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The MI wasn't the entire military. Military Service included research
positions and labor and the like. The MI was the hardcore cap troopers.

"In the MI, everybody fights, from the chaplain to the cook to the Old Man's catamite." That was the cook I was to referring to. I think Durandal has nailed it succinctly.

- Greenie

Oh, it's succinct you were looking for. Well why didn't you just say "Ragnar need not apply" right up front?!

I'm probably going to nail myself as a huge literature geek, but here it is.

I'm really enjoying the heck out of this thread

Sal

lol

Interesting read. Must pick that book up.
(Though I enjoyed the film as a brainless sci fi action flick, I can see the the book was very thoughtful and understand people being upset.)

It is a classic, though it's more of a story about the character, his training and development as a soldier and a person than it is an action story. That said, the combat scene which opens the book kicks butt.

The book has inspired a lot of other books by younger greats in Sci-Fi, including Brunner, Haldeman, and Steakley. Steakley's Armor, to me, is a perfect companion piece. Totally different while having superficially identical settings. Both of them are probably in my top 20 favorite books.

The odd thing about Starship Troopers is that the best parts of the book
aren't the actual combat scenes. There are only three or four described
action sequences in the entire book. The best parts, at least to me, are
the boot camp training sequences, and all the things that Rico learns
in his classes.

Good stuff.

It is a great novel and should be required reading for children in school. Stranger in a Strange Land is even more weird and I could never put my finger on what exactly Heinlein was trying to get across... it was also an excellent book as well.

Greenie,

The instant you make something "required" it becomes a chore.

Posted By malfred on 04/22/2007 2:45 PM
The odd thing about Starship Troopers is that the best parts of the book
aren't the actual combat scenes. There are only three or four described
action sequences in the entire book. The best parts, at least to me, are
the boot camp training sequences, and all the things that Rico learns
in his classes.

Good stuff.

You'll always be Mr. Dubois to me, Felix.

Does that make Hellfury Sgt. Zim?

Yes. I could never quit him.

Wait....

I agree, Greenie, Stranger in a Strange Land was just plain wierd.

But then, a lot of his "sexually liberated" books were, like The Cat who Walks Through Walls and Time Enough for Love.

Sal

Yeah um fellblade? Pretty much everyone counts 'being on a warship in combat' as fighting. Unlike say, the ground or air forces, everyone on a ship can be killed by a lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) hit. And the cooks aren't making french fries while the missiles start piling in, they are manning machine gun pits, forming damage control parties, treating the wounded, etc. To say they don't fight is an insult to a great many Navy cooks who died in the line of duty.

Green, don't you think that making ST required reading would be at least a little, ironic?

If you think about the climate we live in currently here in the US then required reading of SST makes perfect sense to me. There were a lot of novels and short stories that I had to read in English class back in the day... I still am glad that is how I discovered authors such Edgar Allen Poe and Cicero.

As far as fighting in the MI goes everyone aboard the ship has a suit of power armor and has been trained thoroughly how to decimate the enemy.

- Greenie

Everyone but the Sailors? I'm pretty sure the squids weren't running around in uber power armor, but I haven't read the book in about four years so...

It isn't ironic in the context of the nation, it is ironic in the context of the book. Yes- required reading is a fact of life. In my high school English class, freshman year we had to read the following books: Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Elie Wiesel's Night. This is a completely white, upper class, western-European descendant demographic. In the deep south of the US.

We got pissed because what a 14yo of the demographic I described takes away from those books is that if you are a man, your a worthless savage, if your a wealthy southerner you are a merciless slaver at heart, and if you are American, it is really your fault that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.  Ever since that time, I haven't been a fan of ordering the reading of books as topical as those, or as SST. It seems too politically motivated.

This topic came up on the strategypage boards a few years ago.

     Strategypage Forum

Enjoy,

ZF-

Posted By Green Bloater on 04/24/2007 7:00 PM
If you think about the climate we live in currently here in the US then required reading of SST makes perfect sense to me. There were a lot of novels and short stories that I had to read in English class back in the day... I still am glad that is how I discovered authors such Edgar Allen Poe and Cicero.

As far as fighting in the MI goes everyone aboard the ship has a suit of power armor and has been trained thoroughly how to decimate the enemy.

- Greenie

I'd disagree with that. The book was ok, but the poltics weren't that special. Little difference between military requirement for being a citizen and a mandatory draft. The writing itself was...ok.

Having said that, reading tomato can labels would be better than the horror of Great Expectations. Set barfometer to STUN. :S

Or you could avoid taking it personally, or learn how to.

Did we do those things? No. Did somebody? Yes.

Is it possible for us as people to continue doing those things?

Yes.

(Am I doing any of them now? Only in my dreams, and only with
your corpses.)

Thats a little weird Malfred

Posted By Silverthorne on 04/24/2007 10:18 PM
Everyone but the Sailors? I'm pretty sure the squids weren't running around in uber power armor, but I haven't read the book in about four years so...

It isn't ironic in the context of the nation, it is ironic in the context of the book. Yes- required reading is a fact of life. In my high school English class, freshman year we had to read the following books: Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Elie Wiesel's Night. This is a completely white, upper class, western-European descendant demographic. In the deep south of the US.

We got pissed because what a 14yo of the demographic I described takes away from those books is that if you are a man, your a worthless savage, if your a wealthy southerner you are a merciless slaver at heart, and if you are American, it is really your fault that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.  Ever since that time, I haven't been a fan of ordering the reading of books as topical as those, or as SST. It seems too politically motivated.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the book "A Politically Incorrect Guide to English Literature."  It speaks exactly to your experience in English class.

