Starship Troopers is a science fiction classic, a great military coming of age, and simply an incredible book.

You know the story. Boy joins space marines, learns how to use exotic weapons, meets interesting aliens, uses exotic weapons on them, becomes a hero. The story opens in media res, with a heart pounding combat drop and raid onto a planet held by the Skinnies, a secondary alien power. We meet the surface of the book: powered armor, atomic rockets, jump jets and flame throwers. But unlike a lot of military science fiction, this book is not about the battles. It's about the making of man, in high school, boot camp, barracks-room bull sessions, officer candidate school, and finally combat command.

I've never been in the military, but I read way too many combat memoirs and histories, and everything about war in Starship Troopers strikes me as exactly true, from the importance of building up esprit de corps, to the burden of command and the confusion of battle. It's a brilliant execution of the premise of "what does it take for infantry to survive on the modern atomic battlefield", and one that has inspired more than a few real military research programs in powered exoskeletons.

But Starship Troopers is so much more than that. It had been a while since I'd read it, and two things that I'd forgotten is how excited Johnny Rico is about everything. His enthusiasm for his world is infectious; you really want to see what happens next. Second is how taut the writing is. I don't think there's a single misplaced word in the first hundred pages, and the rest of the book slackens only slightly. This is Heinlein at the height of his powers as a wordsmith.

This book is controversial politically. I wouldn't go as far some people in calling it fascist, but Heinlein delivers body blows against some of the core conceits of liberal democracy, like universal voting and social work. Due to the basic flaw of an imbalance between authority and responsibility, society broke down in the late 20th century, helped along by a global war between an American-Anglo-Russian alliance and China. In the wake of this catastrophe, society was rebuilt by committees of veterans, which after several centuries has stabilized into a franchise granted by federal service. Service is probably military, but could be anything from hard labor terraforming to "counting the hairs on a caterpillar by feel." Anything to make it clear that the franchise is dearly bought.

This book is determined to drive through its core thesis that the only thing that matters is survival, but that the instinct to survive is best harnessed to moral sensibilities for the common good. That's the core ethos of the Mobile Infantry, in their extreme esprit de corps and mantra that "everybody drops, everybody fights." It seems to work, their organization is lean, self sufficient, unbelievable destruction, although I wonder how well it would hold up to the messy ambiguities of counter-insurgency and pacification rather than a war of extermination against the perfect communism of the alien Arachnoids.

This strong philosophical grounding separates Starship Troopers from its imitators, which postulate a universe of war without asking why. A second thing that's interesting is the lack of a gun fetish, aside from the Marauder Suit, which is mostly sketched at (you wear it, it's tough and can fly and has atomic rockets), there's very little of the overwrought descriptions of destruction that characterize the genre. As the book says, there's no such thing as a deadly weapon, only deadly people. Juan Rico is probably the nicest deadly person in fiction.

Space Team is a fast-paced scifi parody in the vein of Harry Harrison. Cal Carver is a low-level crook and con artist who's life takes a turn for the awesome, as he's abducted by a galactic government, assigned to a team of malcontents, and given a very important mission to retrieve a super-weapon and stop a civil war. The first and biggest problem is that they've mistaken Cal for his cellmate The Butcher, an infamous serial killer/cannibal. After that, well its a dizzying array of stock scifi tropes , gross-out humor, and casual misogyny in pursuit of action.

Overall, this story is aggressively average. The humor relies on body functions (especially snot) and references to nerd pop culture. Cal is a relentless optimist, which does a lot of good for making the plot feel exciting, even as it consists of meetings and arguments and chase scenes which are circular at best. But there are irritating tics in the writing (do people have expressions beyond various levels of false smiles?), and you know, I'd never expect to say this about a comedic scifi novel, but there's an irritating amount of white male privilege on display. Cal is the captain, despite a complete absence of leadership qualities, because he's too arrogant to shut up and let people who don't preface everything they see with "space-" do their jobs. The other characters exist purely in reaction to Cal, without much characterization of their own.

Not bad if you can pick this up for a dollar and want to kill a few hours, but you're better off reading Bill The Galactic Hero instead.

