The Way We Were

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Friends (Romans, Countrymen, Dragon otherkin!) I’ve found Antro the Lifegiver by John Degan, but I haven’t finished it.

Partly it’s going slow because of my not seeing as well as I did in the eighties, and having trouble reading the teeny print of a 60s paperback. (I have new glasses on order. They haven’t arrived yet. And my astigmatism is way off.) I prefer books on the kindle, because they allow me to lie to myself about being older than dirt, I guess. I can put the print at six or seven and never tell anyone (except you guys now.) I mean, eventually it will be at nine and I’ll get a word per page. Maybe they’ll make massive kindles then. Or maybe there will be robotic eyes or something.

Anyway, there might also be the slight thing of the new Dresden files having dropped today, and — um… — anyway, so….

One thing that has occurred to me while reading the beginning is that the science fiction of the mid century is almost all infused with a heavy military subtext. Even when they are not strictly military — like Star Trek — the structure is military and there is a bearing and a behavior to the people that are more military than not.

What do I mean they’re not military in Star Trek? Well, it’s not Starship Troopers style mil sf.

Like most mid-century sf, it’s exploration, but the exploration corps has a military structure.

In that sense, it’s actually pretty interesting, because the earliest, pre or just after WWI sf pulp is the individual genius or group of them, or the lone scientist having a breakthrough. But by the mid century is exploration groups in military format, with ranks…

And there’s something about the way people interact that bespeak military experience.

Oh, I don’t mean there aren’t exceptions. Of course there are. But the basic, most generic, pulp sf is people in vaguely military arrangements.

And it occurred to me this made perfect sense. Most of the authors writing in the fifties and sixties were in fact veterans and likely WWII veterans.

But even those who hadn’t fought for whatever reason, had probably grown up watching World War II movies. As did I, btw, and reading WWII biographies and analysis.

This is because — even though to me at the time it seemed like ancient history, since most of the movies were from when the world was in black and white — I was born less than twenty years after the end of World War Two. This, of course, affected the generation before me.

Not just the various analysis of the war and the embrace or repulsion of war as a method, but the discipline, structure and experience of the war itself.

So the default, low effort writing had military or quasi-military groups.

Equally logically, that is no longer true, unless you’re specifically writing mil sf.

What do I mean by this?

Well, I was thinking there are many things a generation — or two, or three — think it’s “natural” but it’s not. It’s the result of when the genre took off. Or of what was happening in the world at the time.

Now that we live more than say four to five decades, at least a substantial portion of us, and the cultural influence of generations is taking way longer to clear from the culture, it’s important to remember this. It’s important to remember that the circumstances of our childhood are not necessarily more “real” or better than today’s.

We were born in a particular place in history. And it came freighted with baggage of — for it — recent events.

Very different, yes, but then our generation was very different in upbringing from the previous.

It’s important to step back and look at things with a curious eye. Not all difference is wrong. And things change with time. Right now it seems very likely that whoever lands on Mars will be a civilian employee of a privately held corporation. And heaven only knows who the first colonists will be.

None of that matters. Those are details. It’s the will to go, to reach ever farther, to take humanity out of the one single place where we exist and to the stars, so we won’t go extinct by accident or due to the vagaries of climate and circumstance that matters.

Whatever form that pushing forward takes.

Jeff Greason once told he always wondered if the form the expeditions to Mars took was the result of German influence on the space program. And that’s likely true. But it was also a quintessential midcentury project. “If we can defeat the Nazis, we can put a man on the moon.” — Note this was later weaponized into “if we put a man on the moon we can defeat poverty.” None of which made sense. — and the idea that big government and its projection of force were the way to accomplish big things.

In a way this was also the result of the concentration of industry and news and… well, everything that reached its apex mid century.

We live in different times now. In fact so different it’s shocking how far we came in such a relatively short time.

And it doesn’t matter. In the end what matters is getting off this rock. By any means necessary.

75 thoughts on “The Way We Were”

  1. Sarah, I think at least some of that is because the closest real world analog to space travel is an ocean voyage. This automatically imposes a structure that carried over from merchant ships into warships and vice versa.

    This is why there’s almost always a “navy” feel, and why I think “Space Force” will sooner or later become “SpaceFleet”.

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    1. My husband — Navy and Marine family, so very against interest– has a pretty good argument that “SpaceFleet” will show up as a completely separate service.

