The genre: Military science fiction
The book: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
Actually, Wikipedia and Fandomania credit the earliest beginnings of military SF to George T. Chesney's 1871 Germany-invades-England tale "The Battle Of Dorking" and George T. Griffith's serialized "The Angel Of Revolution," plus the works of H.G. Wells. But the book that everybody refers to as the touchstone of military SF, the book which really launched the themes of futuristic interplanetary warfare and examining the military as a social entity, was Heinlein's Starship Troopers. As Fandomania's survey puts it, this 1959 book "put Military Science Fiction on the radar."

The genre: Cyberpunk
The book: Neuromancer by William Gibson.
There's some debate about who really "invented" Cyberpunk as a genre. As this cranky essay (PDF) notes, Asimov was the first writer to consider the ramifications of artificial intelligence seriously. Bruce Sterling helped shape the genre with his 1986 anthology Mirrorshades. Bruce Bethke invented the term "cyberpunk" with his 1980 short story called "Cyberpunk." But even Bethke admits:

I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk fiction! That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, Neuromancer, was the real defining work of "The Movement." (At the time, Mike Swanwick argued that the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.)

Gibson's Neuromancer gives us the fusion of noir with brain-computer interfaces and dystopian paranoia, which spawned so many imitators.

The genre: Gothic science fiction
The book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Commonly acclaimed as the first science fiction novel in general, Frankenstein was the first novel to meld the burgeoning gothic lit genre with the themes of abuse of science. Brian Aldiss, in his seminal work of SF criticism The Billion-Year Spree, claims that SF was "born out of the gothic mode" with Frankenstein. As CUNY professor Lilia Melani puts it:

In 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus introduced the theme of the dangers of science and created the obsessed scientist, who was to develop into the mad scientist, and the archetypal Monster. Frankenstein has been called the first science fiction novel; she of course thought she was writing a novel of terror.

Gothic science fiction has come to mean any science-fictional story with terrifying elements, a horrendous monster or some kind of science-fictional explanation for a horror trope, like vampires created by a bio-engineered plague.

The genre: First contact with an alien race
The book: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. This was a tough one - even if you only define "first contact" as being a scenario where human society, as a whole, comes into contact with an alien species (and not just one solitary human explorer) you still have tons of early stories about aliens showing up. Some would say the earliest notable "first contact" novel is H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds. But let's say that a crucial component of the "first contact" story is that the aliens are friendly - or at least reasonably well-intentioned. Otherwise, you just have an invasion or war story. In that case, Childhood's End, with its super-advanced Overlords showing up and guiding humanity to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, although somewhat disturbing, is still a more benign story than Wells'. And thus a more proper precursor to books like Carl Sagan's Contact and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis saga.

The genre: Utopian science fiction
The book: Stories of utopian futures are enjoying a bit of a resurgence, with the upcoming Shine Anthology pushing for a more optimistic futurism. But the first future utopian novel (as distinguished from, say, More's Utopia, which is the account of a fictional realm) is The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane C. Loudon. In this happy future, everyone wears neon hats:

The ladies were all arrayed in loose trowsers, over which hung drapery in graceful folds; and most of them caried on their heads, streams of lighted gas forced by capillary tubes, into plumes, fleurs-de-lis, or in short any form the wearer pleased; which jets de feu had an uncommonly chaste and elegant effect.

Other wonders include "the steam-powered automaton surgeons and lawyers (who speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies) and the delivery of letters by cannon-balls, which are shot into large nets erected in each village." She even predicts a sort of Internet. Everyone travels around in giant blimps, and it's a happy, egalitarian society. There's also Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, in which a young man goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the Socialist utopia of the year 2000 - Bellamy's book may have been more influential, along with H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia. (Thanks to Liz Henry for the suggestions.)

The genre: Apocalyptic fiction
The book: The earliest apocalyptic novel is probably Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. But the first really popular novel of global devastation, and the one which helped to spawn a ton of imitators, is Nevil Schute's 1957 novel On The Beach. As you'd expect from that date, it's all about nuclear holocaust, which devastates the Northern Hemisphere and leaves the last survivors in Australia and New Zealand, drinking way too much wine while awaiting the end of everything. It became a film and also helped shape our atomic anxiety into a rich seam of fiction that endures today in novels like The Road.

