It
has been a sheer delight to re-discover the great work by Robert A. Heinlien
being ‘Starship Trooper”. As a young lad I read it when it was first published,
and only saw it as a straight adventure story. Of course that was in 1959. It
is with distinct pleasure as I followed Heunlien’s careet. And the story I
re-read many times.
Then
when the movie came out, I had my son read it, and we had interesting
discussions about how the book was changed. The original movie is good, but the
book is much better.
While
Heinlien was writing about a possible future he was really exploring a
different society structure, how that influenced the military, creating a work
on training the infantry and then the Officer Candidate (Himself a Annapolis graduate
and former Naval Officer, and it shows in the texture of the story), crafting a
work of social commentary on the decline of current and future society that
still has a edge IMO, amd most charming how his 1940-1950 morals shape the society
and traditions around the story. A most brilliant piece of work for a short
book. Lest I forget he also used a Bug
War as the central evil, which had been milked to death, but it works well.
The
book “The Old Man’s War” by John Scalazi is much the same, however here 70 year
old men and women enlist in the Colonial Marines, are slammed into perfect
green new super perfect bodies. Under go super accelerated basic training and
are immediately placed into combat
Against
everything the universe has to offer in gritty detail. It to is a series of
books which also play with different social structures and their role with the
military. You are left with the same tone to the first book as if it was also a
wotk by Heinlien, but it is not.
Great
Works of Fiction.
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