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mllaneza posted:Why did I know that both of your examples would have John Ringo's name on them ? I have to admit John Ringo is a big guilty pleasure of mine. Something about his over the top right wing views and blatant rape fantasies is very amusing to me even as one of the evil left wing socialist pussies who would most likely be overrun by his real "heroes". Either that or its just I have a high tolerance to bad literature I mean I managed to get through Watch on the Rhine by Kratman without barfing.
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Dec 2, 2010 11:30
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Ferrosol posted:I have to admit John Ringo is a big guilty pleasure of mine. Something about his over the top right wing views and blatant rape fantasies is very amusing to me even as one of the evil left wing socialist pussies who would most likely be overrun by his real "heroes". Either that or its just I have a high tolerance to bad literature I mean I managed to get through Watch on the Rhine by Kratman without barfing. In all seriousness, I never thought I'd read such blatant fascism apologia in this day and age. But, there it is.
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Dec 2, 2010 19:35
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Ferrosol posted:I have to admit John Ringo is a big guilty pleasure of mine. Something about his over the top right wing views and blatant rape fantasies is very amusing to me Yeah, I think of it as "trainwreck syndrome" - it's terrible and you know it is, but it's entertaining to read simply because it is so bad. The Looking Glass and Legacy of the Aldenata books are probably his 'best' work (in the sense that they don't typically include the rape stuff, just over-the-top militarism) but I think it's because they pretty clearly draw an "us versus them" line so he can go balls out with You still have stuff like the huge linebacker nerd being trapped in a collapsed building with an uber-hot woman in the middle of an alien invasion, having sex with her then later escaping, marrying her and joining a power-armor military unit to slaughter millions of aliens though 
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Dec 2, 2010 20:22
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What's the Ringo book where the UN is collaborating with alien invaders to turn the Earth into a totalitarian state, and the Special Forces officer with his bisexual prostitute/assassin girlfriend leads a squad of cloned Spartan warriors equipped with power armor and blasters from Area 51 to defeat the UN-alien forces? Also I just completely made that up, but it's kind of depressing how that's not even too outlandish to be a typical Ringo plot.Nucleic Acids posted:In all seriousness, I never thought I'd read such blatant fascism apologia in this day and age. I think I mentioned it in this thread before, but the one time I saw Ringo in person, he didn't understand how living under Nazi occupation could have made Paul Verhoeven somehow not like fascism. You see, Ringo was talking about the notion that Starship Troopers is supposed to be an apology for fascism, and Ringo had no problem with that. Chairman Capone fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Dec 2, 2010 |
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Dec 2, 2010 20:34
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Chairman Capone posted:I used to give Baen a lot of credit for their willingness to put both old and new titles online for free. But on the other hand, most of their free stuff is poo poo like this. Also the covers to their books are, without a single exception, absolutely terrible. Ah, Freehold. What I love about that is one of the later books in the series has the I'm-obviously-the-author's-avatar protagonist talking about how utterly disgusting terrorists are for targeting civilians, but at the end of Freehold a general kills several billion civilians by kamikazing spaceships at relativistic speeds into Earth's major cities. Of course the general was wearing a uniform (and was targeting the scummy, degenerate, and above all liberal Earth), so that makes him a hero. Also, libertarian wiccan utopia.
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Dec 2, 2010 21:12
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Chairman Capone posted:I think I mentioned it in this thread before, but the one time I saw Ringo in person, he didn't understand how living under Nazi occupation could have made Paul Verhoeven somehow not like fascism. You see, Ringo was talking about the notion that Starship Troopers is supposed to be an apology for fascism, and Ringo had no problem with that. Well, first of all the government in Starship Troopers was not fascist, and second, the Nazis no longer existed by the time Verhoeven was 6 years old.
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Dec 2, 2010 23:08
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Why do you say it's not fascist? And why do you think he couldn't have a negative, even traumatic experience of fascism before he was six? Paul Verhoeven posted:"When we were working on the [Robert] Heinlein book, we felt like we had something that was pretty militaristic, pretty right-wing, and you could even say had a tendency to be fascist. " quote:"When we came on our promotion tour to these countries that had been fascist, notably Germany and Italy, and France to a certain degree, it was a continuous fight with the journalists, explaining to them that the movie basically used fascist imagery, and was using images of Leni Riefenstahl to point out a fascist situation."
