|
tuluk posted:Check out "Bill the Galactic Hero" by Harry Harrison. It's a scatter-shot satirical take on Starship Troopers, and is pretty jokey. Just about everything glorious in Starship Troopers is deconstructed/expanded upon. e: whats the best one, got the lot somewhere.
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 07:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 20:29 |
|
|
Tony Montana posted:But.. I just want to put this out there. I just devoured Starship Troopers. I couldn't put it down. Why do people rag on Heinlein so much? I think he's fantastic.. When people rag on Heinlein it's... let's just say it's usually not because of anything he wrote in the 1950s. He got weird as gently caress later on in his career.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 09:41
|
|
|
As much as Troopers has a idealized view of the military, that's what makes it so fun too. We are reading fiction here.. I know anything that size must be something like how corporateland works and corporateland can be so depressing that it will eat your soul. You don't want to read about that.. the Culture in Bank's books are also some magical super-organization where everything just works like Star Trek. But I'm glad there hasn't been any real opposition to Troopers being one of the greatest works in the genre.  So this is what I've got left for the rest of my holiday. I don't think I'm going to run into any shitiness with Heinlein with those two.. although I've heard Stranger is .. well.. loving strange. I'm ready for something different though.. any recommendations on what to read next? From what I understand pretty much all of those are behemoths of scifi.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 12:19
|
|
|
Seaside Loafer posted:If someone could explain why any Harry Harrison is actually funny on any level id give him another try. Read the first bill book. The others are weaker/ghost-written and not good. back on topic. Finished the quarry this week. Pretty good and like most people have said in this thread: extremely spooky hookup with real life. Much better than stonemouth for me. Stonemouth had a idiot main character that keep doing the same stupid things over and over.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 13:54
|
|
|
tuluk posted:Starship Troopers was very good, but also presented a highly idealized version of the military. It's interesting to compare Starship Troopers and The Forever War. Similar premise, utterly different perspective.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 14:20
|
|
|
Neuromancer, Forever War, Starship Troopers. That might be my top 3 right there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 14:36
|
|
|
Of the books you've got there, I think Brave New World is clearly the strongest. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is pretty weird, Stranger in a Strange Land is an interesting cultural artifact and not as baffling even if it starts to evince some of Heinlein's stranger preoccupations. Ringworld is a big dumb object of a book, and Niven, while capable of writing some fun SF, is also pretty kooky. Ender's Game is stupendously controversial for two separate reasons, one of them about Card's sexual politics, the other about its alleged apologia for fascism. And Snow Crash, at least, offers one of the best openings in science fiction, even if I think it's a little obnoxious. In general I think that science fiction from the 50s-80s is, as a whole, a little weaker than what we've got on offer today. Heinlein and co were simply not very talented prose writers, and they were blinkered by their cultural origins. I definitely wouldn't put Troopers or (for all my personal respect for Haldeman) Forever War in my top three, though Neuromancer might have a shot. bold words Kassad posted:It's interesting to compare Starship Troopers and The Forever War. Similar premise, utterly different perspective. And it's telling which one of them came from a veteran. The dialogue between them (with Armor cursing at them somewhere in the same room) is interesting, but Haldeman's work is so damning I think it clearly wins out, simply on the conviction of real experience. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jan 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 16:40
|
|
|
Hiney was a vet too. He was a Navy man, it says so on his Wiki entry. The end of Troopers gets a bit like trying to read the military subforum here, all acronyms and assumed knowledge.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 17:50
|
|
|
Totally, but I just don't think he - uh, forgive my vernacular - saw the same hosed up poo poo Haldeman did. I've spent some time with him (he taught my partner fiction at MIT, so she knows him even better) and he's clearly been marked for life but what he went through in Vietnam. It's hard for me to believe Heinlein could have written Starship Troopers as it stands if he'd seen that kind of combat. Of course, Troopers isn't really a book about war in and of itself, it's about service and citizenship. Still - and call me a cynic if you will - I think even Heinlein would admit he might have made things a little too tidy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
