Space Infantry

By Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh

Book Overview

Stories deal with interstellar warfare, suspended animation, a rebel uprising, war machines, alien soldiers, and heroism This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0441777473
• ISBN13: 9780441777471
• Release Date: November 1989
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Space Infantry, by Drake, Waugh, and Greenberg

Space Infantry is a Military Science Fiction anthology edited by Drave Drake, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Greenberg. It contains stories by a dozen authors spanning 3 decades. In order of appearance they are: "The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears," by Keith Bennett; "His Truth Goes Marching On," by Jerry Pournelle; "But as a Soldier, For His Country," by Stephen Goldin; " Soldier Boy," by Michael Shaara; "Code-Name Feirefitz," by David Drake; "The Foxholes of Mars," by Fritz Lieber; "Conqueror," by Larry Eisenberg; "Warrior," by Gordon R. Dickson; "Message to an Alien," by Keith Laumer; ". . . Not a Prison Make," by Joseph P. Martino; "The Hero," by George R. R. Martin, and "End Game," by Joe Haldeman. Of the lot, Joe Haldeman, Gordon R. Dickson, Jerry Purnelle and Fritz Leiber are Hugo Award winners, though not for these stories. Mr. Drake and Mr. Haldeman served in Viet Nam. Their experiences color and inform their stories. Mr. Drake once said that his Hammers Slammers stories were partly therapy. Though clumped together as "Space Infantry," these stories run a wide gamut in attitude and outlook, and they need not strictly speaking be about Infantryman at all. Anyone simply seeking simple action adventure, bang-bang-your-dead, stories may be disappointed. There is so much more here than that. Anyone looking for high quality writing should read these stories. They stand out as excellent severally and separately. The book is essential to anyone with more than a superficial interest in Military Science Fiction-- especially anyone interested in the crafting or the history of Military Sci Fi. "The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears" Mr. Bennett's story is not so much about ground sloggers as downed rocketeers who get the job done regardless of any obstacles and who coincidentally save their corps from absorption or disbandment. The basis for the title, according to Drake, is a song-- "The Mountaineeers Have Hairy Ears," whose lyrics I'll not reproduce here, and which carries the same emotional load of the Viet Nam Era, "don't mean nothin" in the context of having just had one's eye shot out. Mr. Drake was half a generation removed from Rocketeers, as I am from Drake's Slammers. In the context of today's milieu, the story is shockingly militaristic and imperialistic, much reflective of the attitude of the times in which it was written, 1950. No consideration is given to the real estate and no quarter to the natives. AS I said, the these admitted "Sons of bi-- er, Space" get the job done. There is of course a problem with some stories written in the 1950's. The idiom is changed. Readers of today may find it difficult to relate to. "His Truth Goes Marching On" Dr. Pounelle is a Political Scientist and this story is as much a poli-sci treatise as it is a work of military science fiction. It is of course set in the Falkenberg's Legion universe before the collapse of the Co-Dominion and the ascension of Lysander to the Spartan throne, just pr