Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Ha. Read some scifi by the Scottish Authors. Banks, Gibson, MacLeod, Stross...
Not to mention Richard Morgan, too, northern UK but not Scottish.
Left. Massively, massively left. Start MacLeod with The Cassini Division, by the way, not The Star Fraction. (Which was published first, but...it's better this way, trust me)
And the best thing about Starship Troopers the movie? The armour has been used in a lot of much better TV series and films, like Firefly  |
I said I gave up science-fiction early on. I gave it up when my politics were still forming and I discovered much more interesting books that did not rely on space-gimmicry or revel in machine fetishism and glorifying war (again an impression, not the Gospel truth). The tropes of the genre (as most genres) stopped interesting me after puberty, the settings hold no interest and for the most part I find the writing to be pedestrian at best (I haven't read everything, so no, I can't say for everything. But what I have read I can quite honestly say the writing has been average).
Since then I've read Banks (met him too, he's an arse, which didn't help), Gibson (dense, pseudo-intellectual pulp), Stross (couldn't finish even half of a chapter) and the latest golden boy, Neal Stephenson (boring beyond any of his subject matter). I still like some of the more socially aware writers of the 60's such as Harry Harrison, Philip K. Dick, and I really love those writers who hover around the edges of Sci-Fi like J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. but beyond that it holds no interest to me as a reader, and especially not as a writer. Left or right wing, it all feels juvenile and outdated, especially the Baen stable of works, but I pretty much have the same reaction to all outright genre these days. Familiarity really does breed...well in my case, disinterest.
The Verhoeven approach is well documented both in written and filmed interviews. Here's the one where Verhoeven says:
"Robert Heinlein's book is on the edge of militarism and fascism. I believe that all things that happened in Starship Troopers.... is me and Numeier opposing Heinlien and his vision."
For the record, I don't like Starship Troopers, not even when it is watched with Verhoeven's intentions fully in mind.
The Starship Troopers stuff starts at 4:20 (but the whole interview is worth watching)