I have a degree in English Literature, with a dual major in Secondary Education.  I didn't follow through with that career specifically because of the political agenda that (seemingly) every English department in High Schools across the nation seem to think it is their duty to impart.  What ever happened to teaching the literature and encouraging the kids to think for themselves?  I remember having this discussion with one of my co-operating teachers during student teaching.  They just couldn't understand (or at least admit) that the selection what texts to study was just as bad as telling students what to think; especially when the texts were more works of socio-political relevance than anything of lasting literary value.

Sal

Well, as much as I'd like to be Nancy Atwell...

Posted By Saldiven on 04/25/2007 11:23 AM

Posted By Silverthorne on 04/24/2007 10:18 PM
Whole lotta stuff

...What ever happened to teaching the literature and encouraging the kids to think for themselves?

Education and educators have always had a political agenda, and 'encouraging the kids to think for themselves' has rarely been part of it (and when that was part of the curriculum, 'thinking for themselves' was usually very tightly defined).

Education in this country is largely about the warehousing of children so their parents can work, and acculturating them to function in a now defunct industrial society.

On topic: my wife is a big fan of Heinlein, and mostly Stranger In A Strange Land. While it may not stand to the 'whiz-bang' credentials of books like Starship Troopers, it is this book, along with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Herbert's Dune, Bradbury's various works and before them, Azimov's Foundation that really set the tone for 20th century science-fiction; that is, as a tool of countercultural literary experimentation.

Of course, you couldn't have them without Wells rebuking Victorian mores, but that's for another story.   

It's unfortunate that many, many people equate Science Fiction with Star Trek (technogibberish cult following) or Star Wars (special effects, blowing things up, neat-o pop culture references) or their ilk, rather than seeing the medium for what it is/could be--a way of talking about today's issues in a different context. Battlestar Galactica does a good--albeit hamfisted--job of this, and of course the biggest complaints about the show is that not enough things go 'boom' . I like things to go boom (or 'chop' or scream 'SPARTA!' or whatever) as much as the next guy, but let's face it, t's the intellectual equivalent of Hockey-haired trogs yelling out to Karen O or Cat Power, "Show us your T!TS!" at a concert.

Okay, rant done.   

Well, I try to sell Star Trek as political allegory to my friend, but
so far he hasn't bitten.

Actually the first Star Trek series had many episodes that were political allegories (sp?). The x-Men also followed along these lines back in the 80s. The nice thing about scifi is you can explore things that would not possible in a conventional setting since most people do not take this genre seriously.

- Greenie

Posted By Silverthorne on 04/24/2007 5:12 PM
Yeah um fellblade? Pretty much everyone counts 'being on a warship in combat' as fighting. Unlike say, the ground or air forces, everyone on a ship can be killed by a lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) hit. And the cooks aren't making french fries while the missiles start piling in, they are manning machine gun pits, forming damage control parties, treating the wounded, etc. To say they don't fight is an insult to a great many Navy cooks who died in the line of duty.

Yes, I know.  My uncle was in the navy during 'Nam.  Several of my friends are ex-navy.  Several of my former students are currently enlisted in the navy.  My next-door neighbor served on a minesweeper in the Pacific in WWII. (I keep trying to get him to come to school & show my students what their tattoos will look like in forty or fifty years).

However, in the context of this discussion, I was trying to differentiate between a navy rating, in the novel, whose primary duty is 'cook', and will certainly have other duties during battle stations, and a cap trooper, in the novel,  whose primary duty is 'mobile infantry trooper/angel of death', with other duties as assigned.  Kind of the way Heinlein was satirizing the modern American army (or as he may have seen it, the bloated military-industrial complex), with its huge logistical tail presided over by remfs and hobbits.

And before anyone else gets their panties in a twist: yes, I know that the huge logistical tail is the main reason for our military's success. Or any military, for that matter.

Perhaps 'satire' is not the correct term, but Heinlein did spend a lot of ink on the point.

Yeah, sci-fi is subversive! Lots of the counterculture/anti-Vietnam-War crowd loved Heinlein for Stranger, but then hated his guts because he 'betrayed' them by writing Trooper. It all depends on whose ox is being gored.

There was a discussion somewhere on the disservice of lumping everything under the catch-all term 'Science Ficition', when it could be more accurately 'speculative fiction' and 'space opera'. Star Trek is mostly speculative fiction (once you develop matter transmission, how do you not use it to solve every problem that crops up?), while Star Wars is straight-up space opera.

Fellblade, I agee with you on Trek (though I really enjoyed some of TNG), but you have your chonology backwards. ST was published two years earlier than Stranger, though he actually started writing Stranger first.

It doesn't much matter what their political orientation- mental midgets are always confused by the idea that a writer can espouse ideas in print that are not necessarily his own beliefs.

Bloater, I'm glad you're discussing other stories, because every time you post something about ST it's both wrong and something you woudn't have written if you had read the article I linked to the first time.

The military does not = the MI. The only ships we really see in the book are MI transports, and even those have plenty of Navy crew who don't wear power armor or deal death face to face. Of course their jobs are no picnic either, and even the cooks still run the risk of death. Hence they are earning their vote just as much as the MI are.

Just put yourself in the shoes, I mean tire-tread sandals, of some poor flower child whose first exposure to Heinlein was this 'grokking' book all his hippy friends were talking about. Then imagine him maybe looking for something else by the same author, and finding a heavy fascist trip/discourse on civic virtue instead of another counterculture mindblower.

But yeah, chronology wrong. Me 'shamed.