Make Of This What You Will
Recently I was sitting in a space with a somewhat large group of very junior enlisted (as in “a few months out of boot camp” junior), when a crusty master sergeant asked a question as a means of breaking the conversational ice.
“Who here has read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein?”
Almost every hand went up.
3 Responses to “Make Of This What You Will”
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April 7th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Funny, I used to ask the same question when I was training Ensigns. And hand out copies of SST to those who had never read it (and you’ve got to ask who has actually read the book, as opposed to just seeing that piece of crap movie Verhoeven made). Then I’d make the JO’s explain to me what they thought was most significant and why.
Then we’d start in with Haldeman’s The Forever War…
Goddamn, I miss training Ensigns – one of the real joys of being a crusty old Warrant.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Start with Heinlein, move on to Card’s “Ender’s Game”, then Feintuch’s Seafort series, and do a graduate course with Weber’s Honor Harrington, and they just might come close to understanding our role and mission in society.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Is it too late to raise my hand as well?
Starship Troopers was just the first Heinlein book I read, in perhaps 4th or 5th grade. I had a frakkin’ awesome elementary school library.
I’ve linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/04/re-make-of-this-what-you-will.html