      I’m still annoyed they went Air Force foundation for space right now, but… it is aimed at basically a home base that you go back to every single time you do a mission, and I kinda got to hope they put the same kind of human services on the Space Force bases.

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      1. The closest historical analog I can come up with for the current U.S. Space Force is if in the interwar years the U.S. split off a separate service for coastal defense, absorbing Army coastal artillery units, Navy zeppelins, and some of the USAAC B-17 units they thought would be taking on enemy battlecruisers doing coastal raids.

        The whole “adopt the customs and structure of the U.S.A.F.” thing, which made sense mostly due to the U.S.S.F. absorbing the Air Force satellite operations folks, really won’t make any sense at all when we need a deep space service on large crewed ships, from the basic “how things need to work away from instantaneous comms” to day to day vehicle manning concepts underway. Independent deep space ops are really really far away from how you need to run a U.S.A.F air base, and are probably closest to how the USN or RN subs operate.

        I imagine the current service will end up being surpassed by yet another deep space service when the time comes.

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  3. Interesting to note they have just uncovered long term exposure to weightlessness can cause permanent brain damage to astronauts. Real, or Nasa trying to limit private companies from exploration? Don’t say they wouldn’t do something like that, covid ya all. But if true we may need artificial gravity before we get there. I for one can wait to leave all the Liberals on this rock.

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    1. Yes I know Liberal is a word that has been bastardized by the left in an attempt to hide their Marxism. Yes I know that by definition that Conservatives are the real Liberals and Liberals are just godless Marxist slave masters. Note how kenji the demented squirrel used Jim Crow Laws to justify Hawaii’s gun control laws. A black Justice, using anti black laws to justify gun control. You just can’t make this stuff up.

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      1. Starship is a short term answer on how to get to Mars. Ultimately what you want are centi-g or deci-g constant acceleration ships traveling like a cycler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler and legalistically they’re not cyclers because of the constant acceleration). Centi-g gets you 10-14 day average transits, deci-g gets you 2-4 day transits (one way). This makes Mars the same time distance as the US was in the early 20th century from Europe for the Centi-g ship. Not sure if 1/100th g is enough to fix the health issues, even 1/10th g might not be enough. Deci-g makes the trip short enough (similar to the original Moon landings) that the health issues are ngligible. Alternatively you could have a true Aldrin Cycler with a rotating (say 1/3 g) ring at one end and plenty of room on a non rotating structure to attach Starships (or derivative) craft. As the Cycler approaches from Mars, bunches of Starships bearing passengers and cargo for the trip launch to meet and dock with the cycler. There is a flurry of activity to unload the Starships as the Cycler passes “near” earth and the cargo (and perhaps most) of the passenger ships return to earth. 146 days later the reverse process starts unloading passengers (likely with Mars tailored Starships). Anyone going home climbs aboard USCS (United States Cycling Ship, Owned and operated by SpaceX) Buzz as well as any cargo to Earth and they take the much longer trip to Earth. This is probably how the second wave of emigration to Mars goes. First wave is going to be far more like Plymouth/St. Augustine/ Roanoke (preferably without disappearing colonies and near starvation, but don’t bet on it). Big issue is reaction mass, you’ll need a lot and it will be need to be resupplied likely at both ends. Fusion Power would be better but right now you might as well as well talk about antimatter or an alcubierre drive. Fusions been 20 years away since I was six and I’m fast approaching 65.

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        1. 14 day transits should address the issue – as far as I have seen this only came up from ISS stays using Earth-Mars zero acceleration Hohmann Transfer Orbit durations, and I have seen nothing indicating they have seen anything like this from Apollo, Skylab, or Space Shuttle missions durations in microgravity.

          If they can get to the 2-4 day transfer orbits I am certain the issue is moot.

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  4. I started taking DMSO by mouth (1 Tbsp twice a day in water) for various aches and pains and, to my astonishment, my eyesight markedly improved especially in my distance vision. With your sensitive system I’d be very cautious trying it if you decide to do so, but it has definitely helped my arthritis as well. YMMV.

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      1. I get it through Amazon from the DMSO Store because it’s 99.995% pure. I also use 70% DMSO in gel or cream for external issues like aching knees or shoulders.

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      1. Cataract surgery will lower the Glaucoma pressures for many types of Glaucoma. I had my left eye done because my pressures were spiking and I had a moderate cataract. The cataract is just as effective as the glaucoma surgery and is far less invasive. On top of that left eye went from 20/60 uncorrected to 20/20 uncorrected (though that meant paying for a slightly more expensive lens that insurance didn’t cover due to pretty severe astigmatism).

