There was a sequel? I guess I need to look it up... 
Starship Troopers
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There are two sequels but they´re only faint shadows of the original. The second movie is more of an experiment by the effects crew. They wanted to see how much could be donw with a budget as limited as the one they had. The third one is better again but still only a regular B movie.There was a sequel? I guess I need to look it up...
There are two sequels but they´re only faint shadows of the original. The second movie is more of an experiment by the effects crew. They wanted to see how much could be donw with a budget as limited as the one they had. The third one is better again but still only a regular B movie.There was a sequel? I guess I need to look it up...
I think he meant a sequel to The Forever War.
Yes I meant the forever war sequels. Sorry about the confusion.
Re: the society in Starship Troopers
From what I gather, the "Service = citizenship" mentality came about after a war in which a number of (American?) soldiers were captured and the government simply chose to abandon them.
Returning veterans from that war took issue with that and took over, reasoning that only someone who had put their time in could truly understand the responsibility of things like governing and going to war.
I notice this sentiment in George RR Martin's "Ice and Fire" novels, where one of the lords insists on executing criminals himself...as a reminder that killing should never get easy.
ANd given the last eight years, it's not an attitude I'm really prepared to argue with. It should never be an easy thing to kill, or to send soldiers off to be killed.
From what I gather, the "Service = citizenship" mentality came about after a war in which a number of (American?) soldiers were captured and the government simply chose to abandon them.
Returning veterans from that war took issue with that and took over, reasoning that only someone who had put their time in could truly understand the responsibility of things like governing and going to war.
I notice this sentiment in George RR Martin's "Ice and Fire" novels, where one of the lords insists on executing criminals himself...as a reminder that killing should never get easy.
ANd given the last eight years, it's not an attitude I'm really prepared to argue with. It should never be an easy thing to kill, or to send soldiers off to be killed.
The American wars before the publication of the book were Korea and WWII. There was no such thought of abandonment. The Mission MIA scenario came out of Vietnam a generation later.
Forever Free was a direct sequel to the Forever War - same characters farther along in history, but it wasn't military scifi, it dealt with them interacting with a society where they were anachronisms due to the relatavistic time dilation of their FTL drive.
Personally, I thought it was a bad Trek episode, complete with enigmatic and omnipotent aliens and a flashback to Westworld.
Forever Peace was set in a completely different timeframe, and dealt with cybernetic control of high tech weapons fighting guerillas in the third world. It was much better - it won a Hugo too. Dealt a lot with the inclusion of media in society and the ethics of being a soldier against a clearly inferior foe, lots of interesting tech details about teleoperation and cybernetics.
Heinlein's little sermonette on the superior justice of whipping is intended to get boys reading a juvenile to thinking about justice in real life, not in imaginary courts martial. But it's nonsense. Nonsense shouldn't be inflicted on children. There are good reasons for Scribner's to have rejected this book. If the book is just a little playing around irrelevant to the real world, then it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Explaining to adolescents there are no such thing as rights is absurdly misleading. And I think, meant to be so. Might makes right is rightfully regarded as the slogan of a moral imbecile.
As for the stability of democracies: Alexander decreed that the exiled democrats be allowed to return to their native cities in Greece. It is believed he did so because the thousands of mercenaries roaming around were causing problems. So unstability among democracies, resulting in oligarchies and tyrannies expelling democrats (and occasionally vice versa) was a major problem. Athens itself was marked by instability, despite the great wealth of the silver mines on Mt. Laurion. And I don't mean sudden reversals of policy but outbreaks of extralegal violence.
I already said, consider the career of Alcibiades alone. Also consider the career of Peisistratus.
Least important, Heinlein bragged of bullying Russians more than once. And studying up on vulgar Russian insults ahead of time too.
Explaining to adolescents there are no such thing as rights is absurdly misleading. And I think, meant to be so. Might makes right is rightfully regarded as the slogan of a moral imbecile.
As for the stability of democracies: Alexander decreed that the exiled democrats be allowed to return to their native cities in Greece. It is believed he did so because the thousands of mercenaries roaming around were causing problems. So unstability among democracies, resulting in oligarchies and tyrannies expelling democrats (and occasionally vice versa) was a major problem. Athens itself was marked by instability, despite the great wealth of the silver mines on Mt. Laurion. And I don't mean sudden reversals of policy but outbreaks of extralegal violence.
I already said, consider the career of Alcibiades alone. Also consider the career of Peisistratus.
Least important, Heinlein bragged of bullying Russians more than once. And studying up on vulgar Russian insults ahead of time too.
