Quote of the day

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

Rex Stout

Review: Starship Troopers

Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) is in some ways a very easy or a very hard novel to review, depending on how you approach it.  On the one hand, it is an incredibly simple story.  Juan Rico, fresh out of high school, joins the army of the future, goes to boot camp, gets promoted, goes to officer training school, and gets promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.  The end.  


Okay, but what about the plot?  The human drama?  The characters?  The conflict?  Sorry, but that is the plot.  As to the rest, there isn't any.  There is no drama, the main character never grows and we learn nothing about him, the other characters are all the same character with different names and ranks, and there is no conflict.  As Alexi Panshin says in his analysis of the book:

Starship Troopers is in no way an account of human problems or character development.  There is no sustained human conflict.  The story is the account of the making of a soldier–or, rather, a marine–and nothing more.  The narrator goes in as a boot and emerges a lieutenant, and that is all.

Unlike Heinlein's earlier novels, Starship Troopers is a very hard read.  Nothing at all happens, but that nothing is stuffed with various incidents and minutiae about military life that fill up the pages like bran.  You could chop out whole sections of the book, add in linking text, and no one would ever know the difference.  It is, in Panshin's words, a recruiting film script.  There is no plot, no characters, but there is a lot of extolling the glorious life of being a soldier and the excitement of war.   


Curiously, for such a thin book, Starship Troopers is one of Heinlein's most influential and controversial.   And it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  It has to do with the background material.  In other words, this is a book that for over half a century has had critics arguing about the costumes and backdrop rather than the play.


First off, there is the power armour; a battle suit that is essentially a walking tank that gives a man the strength of Hercules.  It's a neat little invention and one that has influenced science fiction up to the present day, but it's relevance to the plot?  Nil.  It's interesting, but it plays no more part in plot or character development than a pair of boots.  This can't be due to lack of imagination when you consider that his previous book, Have Spacesuit–Will Travel involved a teenager developing such a close relationship with the motor car spacesuit that he was restoring that it started talking to him.


Then there's the background of the story.  Starship Troopers is set in a future where only those who have completed two years of "federal service" are given the vote.  In the case of Juan Rico, this means joining the army.  This has had fans arguing for decades about whether or not this suffrage by service made Heinlein a Fascist, which is blatant nonsense if you look at how Fascism actually operates.  It's actually closer to the Ancient Greek system, though Heinlein claimed that he got the idea from the Swiss.  One suspects that had Heinlein set the story in peaceful, modern-day Switzerland instead of an outer space war against super-intelligent bugs, his pontificating would have elicited giggles rather than criticism.  

Heinlein goes on about his political system at great length in the book, which gives his critics loads of ammunition, but both Heinlein's political philosophy and his critics' objections are maddening because of one thing that is overlooked:  What relevance does this have to the plot?  Nil.  Rico joins the army in order to get the vote, but it's a McGuffin.  As far as the plot is concerned, it might as well be a GI scholarship or an excuse to leave home.  


Part of the reason may be that Heinlein's attitude toward citizenship and military service are offensive even to those who are pro-military.  His ideas are often simplistic and clumsy and, worse, he tends to support them with straw arguments of the most facile kind such as in this exchange between a high-school student and her History and Moral Philosophy teacher, Mr. Dubois:

One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never solves anything."


Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly.  “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that.  Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”

They had tangled before—since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”

“You seem unaware of it,” he said grimly. "Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea—a practice I always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.  Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

Bear in mind that all of this is based on "a scientifically verifiable theory of morals.”  

 The condescension of Heinlein speaking through his mouthpiece Dubois is palpable. When Heinlein gets into cracker-barrel philosopher mode it’s hard to stop him.  Never mind that a student who had “tangled before” with such a sophist would never throw him such a soft ball.  Heinlein has an opinion to pontificate on and story logic be damned. Small wonder that Panshin referred to Heinlein as:

(A) man standing in a pulpit delivering sermons against an enemy that no one but he can see clearly.

The main problem with Starship Troopers is that it is, in the end, nothing more than a Utopia novel where Heinlein gets to layout his vision of an ideal military and its place in society–at the top, naturally.  Never mind that military juntas (even one of veterans) make for bad soldiers as well as bad governments.  In Starship Troopers we are seeing Heinlein's self-confessed nostalgia for the Naval career that he loved dearly, but was forced to abandon at an early age due to illness.  A product of Annapolis, Heinlein was a firm believer in the academy system and was certain that a rigorous regime of selection, Prussian-style training, elimination, and lots of mathematics would produce near-perfect, incorruptible graduates.  In Heinlein's world, there is no such thing as gaming the system or compromises–never mind the fact that such a regime may have inherent contradictions or require infallible administrators. Lean on them enough and everything will work out fine.

