Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction for which the principal characters are members of a military service and an armed conflict is occurring, often in space or on a planet other than Earth. A detailed description of the conflict, the tactics used for it, and the role of a military service and the individual members of that service forms the basis for a typical work of military science fiction. The stories often use features of actual past or current Earth conflicts, with countries being replaced by planets or galaxies of similar characteristics, battleships replaced by space battleships and certain events changed so that the author can extrapolate what might have occurred.
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