amphiskios's blog

Just watched the Miniseries

amphiskios — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:15:16 +0000

I just finished the Battlestar Galactica miniseries.

First off, I am extremely sad I hadn't found this show earlier, as I would have been watching it the whole time. It really is a great science fiction epic. The little touches make it seem far more real than straight space westerns do. There is less sound in space than in other parts of the show, which is gotten wrong by almost every space media. However, there is still some sound, which I see as a nod to the fact that without it the show would be boring. The ships seem more realistic than the regular star fighters in most shows. While they do still have shapes that seem better suited for air than space, they at least have jets on every side of them so that they can maneuver more easily and correctly in space. Battlestar has so far been far better at showing inertia in space, and not making ships stop instantly whenever they want to or their engines fail. The situation where the mark VII vipers lost power against the cylons was great because of that fact, that the ships kept moving forward even after their engines stopped.

Other parts of Battlestar that I really liked were the flaws in so many characters. While it seems requisite to include flaws in your characters, Battlestar has so far seemed to create realistic ones. Adama isn't perfect, but he listens to reason. He drove his son away with his high expectations, but he is willing to make amends. Roslin is an extremely interesting character. She has steel in her that seems out of place, until you realize that it comes from her cancer. She knows she will die, so she is free to make difficult decisions, especially the one where she abandons the sub light craft to make sure the FTL craft can escape.

Starbuck reminded me greatly of Tank Girl. Their personalities seemed very similar, especially when Starbuck was fighting and flying. Anyone else get that?

I realized I trail off a little towards the end, but I want to watch more Battlestar, so more thoughts in a few hours.

Crake: The Ultimate Environmentalist?

amphiskios — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:19:36 +0000

Crake succeeded in saving the environment of Earth. By killing all humans and replacing them with a species specifically designed not to get out of control and expand further than sufficiency, Crake did the best possible thing he could for the environment. Obviously, there are only a few humans who would agree that extinction and replacement is the way to save the earth, but one cannot deny that in terms of effectiveness of the measure, Crake's plan was the best. Humans in any form do not have the restraint to refrain from expanding to the point where they harm the environment, according to Crake, and this could never change. The solution to the problem is surprisingly similar to several voluntary extinction programs that believe that humans should allow themselves to die off. Few are advocating killing everyone off, but that is what happens when you get a mad scientist. Crakers as a species are also a great environmentally conscious race because of their eating habits. They are completely vegetarian so they do not have to kill off any animals. They eat parts of plants that are hard to digest and so they don't have to farm food for themselves the same way humans do, and they do not cook food so they do not have to make large fires and cooking methods in order to eat. This makes Crakers 'in tune" with nature. Thus, Crake was the ultimate Environmentalist.

Pattern Recognition

amphiskios — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:16:42 +0000

Pattern Recognition Science Fiction?

I don't think so. Of course Science Fiction is already a fairly ill defined genre. However, I would define Science fiction as having a What if? Statement that is explored in the novel. For example, The Left Hand of Darkness asked what if there was a planet of androgynies. Neuromancer asked what if there were a world wide information network and AIs in habiting it. Pattern Recognition doesn't make any such supposition to me. It seems like a perfectly acceptable story that could really happen in real life, and for me that means that it is just fiction. Everything in Pattern Recognition was based in reality in a way that Science Fiction doesn't seem to be. The most far fetched thing was Cayce's allergy to trademarks and brands, but as a psychosomatic disorder, it seems like it could happen. The rampant use of email can be used as an example of science in the fiction, but it appears just like normal life. Had this book been set 10-15 years ago, I could see email being as ubiquitous as it is in the novel as a argument for science fiction, but because people actually use email as often as it is used in the book it no longer seems out of the ordinary. Meeting people from forums is also old hat. The story of people meeting online, dating, and then falling in love and marrying is now a common place story. Pattern Recognition is a good book, but I can't consider it science fiction.

