OFF: Starship Troopers (was Classic Rock)

[Hardman DK]

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, J. Michael Looney wrote:

> 1) The politics, at least in the book IS the point of the book.
> 2) The Makers of the movie didn't like Heinlein's views, so they made it,
> well, almost evil.  If you have not read the book, you WILL get the wrong
> idea about the concepts the R.A.H was trying to get across.

Perhaps you have a different perspective if you've read the book, but I
didn't think the movie showed the government as evil - rather the movie
seemed ambivalent on this score.

Maybe I should read the book, but the only other Heinlein novel I ever
tried to read (The Number of the Beast) I had to abandon after the 1st
chapter. I'm afraid I found it risible and badly-written.

> Moorcock,at least in my view, has trouble with 2 things.
> 1) The concept that the "The Military" can be a honorable calling for a
> honorable man.

As an anarchist, Moorcock is basically opposed to the state and its
machinery. But I don't think he's a pacifist; hence his references to the
Nestor Makhno's anarchist army in the Russian civil war.

2) That it is possible to, at the same time, support the concept of the
rights of the individual AND the duty of the individual to the group as a
whole.

The anarchist perspective would say that because states are not democratic
people need feel no duty to them. But you can have duties to genuinely
democratic groups.

But I don't want to get into a discussion about whether these views, or
Heinlein's, or whoever's, are right or reasonable!!

Dave

"History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant,
brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools"
(Ambrose Bierce)
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David Hardman                           "When your back's against the
HCI Design Centre                        wall, you've got to turn round
School of Informatics                    and march forward!"
City University
Northampton Square                       John Major, ex-Prime Minister
London EC1V 0HB

Phone: +44 0171 477 8152
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E-mail: D.K.Hardman at city.ac.uk
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