I'm conflicted about 13th Age, I really am. On the one hand, it's almost my ideal fantasy RPG system, keeping the designed tightness of D&D 4e while dropping the most finicky parts of the tactical battle system. Classes in 13th Age are a fast 10 levels, with unique talents and powers, none of the "screw it, just play a cleric" mess of D&D 3.x. But I've never managed to run a campaign of it that's lasted more than 3 sessions. And while the map may look like generic fantasy, the world is very different, with flying islands, giant beasts, demigodly icons that walk with the PCs, and the end of an Age at hand.

13 True Ways extends the 13th Age core with six new classes, including the jack of all trades druid and super cool occultist. The commander and monk feel more like misses, though, and the chaos mage's core mechanic of not knowing what spells he's casting until the round before seems like a recipe for boring delay of game.

The book rounds out the setting, with descriptions of the major cities, lots of rumors, a whole new collection of devils to serve as tough nemesis, and some example NPCs and locations. It's imaginative, but I don't feel inspired to run this game, so much as impressed at the cleverness of the designers. Who knows, maybe one day.

Fate Accelerated is probably the definitive minimally viable universal RPG system. Roll 4dF (special d6s marked with -,0,+), add a bonus from one of six approaches that are basically the classic six stats with more evocative names, and play fate points to invoke aspects, from the high concept of your character to situational bonuses. The true clever part is how aspects cover almost every possibility in play, providing mechanical weight to describing how things happen without weighing down the game with a ton of rules. Fate points provide a nice way to limit character power, and compels, where a negative aspect is invoked against the character by the GM, create drama in the moment and fuel the fate point economy.

I can't say that I want to run Fate, but like a set of hex keys ever game collection should have it.

Amazon had a deal on the first six books in the series because the seventh one is coming out, and I like military scifi so why not?

Welcome to the future, a future of war! Galactic civilization has fallen after setting up a network of FTL routes, and the technology for building new ones have been lost. Three major powers have risen in the aftermath. The Confederation are our good guys, a democracy with an independent streak that is regarded as soft by the enemy, but which has survived three existential wars thanks to daring heroics and superior technology. The Alliance is our bad guys, a militaristic empire with a warrior aristocracy and Spartan/Roman overtones. And the ugly guys are the Union, a totalitarian empire with a fearsome secret police and purge-driven politics. The troops of the Union are the Foudre Rouge. Subtly is not Allan's strongpoint as an author, though compared to David Weber (Rob S. Pierre, folks!) he's doing okay.

So the plot. War between the Confederation and the Union is imminent, and Confederation battleship Dauntless is patrolling the frontier, when it gets pulled off for a refit at the rear of Confederation space. Except that the Union has convinced the Alliance to launch an attack as well, hoping to force the Confederation to fight on two fronts. The Alliance is skeptical, and in the midst of their own refit after a recent conquest, but they can dispatch their most advanced dreadnought, the Invictus, under the command of Kat, a staunch warrior who conceals her doubts about the Alliance, to take a distant refueling outpost. If the attack succeeds, the Alliance will press forward. If it fails, they'll deny everything. The fate of the Confederation rests on Dauntless, her crew, and her captain Barron, grandson of the Confederation's great hero.

Allan mixes action sequences and the rush to war with philosophical musings on combat and death, but this is very much war via John Wayne movies, a kind of pop-culture profundity. The space ships are Galactica style battlecruisers with laser and particle beam weapons, carrying a few squadrons of fighters armed with missiles and plasma torpedoes. There are some gestures towards Newton and vectors, but the style is "World War 2 in space" rather than a new, or even particularly cohesive take on war in space. There's a recurrent moment of ships hiding by orbiting behind a moon or planet, and as anyone who knows about orbital mechanics well tell you, the thing about orbits is that they go around a mass. You can't hide in orbit for very long. This is very much Extruded Space Opera product #7. There aren't any major flaws, but it is definitely a step down from The Lost Fleet or the good Honor Harrington books.

There was one thing that I couldn't tell if it a dumb oversight or actually clever. The Confederation has an emergency alert command "Omega One" which signals invasion of the Confederation. The Alliance has a command "Omega Zero" which triggers their self-destruct. Did Allan forget he used that name already, or it it a statement about what each side regards as their 'ultimate'? I'll probably read the rest of these between serious books, because I was entertained, but that's as far as I'll go.

Raymond Chandler wrote "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." Killing Gravity author Corey White must be in some kind of ongoing existential crisis, because this book is Chandler's law padded out to novella length.

