The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War • Hacker News Board

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#81

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 4:43 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #10

griffinmahon wrote: post #7

I read Starship Troopers and The Forever War back-to-back in like three days, and I wasn't so much of a fan of Haldeman's book, the writing just didn't seem as good to me as Heinlein's and in any case they're nearly identical -- though obviously the relativity thing and time making the "forever" part true was a very good point.

Saying they're "nearly identical" seems to miss the point that the former is a paen to the military filled with lieutenant colonels waxing philosophical about how duty to fight is the basis of all morality, whilst the latter involves a brazenly cynical protagonist whose thoughts of war mostly involve hoping to find a way out of it...

For citizens, it was the basis of all political morality/legitimacy . There was a pretty well-kept wall between the citizens and the rest of the populace. By joining up, Rico is disowned by his father. And otherwise, Rico is a square-jawed fkup.

I always took that as a way to keep the economy and the war-machine separate. You get the general vibe that it's an otherwise post-scarcity society.

If you were a citizen, you were part of the part of society that used force. It's the basic Libertarian trope about force in that regard.

SFAIK, ST was based on ideas from the Swiss system, obviously drawn to the exponential.

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#82

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 4:49 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #12

pm90 wrote: post #2

Mankind has been at war for most of its existence. Only after WW2 and the development of nuclear weapons has war become much too risky due to MAD and has made diplomacy a much more viable option....for the more powerful nations. Meanwhile, we still have civil war in Syria, unrest in Africa etc. Once we colonize other worlds and space travel becomes more feasible, earth will become less valuable: the powers that be ca…

Actually, mankind has probably not been at war for most of its existence. Homo sapiens comes into existence ~200kya. By contrast, there is no evidence of warfare for most of the Paleolithic, and the first unambiguous evidence only comes ~10-12kya. In other words, the development of warfare is only roughly contemporaneous with the development of agriculture and sedentarism.

It's nor war in the classical or modern sense, but mankind has a pretty violent history. It's a slog of a book, but Pinker's "Better Angels" and all that.

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#83

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:59 AM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #68

Jtsummers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it. Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.

Some people, such as myself, dislike the movie because it was an almost completely unrelated script that was just reworked to have some of the same superficial elements as the book. It wasn't satirizing anything. It was just capitalizing on name recognition. But if they didn't do that, fewer people would have watched it, and we would not now be discussing movie vs. book, because they would have always been two separa…

If you can say with a straight face that it wasn't satirizing anything then you know nothing of the director's work and didn't pay much attention to the movie.

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#84

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:24 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #83

logfromblammo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people, such as myself, dislike the movie because it was an almost completely unrelated script that was just reworked to have some of the same superficial elements as the book. It wasn't satirizing anything. It was just capitalizing on name recognition. But if they didn't do that, fewer people would have watched it, and we would not now be discussing movie vs. book, because they would have always been two separa…

If you can say with a straight face that it wasn't satirizing anything then you know nothing of the director's work and didn't pay much attention to the movie.

It wasn't satirizing anything about the book. Militarism and fascism and propaganda and jingoism are all big enough to be satirized without having to pass them through Heinlein's filter first.

I must admit that I haven't made much of an attempt to evaluate the movie on its own merits, as it already started off on the wrong footing with me, due to the attempt to trick people into watching it by pretending to be something it was not. It might have been just fine as Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine. But they chose to wallpaper a licensed property over the facade instead.

As a film adaptation of a book, it is the least faithful interpretation I have ever seen. It wasn't even sci-fi. It was more like a World War II movie, except I couldn't actually tell if the humans were supposed to be the Axis, or the Allies, or a little of both.

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#85

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #41

mikeash wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Heinlein's history and politics, I don't think so. Now the movie , that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it.

> Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it. Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.

> Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.

It was actually intended as (per Verhoeven) a satire of right-wing, fascists elements perceived in modern American culture that directly associated them with Nazi propaganda; the movie was largely written independently of the book, with rights to the book secured later after superficial similarity between some elements of the movie and the book were pointed out, at which point names, etc., from the book were added. Verhoeven says he only read two chapters of the book.

The film was a satire, but not of the book.

Re: The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War

#86

Post by KingMob » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 8:34 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #59

justin66 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you should be able to find something you like among Camouflage, Old Twentieth, The Accidental Time Machine, and Work Done For Hire. Together they're actually a pretty good spectrum of what he does. I honestly haven't cracked the Marsbound books yet, although I have them. There's something just a bit off-putting about series books to me...

Thanks. Although, the one I've read amongst those, The Accidental Time Machine, I remember as being a quick enough read but otherwise shallow and unmemorable. I'm generally with you on series books. I understand why publishers and authors like them but there are so many out there that take an original concept and even get a good novel or two out of them but then continue on endlessly until all life has been squeezed…

I agree on The Accidental Time Machine (nice, but fluffy). Camouflage was good, though, and a number of people really recommend Marsbound, though I haven't read it yet.