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Post by Tea Rex on Sept 3, 2017 11:32:05 GMT -5
Hey guys, I need recommendations for science fiction where the military is upended and/or proven to be shitty. Not Ender's Game.
My brother was bitching about the lack of sci fi of this nature, and reading through his list of have-reads, I told him to get out of the 70s/80s. However, when reading through my OWN list, I found that all the hard sci fi I've read has been either pro military or benign military. I had nothing to suggest!
Any suggestions for a book where the military is taken to task?
Thanks!
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Sept 3, 2017 12:44:45 GMT -5
Did your brother mention either The Forever War or The Word for World is Forest?
The first is Joe Haldeman's classic of screwed-up, long-distance (and long-term) interstellar warfare from a decidedly satirical and antiwar perspective (Haldeman, a Vietnam vet, was writing it partly as an explicit riposte to Heinlein's Starship Troopers). The second is Ursula LeGuin's Vietnam allegory set in the context of Earth interstellar colonization.
Haldeman's novel is a rightly reckoned classic (though probably dated in some ways; I haven't read it in years, but I'd be likelier than not to bet it doesn't read great from a gender perspective now). LeGuin's... it's cartoonish and preachy (I keep saying these things about works that came out years ago, but the last couple of years have made me wonder how "cartoonish" some of these flights of despair prove and whether that's even really the word), but there's something powerfully affecting in seeing such a brilliant writer (and a personal literary hero) reduced to that kind of thing through sheer indignation at what she read in and saw on the nightly news.
Both are admittedly from the early 70s; I don't read a lot of straight sci-fi (hardly any the last several years) so I might not be the best person to ask.
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Sept 3, 2017 13:38:22 GMT -5
Not quite anti-boots-on-the-ground military but Lem’s late works, in particular Fiasco and Peace on Earth, are in large part spoofs on strategic nuclear planning and the military tradition of American SF, with Fiasco being more tragic and Peace on Earth more comic. They are also Lem at his Lem-iest: Fiasco’s actually not particularly long, but it is very densely-packed with ideas and such. And Lem purposefully shies away from action—points that would be conventionally exciting in an American SF book or film (even something like 2001—like 2001 or even something like Star Trek it’s about an expedition to investigate an alien intelligence that goes…well, the title says it all, but even that doesn’t quite confer how wrong it really does go) are interrupted or purposefully made confusing. It’s very much in the tradition of humans-encountering-the-unknowable, with that extended towards self-knowledge since the main character doesn’t even know who he is (and neither does the audience). It’s great, it’s tragic, it still sticks with me, but it’s the absolute worst choice for a first Lem.
Peace on Earth is shorter and more straightforward in its satire, but even there the POV character’s had his corpus callosum cut so his two hemispheres are working separately for the whole book. It’s great, but Lem really got Lem-y at the end of his career.
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Post by Celebith on Sept 21, 2017 0:08:25 GMT -5
Hey guys, I need recommendations for science fiction where the military is upended and/or proven to be shitty. Not Ender's Game. My brother was bitching about the lack of sci fi of this nature, and reading through his list of have-reads, I told him to get out of the 70s/80s. However, when reading through my OWN list, I found that all the hard sci fi I've read has been either pro military or benign military. I had nothing to suggest! Any suggestions for a book where the military is taken to task? Thanks! Aliens is sorta anti-military. And anti-corporate. But the most competent military person in the movie is a Corporal and it's up to a plucky civilian to save the day. |
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Post by 50ft Eris on Sept 29, 2017 13:09:58 GMT -5
I would suggest Vernor Vinge. A Deepness In The Sky, The Peace War, and to a lesser degree Rainbow's End have somewhat anti-military themes. They're maybe a little more anti-authoritarianism than specifically anti-military but I feel like it's in the same vein.
Also check out Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series, written around the Vietnam era. They're pretty goofy, but thought provoking. Escape Velocity is the prequel and iirc quite explicitly anti-military.
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Post by haysoos on Oct 9, 2017 21:33:37 GMT -5
Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero is possibly just what you're looking for.