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Dec 2, 2010 23:17
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I don't think Heinlein purposefully decided to make Starship Troopers a fascist apology, but at the same time, that doesn't mean it isn't one. It's a utopian fascist state where happy citizens voluntarily support a benign government where power is vested in a small cadre of soldiers and which is militaristic, nationalist, and racist (through the sci-fi lens where aliens stand in for ethnicity). Just because George Lucas didn't purposefully set out to include racist stereotypes in the Star Wars prequels doesn't mean they're not there.
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Dec 2, 2010 23:57
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Oh I don't think Heinlein meant for it to have any particular relevance to fascism, but Verhoeven is another story.
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Dec 3, 2010 00:06
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Trig Discipline posted:Why do you say it's not fascist? Because it was democratically elected, and not a single-party state. It was pretty clear that Verhoeven went to great length to make it look fascist regardless. He changed the ethnicity of the main character from Philipino, to the typical aryan look (blond hair blue eyes), he added the propagandistic recruitment campaigns when in the book people were actually discouraged from joining the military unless it was what they absolutely wanted. Basically he went out of his way to twist Heinlein's work into an apparent fascist apology when it clearly wasn't because he had an axe to grind. Edit: ^^^ Ah, I see we are in agreement.
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Dec 3, 2010 00:17
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Ah, all right.
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Dec 3, 2010 00:30
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Starship Troopers has always really confused me, considering how his other books tend to promote extreme Objectivism and anti-militarism.
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Dec 3, 2010 00:44
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Fray posted:Starship Troopers has always really confused me, considering how his other books tend to promote extreme Objectivism and anti-militarism. It is pretty much what interesting sci-fi authors do. Posit other ways of arranging society that might work. Heinlein himself was at times a fairly serious and committed Socialist, but just because you have a way you'd like things to work for you doesn't mean, unless you are a goddamn idiot, that you cannot conceive of, and write interestingly on, other ways of making things work. So, the political campaigns he worked on here on earth were populist/socialist. Then he wrote about a libertopia, and a tolerable fascism, and loving his time travelling redheaded teenage daughters.
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Dec 3, 2010 01:24
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Chairman Capone posted:I don't think Heinlein purposefully decided to make Starship Troopers a fascist apology, but at the same time, that doesn't mean it isn't one. It's a utopian fascist state where happy citizens voluntarily support a benign government where power is vested in a small cadre of soldiers and which is militaristic, nationalist, and racist (through the sci-fi lens where aliens stand in for ethnicity). Just because George Lucas didn't purposefully set out to include racist stereotypes in the Star Wars prequels doesn't mean they're not there. The power is not vested in a "small" cadre of soldiers, but in quite a large percentage of the population. I think Heinlein even mentions that the vast majority of those in the military never even see combat.
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Dec 3, 2010 01:49
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Magnificent Quiver posted:The power is not vested in a "small" cadre of soldiers, but in quite a large percentage of the population. I think Heinlein even mentions that the vast majority of those in the military never even see combat. When I first read it I got the impression that it was more along the lines of the mandatory service in Germany or the Netherlands, only with the civil service jobs still under the aegis of the military. Isn't it pretty much said point blank that Rico is a massive gently caress-up, not being able to qualify for anything but line infantry? It's still not that hard to read it as a fascist apology if you really want to, particularly if you take the "Applied Ethics" instructor in the beginning as an authorial stand-in, but it's nowhere near the level of the movie.
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Dec 3, 2010 05:39
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TouretteDog posted:When I first read it I got the impression that it was more along the lines of the mandatory service in Germany or the Netherlands, only with the civil service jobs still under the aegis of the military. Isn't it pretty much said point blank that Rico is a massive gently caress-up, not being able to qualify for anything but line infantry? No, the service is voluntary, and people are actively discouraged from joining unless they are absolutely certain they want to. And Rico was not a gently caress-up he just didn't qualify for all the other positions he applied for such as pilot or something. Oh and I think he also qualified for the K-9 unit, but because he never had a close enough relationship with a pet the selection officer recommended mobile-infantry instead (which is also a pretty high-responsibility job, considering they carry pocket nukes and poo poo).