Time Travel in Midnight Robber?

amphiskios — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:43:39 +0000

After finishing Midnight Robber, I got to thinking. There is a lot of talk about how New Half-Way Tree is in a different dimension. What if instead it was in a different time? I don't know exactly what that adds to the work, but it seems to fit better, and explain current Touissant more fully.
I started thinking about time travel instead of dimensional travel when I first read about the shift pods. While fairly stock, they made it clear that they were not really moving through space. The explanation was that they moved through dimensions, but it seemed far easier to explain that they were moving back in time. I think that New Half-Way Tree is Touissant, but back in time a few hundred years. This makes it more obvious why the myths of the Midnight Robber and Robber Queen spread so easily. They could easily have been already passed on to the people of Touissant when they arrived, and found there way into myth enough that eventually Tan-Tan had the motivation to perform acts of legend. This theory also explains why many of the larger animals are extinct on Touissant, and the Mako Jumbie bird had been domesticated. There is plenty of time to domesticate the bird if New Half-Way Tree is set a few hundred years back. It also explains the absence of the Douen, because they could have been eradicated by the humans of New Half-Way Tree before the colony ships ever arrived, relegating them to myths before the culture of Touissant could exert itself.
However, this explanation is slightly debunked by Hopkinson's own narrative. She does talk about the other dimension a lot throughout the work. Since this is mostly humans talking, there is no problem with just explaining it as human ignorance. However, Hopkinson also talks about Grammy Nanny searching through the dimensions to find Tan-Tan, a description that wouldn't make as much sense if New Half-Way Tree was just back in time. The time difference though does explain why Grammy Nanny cannot affect anything that happens on New Half-Way tree. Grammy Nanny would not be able to affect anything before she was created. This would make the scene with the shift pods more believable too, because the eshu kept talking to Tan-Tan for a reasonable length of time while in the shift pod. If the shift pod was traveling back in time, then the eshu would have a reasonable amount of time before the pod went to a time before it was created.
Still, in the end, time travel doesn't seem all that likely. There is only one reason why Hopkinson would state that it was dimensional travel instead of time travel; to show an interesting recursive myth creation that would not add all that much to the story, and create weird paradoxes. If the myths that Tan-Tan was told were about her it would create a lot of pre-determinism that doesn't really fit into the story. I like to think that the time travel works, but it doesn't add enough to the story to justify me shoehorning it into Hopkinson's work.

Snow Crash vs Jennifer Government

amphiskios — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:12:08 +0000

Both Snow Crash and Jennifer Government postulate a fairly dystopian future. Snow Crash is very much science fiction, while Jennifer Government is merely fiction, and has nothing really scientific about it. However, both overlap in their portrayals of business, corporations and government in the future.
In Snow Crash, large franchises have all the power. These units are like nation-states, corporations, and gangs all in one. For instance, there is the Mafia, which alongside its goons and guns for hire, run a large and successful pizza business. There is the Hong Kong franchise, New South Africa, and among others, the Government franchise. The government has turned into a for-profit business like the rest of these entities. All of these entities can battle it out with the minimum of interference by any other organization, because the government doesn't work the same way as it used to. Security must be handled by private firms, and all roads and mail are covered by private firms. It is a darker place if one wants some government supports in their lives. Jennifer Government postulates the same sort of future, with a few twists that's make it interesting to the Snow Crash future. Jennifer Government is set in a world where corporations run everything. The government has been nearly disbanded, and has only one job now. The government tracks down criminals and catches them. The catch is that the victim must pay the government to actually perform this service, because after taxes were abolished, the government needed some form of revenue. The rest of the world, except for socialist Europe, is under the sway of anarcho-capitalism, which sounds very similar to the economic model in Snow Crash. Roads are built by private companies, and are all toll roads. That fact is hinted at in Snow Crash but never said right out. Companies ally themselves together, and hire private security to keep their Corporations secure. On one side the corporations hire The Police, a private security company descended from the real police. This company has the power to throw people in jail that it was hired to arrest, just like in Snow Crash when Y.T. is caught in the burbclave. On the other side is the NRA, which has evolved from its status to become a paramilitary organization that trains commandos for secret missions for its clients. It has evolved into a company, just like The Mafia does in Snow Crash.
Jennifer Government's premise is a dreary one. Jennifer Government takes the anarcho-capitalism that is in Snow Crash and drives it to the next level. War in the world of Jennifer Government means business. And the firms that are hired have surface to air missiles, tanks and other modern tech. And they fight huge clashes between corporations. No one says anything because it isn't any of their business. In Snow Crash, the world has not quite progressed to that. The maneuvers between corporations tend to be lighter. They are still afraid to come out into the very open. This would have changed with Rife's victory, but luckily (for some people) that crisis was averted. But it is oh so easy to tell how much worse it could be for people if the world in Jennifer Government was the more similar to the world in Snow Crash.

