Category Archives: SF

Thoughts on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

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One of the most divisive science-fiction novels published is Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Written as one his juvenile novels it was rejected out of hand by the publisher and immediately upon publication by another house stirred intense political debate that carries on to the present day. My meager thoughts in no way will settle this argument and for those firmly fixed in their camps nothing will dislodge them.

Troopers posits a future where humanity has spread out to the stars following some war with itself that left in its wake a unified government ending unrest and ushering in a period of

G.P. Putnam’s & Sons

prosperity. The political system of this unified government is a democracy, but one where the right to vote and run for office, the civil franchise, is restricted solely to those who have served in the armed forces.

This ‘only veterans’ franchise is often labeled by the novel’s critics as ‘fascist’ and a system of military rule. While I think the system proposed actually would never work in practice and the author hand-waved his way past serious political and practical issues, both critiques miss the mark.

Fascism has no simple, agreed upon definition. It is often hurled as a charge towards a political system, movement, or person that someone intensely disagree with. The left hurls it at the right and right throws it back. Setting aside the definition of childish tantrums, to me Fascism is a species of the political right, obsessed with a distorted and false view of history, former ‘glory,’ centralized authoritarian government, and most importantly of all the philosophy that the individual’s only value is what the state can extract from them.

The novel gives very little to no description of the culture surrounding its political system. What little history that is presented is fed to the reader as exposition to explain the political system and how it arose with nothing that glorifies some idealized historical vision.

Equally unexplored is the actual details political system. We know that military service is required for the franchise and that active-duty personnel do not have the vote but how centralized is thew power is a question that is never addressed. The closest the reader comes to understanding the culture and the government is the barbaric punishment of flogging is a common judicially ordered punishment. This predilection for cruelty as punishment is the most fascistic aspect of the novel’s setting.

Many critics point to required military service as a fascistic aspect, but I think it doesn’t meet that criterion. Fascist regimes such a Fascist Italy or NAZI Germany treat the people as something that had an obligation to the state. An obligation that could not be refused. Their service to the state was something required not chosen. The system in Starship Trooper is an inverse of that philosophy. Service is given, always at the choice of the person, and in fact the novel gives the impression that people are dissuaded from choosing to serve as more than one character attempts to talk to the protagonist out of volunteering. This plays into the novel’s philosophy of graded level of morality and I’ll speak to that and its error later in the piece. The core central issue here is that in a fascist setting the power is with the state, a state that compels service and here the power is with the individual choosing to serve.

One of the novel’s many exposition heavy scenes also display the frantic handwaving to make this political system work. An instructor asks the class why does the system work and after the students offer possible answers based on the limitation on the franchise, better people, chosen people, and so on, the teacher simply answer it works because it does. Utterly circular logic. It works because the author wants it to work.

Elsewhere in the work it is put forward that there are levels of morality with morality defined as the willingness to put oneself in danger for a goal or purpose. The lowest and most base level is self-interest. ‘I look out for number one and no one else.’ The system then progresses through family, friends, and loved one with the ‘highest’ level of morality being expressed when someone serves and risks all for their community.

Heroic self-sacrifice is a common trope in adventure fiction and something that is nearly universally admired. We need to look no further in the genre than Spock’s solution to Kobayashi Maru test in The Wrath of Khan to see this presented as noble. That said it, in my opinion, is a lousy system to base your politics upon.

The logic in Starship Troopers is that those who volunteer to place their lives on the line by serving in the military are exhibiting a ‘higher’ level or morality and thus are ‘worthy’ of the franchise and political power. This is flawed for several of reasons.

First, while the novel goes out of its way to make clear that no one can ever be denied the chance to serve it is also clear that military discipline is in effect and people are ‘mustered out’ of the service and thus forever lose the chance to exercise the franchise. That means on a practical level the military while forced to accept every as a recruit can still eliminate anyone it does not want to have the franchise. It is far too easy for a military to expel members to use service as a qualification for the franchise.

Second, it presumes the motive for joining the military is a desire to serve. This ignores the possibility of enlisted to learn a trade, experience adventure, escape an unpleasant home, or even to live the thrill of combat and killing.

Another reason this is a terrible idea is that it sees the only meaningful way to serve your community is by way of the military. Teaching, local services, research, and healthcare, the last having its own unique dangers all too well know with the current COVID pandemic, are all ways to place your own needs second to your fellow citizens’.

While I cannot agree with those who hurl ‘fascist’ at the novel’s philosophy, nor can I endorse it. Between handwaving and some very broad and simplistic assumptions it simply ignores the world as the way I have experienced it working.