The genre: Steampunk
The book: Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy by K.W. Jeter. Jeter not only invented the term steampunk, in an interview around the time this 1987 novel came out. A weird comic twist on the Victorian adventure novel, Infernal Devices stars George, a young watchmaker who discovers that his father was the greatest inventor of all time - even creating a clockwork automaton version of George. The clockwork duplicate of George plays the violin better than Paganini and has greater sexual prowess than George himself, leading to all sorts of wacky adventures as people mistake George for his automaton twin. Other books that could claim to be steampunk pioneers include Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1983) and Homunculus (1986) by James Blaylock. But to be fair, the book that really popularized the steampunk genre was 1990's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

The genre: Time travel
The book: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This is sort of a gimme, I guess. The best-known early time-travel saga, and still one of the best, Wells' story launched a whole flotilla of time vessels into the distant future as well as the past. Like War Of The Worlds, it has been adapted into movies and various other formats, and the Eloi/Morlock dichotomy has become a sort of shorthand for a type of future dystopia rife with exaggerated social division.

The genre: Alternate history
The book: Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon And The Conquest Of The World.) Screw those "Hitler wins World War II" books. How about this popular "Napoleon won the Napoleonic wars" book, published back when Napoleon was still a living memory? Louis Geoffroy imagines Napoleon's First French Empire defeating Russia and then going on to invade England in 1814. Result: Game over. Napoleon rules the world.

The genre: Posthuman space opera
The book: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. I have no idea what book launched the "space opera" genre originally - that might be a question for another day. And there's some debate over which book inspired the resurgence of space-opera books loosely called "the new space opera." But to me, it's probably more accurate to call this genre "posthuman space-opera," since it so frequently deals with artificial intelligences, augmented humans, beings who live for millions of years, and generally a set of characters who far exceed the capabilities of a regular human. And for my money, the first really influential star-spanning novel about a civilization of A.I.s (the Minds) and superhumans whose concerns are much farther reaching than our pathetic horizons was 1987's Consider Phlebas. I freely admit this may be a bit of personal bias showing through, since Phlebas was the first novel I read which really knocked my head off and made me see the awesome potential for this type of story.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and create some more new genres!

Top image from Consider Phelbas cover.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Space opera is best described as a genre of science fiction that is about adventure, often pitting the protagonists against powerful opponents, with broad themes, characterizations and actions throughout. The actual science that defines science fiction is not necessarily at the forefront of the story.

Military science fiction, on the other hand, is about conflict of the worst kind, involving all-out warfare. Oftentimes, the main characters are part of a military organization and are involved in conflicts much greater than their own parts, but they might be pivotal to the overal conflict to some degree.

To be very fair, there is a lot of overlap between the two different sub-genres. Stories that may fall firmly within the space opera side may also carry elements of military science fiction, whereas the opposite is very true, in a number of cases.

Of all the space opera stories that come to mind, Star Wars is right up there at the front, although that's not necessarily the first one out there. Physical flaws aside, the six films span a very epic story of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and his redemption. We see the fall of a massive government undermined from within, the rise and fall of an Empire and the rise and realization of new heroes and destinies, all set in front of a backdrop of a series of galactic wars. While combat is certainly one of the most intensive, exciting and interesting parts of the Star Wars saga, I've never really thought of it as a strictly military story.

The intentions and themes between the two genres are what often sets them apart. Military science fiction tends to attempt to provide commentary on real-world events, placing the conflict out of context for readers to pick on on themes that mirror those found in real life. Starship Troopers looked out of the Second World War, and examined themes such as facism and a society where all-consuming, total war was necessary. World War Two was the closest that the United States and the world has ever come to a total war, and it is unsurprising that these themes would be at the forefront of authors' minds. Beyond that, however, there is a larger theme that I've often found within most of the military science fiction stories that I've read, and it parallels the sort of mentality that is required in a military force - the Other.