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Dec 3, 2010 06:07
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Mr.48 posted:No, the service is voluntary, and people are actively discouraged from joining unless they are absolutely certain they want to. Wasn't the whole point of joining up to become a citizen? So that you could vote and everything, otherwise you were 'just a civilian' athough most civilians didn't seem too bothered about it.
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Dec 3, 2010 07:46
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Midget Fist posted:Wasn't the whole point of joining up to become a citizen? So that you could vote and everything, otherwise you were 'just a civilian' athough most civilians didn't seem too bothered about it. You are a citizen anyways, but you need to serve to get to vote.
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Dec 3, 2010 08:24
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Midget Fist posted:Wasn't the whole point of joining up to become a citizen? So that you could vote and everything, otherwise you were 'just a civilian' athough most civilians didn't seem too bothered about it. Right, but "join up" in the context of the Starship Troopers novella could mean "spacesuit field-tester" or "mining at the bottom of the Marianas Trench" or "nuclear reactor refueling technician". The idea is that it's difficult, dirty, dangerous work which shows that the person will instinctively make choices that benefit the group.
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Dec 4, 2010 23:58
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Right, but "join up" in the context of the Starship Troopers novella could mean "spacesuit field-tester" or "mining at the bottom of the Marianas Trench" or "nuclear reactor refueling technician". The idea is that it's difficult, dirty, dangerous work which shows that the person will instinctively make choices that benefit the group. Exactly! I wish I could articulate my thoughts properly. I can't think of another Heinlein book I enjoyed as much as Starship Troopers. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress probably my closest 'second place.'
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Dec 5, 2010 22:24
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Pyroclastic posted:And speaking of guilty pleasures, anyone else read Tim Zahn? The Star Wars books introduced me to him, but I've enjoyed what I've read from him outside SW. The Conqueror's Trilogy is one of my favorites, and his recent Quadrail series (Trains In Spaaaace!) has been fun. Anyway, like you I was introduced to him through his Star Wars novels (specifically the Thrawn trilogy), and I've also read the Conqueror's Trilogy, as well as The Icarus Hunt and Manta's Gift. I suppose none are particularly important or interesting in literary terms - even within science-fiction -, but I've enjoyed all of them a lot and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone interested in 'soft' sf.
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Dec 6, 2010 02:05
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Right, but "join up" in the context of the Starship Troopers novella could mean "spacesuit field-tester" or "mining at the bottom of the Marianas Trench" or "nuclear reactor refueling technician". The idea is that it's difficult, dirty, dangerous work which shows that the person will instinctively make choices that benefit the group. I recall that the system was very inclusive. No matter how special needs or physically disabled you were, they had to find you a job. It was more of a halfway point between compulsory military service and the right to vote just by value of birthright. As someone else mentioned previously, it didn't even have to be military service but service to the Federation. There was a military as well as other forms of federal service, kind of like a government-run Peace Corps. Basically, it was a Utopian fantasy. The Hollywood movie was what really made the "facism" part. When I first read the book, I interpreted the message to be "Freedom isn't free" and "people don't appreciate the right to vote." So to express those points, Heinlein wrote about a society where people have to serve the greater good in order to vote and influence the course of government. Insane Totoro fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Dec 6, 2010 |
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Dec 6, 2010 23:21
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Slo-Tek posted:It is pretty much what interesting sci-fi authors do. Posit other ways of arranging society that might work. The important thing to recognize about Heinlein's fiction is that it was aimed at 12 year old boys. I don't mean that as an attack or slur --- Heinlein was a masterful writer -- but a lot of what he was trying to do, especially with MIAHM, Starship Troopers, SiaSL, etc., was to give 12 year old boys poo poo to think about and challenge their assumptions. Starship Troopers especially is meant to be more a fun thought experiment than a serious proposal.
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Dec 7, 2010 17:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The important thing to recognize about Heinlein's fiction is that it was aimed at 12 year old boys. I don't mean that as an attack or slur --- Heinlein was a masterful writer -- but a lot of what he was trying to do, especially with MIAHM, Starship Troopers, SiaSL, etc., was to give 12 year old boys poo poo to think about and challenge their assumptions. Starship Troopers especially is meant to be more a fun thought experiment than a serious proposal. That's true of his early stuff, for sure. Definitely not his later work, though. He actually wrote for Boys' Life for a long time IIRC.