Naturally, the product of this system are pure soldiers of the kill-people-and-break-things variety.  All they do is prepare to fight and fight.  In Heinlein's world, they do nothing else.  It isn't just they have nothing to do with support, logistics, and all the thousand other jobs that are needed to keep a fighting man active on the front; they don't even have to handle duties that were already well-established when Heinlein was writing, such as acting as an occupation force, executing counter-terrorism operations, providing security, peacekeeping operations, border patrols, disaster relief, and so on and so forth.  In Heinlein's world, soldiers never do anything as unglamourous as hanging around the streets of Belfast or lining up kids for vaccinations.

In all, this does a disservice for the military and for those of us who support it.  War is a harsh, grim business.  It is bloody, dirty, terrifying, and chaotic.  It is one of the few professions that require young men to unleash violence and destruction while trying to remain civilised in a situation where civilisation is no longer in control.  It is a life of sacrifice where those under arms look barbarism in the face so that their families back home don't have to.   It's one thing to give a proper portrayal that honours that sacrifice, but its another to indulge in cheap glorification as Heinlein does to the point of commending soldiering as a prerequisite to citizenship on the grounds that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch".

Really, Mr Heinlein, such grammar from an Annapolis man.

With that sort of logic, one is a step away from Terry Pratchett's political system of Ankh-Morpork, which is "One Man, One Vote," where the Patrician Lord Vetinari is the Man, and he has the Vote.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Wanted: 7 Fearless Engineers

Quote of the day

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Quote of the day

The government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under 5'7", it is impossible to get your congressman on the phone.

Woody Allen

Review: Medium Raw

Food writing is a difficult art in that it doesn't allow for much scope.  leaving aside cookery books,  food writing tends to gravitate toward one of two poles. At the one, they epicurean tomes filled with raptures about outdoor banquets under sunny Tuscan skies,  culinary adventures involving munching on grill sparrows at a Hanoi market stall, or word pictures of Christmas banquets against a snowy New England backdrop.  At the other pole we have nutritionists and pinched-faced books on the virtues of Vegetarianism.  The one thing that is very rare is a cynical, biting account of what it's really like in the kitchen by someone who has seen the dark underbelly of modern food culture.

At least that was the case before Anthony Bourdain came along with his sleeper best seller of 2000, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. It was the first to take a jaundiced eye to the entire food culture from the point of view of a battle-scarred veteran of the grill.  Bourdain revealed the world of top-flight restaurants, particularly in New york, as an insane mix of alcohol, drugs, eccentricity, sex, hard work, long hours, money, illusion, delusion, and burn-out that is as addictive as cocaine–of which there was a lot, too.  The book's success surprised everyone; including Bourdain, who found himself catapulted overnight from being a failed chef in a tenth-rate kitchen to the life of an international celebrity and television personality.   Ten years later, Bourdain follows up with his new book,  Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (2010).

Seen from the perspective of a man who is older, more responsible, and (hopefully) wiser, Bordain is still as cynical, opinated, foul-mouths, acerbic, dry-witted, and insightful as he was in Kitchen Confidential. He also hasn't lost his talent for vivid writing as this passage about a highly sensual and illegal meal of roasted ortolan bunting shows:

In the darkness under my shroud, I realize that in my eagerness to fully enjoy this experience, I’ve closed my eyes. First comes the skin and the fat. It's hot. So hot that I’m drawing short, panicky, circular breaths in and out—like a high-speed trumpet player, breathing around the ortolan, shifting it gingerly around my mouth with my tongue so I don’t burn myself. I listen for the sounds of jaws against bone around me but hear only others breathing, the muffled hiss of rapidly moving air through teeth under a dozen linen napkins. There’s a vestigial flavor of Armagnac, low-hanging fumes of airborne fat particles, an intoxicating, delicious miasma. Time goes by. Seconds? Moments? I don’t know. I hear the first snap of tiny bones from somewhere near and decide to brave it. I bring my molars slowly down and through my bird’s rib cage with a wet crunch and am rewarded with a scalding hot rush of burning fat and guts down my throat. Rarely have pain and delight combined so well. I’m giddily uncomfortable, breathing in short, controlled gasps as I continue, slowly—ever so slowly—to chew. With every bite, the thin bones and layers of fat, meat, skin, and organs compact in on themselves, there are sublime dribbles of varied and wondrous ancient flavors: figs, Armagnac, dark flesh slightly infused with the salty taste of my own blood as my mouth is pricked by the sharp bones. As I swallow, I draw in the head and beak, which, until now, had been hanging from my lips, and blithely crush the skull.