Mars Xi is a voidwitch, a telekinetic supersoldier forged by the sinister MEPHISTO arms combine. We meet her in a crippled corvette, life support on critical and waiting for the air to run out, when she's rescued by a freelancer scrap/salvage crew. We barely have time to meet nonbinary captain Squid, angry mercenary Trix, and deserter soldier Mookie when a man comes through the door with a gun in his hand a cruiser wormholes in and deploys space marines, and Mars kills them all with her telekinetic powers. Then it's off to a space station, where Mars meets a data broker, men with guns burst through the door, and Mars kills them all with her telekinetic powers. A clue leads her a mist-shrouded fungus planet, where Mars meets her sister, who freed her from the supersoldier training program, and she has brief reunion before a bounty-hunter with a sniper rifle kills Mars' sister, and Mars kills him with her telekinetic powers. When she finds out that Squid and co have been captured, Mars has only one course of action: Find the MEPHISTO flagship and use her telekinetic powers to kill them all!

Killing Gravity mimics the style of better authors: the blood-splattered excess of Alistair Reynolds, the gender-fluid killers of Yoon Ha Lee, the magical space cats of David Weber (yes, there's a magic space cat), but it adds up to an ADHD power fantasy, space opera by way of Michael Bay. I'll not be getting the rest of the series.

This book is a readable, if dry, account of how the CIA worked circa the late 1980s, which is far more exciting when read between the lines. Kessler is (was?) one of the preeminent intelligence journalists in Washington D.C., with a string of books about the FBI, spies in Moscow, and the Reagan White House. In 1990, Kessler approached the CIA public relations office about writing a book, and got a favorable response: hours of interviews with key officers, including then Director William H. Webster, large amounts of access to the buildings, and relative freedom to write whatever he wanted within the constraints of national security.

The picture he paints is one of dedicated professionals, hard at work within a sometimes opaque bureaucratic structure. Where the CIA has erred, it has done so because the world is inherently uncertain, or because their worst excesses were ordered by the White House. The idea of rogue agents and operations is part of the bad old days before the Church Committee. The new CIA, as reorganized by Director Webster, is an efficient team player, supplying fair intelligence to the President, in line with American values. Sure, the CIA operates everywhere except for the "Five Eyes" nations, but it's mostly precautionary, and a way to get sources in place to prevent surprise. The four Directorates are somewhat insular, but all good in their own way. Operations talks to foreigners and recruits them to be agents. Intelligence analyzes everything coming in, and synthesizes it down to intelligence assessments for the White House. Science & Technology runs spy satellites and a real life "Q-branch." Administration makes sure that everybody gets paid on time, and secures the agency overall. Webster gets a glowing report: former judge, FBI director, bringing the CIA into the modern era by reversing the politicized decisions made under Casey, the previous CIA director who was a Reagan campaigner staffer, and providing much needed support to the public relations office and the office of general counsel.

Reading between the lines, I got the sense that Kessler was brought on to help rehabilitate the CIA after the Iran-Contra affair, and justify its relevance after the fall of the Soviet Union. He wound up getting a little seduced by the agency, so the epilogue, which was written after the Aldrich Ames case broke, runs directly counter to the rest of the book. CIA compartmentalization is a joke. The security people are entirely incompetent. Deep philosophical cracks in the mission of the CIA need to be filled before it can be the intelligence agency America deserves.

My final verdict is that this book is a picture of a kind of business as usual that no longer exists. The post-9/11 CIA, an agency of drone strikes and extraordinary renditions, is very different from the gentlemen analysts and Operations great gamers Kessler writes about. There are a few illuminating anecdotes here, but far too little about the contemporary crisis of Iran-Contra. Kessler knows his stuff, but this book has not aged well.

Damnation Alley is pure post-apocalyptic cheese, decorated with some ideas of genuine weirdness that uplift an otherwise mediocre by-the-book thriller. Roughly 25 years after a nuclear war, America is a blasted wasteland, with California and Boston the only two nations of any importance left. Boston is afflicted by a deadly plague, and California has the cure. The problem is the 3000 miles of howling atomic desolation between the two. Only one man is bad enough to make the journey; Hell Turner, last of the Hell's Angels and vicious killer. And to do it, he has a customized, armor-plated, rocket-packing, flame-throwing, all-terrain driving machine.