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A Bittersweet Time

For me, coming to the end of an artistic project always carries waves of mixed emotions. There’s the high of actually reaching the end, sharing the exctement and thrill of the conclusion with the characters I have spent so much time with. Throughout the writing of a story, short or long, I churn up in myself the same emotional states of the characters I am recounting and creating. The sweeping climax as everything comes to head at the end is often the most emotionally engaging period for me.

There is also a sadness as the journey ends. Writing a long form piece like a novel swells this emotion. The characters, the settings, the very nature and tone of the work become a part of daily life. Even when I am not actively at the keyboard putting words in a line my mind is fluttering about their scenes to come and how they might be crafted and feel. All of that comfortable familiarity vanishes with the end of the project. What had been a stable, predictable schedule of life is no more and as a creature of established routine and habit that is always unsettling.

Finally, there is fear.

Of course, some of that fear is directed at the completed project. It’s about to be sent into the wider world, a cruel cold world of querying agents, submitting to editors, with the near certainty of impersonal rejection or outright dismissal without reply.

But some of the fear is directed at the nascent project already forming. The new work with vague characters and setting, where the tone is already known but achieving that is only a possibility. One that might not be reached. Will the project work, will it come together, or might it like others, fail to take flight and crash like an overladen bomber from the Second World War?

This is the time I am in now. My military SF novel is complete. 100,000 words following an American serving in the European Union’s star forces. It held suspense, fear, and surprises for me but now its time at the front of my mind has come to close. Now it is time to fully commit to the new story, the new characters, and to set fear aside and march into the new battle.

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Sunday Night Movie: War of the Satellites

Exhausted from the heat and finishing my latest military SF novel I opted for something that wouldn’t tac the brain cells and settled on Roger Corman’s 1958 SF film War of the Satellites.

Inspired by the public interest frenzy and terror following the USSR’s 1957 successful orbiting satellite Sputnik, Corman conceived filmed and edited this feature in 90 days.

War of the Satellites open with Project Sigma’s ninth attempt to place a crewed satellite into Allied Artistsspace. Once again, a mysterious force destroys the vessel and the project leader, Dr. Van Ponder (Richard Devon) vows to continue the program despite opposition from other nations over the financial costs. (No one mentions or seems to care about the cost in lives of nine destroyed crewed mission.) Assisted by loyal scientist Dave Boyer (Dick Miller) and mathematician Sybil (Susan Cabot) Van Ponder fights the system for funding for a 10th attempt, one he plans to captain himself.

The nature of the mysterious force is revealed when an alien message probe arrives announcing that the Earth, due to humanity’s childish nature, has been placed under a quarantine and that all launches will be destroyed. With the core conflict established, humanity opposing the unseen alien’s blockade of space, the film unfolds with the 10th launch attempt progressing and the aliens further attempts to stop it.

Made on a budget of about 70,000 dollars and with a brief running time of 66 minutes War of the Satellites is a literal B-Picture, released as a second feature with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Only a year after sputnik and the same year the United States placed its own satellite Explorer into orbit around the Earth this movie has an amazingly optimistic view of humanity’s push into space. Not only is the technology absurdly advanced, three launches within minutes of each other that assembles a fully functional large spacecraft but also one capable of reaching the speed of light, but the politics of the story is even more optimistic with the project operating under the multinational authority of the United Nations.

War of the Satellites also has the earliest onscreen performance I have seen yet of Roger Corman. While later in life he often made appearances in the films from directors whose careers he helped launch, as director of the FBI in The Silence of the Lambs and as a Senator in Apollo 13, this is the first time I can recall seeing him, as a one scene launch controlled, in one of his own pictures.

This film is by far not a great movie, but it is far from the worst Corman ever produced and directed. For those who enjoy cheesy optimistic SF 50s movie it is worth watching at least once.

War of the Satellites is currently streaming on Shout Factory!‘s commercial supported streaming service.

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Like A Shark

Most, but not all sharks, need to constantly move through the water to breath. This was the point of the barrels in Jaws, tire the beast out until it cannot swim and then suffocates in the water.

Like a shark most writers, but not all, need to move from project to project. Always writing always creating on some level. As I finish up my latest military SF adventure novel, not just cleaning up and the prose and getting my sweetie-wife’s assistance on my typos and fondness for run on sentences my mind turns to the next book.

