I was just talking about general rules; to me, The Forever War feels rather like an exception to the rule. There’s also a huge body of “literature” (note the scare quotes) that calls itself “military sci fi” that reiterates the “cool space military gadgets” and “faceless inhuman enemy” aspects of Starship Troopers without providing any philosophical ideas.
But of course, no one has read every bad book out there, so none of us is really qualified to say what is more common.
With Heinlein, I never know if it’s a repugnant philosophical treatise or a philosophical experiment that turns out to be repugnant. Either he changed his opinions, or what he wrote didn’t accurately represent his opinions. One thing about fascists, though: they don’t hate freedom. They just tend to abolish it as a side effect of fascism. Austria’s most right-wing party is called the “Freedom Party”. It’s entirely plausible for a fascist to be in favor of “freedom” as a value. And as a non-libertarian, I find it entirely possible that some libertarian policies can lead to consequences very similar to fascism.
Interesting. So maybe they used to be more popular. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and among my contemporaries, Superhero movies/tv > Star Trek >= Anime > Manga >> Science Fiction books >> Superhero Comics. For the kids born in the 90s and early 00’s, Anime and Manga has become more important, and Star Trek less important. For my parent’s generation, my sample is pretty much limited to my father, and he never bothered to introduce me to comics.
But from “secondary” American stories, that is, stories about geeks, there seems to be the consensus that the true American geek grew up reading comic books (and being ridiculed for it), and that’s not what it was like to grow up a geek in Austria.
