No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Starship Troopers, Galactic Heroes, Mercenary Princes: the Military and its Discontents in Science Fiction
Abstract
I. R Clarke’s demonstration of the debt owed by H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds to General Chesney’s till then forgotten best-seller The Battle of Dorking remains one of the most suggestive facts in the history of SR If science fiction is above all a ‘fabril’ mode, as I have suggested elsewhere/ then the area in which the fabril mentality first began to dominate European narratives was not that of SF exactly, but of futuristic military fiction — from which, however, there was an easy transit to the founding works of SF proper.
This article sets Fuqua's recent movie King Arthur in the context of a century-old desire to blend two "imaginaries": the fifth- and sixth-century Dark Age known to history and archaeology, and the medieval legends of King Arthur and his knights. It is argued that the movie essentially reflects contemporary preoccupations, in particular the desire to see American military initiatives (Vietnam and Iraq) as advancing the cause of freedom, uncontaminated by imperialism, and welcomed by those undergoing liberation. While this goal is pursued with some originality, it appears in the end unconvincing, both as history and as propaganda.
There are many definitions of science fiction, but one thing nearly all of them agree on is this: science fiction contains, must contain, some element known not to be true to the-world-as-it-is (see the start of item 1, above). But there is no rule that says you have to tell the reader which element that is. Consider, for instance, the first four statements from ‘Solution Unsatisfactory’, a story by ‘Anson MacDonald’ (really Robert A. Heinlein) published in ...
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
- Harry Harrison
Trillion Year Spree: the History of Science Fiction
- David Brian Aldiss
- Wingrove
As there is limited practical utility in giving page references to works constantly reprinted with different pagination, in the case of science fiction novels I have tried, wherever possible, to give some more stable indication for references, by chapter or section
- Robert A Heinlein
- Starship Troopers
The Art of Future War
- Alasdair Spark
Basic Books, 1979); ed., The Tale of the Next Great War
- I F Clarke
- IF Clarke
The Art of Future War: Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and Vietnam
- Alasdair Spark
- A Spark
The Critique of America in Contemporary Science Fiction
- Robert A Franklin
- Heinlein
- A Panshin
As there is limited practical utility in giving page references to works constantly reprinted with different pagination, in the case of science fiction novels I have tried, wherever possible, to give some more stable indication for references, by chapter or section
- Robert A Heinlein
- RA Heinlein