Returning the dark cynical world of crime and people making bad decisions as I have with Vulcan’s Forge, my next novel is set on Mars about 2130. Thematically its draws inspiration from crime and noir movies such as The Maltese Falcon, desperate people trying to escape such as Casablanca, and social commentary such as The Jungle.

Here is a smattering of some of the notes I have written as I begin to lay out the bones of the world before I flesh it out with characters and dilemmas.

Major Economic Industries of MARS

ROCKET FUEL

From Martian water and CO2 and utilizing nuclear power (Fission) mars produces Methane CH4 and O2 for rocket fuel used throughout the Solar System. The energy coast of lifting the fuel off the Mars is less than half (about 40%) of that compared to Earth. (3.8 KM/s vs 9. Km/s) This fuel is then transported to Earth and the asteroid mining operations for use in scientific and commercial operations.

MANAGING SPACE OEPRATIONS

Given the lower energy costs to lift from the surface, Mars has also become the principal site for directing space operations. The majority of the operations are commercial but substantial scientific and research projects, crewed and uncrewed exploration, process development, and pure research, are also managed from Mars for governments, Universities, and Private concerns.

WEALTHY RETIREMENT LIVING

The lower Martian gravity, about .3G is discovered to prolong life by way of less stress on vital organs. (Lunar gravity about .16 is too low and like no gravity induces muscle and bone loss along with other health troubles.) Mars hosts a community of wealthy person who have permanently relocated to the red Planet in retirement to extend their lives. They do not live communally, they are rich after all, but have in effected formed their own colony within the Martian community. This option is very expensive with the total number of wealthy retirees less than a thousand. However, because of their desire for personal services they employee a fair number of native Martian persons.

WEALTHY TOURISM

Mars is an exotic destination that can only be afforded by the wealthy. Given the scheduling of the cyclers transferring between Earth and Mars no one visits Mars for a week or two, but tourists are usually required to stay about 2 years. This reduces the pool of potential tourists to just the wealthy who can either afford to ignore their lives and commitments for two or more years or those still wealthy but able to manage their duties remotely and with lengthy communications lags.

MARTIAN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

A small community of rotating scientists from Earth live on mars researching the planet itself. Due to bacterial contamination from the settlement of the colony the question of native Martian life has yet to be definitively answered. (all microorganisms discovered to date have similar enough genetic make-up it could either be parallel evolution or contamination.) The scientists live is spartan conditions with nearly all of the technical and lab support coming from native Martian colonists.

MARTIAN FACILITIES SUPPORT

The largest number of people are actual native Martian colonists employed supporting the other forms of economic activity on the Red Planet. Nearly all of these people dream of living on Earth under open skies and weather, but these are dreams as they are shackled to the planet by their debt. None may immigrate from Mars without first clearing their debt to the colony.

I have major questions to research and answer. What would be the schedule of a Mars cycler, a spacecraft that ferries between Earth and Mars about 2130-2140? What the right inflation factor for cost between now and the novel’s period? How does daily assessed interest make loans nearly inescapable? How does the legal regime on Mars develop? And more.

That said I am excited and looking forward to this new project.

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Accessible Science-Fiction

There are SF writers whose works is at the cutting edge, the vanguard, of the genre, pushing the artform into new and bold areas. Their work can be illuminating and challenging often difficult for readers new to the genre to grasp and fully enjoy. These works, and they can be thoroughly enjoyable, are more suited to readers already well-versed in the form and tropes of Science-Fiction from which foundation the more experimental pieces can be explored.

I think of my own SF writing as nearly the opposite of that.

I would hope, and what I strive for, is welcoming, accessible science-fiction. That is not to say the vanguard, boundary-breaking, parts of the genre are bad, not at all. We need those bold experimental pieces to take us to new lands, new ideas, to keep the whole body healthy. But we also need works that welcome new readers, that allows people to wade into the safer and calmer waters before setting sail across the genre’s ocean. That is, in part, what I want to achieve.

Local Author, Critic, and Podcaster David Agranoff said of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge:

“Speaking as someone who likes Golden Age and new wave science fiction I liked that this felt like a lost 60s or 70s novel. There is very little that feels modern about this novel, that is a compliment by the way.”

That is very much the sort of feel I wanted for my novel. The 60s and the 70s were a time of great expansion in the genre both in what was produced and in the readers coming to discover it.