Camera and utilisation in Slow River

amphiskios — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:28:06 +0000

In any world where identity is important, the camera is going to be a focal point of observation. In Slow River, in response to Tok's "Find something," an admonishment to keep Lore sane with the parents she has, Lore acquires a camera and edit board. Lore's filmography becomes a very important part of the book. It shows not only the fluidity of identity, but shows first how perception of identity can change things. "Lore's first projects are wish fulfillment," and are of her parents happy together. This scene is the first that really spells out how poor her parent's relationship is. Then she moves on to porn with her parents faces on the bodies. From a very early age, she has sexualized the camera and the things she looks through it to see. The identity through the camera becomes desensitized, and not as real. This is one of the reasons that lead to the creation of porn with Lore's movie making skill. Because her parents never touch, even the touch of porn seems better than no touch at all.
Shifting forward chronologically, Lore's camera becomes a defense mechanism. She carries it around with her all the time, and avoids both her mother and father's presences. Her father stops taking her fishing, and her mother stops trying to talk business with her. This is when a mutable object defines her identity. Lore's identity is defined through her camera, which allows anything seen through its lens to be changed. This doesn't allow for a strong sense of identity by lore. This is also the period of her life where Lore starts dying her hair, another change to her identity that the camera led to. The identity and defense mechanism comes to a head at Spanner's home. During the sex orgy brought about by the drug, Lore is shielded from the action only by her camera. That is when she realizes that the camera is not truly a shield. She is still affected by her actions, even years later. While Ruth nominally gave her permission, Ruth was still hurt by her act, which led to a break down in their relationship anyway. Even with the identities changed on the other side of the camera, people can still be hurt in their true selves.
The last and most important camera scene is the creation of the charity ad. It creates a huge problem first off, because the equipment is so expensive. It seems to say that it is extremely difficult to try to perceive things differently than they are. Spanner gets all of her limbs forcibly dislocated and relocated to try to get the money for the equipment. That just says another thing about the false identity that the camera can create. It shows how much Spanner is reaching and trying for that false identity. As this stage of the novel however, Lore is not making nearly the effort to try to get the equipment for the falsehood. She has matured in enough ways that she no longer feels the need to hunt out the material to achieve falsehoods. The charity ad itself is a large falsehood. Starting with a false charity, where all the money goes to Spanner and Lore, and then being a false advertisement, in place of the show because the rest of the commercial space was filled, to being about a problem which, while real, was not personified by the person used to portray it. Lore was trying to show the plight of the person born before 1960. Her subject however, Tom, was fully integrated into his world and had no trouble at all living in it. In fact, he quite enjoyed it. The camera had to create a complete falsehood to be successful. Then, when the ad was given to Tom along with his share of the cut, he did not watch it. Instead he started on at the news with his impossibly clear eyes, full of truth, and did not watch the falsehood. That was the last straw, and helped Lore to finally start to realize her true identity, and not an identity created through any kind of construction or lens.

Detail in Delany's world

amphiskios — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:27:25 +0000

The best part about Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is the immense amount of detail he puts into his world. In the introductory passage about Rat Korga, the amount of back-story in the world is simply incredible. At first, the novel merely hints at interesting events, polar research stations, and the q-plague. But when Korga is bought illegally and hooked up to General Information, the amount of work Delany has put into his world really shows. Korga is soon asked what the four largest geosectors on the world are. He answers perfectly, with four names that actually sound like they fit into the world he is on. Next, the four smallest. And yet again, Korga answers with names that fit into the world. "Hebel-E" is my favorite, because it suggests something behind that strange hyphenated E at the end of the word. The four names weren't merely random made up words; they seem to have some though behind them. That really helps Delany's world come to life. Next come the books that Korga reads. He reads over 50 books, and to most authors that would be enough to say. Delany on the other hand names almost all of them, and names that seem to make sense for the planet they live on. Two are named a variant of sand, one after wind. Each of the books has some sort of blurb given about it as Korga assimilates its text. Here the sheer though Delany puts into his back story is amazing. Not only does each novel fully realize itself, it also makes references to other authors and novels that Korga read, in a way that doesn't seem contrived. When these books that Korga read fit together, they bring forth a life on the world that seems far stronger than that seen through the rat so far. Delany is a master at giving hints of back-story, which fit in well with the story and keep the work entertaining. Later on, he uses GI and Vondramach to do the same thing, fill in holes of information with interesting tidbits. In the process he creates a very vibrant world.

