Friday Night Update
I was going to blog on "Hearts of Darkness" which I watched last week, but in the meantime I picked up the copy of "Stranger in a Strange Land" that's been drifting around the puter room for the last few years (I think Spud left it here). The evening was late, but hadn't yet cooled off enough for comfortable snoozing so I started reading.
The first half was just as I remembered it from back in the late sixties: pure corn. The cloyingly cutsie-wootsie banter; the sitcom sterility of Heinlein's idea of paradise in the Poconos; the painfully crafted innocent nobility; the odd (even for 1961) featherheadedness and dependence on men of the womenfolk. For all that, the chase plot was fun, with Michael saving the day and Jubal twisting the tails of the Powers That Be. Then we get to the second half.
Even when I was a brainless teenager I found the "Church of All Worlds, Inc." segment foolish and tiresome, but reading it now also brings a good whiff of the loathsome stench of Jonestown, the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, etc with it. Thirty-some years ago I finished the book just to see how it turned out. Didn't bother this time.
I'm now tackling "Starship Troopers," a "Controversial Classic of Military Adventure." Hmm. I'm two thirds of the way thru it and still waiting patiently for a smidgen of either controversy or adventure. The central figure, "Johnny," is a nullity; he has no personality, no inner life, no imagination, no intellect, no relationships, no desires, no vices, no nothing. The story would be better without him, I think, except that Heinlein needs him hanging around to hear (or overhear) steaming heaps of pompous sermonizing from his betters.
The book does clear up some confusion that I had about the wrenchingly godawful Verhoeven movie version: Why, oh why would an interstellar military force consist solely of footslogging infantry? Why no tactical or strategic air cover, tanks, artillery, mortars, armored ground transport, etc? You know, all the basic battle-deciding military hardware that might keep those poorly armed and virtually defenseless troops from getting chopped to ribbons by twenty foot tall bugs every single time they went into combat.
In the book, the troops individually *are* all of those things each in their own personal two-ton-armored-jumping-flying-grenade-projecting-flame-throwing-rocket-launching suit complete with low-yield nukes. I guess Verhoeven decided to leave out the one thing that would have made the battle sequences in the movie at least mildly rational because, having already made "Robocop," he didn't want to be tagged in Hollywood as "That Robot Suit Director."
More later, if and when I finish the book.
The first half was just as I remembered it from back in the late sixties: pure corn. The cloyingly cutsie-wootsie banter; the sitcom sterility of Heinlein's idea of paradise in the Poconos; the painfully crafted innocent nobility; the odd (even for 1961) featherheadedness and dependence on men of the womenfolk. For all that, the chase plot was fun, with Michael saving the day and Jubal twisting the tails of the Powers That Be. Then we get to the second half.
Even when I was a brainless teenager I found the "Church of All Worlds, Inc." segment foolish and tiresome, but reading it now also brings a good whiff of the loathsome stench of Jonestown, the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, etc with it. Thirty-some years ago I finished the book just to see how it turned out. Didn't bother this time.
I'm now tackling "Starship Troopers," a "Controversial Classic of Military Adventure." Hmm. I'm two thirds of the way thru it and still waiting patiently for a smidgen of either controversy or adventure. The central figure, "Johnny," is a nullity; he has no personality, no inner life, no imagination, no intellect, no relationships, no desires, no vices, no nothing. The story would be better without him, I think, except that Heinlein needs him hanging around to hear (or overhear) steaming heaps of pompous sermonizing from his betters.
The book does clear up some confusion that I had about the wrenchingly godawful Verhoeven movie version: Why, oh why would an interstellar military force consist solely of footslogging infantry? Why no tactical or strategic air cover, tanks, artillery, mortars, armored ground transport, etc? You know, all the basic battle-deciding military hardware that might keep those poorly armed and virtually defenseless troops from getting chopped to ribbons by twenty foot tall bugs every single time they went into combat.
In the book, the troops individually *are* all of those things each in their own personal two-ton-armored-jumping-flying-grenade-projecting-flame-throwing-rocket-launching suit complete with low-yield nukes. I guess Verhoeven decided to leave out the one thing that would have made the battle sequences in the movie at least mildly rational because, having already made "Robocop," he didn't want to be tagged in Hollywood as "That Robot Suit Director."
More later, if and when I finish the book.
posted by Goyo at 7/21/2006 03:41:00 PM
2 Comments:
"I feel sorry for people that don't drink. They wake up every morning and know that's the best they're going to feel all day."
Frank Sinatra
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-- we know........
PS. I recommend "Farnham's Freehold" as an amusing read
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