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David Drake, the author or co-author of over 80 science fiction and fantasy books, passed away on December 10, 2023 in Silk Hope, North Carolina. Drake, a Vietnam veteran and lawyer, turned to writing fulltime in 1981, a few years after his first book was published.
Drake was born on September 24,1945. He studied at Duke Law School and was drafted into the army in 1970, where he was assigned to the 11th Cavalry Regiment (Blackhorse) where he spent the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. He finished law school after he returned and became Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Assistant Town Attorney. He turned to writing to help him grapple with his army experiences; his first book, the short story collection Hammer’s Slammers, came out in 1979.
“The stories [in Hammer’s Slammers] were more important to me as self-therapy than they were as the start of a career,” Drake wrote on his website about his first published book. “They gave me a chance to write about what I’d seen and heard; about the men I’d served with and person I’d become in that time. Being able to get that out on paper helped me keep it between the ditches and (from what they’ve told me) helped other veterans by showing them that they weren’t alone.”
Hammer’s Slammers was a ten-book series and became his best-known work, which includes dozens of other novels including the fantasy series Lord of the Isles and the Lt. Leary series. He also provided outlines for numerous books, including the Belisarious series and The General series.
Drake stopped writing in November 2021 due to health issues. “I have a long memory. This certainly isn’t a virtue when somebody else remembers another way and I refuse to change my belief,” he wrote in his last newsletter on November 17, 2023. “Sometimes it’s clearly a good thing though, being able to remember events in the army. Not so much because they gave me a career, not so much because of specific incidents as by giving me the feel of a war zone. That’s really different from normal life.”
The following excerpt is from Blackhorse Tales, By Don Snedeker.
David Drake was drafted out of law school in 1969. He recalls that his basic training company at Ft. Bragg, NC, “was about equally split among blacks from inner city Detroit; whites from the mountains of Western NC; and college graduates like me. It was an interesting mix.” Equally interesting was his return to law school in 1971. His classmates didn’t know that he was a Vietnam Vet. When he heard two of them sharing ideas on how to avoid getting sent to Vietnam, “for a moment, listening to them, I wanted to kill both of them.”
David got over such notions. He quit lawyering and became a successful full-timemscience fiction author. He’s widely considered the gold standard in the Military SciFi genre (about 60 books), due, in no small part, to this first-hand combat experience with the 541st Military Intelligence Detachment in the Cambodia operation in 1970. David concludes: “The greatest single influence on my life was the Vietnam War. I wish that weren’t true, but it is … I’m very proud of my service and of the Blackhorse, but this was not a good time in my life. It really, deeply, wasn’t.” Many troopers would agree that their year at war was not a good time in their lives.
the author or co-author of over 80 science fiction and fantasy books, passed away on December 10, 2023 in Silk Hope, North Carolina. Drake, a Vietnam veteran and lawyer, turned to writing fulltime in 1981, a few years after his first book was published.
Drake was born on September 24,1945. He studied at Duke Law School and was drafted into the army in 1970, where he was assigned to the 11th Cavalry Regiment (Blackhorse) where he spent the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. He finished law school after he returned and became Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Assistant Town Attorney. He turned to writing to help him grapple with his army experiences; his first book, the short story collection Hammer’s Slammers, came out in 1979.
“The stories [in Hammer’s Slammers] were more important to me as self-therapy than they were as the start of a career,” Drake wrote on his website about his first published book. “They gave me a chance to write about what I’d seen and heard; about the men I’d served with and person I’d become in that time. Being able to get that out on paper helped me keep it between the ditches and (from what they’ve told me) helped other veterans by showing them that they weren’t alone.”
Hammer’s Slammers was a ten-book series and became his best-known work, which includes dozens of other novels including the fantasy series Lord of the Isles and the Lt. Leary series. He also provided outlines for numerous books, including the Belisarious series and The General series.
Drake stopped writing in November 2021 due to health issues. “I have a long memory. This certainly isn’t a virtue when somebody else remembers another way and I refuse to change my belief,” he wrote in his last newsletter on November 17, 2023. “Sometimes it’s clearly a good thing though, being able to remember events in the army. Not so much because they gave me a career, not so much because of specific incidents as by giving me the feel of a war zone. That’s really different from normal life.”
The following excerpt is from Blackhorse Tales, By Don Snedeker.
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Christmas Through the Years With the Blackhorse
Christmas card, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light), Camp Carson, CO, 1952
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