It's been years since I've read Troopers but the one thing that stands out to me about the writing was that whenever he wanted to talk about the political structure of the society, it's done through Rico's teacher via what, to me, feels like "I am John Galt" level dialogue. Someone mentioned Armor earlier as belonging to the same context. Is it worth reading? I've also heard mixed things about Old Man's War and I'm curious what you guys think of it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 09:11
|
|
|
Old Man's War is intentionally intro-level SF. It's a fun, engaging story with simple prose and (in my opinion) fairly little takeaway. Armor is about the individual soldier's experience rather than the political role of military service, and it has a lot more action - though I don't think Steakley was a veteran.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:17
|
|
|
Tony Montana posted:Hiney was a vet too. He was a Navy man, it says so on his Wiki entry. The end of Troopers gets a bit like trying to read the military subforum here, all acronyms and assumed knowledge. Not to knock Heinlein's military experience, but he served as an officer in the Navy for some of the least interesting five years in the 20th century. The military during prolonged peacetime is a radically different experience from what Haldeman went through.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2014 05:41
|
|
|
Prop Wash posted:Not to knock Heinlein's military experience, but he served as an officer in the Navy for some of the least interesting five years in the 20th century. The military during prolonged peacetime is a radically different experience from what Haldeman went through. Also Heinlein was medboarded (discharged for medical reasons)from the US Navy. aka it wasn't his choice to leave the US Navy. The US Navy was basically the prestige branch of US armed services in the interlude between World War 1 & World War 2.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 04:59
|
|
|
Prop Wash posted:Not to knock Heinlein's military experience, but he served as an officer in the Navy for some of the least interesting five years in the 20th century. The military during prolonged peacetime is a radically different experience from what Haldeman went through. Yeah, I wondered as much when I read the bio. You do say 'not to knock his experience' and then totally knock it  I don't care, I don't know the guy, but I just thought it was funny.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 11:05
|
|
|
The oddest thing about stranger in a strange land (to my perspective anyway) is that it managed to introduce a word as stupid as 'grok' to the point that i occasionally hear people say it in a tone other than scornful irony like 50 years after the book came out. What the gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 15:15
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:The oddest thing about stranger in a strange land (to my perspective anyway) is that it managed to introduce a word as stupid as 'grok' to the point that i occasionally hear people say it in a tone other than scornful irony like 50 years after the book came out. What the gently caress. I grok what you're saying but shut up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 17:48
|
|
|
Did I touch a nerve? For the purposes of the book i get it but seriously, saying it aloud either earns you puzzled stares from people who don't get it or the eternal disdain of people who do.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 18:01
|
|
|
WeAreTheRomans posted:I grok what you're saying but shut up. Classy. What would you expect from a chips and gravy man.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 18:20
|
|
|
Jesus, I was joking. I just wanted to use grok in a sentence  edit: also that's ketchup not gravy, I believe edit2: vvv please continue to make this thread more terrible and explain how jokes work. WeAreTheRomans fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 6, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 18:58
|
|
|
Brown ketchup. Jesus. I'll have to remember that next time I want to make a joke, just tell someone you don't know to shut up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 19:07
|
|
|
Not in the Banks thread, please, you'll disturb Iain's journey through Infinite Fun Space 
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
I'm not sure I can face a universe without more Culture novels, but I can't think of anyone other than El-Bonko who'd be able to pull one off. I've not read that China Mieville chap, though, and I hear he's got similar politics, at least. Any thoughts, fellow Minds?
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 20:38
|
|
|
Barry Foster posted:I'm not sure I can face a universe without more Culture novels, but I can't think of anyone other than El-Bonko who'd be able to pull one off. China mieville is excellent in his own right but not all that reminiscent of banks IMO. Read his stuff anyway, start with embassytown, then perdido street station if you are interested in fantasy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 20:41
|
|
|
Barry Foster posted:I'm not sure I can face a universe without more Culture novels, but I can't think of anyone other than El-Bonko who'd be able to pull one off. The City in the City is a lot of fun, especially if you go into it looking for political commentary. It takes a special kind of author to take an absurd premise, write it from the PoV of someone who doesn't find it absurd, and then slowly creep up on the reader with the realization that we're really a lot more like the narrator than we'd thought. Nationalism is bullshit!
