Here’s an excerpt from a review of the movie (Netflix) which I find interesting. I haven’t seen the movie.
Which were originally published in Astounding in the early 1940s. If it were written 10 years later it might have shown up as a juvenile, except for it being in the Future History timeline. Many of the juveniles were serialized in the sf magazines without being called juveniles - Citizen of the Galaxy was in Astounding, and Star Beast was in F&SF, among others.
Then Verhoeven should have called it something else, and not tried use (in the sense of using a whore) Heinlein’s book. He should have titled it differently, and let it stand or fall on it’s own artistic merits, but he didn’t do that. IMO, he didn’t do that because he’s as big a piece of shit as this film is, and he knew that it couldn’t and wouldn’t succeed on it’s own, so he forever tied it, however wrongly, to a piece of literature that was already widely acknowledged as a classic, when in fact he had made a movie that had nothing to do with said novel.
For Us the Living can be considered like the first flapjack, the one you throw away in proving the griddle is hot. As fiction it is awful - wish fulfillment, footnotes (a la Gernsback) and no plot worth mentioning. It was mostly interesting in seeing the early glimpses of Scudder and other pieces of the Future History. I think it is telling that Heinlein never tried to turn it into a book even when he could sell pretty much everything. What is also remarkable is how good his first published stories were - he clearly learned fast, a lot faster than Asimov did.
I think it should be read last, and only by people so interest in Heinlein that they’d appreciate the Future History prehistory.
If anybody disagrees with muldoonthief’s opinion, I am very interested in reading the contenders for the title.
The first chapter stands apart from the rest of ST as a straight-up combat, using the classic literary style of opening the story mid-action. The style frequently works well.
Can’t directly compare, because I haven’t read ST; the best fight scene in all of science fiction as far as I’m concerned is the duel between Yama and Rild in Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT. Zelazny, in general, wrote the best fight scenes of anyone I can think of.
Oh, I don’t really have a problem with the homosexuality myself. I mean, he starts a naive teenager and has a couple of encounters where he is learning about life and caring and sexuality, and it happens his training is from a male. But he sorts himself out. (Not saying anything wrong with homosexuality, I’m saying he figures out his orientation and his desires.)
I just commented because a buddy of mine didn’t appreciate it at all, and to point out recommending it to teenagers could be awkward in some cases.
And I find his approach to the issue curious. I recall reading a couple of works in that time frame ('90s) dealing with homosexuality, with two very different approaches. One story set I read took an alternate galaxy and just made homosexuality accepted. I was reading the story (The Price of the Stars, Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald) and one main character is a female pilot who goes undercover as a spy, and uses as her cover identity a male smuggler/pirate. In one scene, she is in bed in her ship with her male lover, and some assassin sneaks on board. And the assissin thinks nothing of it that the captain and first mate are doing the nasty, even though he doesn’t know her real identity. They didn’t play it with snickering about him being a “dandy” or anything, just straight up that the two were together. That threw me for a loop the first time, how the guy could just nonchalantly accept it. A later book in that series has a pair of lesbians that are taken for granted as well.
In contrast, Gerrold poked a big stick in the homosexual issue by playing with this character learning about sex from a manipulative guy, getting worked over by the guy in a woman’s body (complicated story device using computer implants), and in later books, even after pairing up with a hot pilot chick, getting rude comments about his being gay. I’m sure Gerrold was exploring an issue dear to himself, perhaps even drawing on personal experience. I find the contrast of approaches interesting.
No argument. I love the series, and was all wrapped up waiting for book 5 - and waiting, and waiting, and saw something that suggested it was almost done, and then after a decade found out he had a falling out with the publisher and would NEVER be able to finish it, because the publisher has first rights and Gerrold never wants to work with him again. So I’m stuck with an unfinished series that I wanted to see where it went. 
Well, no doubt he didn’t read the book, but it can be argued that the powered armor wasn’t a necessity, from the point of view of the story. The powered armor was Heinlein’s invention purely so he could focus on infantry in a future army, where weapons and technology have increased. So he puts his infantry in armor that gives them the protection and firepower of tanks, mobility of a motorcycle squad, but largely the issues and tactics of infantry - the grunts in the mud.
