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I'm waiting for the third part of the Complete Slammers to come out before I buy them all, because I know what will happen the instant I have them on my 505, and what will happen is not compatible with accomplishing anything more productive than eating what is put in front of me, and tending to the consequences of that eating.
Yeah, there's a lot that's unpleasant in the Slammers books, but it's different from the Kildara books. I think the big difference is in not having a viewpoint character that pretty much exults in being a sick %#$@. Partly, I suppose, it's because the various Slammers stories are less tightly connected, rather than being the story of a single individual's experiences and actions. Another part is that the characters often have a sense that what they're involved with is a tragedy and a waste, but it's happening, and they're there, and it's the kind of job they're good at. One comes away with the feeling that (nearly) everyone, even Colonel Hammer, would prefer to live in a world that had no work for them, but that's not how it is, so they'll do their job. (I'm not even going to try to get Steuben into this) Mike Harmon enjoys what he does -- from what I've read to this point, he wouldn't have it any other way -- and his actions, and more important his lifestyle, are presented as desirable, even ideal.
Even in the Posleen books, I don't see the same kind of depth that Drake brings to his writing. It's all black and white, good guys versus bad guys (and not even nuanced bad guys; one-dimensional bad guys who want to eat us). Are the Slammers the good guys or the bad guys? It depends on who you ask. There's no ambiguity in the Posleen War. We win, or we get eaten. I don't like to use the term "military porn" or its variants because they have been so often directed against the things that I enjoy, but the way Ringo describes weapons in particular seems to incline that way. To Drake, a tribarrel is a tool; to Ringo, a SHEVA is a lover. Different generations, I suppose, and more than that, the difference between the grimness of Vietnam and the nationalism of the Reagan years.
Another difference is in the authors' attitudes. Going back to what I said earlier about the dogmatic versus the pragmatic, Drake impresses me as being one of the pragmatic. Like the Slammers, he got any illusions burned out of him a long time ago. Ringo is -- and again, I'm getting this from his writing and his commentaries on his writing, not from knowing him personally -- is dogmatic. I can't think of a character in his stories who disagrees with the viewpoint characters' ideology who is not a two-dimensional straw man (I guess that would be sort of a woven mat?). They only exist so that Ringo, speaking through his POV characters, can discredit their beliefs -- which are generally exaggerated and distorted mockeries of real-world ideas he thinks are wrong. Of the two of them, I can easily see Drake having a reasoned discussion with someone whose ideology he disagrees with, while it seems to me that Ringo would just chant "USA! USA!" any time the other person tried to speak.
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