 thumb|amazing stories december 1936, an early illustration of space marines. the space marine, an archetype of military science fiction, is a kind of soldier that operates in outer space or on alien worlds. historical marines fulfill multiple roles: ship defence, landing parties, and general-purpose high-mobility land deployments that operate within a fixed distance of shore. by analogy, hypothetical space marines would defend spaceships, land on planets and moons, and satisfy rapid-deployment needs throughout space. ==history== the earliest known use of the term "space marine" was by bob olsen in his short story "captain brink of the space marines" (amazing stories, volume 7, number 8, november 1932), a light-hearted work whose title is a play on the song "captain jinks of the horse marines", and in which the protagonists were marines of the "earth republic space navy" on mission to rescue celebrity twins from aliens on titan. olsen published a novella sequel four years later, "the space marines and the slavers" (amazing stories, volume 10, number 13, december 1936), featuring the same characters using a spaceship with active camouflage to free hostages from martian space pirates on ganymede.bleiler, everett f. and bleiler, richard, science-fiction: the gernsback years, kent state university press, 1998, pp. 315â317 a more widely known early example was e. e. smith's lensman series. while the first story, triplanetary and most later sequels (second stage lensmen, children of the lens and the vortex blaster) do not mention them, passing mentions of marines are made in galactic patrol (astounding stories, september 1937âfebruary 1938) and gray lensman (astounding stories, october 1939âjanuary 1940), and a more direct mention is made in first lensman (1950): "dronvire of rigel four in the lead, closely followed by costigan, northrop, kinnison the younger, and a platoon of armed and armored space marines!&q
Fictional_military_organizations Space_marines Space_navies Space_warfare_in_fiction