a planetless M8 red dwarf near the inhabited Star named Lynx in the (so-called) Talbott Cluster. This became central to the first novel of a new sub-series, Shadow of Saganami, and in some of the short stories set after its discovery.

Since the wormhole junction termini links are so similar to "Age of Sail like" trade routes, the Star Kingdom of Manticore has a very important role in interstellar trade and general commerce much out of proportion to its population or number of planets. Like the British Navy in the days of the British Empire, Manticore's Royal Navy has an important role in maintaining the security and integrity of the star nation's economy, and has been designed to do just that. The Star Kingdom's wealth and importance have evoked both envy and avarice and it has been and remains the object of much intrigue and friction on the part of other large powers in the Honorverse: examples include the Solarian League, the Republic of Haven, the Andermani Empire, Mesa and its corporate powers, and the large, chaotic collection of mostly individual star-polities known by the misnomer of The Silesian Confederacy, where pirates roam, and more or less everyone wants to do business, or conquer, or annex the mess.

There are some other interesting historical parallels to Earth's Age of Sail built into the Honorverse. It is set primarily after Honor's October 1, 3961 birth. Disruptive technological advances have been gradual in the Honorverse for most of the 500 years of the Star Kingdom of Manticore's existence, and as the series opens, that technological stagnation has led to a similar stagnation in both strategy and military tactics. The gravity impeller propulsion systems used in spaceships require "gun ports" in military vessels and captains strive to position their ships to maximize their fire power by using a broadside attack akin to the unturreted days dominated by the warships and ships of the line of the Age of Sail. Like Horatio Hornblower, Lord Nelson and Thomas Cochrane, Honor Stephanie Harrington is a superb ship handler bordering on genius.

Although most of the stories and books cast Honor in a starring role, more recent additions to the series include short stories and novels in which only passing references at most are made to her. In some cases this is because they are set before her birth; otherwise the featured characters have usually made appearances (if only brief ones) in Honor-centered stories.

The Books

All the books up to and including At All Costs are available on free-to-copy CDs produced by Baen Books. Weber has stated that there will be at least five more books in each of the Honor Harrington, Wages of Sin, and Saganami Island series. The newest book, At All Costs, is now available in hardcover and the hardback includes one of the CDs containing all the previously released Honorverse titles.

Main Series (novels)

  1. On Basilisk Station (© 1993 Mass market paperback, © 1999 Hardcover)
  2. The Honor of the Queen (ISBN 0-671-57864-2, Copyright © 1993 by David Weber, First hardcover printing, March ©2000)
  3. The Short Victorious War (1994)
  4. Field of Dishonor (1994)
  5. Flag in Exile (1995)
  6. Honor Among Enemies (1996)
  7. In Enemy Hands (1997)
  8. Echoes of Honor (1998)
  9. Ashes of Victory (2000)
  10. War of Honor (2002)
  11. At All Costs (2005)

Sub-series works

These works are:
  1. Genre collections in which the author, David Weber has opened his milieu and copyrighted characters to other authors. These are examples of old style or traditional collaborative writing, in which Weber also adds a story or two of his own.
  2. A departure from the main Honor Harrington storyline, usually featuring previously minor characters used in other works.

''Worlds of Honor Sub-series Anthologies
  1. More Than Honor (1998) - stories by David Weber, David Drake, S. M. Stirling plus an Honoverse background history, and including the story in which a central species first becomes known to humans; (3 stories total)
  2. Worlds of Honor (1999) - stories by David Weber (two stories), Linda Evans, Jane Lindskold and Roland J. Green; (5 stories total)
  3. Changer of Worlds (2001) - stories by David Weber (three stories) and Eric Flint; (4 stories total)
  4. The Service of the Sword (2003) by David Weber, Jane Lindskold, Timothy Zahn, John Ringo and Victor Mitchell (cowritten), John Ringo and Eric Flint; (6 stories total) Originally, this book was to have been titled In Fire Forged.

Wages of Sin sub-series
  1. Crown of Slaves (2003) with Eric Flint — a departure type work, the setting is outside Manticore space for these stories based on the Zilwicki family, who were mentioned in earlier works.
  2. Crown of Slaves 2 (working title, planned release in 2006)

Saganami Island sub-series
  1. The Shadow of Saganami (2004) — in this first novel the action happens in the Talbott Cluster, newly discoverd to be connected to Manticore via a junction terminus, and involves the naval career of Helen Zilwicki mentioned in earlier works.
  2. The Shadow of Saganami 2 (working title, planned release in 2007)

The 'Honorverse' universe

The most important space empires in the series are Star Kingdom of Manticore, (People's) Republic of Haven, Solarian League, Grayson, Andermani Empire, Mesa, Erewhon and the Silesian Confederacy.

See also

External links

Honorverse

Honorverse | Honorverse

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Honorverse".

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