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Dec 7, 2010 17:25
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Trig Discipline posted:That's true of his early stuff, for sure. Definitely not his later work, though. Yeah. I really liked Starship Troopers when I was a pre-teen (and into Dragonlance and Drizzt like every other remotely nerdy pre-teen) and asked my father for another Robert Heinlein novel thinking I'd get more of the same. What I got was The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Holy poo poo.
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Dec 7, 2010 21:24
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Trig Discipline posted:That's true of his early stuff, for sure. Definitely not his later work, though. Yup, Farmer in the Sky was a commission piece for Boys' Life in fact.
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Dec 7, 2010 21:32
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Yeah. I really liked Starship Troopers when I was a pre-teen (and into Dragonlance and Drizzt like every other remotely nerdy pre-teen) and asked my father for another Robert Heinlein novel thinking I'd get more of the same. What I got was The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Holy poo poo. Yeah, pretty much. My school librarian got me interested in some of his stuff for younger kids but they also had the more adult stuff and there was no obvious way to distinguish between the two without reading them. It sort of went from "yay space and rocket ships!" to "come over here and gently caress your grandpa!" without any warning.
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Dec 7, 2010 21:49
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The important thing to recognize about Heinlein's fiction is that it was aimed at 12 year old boys. I don't mean that as an attack or slur --- Heinlein was a masterful writer -- but a lot of what he was trying to do, especially with MIAHM, Starship Troopers, SiaSL, etc., was to give 12 year old boys poo poo to think about and challenge their assumptions. Starship Troopers especially is meant to be more a fun thought experiment than a serious proposal. Like the other guy said, this is wrong - but it's really, really wrong. Heinlein wrote stuff aimed at kids, but it's obviously so. Have Spacesuit Will Travel is a good example. The whole story is filled with whimsical life lessons and 50s stereotype family interaction. Starship Troopers is definitely not intended for 12-year-olds, just like Stephen King's It wasn't intended for 12-year-olds even though I got a hold of it when I was that age and ruined my brain. Then again, I could say that Star Wars novels are definitely aimed at 12-year-olds but you know how that goes. Magnificent Quiver fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Dec 8, 2010 |
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Dec 8, 2010 01:01
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Magnificent Quiver posted:Like the other guy said, this is wrong - but it's really, really wrong. Heinlein wrote stuff aimed at kids, but it's obviously so. Have Spacesuit Will Travel is a good example. The whole story is filled with whimsical life lessons and 50s stereotype family interaction. Starship Troopers was explicitly written under the contract for Scribner's, then rejected by Scribner's and published with Putnam. It was intended to be read by 12 year old boys, explicitly. Keep in mind that Heinlein had fairly unique ideas of what was suitable for kids. By the time he was writing stuff like Starship Troopers, he wasn't trying to write 50's fluff for kids; he was trying to write stuff that would push and expand the brains of 1950's/60's-era 12 year olds. Even once he broke the contract with Scribners and was writing independently, though, his later fiction still shows the framework and writing habits he developed writing the juveniles. MiaHM is a juvenile with the brakes off. SIASL is a juvenile going off the rails, and even his later horrors like Cat Who Walks Through Walls use that same space-opera Heinlein-juvie format as their core structure (and turn godawfully bad when they veer too far from that structure). I don't mean to fault Heinlein for that -- he was a great writer. I'm not trying to say that Heinlein was a writer of Little Golden Books or something, just that his work is fundamentally "from" the Action Books for Boys genre in the same way that, say, Alan Moore's work is fundamentally "from" the genre of superhero comics. Said another way, I think that when 12-year-old whoever picked up Cat right after Rocket Ship Galileo and spent the next three days holding their head and going "holy poo poo," that's pretty much the exact reaction Heinlein intended. He wanted his readers to question fundamental societal assumptions, and I think Heinlein thought his target audience was the right age to start doing that. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Dec 8, 2010 |
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Dec 8, 2010 16:45
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Ebethron posted:The Engines of Light trilogy by Ken MacLeod (starts with Cosmonaut Keep)uses a similar device of a mystery built into the stellar civilisation it deals with, slowly unravelling it over three books. He's a fellow Scottish left-leaning sf writer like Banks. MacLeod can be a love him or hate him writer though, so YMMV. Personally I think he's the bees' proverbial. Smart science, good pacing, a sleetstorm of ideas and references to everything from libertarian politics, to theology, to bong addled pot-head culture, to evolutionary biology. Oh and communists in space. All his books have communists in space. I started reading Cosmonaut Keep on your recommendation and I've been enjoying it. The author definitely throws you in the deep-end, but it's really rewarding once you start piecing things together and the pace picks up. Honestly, I'd say that the first half of the book is really slow.