For a military to function, there is an absolute requirement of cohesion, of uniformity and of discpline. During the 1300s to the 1400s, an event in Europe occured, now refered to as the military revolution, when European armies adopted rank and file formations, formalized and standarized training and uniforms, all stemming from the invention of the firearm. Armies seek to break up individuality and provide a group mentality, of teamwork. Otherwise, it would be unable to function correctly. In doing, so, enemies are vilified - just look at what enemy Japanese, German, Vietnamese and Iraqi soldiers have been called in recent conflicts - and in doing so, they are labeled the Other. They are against what you are against, and oftentimes, the others in military SF stories are portrayed as insectoids, an extremely alien figure, completely dehumanized. Protagonists often reconcile or examine these relationships and their role in any interactions, whether it's questioning whether their duties are right and justified, or even looking at this dehumanization and uniformity within society. Othertimes, such as in Timothy Zahn's Cobra books or Ender's Game, the central characters themselves are the others - changed by their training and/or enhancements, that place them at odds with society.

In contrast, Space Opera is about construction, inclusion. Where Starship Troopers looked at the world aflame after the Second World War, Asimov's Foundation Trilogy looked at the world rebuilt, watching as a society fell apart, and was restored through the actions of the characters. While military actions or simple melees have often been a part of these stories, they lack the central elements (although they might incorporate them) that define military science fiction. Other broad themes are incorporated as well - the swell of discovery, seen throughout the Ringworld stories, is another major theme that I would like to point to. In some of the more sophisicated modern stories, such as Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, we witness the efforts of humanity to rebuild under strict guidelines of the Singularity, with broad politicial overtones, punctuated by action and excitement.

Both military science fiction and space opera are about culture, but it is the methods in which they both approach their stories that helps to set them apart. space opera looks to culture through the eyes of construction, of vast worlds and the connections that hold society together, overall looking to inclusion, while Military science fiction examines what happens when those bonds break, and the disintigration of society, and seeking to examine the exclusions found in society.

Star Wars concept art above by Ryan Church.

Literature

Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
When one thinks of military science fiction, Robert Heinlein's classic novel Starship Troopers is often the first to come to mind. It paved the way for a lot of military science fiction, but it did that by going beyond the battlefield - this story extends military culture from the lives of the soldiers, to the root causes of the story's conflict. Heinlein even explores how the culture became militant in the first place.

We follow Juan Rico, a member of the Mobile Infantry, a powered-armor infantry unit that is deployed in the war against an insect based species known as the Bugs, watching him emerge from training to engage in battlefield combat. The story alternates between Rico's military life and flashbacks to his life beforehand and the training that he underwent, all the while serving to explore several political theories of civic responsibility and military ethics.

Cobra Trilogy, Timothy Zahn
Timothy Zahn is known far more for his Star Wars novels, but he has written extensively in the science fiction realm, especially in military SF. Some of his best books have included the Conqueror's Trilogy and Blackcollar, but what springs to mind first is his Cobra series. These books follow a group of soldiers known as Cobras, who have been augmented to pack a greater punch on the battlefield. Rather than exploring the battlefield abilities of these soldiers, Zahn looks to their lives after the war and how they adapt, as the modifications that they receive are permanent.

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game is another of the prominent works of military SF. It follows Andrew 'Ender' Wiggen as humanity is fighting a far off and seemingly unstoppable insectoid race. Andrew and other children are selected for an orbital school that is designed to turn them into the leaders who will lead Earth to victory. Unlike other books, which focus on combat, Ender's Game largely focuses on the command and strategy level of warfare, as Ender proves to be a brilliant subject, and eventually takes command of Earth's forces as they travel closer to the enemy's home planet.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel The Forever War explores both combat and culture. Earth is engaged in an interstellar war, and the story's hero, William Mandella, is recruited to fight far from home. After a period of training, they travel to the battlefield at faster-than-light-speeds. But this subjects the soldiers to relativity: They arrive to find themselves outgunned on the battlefield, and return to find a very different Earth than when they left. Where Starship Troopers is considered to be fairly pro-military, The Forever War was written in the aftermath of Vietnam (Haldeman was a veteran) and is largely seen as an anti-war novel.