Reading response

amphiskios — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:20:26 +0000

Reading response

Octavia Butler's trilogy started with a bang, and ended with a whimper. The last part of imago seemed to me to be the most boring part of any of her books. It also had the most Deus ex machina. Of course the series is supposed to be SF, but most scenes were well explained. It was never satisfactorily resolved how all of a sudden there was a fertile colony of humans around. Somehow someone was raped and found to be fertile, but apparently she was the only one. And that these fertile resisters had a hidden location where both other resisters and the oankali could not find them rang false. The resisters had been searching pretty closely for other humans to raid, and they knew that people in hard to reach spots would be the most likely to be fertile, the resister raiders should have found the fertile village long ago. There is a better reason why the oankali didn't know about the village, because they never actively searched out resister villages so long as they left others alone.

That leads me to my main point. Octavia Butler's work seems to be filled with Deus ex machina. While those scenes in imago were the most obvious parts, looking back through the work, there are many scenes where something happens just so that it will work out later. Now of course, writers are allowed to do this to make their story turn out the way they want to, but there seemed to be too many coincidences which made the story slightly less believable. In imago, meeting humans only a few days out of Lo was one such scene. In Adulthood Rights, Akin being captured was another. In fact, all of Akin was a coincidence. Why were males so much harder to create than females never seemed accurately explained, and why Akin was the only one also seemed strange? It seemed as if Butler wanted a hero who was unique and powerful to maintain interest, and so a normal rank and file oankali would not do, only a one of a kind construct. Then, it turned out that he was to speak for the human race after being trained by an akjai ooloi. It didn't seem like any other oankali received that privilege, but Akin did. In the first work, there were also scenes which didn't ring true. Almost all violent reactions to Lillith seemed strange to me. These reactions appear constructed with second glances, because they don't seem to have any thought process behind them. They were made to further the story rather than anything else.

Octavia Butler uses a lot of Deus Ex Machina to further the story, at least in my opinion. Used in small doses, this can be helpful, but in too many parts of her story, it makes it ring false.

Somthing I was thinking about

amphiskios — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:10:11 +0000

Blag!

Sometime I wish SF could be a little more realistic. No, not the actual science. It's either realistic or not, but I can usually get over that. What I mean is that no one ever does anything boring in SF. It would be a nice change of pace. I mean, I have been up to my neck in work for the past two weeks. But there has never been anything like that facing any of the main characters in most SF. Never does there seem to be boring large amounts of work, or boring scenes. The closest you get in Lilith's Brood is where she is being trained to learn the skills she needs. Even then though, Octavia butler skips past most of those parts. While it helps maintain the intensity of the work and keep it flowing, I think it also divorces us from what Lilith actually went through. Without even one scene in which Lillith is being trained, it is hard to form any empathy about her training, and the need to train the other humans in those same skills. The only author in SF that I can think of who actually pulls boredom off is Vernor Vinge in his novel Deepness in the Sky. There is a scene in that book during a long space flight, and the author manages to convey the boredom by showing a few of the mundane tasks undertaken by the protagonist, while still keeping the book moving along because the tasks were useful. In fact, the scene is a welcome respite from action. Lilith never seems to ever pause in her action, and it makes a few scenes harder to relate to. Especially after she was first awakened, it seemed as if she was always doing something. Though it was described later as a very boring and trying time, while she was experiencing it, the reader only got the slightest intimation of hardship. This made it harder later on to really emphasize with Lilith. And that was a nice break from all the work I have been doing.

Gender Pronouns in The Left Hand of Darkness

amphiskios — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:07:05 +0000

Throughout her novel, Ursula LeGuin mainly uses the masculine set of pronouns, he and him. This seems strange for a novel set on winter, an androgyne world. Why did LeGuin not create her own set of gender pronouns for use in the novel? Couldn't the use of such words lessen the bias that the reader had to a specific gender? LeGuin had many reasons for her choice of pronouns, and use of he as the main pronoun helps rather than hurts the book.

On reason for the use of he instead of she is to counteract her natural bias. The left hand of darkness was one of LeGuin's first books. Her skills as a writer had not matured yet, so, writing characters as a specific gender was difficult. Just as in science fiction written by men with women heroines, science fiction about men written by women tends to trivialize the parts, an characterize them as stereotypes rather than characters in their own right. Worse than that, especially with characters written in first person, they may take on some of the traits of the writer. This leads to male characters appearing female. In the first chapter, Genly appears female, because that was how he seemed written. The use of male pronouns however, quickly disabused me of that notion and allowed me to think him equal, and a more gender balanced character. Estraven, written as an androgyne, appeared completely male in the first part of the book. This was helped by the usage of the male pronouns whenever referring to him. However, when LeGuin started writing Estraven with first person narrative, he seemed more feminine. This was mostly because he was written by LeGuin, whose traits seeped into her writing.