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
Barry Foster posted:I'm not sure I can face a universe without more Culture novels, but I can't think of anyone other than El-Bonko who'd be able to pull one off. I have to agree with andrew smash; I love, love, love Mieville, but he's got a totally different style than Banks (which isn't a bad thing!). If you're looking for more gender/political fuckery, there's always Felix Gilman's Half Made World and Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 21:24
|
|
|
the JJ posted:The City in the City is a lot of fun, especially if you go into it looking for political commentary. It takes a special kind of author to take an absurd premise, write it from the PoV of someone who doesn't find it absurd, and then slowly creep up on the reader with the realization that we're really a lot more like the narrator than we'd thought. I was about to suggest that; it's also a great book because of it's strangeness - the setting is exceptionally hard to visualise so don't try too hard, just accept that it's weird.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 21:24
|
|
|
fookolt posted:I have to agree with andrew smash; I love, love, love Mieville, but he's got a totally different style than Banks (which isn't a bad thing!). If you're looking for more gender/political fuckery, there's always Felix Gilman's Half Made World and Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. I'll definitely look 'em up, and Mieville too (once I get through my current five fiction book backlog). 'course, Iain's theoretical successor would also need to be able to do the same Grand Scale Space Opera stuff. Off the top of my head, only Reynolds really comes close, and his prose is a bit...autistic. He really was one of a kind
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2014 22:38
|
|
|
Yeah Mieville isn't very similar but he is excellent. And right up your political street, I know that much. andrew smash is right on the money for reading order - if it's 'closest to Banks' you want, start with Embassytown, then branch out into the fantasy with Perdido Street Station.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 01:43
|
|
|
fookolt posted:I have to agree with andrew smash; I love, love, love Mieville, but he's got a totally different style than Banks (which isn't a bad thing!). If you're looking for more gender/political fuckery, there's always Felix Gilman's Half Made World and Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. Thanks so much for namedropping this, it's now my next project! I will look into that other one as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 01:48
|
|
|
gender illusionist posted:I was about to suggest that; it's also a great book because of it's strangeness - the setting is exceptionally hard to visualise so don't try too hard, just accept that it's weird. I found it hard to visualize until I realized that there's really nothing to visualize, at least in my interpretation. There isn't actually any physical/magical/whatever separation between the cities, it's all in the citizens' heads.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 01:56
|
|
|
werdnam posted:I found it hard to visualize until I realized that there's really nothing to visualize, at least in my interpretation. There isn't actually any physical/magical/whatever separation between the cities, it's all in the citizens' heads. The moment you figure that out is the best part of the book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 01:57
|
|
|
withak posted:The moment you figure that out is the best part of the book. Because you're all primed for alternate reality shenanigans or something to explain the weirdness, and it's like... NOPE! Perfectly mundane! Never has bog standard mundanity been more satisfying in a (not) SF or fantasy novel.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 10:29
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:China mieville is excellent in his own right but not all that reminiscent of banks IMO. Read his stuff anyway, start with embassytown, then perdido street station if you are interested in fantasy. Don't start with Embassytown, nothing else Mieville's written even comes close to living up to it and reading it first will leave you disappointed in everything else. (Except maybe Iron Council if you recognize all the real-life events and historical figures it alludes to.) Disclaimer: I have not yet read The City & The City. I read Starship Troopers when I was a teenager so I don't feel comfortable criticizing it on purely literary grounds without a re-read, but on an ideological level it stinks. It glorifies violence not as the final but as the superior form of conflict-resolution, and proposes that only people willing to serve the state should have a say in its direction. Either one of those by itself would be reason enough to discount it, both together is repulsive. You might argue that it's Heinlein's character saying it and not the man himself, but by Heinlein's own admission the novel was written to express his views on politics and government, and specifically inspired by his belief that nuclear weapons testing should continue. v  vEnder's Game is trash, but it isn't Hitler apologia and even the woman who wrote the article accusing of it of such has since recanted (because it's a really silly and circumstantial argument.) Here's a much better critique of it: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 20:45
