I think you’re remembering a different book. He finishes officer school, gets command of his old unit, his father, who survived the attack on Earth, is his sergeant, and the last scene they’re getting ready for a drop on the bug home planet.
Yes, but I thought something about the tone implied a more nuanced view… anyway it certainly isn’t worth reading a second time to resolve the argument.
Last chapter ST
Each year we gain a little. You have to keep a sense of proportion. “Time, sir.” My j. o. under instruction, Candidate or “Third Lieutenant” Bearpaw, stood just outside my door. He looked and sounded awfully young, and was about as harmless as one of his scalp-hunting ancestors.
“Right, Jimmie.” I was already in armor. We walked aft to the drop room. I said, as we went, “One word, Jimmie. Stick with me and keep out of my way. Have fun and use up your ammo. If by any chance I buy it, you’re the boss — but if you’re smart, you’ll let your platoon sergeant call the signals.”
“Yes, sir.”
As we came in, the platoon sergeant called them to attention and saluted. I returned it, said, “At ease,” and started down the first section while Jimmie looked over the second. Then I inspected the second section, too, checking everything on every man. My platoon sergeant is much more careful than I am, so I didn’t find anything, I never do. But it makes the men feel better if their Old Man scrutinizes everything — besides, it’s my job.
Then I stepped out in the middle. “Another Bug hunt, boys. This one is a little different, as you know. Since they still hold prisoners of ours, we can’t use a nova bomb on Klendathu — so this time we go down, stand on it, hold it, take it away from them. The boat won’t be down to retrieve us; instead it’ll fetch more ammo and rations. If you’re taken prisoner, keep your chin up and follow the rules — because you’ve got the whole outfit behind you, you’ve got the whole Federation behind you; we’ll come and get you. That’s what the boys from the Swamp Fox and the Montgomery have been depending on. Those who are still alive are waiting, knowing that we will show up. And here we are. Now we go get `em.
“Don’t forget that we’ll have help all around us, lots of help above us. All we have to worry about is our one little piece, just the way we rehearsed it.
“One last thing. I had a letter from Captain Jelal just before we left. He says that his new legs work fine. But he also told me to tell you that he’s got you in mind … and he expects your names to shine! “And so do I. Five minutes for the Padre.”
I felt myself beginning to shake. It was a relief when I could call them to attention again and add: “By sections … port and starboard … prepare for drop!”
I was all right then while I inspected each man into his cocoon down one side, with Jimmie and the platoon sergeant taking the other. Then we buttoned Jimmie into the No. 3 center-line capsule. Once his face was covered up, the shakes really hit me.
My platoon sergeant put his arm around my armored shoulders. “Just like a drill, Son.”
“I know it, Father.” I stopped shaking at once. “It’s the waiting, that’s all.”
“I know. Four minutes. Shall we get buttoned up, sir?”
“Right away, Father.” I gave him a quick hug, let the Navy drop crew seal us in. The shakes didn’t start up again. Shortly I was able to report: “Bridge! Rico’s Roughnecks … ready for drop!”
“Thirty-one seconds, Lieutenant.” She added, “Good luck, boys! This time we take `em !”
“Right, Captain.”
“Check. Now some music while you wait?” She switched it on: “To the everlasting glory of the Infantry — “
Pastiche. Good pastiche, but Scalzi seems to be happier following (and parodying) established conventions, rather than creating new ones.
*cough* The Forever War *cough*
Well yeah that story happens about a decade from now I reckon. My preference would be Friday. Its an underappreciated cyberpunk classic.
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It wasn’t my preferred Heinlein Juvenile but I should point out that the kids were being sent to that planet for a few days at most. The teleport system failed and stranded them there for years.
The only book in the series where I think he really added something was “The Ghost Brigades”. The more recent books–especially the last three–make me think I’m reading Anne McCaffrey.