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Dec 18, 2010 08:50
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What, no love for R. M. Meluch's Tour of the Merrimack series? It's about Captain John Farragut, the raddest space captain of the raddest space ship to ever do rad stuff in space. It's got Space Romans, horrible Space Monsters, and totally awesome American Space Marines. The series starts off with The Myriad, but you could almost skip that and go straight to the second book Wolf Star if you're dumb and hate awesome spaceship battles against mindless monsters. It's cheesy in all of the best ways, and knows it. Legitimately hilarious whenever it wants to be (which is most of the time). I honestly cannot recommend it enough.
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Dec 20, 2010 06:40
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Chairman Capone posted:I used to give Baen a lot of credit for their willingness to put both old and new titles online for free. But on the other hand, most of their free stuff is poo poo like this. Also the covers to their books are, without a single exception, absolutely terrible.  I have a different edition with raised silver & gold foiling on the names/title & on all the metallic objects. It's why i bought the book. It's the book equivalent of this... 
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Dec 21, 2010 10:33
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A: You know, I never really looked at it like that before, but drat if you aren't exactly right! B: You stole that from this thread, didn't you 
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Dec 22, 2010 04:11
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I'm trying to remember a book I read at one point that featured a Matrioshka Brain, I want to say it was one of the Culture books but I honestly don't remember. In any case, the idea of an entire solar system repurposed into nothing but a stupendously powerful megacomputer has always seemed totally rad to me. I'm wondering if any of you goons know of examples of such (or really any type of mega-engineering, such as the Ringworld) in books (most likely in stuff that would qualify as space opera I suspect, which is why I'm asking here)?
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Dec 22, 2010 04:18
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WarLocke posted:I'm trying to remember a book I read at one point that featured a Matrioshka Brain, I want to say it was one of the Culture books but I honestly don't remember. Edit: Also along the lines of mega-engineering I'd recommend The Time Ships and the Xelee books by Stephen Baxter.
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Dec 22, 2010 04:39
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WarLocke posted:I'm trying to remember a book I read at one point that featured a Matrioshka Brain, I want to say it was one of the Culture books but I honestly don't remember. Alastair Reynolds usually has that kind of post-singularity mega-engineering.
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Dec 22, 2010 07:19
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WarLocke posted:I'm wondering if any of you goons know of examples of such (or really any type of mega-engineering, such as the Ringworld) in books (most likely in stuff that would qualify as space opera I suspect, which is why I'm asking here)? There is an anthology of stories about mega-engineering and super-projects coming out in the near future called Engineering Infinity. Contributors include Baxter, Stross, Bear. Linky.
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Dec 22, 2010 09:02
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lilbean posted:I would suspect this is Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Its definitely Accelerando, although in that it wasn't put forward as a good thing. Not a novel but the manga Blame! is an interesting look into the far, far, far future. Its about a guy named Killy as he wanders through the "Megastructure" which is a solar system sized construct in which the remnants of humanity live.
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Dec 22, 2010 12:57
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Mr.48 posted:Alastair Reynolds usually has that kind of post-singularity mega-engineering. Yeah, Pushing Ice and House of Suns were the first things that came to my mind. There's also one of the Culture books that takes place inside of a hollow world and is pretty cool. Can't remember which one it is though.
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Dec 22, 2010 16:14
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Trig Discipline posted:Yeah, Pushing Ice and House of Suns were the first things that came to my mind. There's also one of the Culture books that takes place inside of a hollow world and is pretty cool. Can't remember which one it is though. I like how the star-dams are just made up of ring-worlds that someone or something left behind, and somehow there are enough of them to not have a shortage 
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Dec 22, 2010 20:33
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