|
|
|
Yeah I've gone on with Brave New World as Battuta recommended and I'm glad I did. Just the intros in this version, there is like 30 pages of academics talking about it and how important it is and how Huxley came to many of the ideas he has. It's all very interesting and hypes you up for what you know is a absolute classic. Now on Troopers, I think your reaction is a bit knee-jerk to the philosophy. A great passage is where a little girl in that Morals and History class says 'but Mummy told me violence never solves anything!' and .. Dubios.. that's his name.. Mr Dubios answers with 'oh, you should probably tell the people of Carthage that'. I just like the straight up honesty and reality of that. Of course it's not the final solution, a later section there is a frankly brilliant part where either Dubios or one of the dudes in the Officer Candidate School is talking about the children of a previous civilization (us, basically). It's a long discussion of how morals are not inherent.. they must be taught and without that teaching and guidance a human will not be fundamentally moralistic. A lot of it struck true, while it's also a society that still has public floggings so you know that is also incompatible with a truly modern society based upon reason. I just think Troopers is a very adult book in some of it's ideas, adult in that it goes right against some of the modern ideas we've been brought up to believe and then presents quite reasonable arguments for doing it. In America, there are parts that still have the death penalty. Many of the penalties are stints in jail that are incomprehensibly long and brutal to an Australian or English person. We often see on the TV what happens in the US on these issues and think it barbaric and unthinkable. But we do not come from a society where gun ownership is widespread nor are there hundreds of millions of citizens. The argument of if it's working or not is secondary to 'what else are you going to do? and how are you going to implement that?'. I look at Troopers a bit like that.. I don't want to be there and much of it isn't how I was raised.. but if it's working for them and they have a different moral standard to me.. perhaps there is something there that we are missing. We don't have to take it all verbatim, public floggings or lethal injections, but the idea of social responsibility.. responsibility that comes before rights.. I think there is something in that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 21:16
|
|
|
Tony Montana posted:Now on Troopers, I think your reaction is a bit knee-jerk to the philosophy. A great passage is where a little girl in that Morals and History class says 'but Mummy told me violence never solves anything!' and .. Dubios.. that's his name.. Mr Dubios answers with 'oh, you should probably tell the people of Carthage that'. I just like the straight up honesty and reality of that. That's not "honesty and reality," it's reducing his opponents' position to childlike naivete in order to make his look more convincing. It's a straight-up strawman. The Starship Troopers movie does much the same thing to Heinlein's own position, but it does it in the form of comedy (and does it hilariously well) while Heinlein is completely straight-faced about it. Tony Montana posted:In America, there are parts that still have the death penalty. Many of the penalties are stints in jail that are incomprehensibly long and brutal to an Australian or English person. We often see on the TV what happens in the US on these issues and think it barbaric and unthinkable. Well speaking as an American, you'd be right.  Similarly, the idea that your rights should be dependent on your fulfilling social "responsibilities" (decided by whom, exactly? to what end?) has been used to justify all kinds of unconscionable things past and present, from mandatory conscription to drug tests as a prerequisite for welfare assistance. I don't like it in real life and I certainly don't like it being presented as utopian in my science fiction. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jan 7, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 21:48
|
|
|