I’m not misremembering my impression of the novel at the time because I distinctly remember discussing it with other people shortly afterwards. I would have to re-read the whole novel to re-evaluate the tone, and it isn’t worth it. I don’t suppose anyone thought to ask Heinlein what he thought of the book? Maybe I was wrong, but if so, being wrong made the book deeper and more enjoyable so I regret nothing. For what it is worth, I think reading it as a pro-authoritarian manifesto would be dissonant with the themes of some of his other works i.e ‘Revolt in 2100’. On the whole I would say he treats the downfall of democracy as a bad but very likely thing.
The juviniles can mostly be updated in their tech for todays version of the future, and they’d be perfectly reasonable stories to tell today. All his later adult books suffer from obsolete attitudes about men and women, which would be far more complicated to write around for a contemporary audience.
I find that rather strange. All the Ehapa DC Comics I could find had a price in Schillings, Lira, etc, if only to be sold at tourists spots. And those comics sold reasonably well in Germany well into the 80s, though not as good as Franco-Belgian comics and Disney. I’m not so sure about from 1990 to 2010, but that’s because I read the originals by then and then started to lose interest. But I’ve seen quite a few at the German newsstands.
I bet there were plenty of people - Austrians included - who simply conveniently “forgot” that they ever read that stuff.
My reading of the Heinlein SST was pretty much ‘militaristic service for citizenship’ with an option of ‘service for citizenship’ but that not being as good as risking your life.
Of course, that does mean there has to be something for the military to risk its life for … constantly. Now, maybe Heinlein did mean for his whole book to read like that: the constant war, military service, only those who serve being worthy of participating in society, all that to be read as bad … but it’s just not in the book. Many who read it also don’t find a critisism. And Heinlein himself? Well, he always said his book spoke for itself and hid nothing.
The problem is that his only requirement for having a say in society was service: no service, no say. Doesn’t matter if you’re an idiot, saint, arsehole, brilliant strategic/economic thinker: no service, no say.
Which is antithetical to the thought that everyone who lives in a society should have a say in it’s running. Because it affects you and you affect it, you should have a say in it.
Verhoeven, funnily enough, never even read the book (just two chapters, almost, before he decided he hated it). I was shocked at that. The unrelated script called Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine written by Edward Neumeier just had so many similarities to SST that they bought the name. But the film just absolutely skewers the book, almost as if it had been written as a direct rebuttal.
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http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/into-the-abyss
[quote]1: Heinlein apparently intended or at least convinced himself he intended “veterans” to include people whose public service included non-military organizations but there is no textual evidence of this. What I do see are sections like this:
A term of service isn’t a kiddie camp; it’s either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime… or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof.
and
“Why, the purpose is,” he answered, hauling off and hitting me in the knee with a hammer (I kicked him, but not hard), “to find out what duties you are physically able to perform. But if you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find something silly enough to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe. The only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrists decide that you are not able to understand the oath.”
“Oh. Uh … Doctor, were you already a doctor when you joined up? Or did they decide you ought to be a doctor and send you to school?”
“Me?” He seemed shocked. “Youngster, do I look that silly? I’m a civilian employee.”
“Oh. Sorry, sir.”
“No offense. But military service is for ants."
The doctor clearly sees service as military service.[/quote]
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.
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That’s probably the reason. It was the 70s and 80s for me, I was technically an adult by the mid-80s. And my recollection is that they were definitely on a downslide back then, becoming rarer and produced more erratically than when I was a kid/teenager. That was one of the reasons I switched to US editions, after all, so it wasn’t all just me losing interest.
And in the 90s I still met a lot of comics who read American superhero comics (and that new guy, Gaiman).
It was never something that “everybody” did, like watching Lassie or Ein Cold für alle Fälle, more on the line of reading pulp SF like Perry Rhodan or SF in general.
I think fascists tend to believe they are in favour of the right sort of freedom for the right sort of people.
Germans under Hitler, for example, had more liberties than Russians under Stalin in terms of things like foreign travel, as long as they were white and not Jewish or Communist or critical of the ruling party.
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