Had LeGuin felt it necessary to invent a set of gender neutral pronouns, she would have. She invented so many terms for use in the novel hat a few more would have been completely acceptable, and maybe even useful. For instance, she coined the terms ansible, a term still in use today, Ekumen, and the days weeks and months of her fictional cultures. The creation of a few gender unspecific pronouns would not have been difficult. LeGuin had created most of her invented terms in Gethenian languages. There were gender unspecific terms in those languages, so she could easily have pulled them out and stated that they were now used in English too. But Genly never uses that sort of pronoun. Instead he uses he or LeGuin writing uses he. This is to draw attention to something specific about Homo sapiens, current life on earth. Faced with a gender that is impossible to understand normally, the human response is not to categorize it as something new, but rather to try to pigeonhole it into something old that already exists. Throughout the first part of the novel, Genly categorizes anyone he meets into a gender. He has a landlady, the men in the government are well, men, and so on. He is categorizing something that really should not be categorized in that way. LeGuin is pointing out a fallacy in the human condition when she categorizes her androgyne characters with the pronoun he.

Of course, even with all her reasons, the use of he throughout LeGuin's novel can lead to complications. The novel has not always been interpreted as a feminist novel, even though igender equality is on of its main tenets. In her novel Winter's King, she originally used he in instance of gender pronoun. Later, she switched it to she in every case for dome parity. Overall though, LeGuin did a good job of using gender pronouns in her work.

Emotions of Neuromancer

amphiskios — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:49:39 +0000

Reading response to Neuromancer

Neuromancer. How did it make me feel? I felt alternatively disgusted and thrilled. I felt interested, and bored. Some things seemed exotic and some things seemed far too normal. The book seemed a paradox of extremes at times.

Neuromancer's main character is very complicated. At the start of the novel he is just like any other druggie with a life that's falling apart. I didn't want anything to do with him, and barely felt any sympathy, as I saw how ratty and paranoid he was. When he rented a weapon by the hour to make him feel safer, that is when I knew that he has hit rock bottom. Someone paranoid enough to rent a gun like that is not right in the head. What could he have done with it? Had anyone actually wanted to kill him, hey would have just done it. And Had Case actually killed one or more of the hired guns he thought were after him, he would have been in worse shape, because more would have been sent, this time with orders to make his death very painful. Case wasn't only a druggie though. At points in the book, he was an impressive cyberspace cowboy. He did computer/things that I can't even imagine. He hacked things like they were nothing, though really complicated hacking just gave him pause enough to make him seem more impressive, because he had to fight over an obstacle. His last cyberspace battle, with Straylight's ice and protection, was no harder than anything else he had done in the novel, and almost easier. The only difference was that it took a fair amount of time, which made us able to emotionally connect with his conquest. But in the end, I felt disgusted again. Case learned almost nothing from his experiences, and an argument can be made that he learned absolutely nothing. He replaced his liver and pancreas so that he could become a druggie again, got a cheap woman, and went back to doing cheap illegal labor. He was not someone I look up to, and I was sad that his end was so ignominious.

Molly had her contradictions too. She was thrilling, a street samurai with her nails, her heightened reflexes and her exotic glasses. She seemed impressive from the first time that Case saw her and ran. She became Case's bodyguard and protector, and saved him from death a few times. All these things combined to make me more and more interested in her. She seemed so cool, so powerful, and then Case discovered her in a Freeside whorehouse. I was so disappointed. This amazing character that seemed so impressive had such inauspicious beginnings. The flaw (though you can't really call it a flaw) made her more human, and less of a street samurai. She came back down to earth for me, and at times I was bored with her. She was nothing more than a common whore. And now, even as a street samurai, I saw her in a different light. She was still selling her body for money; just now she was doing it slightly differently. That put a different spin on her employment, and I was disappointed.

Neuromancer was an awesome look at a dystopian future. And while I have a second, I'd like to say something about Blade Runner. (Pardon the non sequiter) That movie made absolutely no sense. If I had not gotten so much more background from reading the book, I don't know if I would have gotten it. What the hell was up with the naked robot with a dove in the end!? Neuromancer had many emotions all rolled up into one, which is part of the reason it was such an interesting book. But it was also part of the reason that I disliked some of the characters more than I thought I would.