Someone else who read the novel and who was not a big reader of SF books told me that they were particularly happy with how they did not feel lost as the new world with its own backstory unfolded for them. That is one of the most pleasing pieces of feedback I have ever received, and it is what I mean by ‘accessible science-fiction.’ It is the sort of thing I aim for and hopefully with hit more and more in the future.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Movie Review: PREY

1987 saw the release of Predator itself inspired by the 1980 wholly lackluster low-budget movie Without Warning, both films used the premise of an alien hunter come to Earth for the sport of hunting humans. Unlike the 1980 movie Predator exploded at the box office quickly becoming a massive success spawning 4 direct follow-on film and melding it with the studio’s other Sf/horror franchise Alien.

Prey, the latest franchise entry, is set in North America during the early 18th century as a band of Comanche deal with a predator-hunter come to Earth. The film’s central character, Naru, (Amber Midthunder) a young woman skilled in healing arts but with a burning desire to a tribal hunter, finds herself struggling to survive the alien’s stalking while navigating the difficult waters of both her tribal politics and the further encroaching of the Europeans into the continent.

There are many who are praising Prey as not only a great sequel but superior to the original 1987 film. This is overly enthusiastic. Granted compared to the lackluster Predator 2, The Predator (2018), or any of the Alien v Predator entries Prey stands out as solid, enjoyable filmmaking. Only it and 20103s Predators took the central premise and did anything more than simply copy the form with cut-and-paste caricatures. That said I think none of the subsequent movies surprise the surprise, tension, and thematic depths of the original film. Predator’s commentary of the emptiness of bravado, and as Lucifer in Sandman might say, the traps of tools, is something that rings true today 35 years later. Prey like all the other films in the Predator franchise has its moments that shatter disbelief. However, it does not layer these issues repeatedly and thus audiences can recover their acceptance of the story as it unfolds. The incongruity that has stayed with me is that any herbal concoction that lowers your body’s temperature to background is simply lethal. No mammal gets to survive that experience.

That is not to say that Prey is a bad film, it is not. Prey boasts interesting characters, who act and react with authenticity. Something that is far too often lacking in popular genre media. (Yes, I am looking at you X.) The tribal characters are engaging, realized human beings with the writers avoid both the cliche of the ‘noble savage’ wise in all things, and the ‘brutal savage’ untamed and untamable. Little can be said for the French fur trappers that who make a brief appearance in the film as all of their dialog is un-subtitled and your humble reviewer speaks no French. Jeff Cutter’s cinematography capture the scale, scope, and beauty of Canada doubling as the American wilderness reminiscent of the fantastic vista often found in John Ford’s best westerns. Director Dan Trachtenberg, previously best known for 10 Cloverfield Lane a tight, confined thriller with a fantastic performance by John Goodman, delivers on the action and tension inherent in a Predatormovie. Naru’s escape and refuge in a beaver lodge is a particularly powerful if short sequence that displays both the character’s quick intelligence and Trachtenberg’s confident directorial skills.

The visual effects are competent and largely invisible. (That pun fully intended.) With CGI creatures and beast flawlessly integrated into the picture. The grizzly is particularly well executed. Prey unfortunately has no theatrical release, and it is possible the VFX would not survive on massive screens but on my 55″ 4K television is worked perfectly.

Prey is well worth watching and is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Series Review: Light & Magic

Disney+ unveiled a new documentary recently Light & Magic a series exploring the history of the groundbreaking special effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM.)

Founded because no studio effects department was capable of meeting Lucas’s vision for his upcoming space opera Star Wars, ILM quickly became the industry’s premier special effects

Disney Studios

company, producing the special and visual effects not only for Lucasfilm’s productions, Star Wars, Indian Jones, but also the company others turned to when they needed outstanding effects for their films.

While it is important to remember that this documentary series is produced by a studio closely tied to ILM and its products and therefore cannot be considered unbiased there is at least some dirty laundry and less that admirable moments shared in the show. The episode steps us through ILM’s life chronologically from its founding as a rag tag group of artists who dared not dream of real cinematic heights to the creation of the defining effects of our time, CGI.

Light & Magic streams on Disney+.

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A Space Opera Advantage

There is no doubt in my in mind that FGU’s role playing game Space Opera has one of the worst edited rulebooks from a major game company. Typos, contradictory rules, vital rules dispersed in various sections, and the lack of any index at all produce a set of rules that without ‘search’ when using the PDFs would make running the game quite challenging.

That said I do adore the game, its bold attempt to sweep in rule for nearly every conceivable SF setting, and its sheer naked ambition.

Recently, in the campaign I have been running since May 2019, I have come to appreciate another advantage to Space Opera, the lack of an experience point system for character abilities.