I don't think it's a strawman. I think Dubios goes on to say violence has solved more problems of the human race than any other approach. As an American, we (the rest of the Anglo-sphere) are thankful for America's understanding of this. Hitler wasn't stopped with strong words. This is the point of the death penalty still in effect in the States and unthinkable incarceration terms. Nothing else works, it gets to a point and then reason is no longer being considered by either side and we revert to the law of the jungle. The US with the largest military in the world is one of the greatest proponents of this truth. What is strawman about it? You're trying to argue that there should be another alternative and we should all be able to just get along? You know that's not how humans or even any other species we know, works. It's a nice Hollywood idea that we can all understand each other if we try and perhaps one day we'll end up in Star Trek utopia and cease the in-fighting.. but the reality of where are now is a long way from that. This is just a reality. Cops carry guns for good reason. I like that Troopers asks the question of how far down this road could we go.. what would be the moral consequences? Obviously if you know some history.. the SS is an example of how far it could go if the controlling forces were fascist rather than the impossibly clean order in the book. You can get all Orwell and quote the absolute power thing, but the society in Troopers is still introspective and democratic. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Similarly, the idea that your rights should be dependent on your fulfilling social "responsibilities" (decided by whom, exactly? to what end?) has been used to justify all kinds of unconscionable things past and present, from mandatory conscription to drug tests as a prerequisite for welfare assistance. I don't like it in real life and I certainly don't like it being presented as utopian in my science fiction. Ok sure, past implementations have been scarred by Animal Farm type ideas as I said above. But because the implementation has been flawed, doesn't mean all ideology is therefore useless. The American idea of FREEDOM, the freedom to bear arms for instance.. there are certainly question marks about the implementation of that despite the idea of the citizens being free is obviously meritorious. The idea that to benefit from the infrastructures of our societies (both physical and mental) it's members should be obliged to contribute something to them.. the implementation would tricky but the idea is the basis of much of social morality.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 22:17
|
|
|
Tony Montana posted:I don't think it's a strawman. I think Dubios goes on to say violence has solved more problems of the human race than any other approach. As an American, we (the rest of the Anglo-sphere) are thankful for America's understanding of this. Hitler wasn't stopped with strong words. And at the same time Hitler's rise to power was supported by a country so ecomonically and culturally brutalized by the victors in a previous war that his promise to reclaim Germany's power and territory through war appealed to them in the first place. Heinlein wants us to believe that there are only two positions on the appropriate use of violence; the little girl spouting an aphorism with no experience to back it up, who thinks the answer is "never," and the position that Dubois presents. Meanwhile, in the real world, here's what an actual counter-argument towards Dubois might look like: http://onviolence.com/?e=363 Violence is not a cure-all for conflict; it's a brutal, ugly solution that often serves only to kick a problem down the road rather than solve it permanently. Total pacifism might not be a viable answer to every social or political reality, but failing to even ask if a non-violent solution is possible, or treating that question as if it were stupid, isn't cool or admirable. It's criminally short-sighted.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 22:34
|
|
|
This isn't the thread for political discussions but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the things you uphold in your post as demonstrating the value of violence are regarded with alarmed contempt in the rest of the developed world for being both murderously barbaric and comically ineffectual.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 22:37
|
|
|
I don't know that politics is completely out of place in this thread, given that these same issues come up in every Culture novel and are even central in several of them (Use of Weapons, Surface Detail, and Look to Windward particularly.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 20:29 |
|
|
Peel posted:This isn't the thread for political discussions but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the things you uphold in your post as demonstrating the value of violence are regarded with alarmed contempt in the rest of the developed world for being both murderously barbaric and comically ineffectual. Really want to second this. A number of things you seem to accept as doctrine are points of massive political and philosophical contention. And you seem to think that America - whether on the level of government or the electorate - has any kind of unanimity on these issues. You talk about the death penalty like it's some kind of exigent solution, rather than a colossal boondoggle on every level with arguably no positive outcomes. Heinlein literally could not comprehend why Arthur Clarke, one of his personal heroes, opposed SDI - a project that Heinlein pushed for hard. He found it impossible to believe that Clarke, who he saw as a rational intelligent person, could oppose the weaponization of space. Is it any surprise that his writing can be just as myopically unilateral?
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2014 22:47
|
|