Don't Sell 'Em Short

brunians at brunians.org · 12 Apr 2007, 21:54 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:54:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: (urth) Don't Sell 'Em Short
In-Reply-To: <e8e9702e0704121406j30ed1dbdp4c04c4eb7e43313c at mail.gmail.com>
References: <131691.95097.qm at web63911.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
	<163326.85361.qm at web32412.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e8e9702e0704121406j30ed1dbdp4c04c4eb7e43313c at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4290.67.142.130.42.1176414880.squirrel at brunians.org>

> While [Starship Troopers] was not especially faithful to the book IIRC
> it did successfully capture the "tone" and "angle" of the book. The book
> was one of those scifi stories (there were a lot of these in the 50s) that
> were really just the author's memoir of military life with some
> sociopolitical commentary thrown in.

Ah yes, a naval officer's memoir of his life in the infantry.

What's really interesting about Heinlein - way more than his writing - is
the influence he has had upon the modern (US) military, which is profound.
There was a series of talks about this at the 2002 WorldCon.

I've not seen the movie. I think that Heinlein generally is overrated, but
I value the book reasonably well. Of course I was an infantryman and I
mostly agree with Bob's political ideas.

.

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