This book is at it's best when Zelazny is describing the deadly landscape. The sky is full of howling winds carrying the rubble of civilization, which rains down like artillery. Giant rabid bats and mutated Gila lizards rule the desert. The rest of it just feels very obligatory. Here's places where it's still 1970, before The Bomb. Here's some rustic farmers who are innocent and helpful. Here's an attack by a motorcycle gang. Good post-apocalyptic fiction uses the end of the world as an acid to etch away the cruft of civilization, revealing what is essential about human nature. Here, Zelazny uses it as a canvas to airbrush thunderstorms and giant bugs.

Tunnel in the Sky is an underappreciated gem of a Heinlein juvenile. In the future, an overpopulated Earth expands into space through wormhole gates. Any job in the Outlands, as the other worlds are called, requires passing Outland Survival. The final exam is being dumped on an unknown planet, and surviving a few days until recall. Rod Walker is a high school student facing such an exam.

We meet his family, and get some cool hints at the expanded setting. A new religion called Monism has joined the big three Semitic faiths. China has conquered Australia and irrigated the outback, but population continues to rise. Rod's sister Helen is an officer in the all-female Amazon space marines. We see pioneers going through the a gate with horses and Conestoga wagons, because 'grass-burners' make their own replacements and resupply will be rare until the colony can export food or Uranium back to Earth. Rod's parents are facing a hard choice as well, a 20 year wait in cryogenic stasis while his father's rare metabolic disease is cured.

We get some useful advice on survival, "don't carry a gun, your job is to be a rabbit and live", and then we're off. Rod does fine the first few days, but then someone knocks him on the head and steals everything but his back-up knife. Worse, as days pass and the gate home fails to appear, it becomes apparent something has gone very wrong. The survivors of the 100-odd high school and college students have to settle down and figure out some kind of long term solution for survival. Rod's is pushed aside in favor of a smooth talking college kid, who's early attempt at democracy becomes mired in committees and social niceties, like building houses for newlyweds rather than a defensive wall. The colony is well on its way to becoming a stone age society, when a seasonal migration of 'dopey joes' turns a previously harmless species into a vicious killer. Rod is vindicated, and becomes mayor of their colony for a year, when the gate reopens and suddenly he is no longer an independent leader on a frontier world, but a kid again, with all that that entails.

There are lots of hints of ideas that Heinlein would develop in later works. The themes of power and responsibility in Starship Troopers, the frontier space colonies of Time Enough for Love, and the survivalism of Farnham's Freehold. Heinlein has lighter touch on these topics, focusing more on the coming of age of his protagonists. There are some missteps, the characterization is a little thin, and who stole Rod's survival gear is a dropped thread. Heinlein's attitudes on gender and race are progressive for their time, but they haven't aged very well. His female characters (Caroline, Jack), are the equals of the men, but it takes Rod some time to get over his prejudices against women. Even so, men hunt and women cook. The 'yellow hordes' bit in the beginning is not great, but according to a letter from Heinlein Rod is canonically African-American, which is solid for a book published a year after Brown v. Board of Education.

This collection is apparently Ellison at the height of his powers, an extended New Wave Scifi riff on the themes of gods and sacrifice. New gods of cities, of highways, of neon lights and computers. Old gods, bloody monsters buried in the earth or the psyche appearing and exacting a heavy toll from modern people.

If there's a word to describe these stories, it's excessive. The language is trippy and overwrought. When Ellison tempers the excess with humor, as he does in "Along the Scenic Route", a story of roadrage dueling in up-gunned sedans with hoverjets and laser cannons, its quite good. When he just vents his spleen, it's fairly miserable, as in "Bleeding Stones", where gargoyles come to life and murder everyone in New York city, starting with an assembly of Christians.

Ellison leans too heavily on the gambit of the psycho-symbolic journey, where the protagonist leaves mundane reality and enters a liminal zone of fantasy, where he encounters a series of set-pieces and images that usually depict the his pathetic nature before an actively hostile cosmos. It's the very antithesis of showing, not telling.

I'm really divided on this collection. There are a few stand out stories, but overall effect is a kind of pretentious misanthropy. This is of course, Ellison's stock in trade, so what do you expect. It's well done, but is it worth doing?