What is left is the fat. A coating of nearly imperceptible yet unforgettable-tasting abdominal fat. I undrape, and, around me, one after another, the other napkins fall to the table, too, revealing glazed, blissed-out expressions, the beginnings of guilty smiles, an identical just-****ed look on every face.

 Unlike Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw isn't a complete narrative, but rather a collection of essays where Bourdain discusses a wide range of topics orbiting around the culinary culture.  With his typical no-holds barred approach, Bourdain takes on the Food Network (a bastion of mediocrity), restraunteur Alice Waters (villain), Fergus Henderson (hero), education (can't even teach young people how to cook an egg), becoming a chef (don't unless you're incredibly talent, hard workings, and insane), his own youthful indiscretions (hard drugs and self destructive behaviour), the Beautiful People (ugly, stupid and evil), and being cool (once you're a parent, forget it.  It's just creepy).  Along the way we're also treated to a tour of all sorts of exotic eateries in incredible locations, the future of the Great American Hamburger, and the ghastliness of a steady diet of cordon bleau.    Sometimes his pronouncements do go on a bit, but his passion for food and the people behind it comes through clearly and he's also matured enough to admit that some of the shots he took at the celebrity chefs like Emeril for selling out weren't wholely justified after Bourdain realised that these chefs had often jumped on the back of a tiger that they didn't dare let go of. 

Medium Raw is a fun and often fascinating read, but like many books of essays, the good stuff is right at the front and by the time we reach the last chapters it's a bit like coming to the end of a delightful buffet only to discover the stale buns and drying onion slices that the chef tried to hide.  The litany of names and faces becomes an uninteresting parade of dishes and I for one wanted a brandy and the bill.  Overall, however, Medium Raw does make for a very satisfying second course from a man who knows a chop from a cheese board.

Quote of the day

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett interview

Quote of the day

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

John le Carre

Rejection slips II

An alternative way to handle rejection.

Quote of the day

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle

Rejection slips

Rejection is something that every writer has to deal with.  You'll notice I didn't say "aspiring writer" or "novice writer"; I said "writer".   The sad fact is that no matter how successful you may become, you'll still have to contend with editors saying "Not today, thank you".  True, as you become more established you won't get rejection slips so often, but they'll still come in.

Rejection slips are disheartening and it's often difficult not to take them personally.  I certainly have from time to time.  You can't sweat blood over a manuscript for months on end and then feel a bit put out when your reward is a form letter that hasn't even been signed.  However, don't let disappointment turn into despair.  There many best-selling works that have sold in the millions that started their literary lives bouncing from publisher to publisher before finally getting into print.  George MacDonald Fraser, James Joyce, Stephen King, and J K Rowling all faced multiple rejections before getting published.  Granted, I often wish that Miss Rowling  had skipped sending off that last submission, but the principle is still valid.

The thing to bear in mind is something I was surprised to discover myself: Not all editors who return my work are piggy-eyed, illiterate, uncultured vermin who wouldn't know good writing if it hit them square in the face tied to Hellfire missile.  Manuscripts get rejected for many reasons and it often has nothing to do with the quality of the work.  Publishers cater to particular audiences with particular tastes.  Sending off a Tom Clancy-style thriller to a romance publisher isn't going to have much of a chance.  Then there's the problem of everyone having the same great idea at the same time.  Do you have a brilliant idea for a novel about a sexy female vampire detective in San Francisco?  I hate to break it to you, but so did 999,999 other people. 
It's even possible to be rejected by being successful.  I've been turned down by some magazines, for example, because they'd just published one of my articles and didn't want my name showing up twice in a row. 

The one sort of rejection slip you definitely shouldn't feel discouraged over is the one with a note scribbled on it or the email with the electronic equivalent.  So long as the note isn't "We all hate you and hope that you're eaten by rabid weasels," you've just been given proof that you've taken a step up the ladder.  Editors are incredibly busy people and taking the time to say anything besides the usual form letter is proof that they see that you have potential.  I wished that I'd realised this when I received my first rejection letter as a teenager.  I was so put out by the editor pointing out my messy typing and done-to-death plot that I didn't realise that what he was saying was, "Keep sending them, kid."

In the end, the best way to handle rejection is to persevere.  If you've have talent and if you've put the work in, you'll eventually find your market.  In the meantime, approach rejection slips as a hobby.  Keep a scrap book of letters and email printouts and treat them like a stamp collection.  One more slip from Random House and I'll have every publisher in New York.

If nothing else, it will give a prop to use on the book tour.