In Dungeons and Dragons players begin the game as low-level adventurers, dealing limited damage, easily killed, and marginally skilled. With each adventure the Dungeon Master awards Experience Points to the characters that advance their skills and capabilities, no adventure, no experience points, no advancement.

Space Opera using skill learning. Characters devote themselves to study and practice to become better at their skills and advance in capabilities from piloting to the sciences. As long as the character can continue their studies they can continue to advance.

This is an advantage when the real world collides with the role-playing world. Is a player in a D&D game misses one or more adventures, their character fails to gain experience points alongside their compatriots, falling behind in skills and toughness that may be fundamentally unfair. Real world responsibilities should always outweigh play. It is a mark of adulthood.

With Space Opera the missing player’s character, while not investigating the slave clone trade can continue to study and practice the skills they have committed themselves to advancing. When the player returns to the table, they suffer no in game penalty for attending to pressing real world duties. As long as the gamemaster is keeping careful track of the time passed, for which I have spreadsheets that have proven invaluable, and when the player is eligible to advance their skills, the system is fair to all players.

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Movie Review: NOPE

This weekend Jordan Peele, writer/director of get Out, and US, released his third feature film again playing in the fields of horror with Nope.

The film centers on brother and sister Otis Jr (Daniela Kaluuya) and Emerald (Kiki Palmer) as they struggle to save their ranch and film horse training business following the sudden, tragic, and bizarre death of their father Otis Sr (Keith David.) Between encroaching visual effects

Universal Pictures

wizards rendering live horses almost inconsequential and a local western themes amusement park seeking to expand by buying up the failing property the survival of Haywood Hollywood Horses is in grave doubt. It is in this dire situation when a threat descends from the clouds that both threatens the inhabitants of the ranch and simultaneously offer the possibility of financial salvation.

If you saw the previews for Nope you might be tempted to think that Peele was moving into the alien invasion sub-genre of horror and science-fiction and to enter the theater with that fixed as an expectation is to invite disappointment. Nope is closer akin to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, individuals isolated and under threat than the grand global menace of War of the Worlds. Modifying your priors and you are far more likely to enjoy Nope than if you expect the film to be something it is not.

That said Nope doesn’t entirely gel. It has ideas, characters, and settings, the backstory and subplot of Steven Yuen’s Ricky Park, a former child star and now owner and proprietor of the western-themed amusement park, is tragic and horrifying but only symbolically belongs in the same film as the threat hanging over the ranch. It was the sequences where we see the source of his trauma and its repercussions that truly unnerved me and produced the most tension. Uts failure to fully integrate into the main plotline left me unsatisfied.

However, there is a lot to praise Nope. Kaluuya continued to demonstrate that he is a terrifically talented actor able to inhabit with utter authenticity his characters. Palmer is more manic in her performance which is an excellent choice for Emerald and her willingness to push and chase a dream beyond the bounds of reasonableness. The visuals of the film can be spare in a manner that accentuates the isolation and vastness of a distant and secluded California Ranch. Perhaps once of the greats slight of hands in the film’s cinematography is the way Peele, Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, and VFX artists capture fleeting glimpses of something in the skies that is enough for the audience and the characters to know that something was there but not enough to describe the thing.

Nope was an enjoyable if somewhat scattershot movie with enough character and threat to carry most audiences through the rougher patches but not achieving the heights of his debut film Get Outwhile avoiding the too fantastical ‘rationalist’ explanation of Us.

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What I Hate Most About Trad Publishing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like traditional publishing, I have no real skills in marketing, layout, or cover design so it is a good thing to have paid professionals preforming those vital functions. My goal is and remains for the traditional publishing route. (And that’s no slight on those who take the hybrid or solely independent paths. In fact, it’s mad respect for managing all those skills.)

I have gotten all manner of rejections going to trad route, form cars, form emails, personalized rejections, and feedback on why didn’t work for the editors reviewing the manuscript. All of these I can take. Strangely I am rarely devastated by a rejection but move on to the next market. So, rejections cold and impersonal or detailed and inviting of further submissions I do not hate.

It is the lengthy time it takes that drives me bananas.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary for my submission to a major SF publisher of my SF murder mystery novel. Six months since I was contacted by the acquisitions editor that it has been pulled for closer consideration. It’s waiting more than year that I find so hard to endure. (But I do for I have no real other options.)

My previous traditionally published novel, Vulcan’s Forge (A SF novel that evokes film noir) sat on my former agents desk a year unread but gloriously but sold to the first editor I sent it to. Had I not lost that year the novel would not have released the week the world went into lock down at the start of the pandemic.

Like Inigo ‘I hate waiting.’

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