There hasn’t been any new news since around May. But that hasn’t stopped Imdb from churning out “articles” that are merely copy-and-pastes from many months old info like the article I posted.
There hasn’t been any new news since around May. But that hasn’t stopped Imdb from churning out “articles” that are merely copy-and-pastes from many months old info like the article I posted.
Even aside from the fascism, it’s just so…boring.
I don’t know how you make a story about a space-faring human civilization with man portable nuclear weapons and powered armor ‘boring’ of all things, but he did.
Actually I do, it’s because he made it some ‘realistic’ portrayal of military service so there’s basically no action, and lots of time for flashbacks to fascistic school lectures.
A lot of sci-fi falls into the trap of being so enamored with the (often cool) setting that it forgets to be a good story.
It really is boring, I gave it a reread a couple years back just to have read it with an adult set of eyes, it is a slog and the fascism is more apparent.
Highly recommend Armor by John Steakley and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman if you want some conceptually similar books to SST that will actually leave you satisfied.
I’d say Steakley delivers more power armored bug stomping action while still contemplating on the effects of conflict on those who participate and their societies, and IIRC the bugs are not mindless and do get some characterization discovered by the POV humans eventually.
Haldeman also has great action and really goes further into the effect war has on removing soldiers from the life they knew before. He leans into FTL travel and time dilation and it’s a clear metaphor for that theme. There is also a big narrative payoff for the adversary species being an advanced civilization. Haldeman wrote a sequel The Forever Peace which is interesting but skippable IMHO. He also wrote a short story A Separate War about power armored soldiers fighting in LatAm and disgruntled vets trying to do direct action to bring a stop to the war, it’s cool but really getting away from the SST vibe at that point. It’s available in a sci-fi anthology that I haven’t honestly read the other stories in.
Seconded.
RIP John
Yeah, I tried to read it back in middle school because I couldn’t go to see the movie (lousy R rating) and it’s so boring
Gave up after 30 pages or so
Apparently, Verhoeven had a similar experience, except he also found it morally disgusting
But I was a little 12 year old shit head, so I didn’t have myself put together well