I must admit, I've never read Starship Troopers, but my mother's reaction to it was largely the same as stj's and I'll take it at face value for the moment. There are more worthwhile books for me to devote my time.
But I must admit to being curious about Heinlein's interactions with (and bullying of?) Russians. Does anyone have any links (or know of any writing about) that particular oddity?
But I must admit to being curious about Heinlein's interactions with (and bullying of?) Russians. Does anyone have any links (or know of any writing about) that particular oddity?
I read a suggestion he just simply didn't like Heinlein's ideas, as during WWII he (Verhoven) had grown up in Nazi occupied Europe and saw enough tin pot helmets around him.
I'll take this opportunity to mention that there's no evidence that Heinlein thought that we should change our systems of government to that in Starship Troopers either. It's an adolescent novel designed to make the reader think the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, about the relationship between the citizen and the state. It's not a blueprint.
Probably not. This is also the same guy that wrote the ode to libertarianism, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
I think the question shouldn't be who gets to vote but what the powers and limitations of the government are. It is self-evident that all people are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. The best government is the one that is able to ensure those rights. I don't much care what form that government takes so long as it can accomplish this.
Once upon a time, only property owners could vote. I believe part of the rationale for this was that the primary function of government at the time was to levy taxes to pay for things. Thus, the only people who could vote were ones with property to be taxed. Anyone else would be a freeloader, attempting to vote to himself the properties of others.
Where I take umbridge with the citizenship=service idea (as well as with some mandatory national service proposals occasionally made in the U.S. Congress), is that no individual should have to justify himself or his inalienable rights to the government. On the contrary, the government must constantly justify itself to us. It's fine to put limits on the franchise so long as those without it can choose to opt out of the government as well. The social contract must be agreed to by mutual consent between the government & the governed. The government cannot unilaterally dictate the terms.
It would have been better had it not used the name of the great book it failed to follow in any significant way.
Without the powered armor, it isn't Starship Troopers.
Maybe you are new to the thread. Because the fact that this discussion so far has been 95% "power-armor free", I would say you are clearly wrong.
The power armor is just a neato tech thing that many readers latched onto. It has nothing to do with the characters and themes of the novel.
The power armor is just a neato tech thing that many readers latched onto. It has nothing to do with the characters and themes of the novel.
Rights are a social contract, nothing more. There is nothing innate about them, they aren't given by a higher power, by nature, or by anything other than mankind's ability to demand them. This makes them MORE important, not less, because it shows the development of our society and the definitions we put on our place in it as sentient beings. However, anyone that believes they are innate is mistaken, and ultimately they are adjudicated by humanity. Even if higher powers did exist, there is no indication that they intervene.
Might makes right is nonsensical - it happens to rhyme in our language. In truth, might allows you to ignore right, ignore the ethical boundaries we place on ourselves.
So those rights are not inalienable, but indeed purchased. They are purchased through duty - your duty to help enforce those rights for yourself and more importantly others.
Rights are a polite fiction, but a necessary one. They fail when people are no longer willing to uphold them. Luckily for us, and again paradoxically, we live in the nuclear age - our societies are protected from enslavement not because of enlightenment, but once again through the threat of force. In this case, the force capable of protecting our rights.
But there are certainly places that exist that you have no more rights than you can purchase at the barrel of a gun.
Queue the outrage, but I have yet to see a philosophy that explains to me how those rights exist in any way other than our ability to get others to respect them. If they don't, and you don't have the might to protect yourself, they disappear. And if they can disappear in that scenario, they aren't inalienable.
Might makes right is nonsensical - it happens to rhyme in our language. In truth, might allows you to ignore right, ignore the ethical boundaries we place on ourselves.
So those rights are not inalienable, but indeed purchased. They are purchased through duty - your duty to help enforce those rights for yourself and more importantly others.
Rights are a polite fiction, but a necessary one. They fail when people are no longer willing to uphold them. Luckily for us, and again paradoxically, we live in the nuclear age - our societies are protected from enslavement not because of enlightenment, but once again through the threat of force. In this case, the force capable of protecting our rights.
But there are certainly places that exist that you have no more rights than you can purchase at the barrel of a gun.
Queue the outrage, but I have yet to see a philosophy that explains to me how those rights exist in any way other than our ability to get others to respect them. If they don't, and you don't have the might to protect yourself, they disappear. And if they can disappear in that scenario, they aren't inalienable.