Old Man's War, John Scalzi
Published in 2005, John Scalzi's novel Old Man's War was nominated for a Hugo Award and Scalzi followed up with two sequels. The story follows John Perry, a seventy-five-year-old who enlists in the Colonial Defense Forces, and begins a military career that leaves him an experienced soldier and leader. But over the course of the carnage, he is left to wonder whether the bloodshed is really worth it. The book has been compared to both The Forever War and Starship Troopers.

Broken Angels, Richard K. Morgan
Broken Angels is the second book in the trio of Takeshi Kovacs novels penned by UK author Richard K. Morgan. Unlike the first book of the three, which had more of a detective-noir feel, we are now thrust into the military background of Morgan's starring character, Takeshi Kovacs. Kovacs is serving with a mercenary unit when he is contracted to help protect an expedition that has uncovered a Martian artifact located in the middle of a war zone. Morgan applies his own twists to the genre. Unlike other military science fiction books, Morgan doesn't look at the themes of warfare, but instead at mercenary and corporate military units, as well as the individual conduct of the soldiers.

Armor, John Steakley
Armor has been compared to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. The title refers to the powered armor that the soldiers in the story use (to fight insectoid aliens), but also refers to the psychological effects of war. The story's hero, Felix, is put into battle again and again, surviving against incredible odds, but finds that these battles take an incredible toll.

Wess'Har Wars, Karen Traviss
Karen Traviss's Wess'Har series spans six books (City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, Ally and Judge) and begins in the near future, before jumping ahead several hundred years. Traviss' protagonist, Shan Franklin, is a police officer who is sent to the world Cavanagh's Star, to recover a colony that had been sent there. There, accompanied by a unit of Royal Marines, they meet several new alien races, and become embroiled in a massive conflict that humanity is dragged into as well.

This series works well because of Traviss' restraint. While these books feature combat, they are mainly political and ethical in nature, dealing with genocide and the limits of warfare. Particularly interesting is that Traviss' books don't necessarily take the side of humanity; she explores a number of other races and their motivations for going to war.

Vatta's War Cycle, Elizabeth Moon
Vatta's War is a series of five books by Elizabeth Moon that follow Kylara Vatta after she is drummed out of a military academy and thrust into the family business of transporting goods. But there is combat: she fights battles with pirates and mercenaries, while working to defend her family and livelihood. Over the course of the series, threats mount and Ky is forced to take command of a task force to defend against a massive pirate armada.

Probability Moon, Nancy Kress
Probability Moon is the first book a trilogy where Earth is (surprise!) fighting against an alien race that has them outmatched. This book deals with the discovery of an alien artifact that can help turn the tide of the war in humanity's favor. What is interesting about these books is that they follow a select number of characters outside of the military who have to interact with a society that is increasingly under the control of military forces. Kress also deals with military tactics that conform to physics, which is a nice change in general.

X-Wing Series, Michael A. Stackpole / Aaron Allston
I wasn't going to approach any elements of the Star Wars franchise, but I couldn't really justify leaving off Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston's 9 book X-Wing series, which deals largely with space battles. This series stands out, because it gives us a strong sense of military culture, jargon and environment as we get to know the Rogue and Wraith Squadrons.

Television

Battlestar Galactica
My first memory of Battlestar Galactica is an image of Adama in uniform in a copy of SciFi Magazine. I remember thinking that it was interesting that a SciFi show had such a realistic-looking uniform, and it only got better from there. It also doesn't hurt that the show's CGI is run by Zoic, which makes the space battles something to die for.

Battlestar Galactica has been known for bucking trends when it came to television SF, and it did so in spectacular fashion over four seasons. Soldiers looked like soldiers, with their simple helmets, knee pads, and guns. But beyond the look of the military, Galactica gave us a stunning array of realistic military tactics.

Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1 largely uses the modern day US military, and did so with a growing understanding over the course of the show's ten year life. The first couple of seasons took a number of liberties throughout, but over the course of the show, its fictional military evolved as the real-life US military evolves (such as new weapons and uniforms). We also got a fair amount of space battles between the human SG forces and the Goa'Uld forces.

Babylon 5
Babylon 5 introduces a sort of UN level of politics to combat-oriented science fiction. The show follows a five year arc that includes massive conflicts between races, culminating in rebellion and a showdown of good and evil. This show certainly wanders into the morally gray area and as such, shows the complexity and multiple-faceted nature of war. The overall look and feel of the show evolves over time, and the military element certainly improves as well.

Movies

Aliens
The popular sequel to the film Alien, this film features a unit of Colonial Marines that accompany Ripley upon her return to the planet LV-426. This was a big change from the original film, which was more of a horror film. After contact is lost with a colony on the planet, the Marines are deployed to investigate. Though the Marines are fighting aliens, the interplay between the soldiers is incredibly realistic - it's basically a contemporary war movie with monsters.

Children of Men
Children of Men isn't really a military science fiction film by any stretch of the imagination, but it does include several scenes where we see a futuristic military, one that is far closer to our present than any of the other entries on this list. In a battle that culminates towards the end of the film, there is a long, single-take running gun battle as UK forces enter a holding area for immigrants in order to track down a terrorist cell, the Fishes. Here, we see that these soldiers are using fairly similar kit to what is used today, but there are also small communications devices and heads-up displays, elements that will likely enter the battlefield in our lifetimes.

Games

Halo Franchise
The Halo games owe a lot to many of the entries on this list, from Starship Troopers to Aliens, to other works, such as Ringworld. Humanity has come under attack by a coalition known as the Covenant, a group of religious alien species, who deem that humanity is against their religion and seek to wipe them out. War breaks out and the games follow Master Chief, a 'Spartan Warrior' - an enhanced soldier in a power suit. The three games follow Master Chief on the first Halo ring discovered, where they also come across a zombie-like race of biological experiments known as the Flood, and then to Earth, as that falls under attack. A run-of-the-mill shooter, this game is still fun to play. We're all just waiting for Peter Jackson to get going on his film adaptation of it.

StarCraft
StarCraft is a real-time strategy franchise that started over ten years ago. Players can pick three species, Terrans (humans), the Zergs (insectoids) and the Protoss (humanoids). The game takes place in future, where Earth is overpopulated and has thus expanded, and as this happens, contact with alien races inevitably goes wrong, and war breaks out. The game has been hailed as one of the most influential and important games in the genre, and has remained popular since.

David Drake says that the genre of military SF contracted in the late 1990s, due to too many "opportunists" jumping into the genre, and the downsizing of the U.S. military.

I freely admit to being one of those who opportunistically jumped into the genre: I wrote Old Man's War in no small part because I walked into a bookstore in late 2000, saw lots of milSF (including books by what I called the "Three Davids" — Drake, Feintuch and Weber), and said "well, I guess I'll try writing that, then." But since OMW wasn't published until 2005, I can't be blamed for anything that happened before then. Not my fault, dude.

Do you think that the genre has rebounded since then?

My impression at the moment is that military science fiction is doing fine; the sales of the sub-genre are brisk relative to most other SF sub-genres, especially if you expand "milSF" to include the Halo series of books, which are pretty much outselling everything else in SF at the moment (give or take a Star Wars tie-in). We're all still getting our clocks cleaned by fantasy, but that's par for the course these days. But in SF, milSF is chugging along fine.

Is the audience for books like Old Man's War the same as the people who were reading Drake's books in the early 90s?

I'm sure there's overlap; from what we know of OMW's audience it contains a fairly wide spectrum of readers. I'm pretty sure I and David Drake (then and now) share some readers.

Now, if we grant that the Halo books qualify as milSF (which I think we should), I doubt that there's much overlap there at all, since in the early 90s the people who are reading the Halo books today were, like, five. What Drake and other milSF folks can hope for in that case is that the readers of the Halo books do a little stretching and try other books of a milSF bent (i.e., "Hey, this doesn't have Master Chief in it, but it still might be cool.")

