Sciencefiction.com asked me to write a retrospective on Robert Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers'. Here it is.
"With all the news about the ‘Starship Troopers’ remake, we couldn’t help but feel a little bit of nostalgia and decided to revisit the acclaimed book with some discussion.
Johnnie Rico jumps to the top of the tallest building in the neighborhood. He flips the snoopers up, looking for a target worth shooting at. There’s a tall building on the horizon. He lets the rocket see it and says “Go find it, baby” as the nuclear-tipped missile leaps away. Pausing only to fry a skinny popping up ahead of him, he jumps in long, easy strides towards the recall beacon as enemy slugs bounce harmlessly off his powered armor. It’s just another morning’s work for the Mobile Infantry."
Continue reading at sciencefiction.com.
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I have been trying to work out what David Cameron's "veto" means for the future of the UK: The Economist blogs were particularly useful. The UK's political elite consistently underestimate how central the European project is to the mainland countries of the EU - they will not let the project, or the Euro, die. So all this talk of countries exiting the Euro is way off the mark.
One way or another the non-UK countries of the European Union are going to make Europe work. Their model is over-regulated, over-welfared and under-enterprised so it will no doubt take decades to get right. Our best UK hope is to be the Taiwan or Singapore, offshore to a less efficient monolith. But don't be thinking they won't retaliate.
Logically, we could have allied with the Germans and other North Europeans to help sort out the south and get the European project motoring. It surely would work a lot better with the UK pushing it along. But having lost an empire, I guess we weren't ready to be junior party to the Germans, in competition with the French :-).
Let's hope in twenty years time we won't regret it.