Bill gets conscripted into military service, goes through basic training, and gets posted to a pointless, menial and dangerous job with no explanations. By accident, he shoots down an enemy ship and is hailed as a hero. Sent to the galactic capital to receive a medal, he loses his city map and winds up declared AWOL. Forced to go underground, he joins an anarchist cell, who send him on a suicide mission. Things go downhill from there.
The original was written in 1965, and is very much informed by Vietnam.
In the late eighties, there were a series of sequels. The first couple are pretty good, including some savage satire of the then fashionable tropes of cyberpunk fiction. They get worse as Harry Harrison's involvement decreased.
There's also The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin. After finishing his service, a soldier and his comrades are offered a deal where they are frozen in suspended animation, and thawed if the country ever need soldiers again. They wind up waking up time and time again in a world they don't recognize, fighting for people they don't know, for reasons they don't understand.
There are definitely some similarities to Haldeman's Forever War, but some intriguing differences too, including a memorable sex scene between the hero and a (non-humanoid) alien. There's apparently an updated version available that upgrades the novel's technology, but I haven't read that version.
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Post by Jimmy James on Oct 10, 2017 12:26:17 GMT -5
I'm a big Vonnegut fan, and I feel like he could fit this mold. Slaughterhouse Five is a classic, though it might not meet strict definitions of hard SF. It might also be more anti-massacre than anti-military, if you want to split hairs. The Sirens of Titan was up for the Hugo award, but lost to Starship Troopers- I always thought it was an interesting juxtaposition, with Heinlein extolling the virtues of military service, and Vonnegut writing a book dealing with the stupidity and pointlessness of war. I think they had very different experiences, with Heinlein serving during peacetime and wokring as an engineer during WWII, versus Vonnegut living through the Battle of the Bulge and the bombing of Dresden.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2017 12:24:55 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Im pretty sure that is very anti military.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Oct 15, 2017 16:12:23 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Im pretty sure that is very anti military. I thought the book was supposed to be very pro-compulsory-military-service, and it was the movie that's supposed to be a satire? |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Oct 15, 2017 18:52:33 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Im pretty sure that is very anti military. I thought the book was supposed to be very pro-compulsory-military-service, and it was the movie that's supposed to be a satire? Yes, that's accurate. |
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Oct 15, 2017 21:04:29 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Im pretty sure that is very anti military. I thought the book was supposed to be very pro-compulsory-military-service, and it was the movie that's supposed to be a satire? Oh yes, the book's very pro-military and pretty didactically, unironically fascistic (even turned a former acquaintance of mine to being anti-universal suffrage because of the book's "you can only get citizenship if you're in the military" stance). I can see it being read as anti-military because it's also kind of over the top to the point of kitsch (how Verhoeven saw it, clearly), but pretty much all authoritarian propaganda seems to be kitschy by nature. |
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Post by Celebith on Oct 29, 2017 13:56:14 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Im pretty sure that is very anti military. I thought the book was supposed to be very pro-compulsory-military-service, and it was the movie that's supposed to be a satire? The book is pro civil-service, but it focuses on the military. |
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Post by Celebith on Oct 29, 2017 13:59:42 GMT -5
I thought the book was supposed to be very pro-compulsory-military-service, and it was the movie that's supposed to be a satire? Oh yes, the book's very pro-military and pretty didactically, unironically fascistic (even turned a former acquaintance of mine to being anti-universal suffrage because of the book's "you can only get citizenship if you're in the military" stance). I can see it being read as anti-military because it's also kind of over the top to the point of kitsch (how Verhoeven saw it, clearly), but pretty much all authoritarian propaganda seems to be kitschy by nature. That's not accurate, though. You could only vote if you volunteered for some sort of civil service, regardless of whether it was in the military, or postal service, or a trash collector. You could be a citizen regardless, though. His point was that if you wanted to have a say in how things ran, you should serve the country in some way. Heinlein's POV is definitely out of the great depression / WWII influenced 'we're all in this together' mentality, though. ETA: I'm definitely ending too many sentences with though, tho. |
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Nov 2, 2017 9:36:24 GMT -5
Ernest Cline's new novel is apparently very critical of the military.
Not that I'm encouraging you to read an Ernest Cline novel, mind you.
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