There was a boom in military SF in the early 90s, which ended up harming the genre, Drake writes on his website. Military SF

had been so hot a genre that quite a number of opportunists had gotten into it despite their lack of knowledge of the military and/or skill at writing. I'd seen this coming (the downsizing of the US military had by itself removed millions of potential readers from barracks where they had a great deal of time on their hands), but I couldn't get anybody to listen to me.

Meanwhile, the military SF genre seems to have gained a new lease on life with John Scalzi's Old Man's War series, John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy, and Richard Morgan's Broken Angels, a sequel to Altered Carbon about a space war. The Military SciFi site lists a bunch of new and forthcoming military SF books, including John C. Wright's Null-A Continuum, the anthology Warfear, Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet: Courageous and Starfist by David Sherman and the awesomely named Dan Cragg.

I wrote to David Drake to ask him if he thought military SF had bounced back, and here's what he said:

Yes, Military SF has rebounded, though it's also being confused with the rebound in space opera. Quite a lot of what's being called Military SF today—including my RCN (Leary/Mundy) series—is really space opera, in my opinion.

There was always a lot of space opera around, but media tie-ins filled that niche until the collapse of the Star Trek franchise. There's now room for Honor Harrington, Miles Vorkosigan, et al; and these series tend to be lumped in with Military SF.

But the US is also at war, and it's not politically correct nowadays to hate soldiers the way it was in the '70s when I started writing the Hammer series.

Some of what's appearing is patriotic and indeed triumphalist, the sort of thing that was a staple of Astounding under John W Campbell. That doesn't happen to be what I write (or ever wrote); but there's room for me too.

Mostly now I'm writing space opera and fantasy, though. That's not due to a change in the market so much as me having gotten my head a little straighter since I wrote Redliners. I'm now able to write what I want to write rather than feeling a compulsion to do harsher work.

The bad places are still there in my head — The Darkness is one of my most recent stories and one of my bleakest — but I'm not forced to look at them all the time.

The difference is intent: a focus on adventure rather than a focus on the military. There's an enormous amount of warfare in both the Skylark series (by Smith) and the Cities in Flight series (by Blish), but those are space operas. Whereas Starship Troopers (Heinlein) and Dorsai! (Dickson) are military SF. In my parlance.

The Old Man's War trilogy isn't becoming a tetralogy, insists Scalzi. Zoe's Tale, coming in August, is a stand-alone book featuring Zoe, the daughter of the trilogy's hero. In the OMW universe, habitable planets are rare and we have to fight aliens for them. You have to be over 75 to join the Colonial Defense Force and join the brutal, bloody conflict in space. No clue whether the story jumps ahead to Zoe's 75th birthday.

The third book in the OMW trilogy, The Last Colony, comes out in paperback around the same time as the hardcover Zoe's Tale. John Perry is living on a colony world with his wife Jane and his teenage daughter Zoe, when he and Jane are asked to govern a new colony called Roanoke.

Also coming soon in paperback: a new, updated version of Agent To The Stars, Scalzi's first (and maybe silliest) novel, about aliens who want a Hollywood agent. You can still read the original "shareware" version of Agent here. (Yes, Scalzi's a scab.)

In early 2009, Scalzi aims to put out The High Castle, a sequel to The Android's Dream with another Dickian title. The first novel followed Harry Creek, a State Department alien-wrangler who has to deliver the last genetically engineered "electric blue sheep" to an alien ceremony and avert an intergalactic war. No details on Castle, except that its first chapter is just as crazy as Dream's. So expect more chapter-long fart jokes, maybe.

Coming at some point later, but maybe still in 2009, are Untitled 2008 John Scalzi Novel, an untitled fantasy novella, and a short novella for an anthology called Godlike Machines.

Scalzi also has two nonfiction books coming out in 2008: A new edition of his astronomy book The Rough Guide To The Universe, and a collection of his online columns, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.

Zoe's Tale cover art from Irene Gallo. [Whatever]