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        1. Yes.

          Eye specialist, when cataracts first detected, stated that there are specific glaucoma specified replacement lens. Doesn’t remove the genetic condition, but it will treat the pressure and prevent further nerve damage better than the drops.

          Mom, at 70 (roughly my age, I turn 70 mid-October), went from “needs glasses to put on her makeup, that blind”, that she wore ever since she could remember, to legally could drive without glasses. Needs readers to read. She calls glasses her “face jewelry”. At 70, she’d worn glasses for more than 65 years. Now at 91 she’s worn them for more than 85 years.

          Me? I didn’t start wearing glasses until I was 15, required to drive. While I should have been wearing them for classwork, to fully see writing on blackboards and slides, I didn’t. Went to contacts in ’80, but dropped those in ’04. Got where I needed reading glasses to read or computer work. If I didn’t wear the contacts, I didn’t need the reading glasses. Until recently, back to wearing glasses only when driving. Until got tired of trying to read grocery labels taking off my glasses (dang things don’t heel any better than coffee cups do). Now I need glasses for driving and reading, regardless of source. At least reading on the computer and phone, I can increase font sizes. Not to the point of only a few words on the phone. So, yes with cataract removal, and new lens embedded, I will be dropping glasses. They are NOT face jewelry. No, I will not have one for nearsighted, and one farsighted. Tunnel vision would not be my friend. Doubt progressive lens would be any better (tried progressive contacts, lasted all of 5 minutes, at best), despite being able to use progressive glasses.

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          1. Mom, at 70 (roughly my age, I turn 70 mid-October), went from “needs glasses to put on her makeup, that blind”, that she wore ever since she could remember, to legally could drive without glasses. Needs readers to read. 

            That was my experience when I had both eyes done about 10 years ago.

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      2. Wife and I each had both eyes done in early ’23; picked distance single-vision, partly because Medicare covered the whole thing, and partly because I’ve been wearing glasses since sixth grade, wife earlier than that, so needing glasses to read was a nothingburger.

        Can drive without glasses; see more sharply with, and can’t actually see the dashboard that well without reading lenses.

        —

        New Dresden Files, yes. Dropped into my Kindle app 2 nights ago, started it then, finished it yesterday, re-reading for different nuance. I’m still running through some of the experience written for Harry, so the situation synchs there. Pretty accurate, in my experience.

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  5. I saw a comment on X to the effect that Star Trek writers seem to have used James Cook and the Endeavour as a template, and that more recent writers seem to understand the template only superficially.

    I’d buy that: TV lately is written by people who don’t know anything about anything, for people who don’t know anything about anything.

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    1. Star Trek Academy. Free to stream, but so bad that people aren’t even hate-watching it.

      Written by illiterate p3rverts, for DEI apparatchiks. Who are also illiterate p3rverts. And stupid.

      Also the ship’s bridge looks exactly like a strip club in Las Vegas.

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      1. On the one hand, I am tempted to, by spite and contrariness, work out a good way to do a service academy themed sci fi show.

        On the other hand, I personally am finding myself massively skeptical of all the schools are mined in the media I consume.

        When someone turns a PRC, Korean, or Japanese school into a wizard training program, and especially with some of the plot lines, I sometimes just wonder why.

        I’ve never been a school spirit sort of guy, but I have no idea about the training premises for whatever hypothetical scifi service academy.

        The gee gaws mean that there are a lot of degrees of freedom for the technical training needed to perform in an organization in science fiction land.

        But, presumeably a service academy has a trade between trying to identify and select stubborn people, and trying to do so with bureaucratically compliant people. (I am basically guessing from first principles.)

        There’s room for creativity in terms of classroom and field trip exercises, but some inventions simply will not work for a reasonably thoughtful or a reasonably informed audience.

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      2. Current speculation, which makes sense, is that the new Paramount ownership, being stuck with the prior ownerships disadvantageous contract with Alex Kurtzman and the resulting 20 episodes across two prepaid seasons of steaming bantha poodoo that is Starfleet Academy, the penultimate “Kurtzman Trek”, put the first episode up for free on YT with the comments enabled and open to all as a clever plan to publicize the disaster and at last collect enough to let them break the contract and fire him.

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      3. One of the comments (said comments left enabled on purpose for the free-to-watch first ep on YT to embarrass Kurtzman) asked why the ships bridge looked like a Dave & Busters.

