Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobytwo  Well, okay. Deep breath...
with regard to the brutal outlook of the ST world, I'd refer to the various flashback lesson scenes, as well as the one where Rico undergoes officer training. In all of them, as far as I recall, the message is hammered home that the old world (ie ours) got soft and weak and hence a revolution was needed (which started with a wave of lynchings). There is a long speech about training a puppy, which has a strong element of "spare the rod, spoil the child" to it. This may be just my own take on this, but I felt that the ST lecturers were rather pleased with themselves about this. I can't help but feel that anyone who dismisses modern democracy, communism and several other world-shaking ideas not just as wrong but as self-evident stupidity is getting a bit above themself. Perhaps Rico just got rather arrogant lecturers.
The whole "rub the puppy's nose in it" - fine for dogs - mentality is applied to humans, and on top of that there is the willingness of the state to beat its citizens in public. I would call that brutal, no matter how wise or logical it may be in policy terms.
As regards my last sentence, about the underdogs, I ought to have clarified what I meant. The ST society is shaped so that it divides people into two groups: voter/veterans and non-voters. So, if the only people who can vote are veterans, only veterans can change society through peaceful means. Surely this means that non-veterans have to hope that the veterans don't start to think of themselves as better and vote in a two-tier society in which civilian non-voters are treated worse than veterans. Were this to happen the civilians would have no protection.
I suspect that the voters would sooner or later start to see the civilian non-voters as cowards without the guts to stand up for themselves, and hence less deserving of protection. In this way the ST world over-values military service - or perhaps over-rewards it. Given that the book is otherwise quite cynical about human motives, I am surprised that this isn't taken into account.
Phew, my brain hurts. RAH can certainly get you thinking. |
Thats why he is my favorit SF writer. Sure you dont agree every view of his specially political ideas but while i was reading his books my brain was in overdrive thinking about the interesting ideas he has.
When i want a social or a Hard SF that will make you think i go for one of his books.
In Starship Troopers for example when they were talking about the juvies problem with the gangs etc i was thinking about how current that topic was seeing as that is still a problem. Specially over here where the law is too nice to teens unlike in US for example.