It’s just that for the Heinlein fan, the powered armor is such an intriguing element that omitting it is huge. Plus, by omitting the powered armor, you need to reintroduce all the combat elements that a real military strike force would require, the capabilities that the armor provided that would have to be supplied - like air support, and tanks, and APCs, and such. Plus, pocket nukes make a lot less sense when the infantry using them doesn’t have any radiation protection. :smack:
Agreed on Armor. That’s like Starship Troopers squared. You know how in SST Johnny Rico goes through several missions, and advances up the ranks, and watches bad missions kill off large elements of his teammates? Part of Armor involves a soldier in powered armor sent into combat against bug aliens (ants), where they get worked over again and again. And through some logistical snafu, he keeps getting sent into combat, not getting any breaks or leave time, over and over getting stuck in hellhole combat and troops getting slaughtered. That’s only a part of that book.
I read it, it really suffers from being Heinlein’s first work. He doesn’t really know how to write a story yet. It is even more didactic than any of his other works, divolving into essays on politics and economics and social sexual mores.
What is worth noting is that Heinlein’s works seem to fall into stages. His early works are Future History short stories, largely about technology and the effect on humanity. Then came the juveniles. Finally, he broke a new direction with Stranger In A Strange Land, which brought in the sex and pushing those boundaries that weren’t really seen before. But FUTL actually shows those elements on his mind way back in 1938. He just didn’t write about it because it couldn’t be marketed.
That’s the one I have. I would like to see the alternates. I was under the impression that the change between was just the addition of the last chapter.
spark240, if Verhoeven wished to make a film to explore propaganda films and the politics of fascism, I don’t have a problem with that. But he didn’t have to piss all over Heinlein to do it.
Visors made of “transparent aluminum”.
Problem solved.
I just, just realized that the first 2 science fiction books I read as a child were “I Robot” and “Starship Troopers.” And Hollywood managed to piss on both of them. Time to put on the Marauder suit and launch a peewee nuke at Tinseltown. Screw the First Law.
That’s the right word for “For Us, The Living” - it’s an essay with a thin veneer of fiction novel overlaid. That said, I found it to be a good essay - I’d hate for anyone to stay away from it because it isn’t fiction-y enough. You just have to know what to expect.
Quoth Voyager:
Some of the juveniles were in the Future History timeline. Space Cadet is certainly in the same timeline as “The Long Watch” (though it can be debated whether “The Long Watch” is in the future history, too), and I think there’s a reference to Noisy Rhysling in Farmer in the Sky.
In any event, regardless of its origin, Orphans of the Sky ended up as a novel, with a young protagonist, and with no sex and very little politics. So I feel perfectly comfortable calling it a juvie.
Not too much of the story takes place during actual battles. It’s a lot of words describing them, but not a lot of elapsed time compared to the other stuff, if you know what I mean.
The training sequences would be more of an issue.
ETA–I do hear what you’re saying. But a good director with good scripwriters should be able to handle those difficulties easily.
I agree with the others that he should have written it as something else.
Which pretty much explains why "Starship Troopers " sucked as a movie.
Verheoven’s Starship Troopers is as if Stalinists had adapted Orwell’s 1984 or Nazis Schindler’s List.
For another perspective on a newbie getting introduced to combat, you might want to check out “Under the Hammer” by David Drake.
Via the Baen Free Library: http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671877941/0671877941.htm
Of course, if Verhoeven had gone the “powered armor” route, people would then be bitching about “RoboCop in Space”.
This is yet another example of what you see all the time in reactions to adaptations–fanboys think that they’re possessed of the One True Vision of the work, and that any different interpretation is an Abomination Unto the LORD. It gets really old after a while; I wish people would just pretend that the titles of the films are Starship Troopers (Verhoeven remix) or The Lord of the Rings (Jackson Remix) or whatever and STFU.
Nope. Ain’t gonna happen. Verhoeven needs to die.
Powered armor was absolutely integral to the book. The whole command and logistics structure, training and tactics all revolved around the existence of the armor.
You have completely missed the point of the criticisms leveled at Starship Troopers. The point being: it doesn’t have anything at all to do with the plot, themes, or character’s described in the book.
It’s exactly the reverse of the disclaimer that used to run at the start of Dragnet: only the names are the same.