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    2. Comment from someone in the industry that big franchises are also becoming jobs programs for favored groups, said in the context of the new ST: Starfleet Academy show.

      From the limited number of PR stills it’s pretty obvious it fits Iowahawk’s definition of leftism: the writers have killed the original and are wearing the skin as a garment.

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      1. Would that they would have the dignity to wear the skin as a garment.

        One truly wonders what demographic they were after. Not the Trekker/Trekkie demographic they/we seem to revile it universally. 20-40 something woke women (The Kathleen Kennedy favored demographic), it seems to be at best meh to them. The 2026 equivalent of the 90210 demographic? Not likely they don’t tend to watch hour shows and not scifi in particular. It is not clear what this rumored $100 million dollar onanistic excess is intended to do other than provide income to 2nd rate special effects bureaus and third rate actors. Damn it Dorothy I’m an ex software engineer not a TV producer. Though perhaps I’d be a better producer than they are.

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        2. Chasing the modern audience youth is apparently an explanation for the horrid sets, cinematography and lighting, as the lens flare, dim backgrounds, and blinding dark-and-light shots draw more attention when watched on a phone screen than a properly lit set.

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        3. Since they keep trying to ape such elements from that show of the snappy modern vernacular dialog and young hip irreverent casts, and also cannot restrain themselves from stapling in only-works-the-first-time things like the musical episode, these writers rooms are obviously trying for todays equivalent of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer demographic.

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          1. Interesting concept. I don’t know why the sight of Holly Hunter curling up in the captain’s chair of the Athena like a cat grinds my gears so much but it does. Starfleet is military or at least paramilitary…and the captain of a ship or the commandant of an academy is going to, IN FRONT OF THE STUDENTS, sit like they’re at home reading Fifty Shades of Spock?

            The box-checking, the complete disregard for prior lore, and the clearly astroturfed social media campaign to try and get people to accept it…ugh. Gowron was right, burn it all down. Qapla’.

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            1. Picard season 3 was a guerilla op by Terry Matalas accomplished on a shoestring while Kurtzman was busy elsewhere on another project!which is why it sucked less. It still had issues, but was so vastly better than Picard 1&2 and the rest of Kurtzman Trek that the clear fan-favored spinoff of the new Enterpise G captained by Seven of Nine was ruthlessly murdered by Kurtzman in a reenactment of the death of Julius Caesar.

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    3. “recent writers seem to understand the template only superficially.“

      –

      I have zero military experience. I despise boats. But I do know that on a boat, or star ship in space, there is ONE person in charge of the boat or star ship. If a large group needed to run said ship (water or spaces), there is still only ONE person in charge over all, but there is ONE person in charge of each critical section (Engineering, Life Support, Medical, etc.). On cruise ships, as in airplane, even charters or private jet, it ain’t the passenger. Screech all you want, makes cringing embarrassing video, but you ain’t in charge.

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    4. The influence of the _Horatio Hornblower_ novels on Roddenberry’s _Star Trek_ are obvious and were acknowledged by Roddenberry. Many of the things which make James T. Kirk so memorable are traits shared with Hornblower. The loneliness of command, the simultaneous chafing at the demands of the service with acknowledgement that its the best place for him to be.

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    6. Scripts by commitee by theater kids for theater kids, with the caveat that any straight caucasian male theater kids were excluded for inclusions sake.

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  6. “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we….”

    Because the moonshot was an ENGINEERING PROBLEM. A reasonably solvable thing. The social stuff? That’s a whole ‘nother kettle of worms! Humans is complexicated, they is!

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  7. Genetically, space travel is a gambit with either annihilation of those that travel into space, or modifications of the human species to where it probably wouldn’t be recognized on Earth. Maybe that’s already happened, but unless unquestioning evidence is presented, we’ll never know. It is something writers will theorize about, and the good writers will entertain with their stories.

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    1. That is the premise of The Proxima Chronicles by John Bailey…

      (… and 9,000,000 other books…)

      Even on Earth, every choice we make changes us slightly.

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    1. I always say the worst thing about the Apollo Program is that it succeeded. Big Government spent billions of our dollars creating a gigantic bureaucracy to accomplish what was essentially the biggest publicity stunt in history. Put A Man On The Moon! They actually exceeded their goal, and put 2 men on the moon. Yay.

