OFF: Starship Troopers (was Classic Rock)

[J. Michael Looney]

At 02:01 PM 1/7/98 +0000, you wrote:
>On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, J Strobridge wrote:
>
>> Veering wildly off topic:
>
>Well, not as off-topic as some OFF:s.  Mike Moorcock, the main link
>between BOC & HW, wrote a critique of Sci-Fi/Fantasy called "Starship
>Troopers". As I recall, Heinlein and various others were picked out for
>their right-wing authoritarian tendencies. This essay can be found in The
>Opium General.

Point of order:

British people, in general, not just Moorcock, have little problem with
American politics, just as Americans have a LOT of trouble with the whole
British system of government.

Heinlein was not authoritarian, he was ,if you must use a single word
poltical lable, a Libertarian.

Moorcock,at least in my view, has trouble with 2 things.
1) The concept that the "The Military" can be a honorable calling for a
honorable man.

2) That it is possible to, at the same time, support the concept of the
rights of the individual AND the duty of the individual to the group as a
whole.  Lots of people have problems with this it seems.  In America, at
least, people seem to think that you must be support one or the other, not a
balance of both.  Writing something that supports the _freely given choice_
of serving a _duty_ to the body politic as a whole, well, tends to confuse
people.

>
>> and the fact that
>> no-one got blown up by their own nuclear bombs it was a disappointment.
>
>Ha ha, how true  :)
This was an issue that R.A.H did in fact cover in the book.  Things about
not shooting to close to your self and how the armor of the troopers was
designed to stop short term effects.

For what it is worth, none of the hardware in the movie, from the space
ships down to the rifles the MI were using is as the were in the book.