As far as Heinlein in Russia, he certainly didn't go there to insult Russians. He was drug into Intourist to be lectured on the evils of America after the Gary Powers incident. He blew up at the incident. However, he didn't brag about it - he characterized it in his writings as unbelievably stupid and dangerous. He had the shakes afterward because he knew the Russians could make him disappear at their whim. He stated he had no right to endanger his wife in that manner. He even spoke of this in terms of rights - he realized in the Soviet Union he had no protections of the rights he assumed in America.
He clearly despised the Soviet Union. Note that doesn't mean the Russian people - he seems to have felt sorry for them. He spoke with many of them on his trip. In one interesting incident he points out that several Russian cadets told him of a manned space flight - later on Pravda declared it wasn't manned. Turns out the cosmonaut died (we really just learned of the human cost of the Soviet space program in the 90s). Heinlein understood what happened, and was chilled and disgusted that one of their cosmonauts could so easily become an 'unperson' - because it would impact the Soviet image he simply never officially existed.
Heinlein knew his Soviet history and cared for it not one whit.
He clearly despised the Soviet Union. Note that doesn't mean the Russian people - he seems to have felt sorry for them. He spoke with many of them on his trip. In one interesting incident he points out that several Russian cadets told him of a manned space flight - later on Pravda declared it wasn't manned. Turns out the cosmonaut died (we really just learned of the human cost of the Soviet space program in the 90s). Heinlein understood what happened, and was chilled and disgusted that one of their cosmonauts could so easily become an 'unperson' - because it would impact the Soviet image he simply never officially existed.
Heinlein knew his Soviet history and cared for it not one whit.
I'll take this opportunity to mention that there's no evidence that Heinlein thought that we should change our systems of government to that in Starship Troopers either. It's an adolescent novel designed to make the reader think the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, about the relationship between the citizen and the state. It's not a blueprint.
Probably not. This is also the same guy that wrote the ode to libertarianism, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
I think the question shouldn't be who gets to vote but what the powers and limitations of the government are. It is self-evident that all people are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. The best government is the one that is able to ensure those rights. I don't much care what form that government takes so long as it can accomplish this.
Once upon a time, only property owners could vote. I believe part of the rationale for this was that the primary function of government at the time was to levy taxes to pay for things. Thus, the only people who could vote were ones with property to be taxed. Anyone else would be a freeloader, attempting to vote to himself the properties of others.
Where I take umbridge with the citizenship=service idea (as well as with some mandatory national service proposals occasionally made in the U.S. Congress), is that no individual should have to justify himself or his inalienable rights to the government. On the contrary, the government must constantly justify itself to us. It's fine to put limits on the franchise so long as those without it can choose to opt out of the government as well. The social contract must be agreed to by mutual consent between the government & the governed. The government cannot unilaterally dictate the terms.
That sounds like the "verse" of Jerry Pournelle's Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion. If you think Starship Troopers federal service requirements are bad
....Heinlein's articles in Expanded Universe do not talk about a single incident.
Without bothering to dig it out of the attic (in the to donate box I hasten to add,) one Russian he boasted of berating, and gloated over how slavish he (allegedly) became. And, I repeat, you do not study up your Russian language insults ahead of such unexpected events as the U2 incident, unless you feel a need to know them.
Russians were not the only ones to receive a sudden attack from Heinlein. Arthur C. Clarke, of all people, was notoriously abused at a party in Greg Benford's living room. There are people (often called sociopaths,) who have learned that decent people are disconcerted by sudden aggression, and use that lesson for fun and profit.
In Have Spacesuit Will Travel, the father talks about being in politics and about being a spy. Heinlein in the thirties worked for the Upton Sinclair EPIC campaign. And his Double Star and some short stories portray politics marked by criminal skullduggery.
Hmm.
Without bothering to dig it out of the attic (in the to donate box I hasten to add,) one Russian he boasted of berating, and gloated over how slavish he (allegedly) became. And, I repeat, you do not study up your Russian language insults ahead of such unexpected events as the U2 incident, unless you feel a need to know them.
Russians were not the only ones to receive a sudden attack from Heinlein. Arthur C. Clarke, of all people, was notoriously abused at a party in Greg Benford's living room. There are people (often called sociopaths,) who have learned that decent people are disconcerted by sudden aggression, and use that lesson for fun and profit.
In Have Spacesuit Will Travel, the father talks about being in politics and about being a spy. Heinlein in the thirties worked for the Upton Sinclair EPIC campaign. And his Double Star and some short stories portray politics marked by criminal skullduggery.
Hmm.
And I would say I am 100% right.
The powered armor is what makes the book cool. All the talk of the book having higher philisophical themes is greatly overstated. The book is not as deep as people seem to think it is. It's about guys in powered armor fighting bigs. It has very little to do with the society at large.
Rii
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