Sunday, November 25, 2007



I like the closing lines about exoskeletal armor becoming autonomous.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

When did Heinlein write "Starship Troopers"? The mid-1960's, I think. Pretty prescient -- that's over 40 years ago....

--W.M. Bear

Mac said...

Yeah, I think Heinlein anticipated this, although I've unforgivably neglected "Trooopers."

Anonymous said...

Oh, yeah. In the book, Heinlein makes a huge deal about trooper boot-camp and training to use the mechano-armor. He also, interestingly, promulgates his somewhat fascist-seeming (to me, anyway) political idea that only those who've served in the military should be allowed to vote....

--WMB

Anonymous said...

Now, if you put a chitinous shell around the exoskeletal frame in the shape of a huge mantis...

Anonymous said...

1st-I want mecha bad.

2nd-seems sorta impractical. Opensource'n balances everything. Takes ten bucks to blow up a million dollar peice of equipment. Not sure if it applies here. Seems to me that if the explosion doesn't destroy it, won't the enemy just empty the goop and have armor?

razorsmile said...

It doesn't to be combat equipment. Think Aliens and the power loader.

Anonymous said...

"Think Aliens and the power loader."

Which is interesting because it always looked to me like the power-loader was a REAL device and not just SFX. (I think I even read somewhere that they rented it from some industrial someplace-or-other.) And that was way back when. (And come to think of it, doesn't the Bishop character use something that looks intriguingly like a laptop to establish the uplink to the orbiting Mother Ship?)

--WMB

Anonymous said...

"2nd-seems sorta impractical. Opensource'n balances everything."

Works well against an insectoid enemy. (Maybe not so well against jihadi RPGs....)