Honor Harrington series

The Honorverse refers to the military science fiction book series, its two sub-series, two prequel series, and anthologies created by David Weber and published by Baen Books. They are centred on the space navy career of the principal protagonist Honor Harrington. The books have made The New York Times Best Seller list.

The series follows Honor Harrington, military heroine and later, influential politician, during a time of extreme interstellar change and tension. Most of the more than 20 novels and anthology collections cover events between 4000 and 4022 AD with "PD" (Post-Diaspora) dating beginning with a dispersal to the stars from our sun ("Sol") in 2103 AD. The main series novels are set primarily in a timeline beginning 40 years after Harrington's birth on October 1, 3962 AD (1859 PD), and some short stories flesh out her earlier career. Additional novels and shorter fiction take place up to 350 years earlier, and still-earlier canon history is filled in between narratives and in appendices attached to the main novels and anthologies.

The political makeup and history of the series frequently echoes actual history, particularly that of Europe in the last half of the second millennium. The series is consciously modeled on the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester, and its main character, like Horatio Hornblower, on a mix of Thomas Cochrane and Admiral Lord Nelson. Weber originally planned for Harrington to die in the fifth book. This was later changed to parallel Nelson by having her die at the peak of her career in the climactic Battle of Manticore in 1920 PD (4020 AD), then continue the series with her children as the main protagonists. However, collaborating author Eric Flint intervened, asking for the invention of a mutual enemy for both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven to oppose in a spy-and-counterspy spin-off sub-series the two contractually agreed to co-write, just as they have contracts to write in Flint's 1632 universe. This "rethink" and redesign caused Weber to move the series' internal chronology up by about 20 years and begat the Crown of Slaves novel, first in the "Crown of Slaves" sub-series based on a number of the short stories of the first four collections. In this scenario, proxies for Manticore and Haven oppose the same hidden enemy, the genetic slavers and powers behind the government and corporations of the planet of Mesa. Mesa is later revealed in Mission of Honor to be part of a secret cabal of about a dozen highly capable planets which are busily building a secret navy using advanced technologies at a secret planet and known to itself as the Mesan Alignment. The Mesan Alignment's navy has new technology and conducts a sneak attack on Manticore in 1922 PD during the twelfth mainline novel, Mission of Honor. The Mesans have a 600-year-old secret program to reinstitute purposeful genetic engineering of humans and break up the Solarian League, while taking down all opponents opposing such genetic engineering. This makes the staunchly anti-genetic-slavery star nations of Haven, Manticore, and various associates of the planet Beowulf primary targets of the Mesan Alignment. The "Crown of Slaves" sub-series books and last two mainline Honorverse novels detail the rising extent of this threat.

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