Some thoughts on Neuromancer, more.

amphiskios — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:47:35 +0000

It took about two-three chapters, but I realized that I had already read Neuromancer before. I finished the book, and I enjoyed it. Both the first and second readings were enjoyable. But one of the things most enjoyable to me was just like in Starship Troopers, and a number of other great Sci-Fi books, things happen behind the novel that prop it up. Never is it said explicitly in the novel that there was a World War, or some kind of culmination of the cold war. I inferred that from the Screaming Fist incident with Corto that at least some sort of conflict occurred. Clearly the world is a much different place than otherwise it should be. This kind of thing makes me enjoy a novel more, because I can imagine a sequence of events that could lead to the events of the novel. The extension of BosWash into BAMA, the sprawl, isn't even that hard to imagine, and does seem to be the way the megalopolis is headed. Lax laws in space could lead to something along the lines of Freeside, where laws can be taken on by the owners rather than some sort of governmental entity. This is sort of a segue, but it also reminded me of The Postman. The Postman is one of my favorite books of all time, and also used allusion to great advantage. Never does on find out what exactly happened to cause the post-apocalyptic world that the protagonist finds himself in, or what the rest of the world looks like. For all the reader knows, it could be flourishing. But it doesn't make that large of difference because the story does not involve anything out. Both, or even all three stories, decide to focus on one person and leave out a lot of information that would be informative, but not necessary to the story. It lets the reader fill in the holes. That is my favorite kind of book.

Response to Starship Troopers

amphiskios — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:05:47 +0000

Response To Heinlein's Starship Troopers

I have always like Sci-Fi. I don't know why I did originally, it was just something my mother got out of the library, and I would read it, having no other choice of something to read. As I got older though, I grew pickier about my sci-fi. I grew away from Space Westerns, and started liking more "speculative fiction." Of course that didn't mean that I didn't still enjoy Space Westerns, just that I thought of them more as fluff. That's why I enjoy Starship Troopers so much. Not only is it such a good piece of speculative fiction, specifically with its all volunteer army, power suits, and a voting populace completely consisting of veterans, but it also has a number of scenes that make my inner fan boy squeal with delight. The first scene about destroying property on the Skinny planet makes for a great read about a "bad ass marine." More importantly to our class, was the scene at the end of the Skinny planet on pages 17-20. While the mobile infantry are taking care of their own, up in the sky, a woman pilot makes extremely difficult computations on the fly and manages to save their retrieval boat, even though it launched late.
Situations like this show Heinlein's respect for women in the context of a world that draws on the 1950s. Women make the best pilots, Heinlein says. They have better reflexes and are able to make the snap decisions that lead to becoming good pilots. Women have a very important role in the novel. The Mobile Infantry would be nothing without the ships that brought them to their combats, and this is alluded to throughout the novel. The navy, and the women, are working constantly on the ship, bringing Mobile Infantry men to their battles, where they fight for only the slightest amount of time, at least in comparison with the amount of time they spend on the ship. There is the argument that the women pilots do not fight, which is essential in a male dominated society to gain respect, but every scene with a female captain involves the mobile infantry paying her the utmost respect. The Navy also seems to do more than the Army. While it almost falls under the radar, the story tells about how the Navy takes out far more bugs than the Army with their planet smashing guns. In fact, the Mobile Infantry seems almost redundant with the weaponry that Heinlein says the Navy has. The ability to rip a planet into pieces is far more powerful than the specialized surgical strikes that the men of the Mobile Infantry have. Also, the job is almost as dangerous for the women pilots, as seen when two ships crash and kill all women Navy crew members. So in conclusion, even though women can be seen as "bus drivers", which is a relic of the 1950s time period, they are exalted bus drivers, ones that command most of the power. In his own way, Heinlein gives women more power to women than men.

Test, and some thoughts.

amphiskios — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:14:57 +0000

DOES THIS WORK?

Kidding. I just finished Starship Troopers, and was favorably impressed compared to the movie. All I had remembered from the movie was a basic action movie set in space. The book was clearly far deeper.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a large amount of race and gender interplay in Starship Troopers. Females being better pilots stood out from the beginning, and then there were numerous references to women as part of the reason why the M. I. fought. Interesting.

More to come later?