      Then it was been there, done that, nothing more to see here. Nobody has gone more than 400 miles above the Earth’s surface since 1972. The bureaucracy went on doing Space Stuff but Pournelle’s Iron Law has set in with a vengeance. NASA is run by bean counters and pencil pushers. Engineers are considered a necessary evil to get more funding.

      And we are left with the notion that Big Government Programs are The Way To Get Things Done. Even though Big Government is the absolute worst way to do anything. Take the Department Of Education as an example. They spent 40 years and $2 TRILLION and are today’s government schools any better than they were back in 1977? No! They’re far worse. But if you point that out, you Hate Education! The only way to fix the Education Crisis! is to give the Ed Dept even more money to waste! Even though they’re the ones that caused the problem.

      I hate bad education and maleducation, therefore I hate the Department Of Education with the fire of a billion exploding stars.

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      1. Big government is like a church dedicated to feeding the poor. But when the offering plate gets passed around, even though everybody puts something in, and even though the church parking lot is full of Cadillacs, there’s only nickles and dimes.

        And of course the reason is all those people in the congregation with sticky fingers, for when the plate comes by. They put in a nickle and take out the folding money. And all the ones pretending to be poor and collecting ten meals a day, which they then sell to the -actual- poor.

        Which is why Tom Swift is working and Karl Marx fails, basically. These days the sticky finger crowd RUNS the church.

        Based on what I’m seeing in the news, my feeling based on nothing tangible is that possibly a third of the American government is straight-up graft. So many people with sticky fingers, pilfering. Some steal a little, some steal by the truckload.

        The Dept. of Education steals by the train load. That’s what it is for.

        Now, I feel I must point out that I am not dumping on the USA. Whatever is going on with you guys, it is as nothing compared to what’s up in Canada.

        #CarkMarney’s response to illegal Chinese Communist police stations in Toronto Ontario (and Vancouver, and Montreal, and probably a few more) is not to kick them the f- out of my country (with a thick ear, this is Canada damn it!). No my friends, he’s solving the problem by making them –legal-. Yeah.

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        1. In theory, it is reasonable to respond to our allegations of illegality by making stuff legal.

          In practice, it feels like our law faculty are a bunch of autistic tim walzes to understand things so poorly that they seriously propose that any arbitrary thing can be legalized or decriminalized.

          It is downstream of presuming that older status quo was arbitrary, and that anything could be admissible.

          But still, they come across as a bit cognitively impaired, before one realizes that they are lawyers, and not all of them are technologists, and not all of them are military history buffs.

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          1. “In theory, it is reasonable to respond to our allegations of illegality by making stuff legal.”

            But in practice, they’re allowing the apparatchik thugs of a Communist tyranny which keeps slaves to set up shop in Canada, where they will push Canadians around. Starting with oppressing Chinese Canadians, but once the camel’s head is inside, the rest of the camel will shortly follow.

            In other news, the Metro Toronto Police Force has announced that they will not be participating in the #Liberal gun confiscation program. Because are they stupid enough to confiscate legally owned guns at the same time the PRC is coming to set up “police” stations? Thank God, it seems not.

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            1. The logical response would be for Canadians to bar the doors to those ‘stations’ while the invaders are inside and then burn them to the ground. Conservatives don’t tend to do that in a timely manner, usually waiting until the camel’s vertebra are scattered all over the parking lot.

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        3. “Possibly a third”? You starry-eyed optimist, you.

          Based on what I’ve seen, the US government is at least 80% graft and bureaucratic deadwood. All of the ‘NGOs’ leeching off our tax money are conduits for graft and payoffs for cronies. A lot of the state governments are no better, and some of them are worse. (koff) Kalifornia! (koff) New York!

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          2. Imaginos1892 said

            Based on what I’ve seen, the US government is at least 80% graft and bureaucratic deadwood

            My aren’t we the starry eyed optimist :-) . I think its closer to 95% in many sectors. I think FDR started us on this path in a vain (and actually ineffectual if not harmful) attempt to dig out from the great depression assuming direct control was better than letting the market choose. In fighting Facisim and later Communism we took on some of their bad habits (government control of private industry) and Government got subverted by Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. I do wonder if what we need isn’t Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage, but it too would soon find itself consumed by the Iron Law.

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          3. Saw it this morning, but can’t be bothered to find the link. [holds thumb to nose, twiddles fingers] J.D. Vance was on an interview [somewhere] and noted that for Furrin’ aid sent from the USA, 88% or so got sucked up by the middlemen. Hell of a job, there.

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      2. Actually, the cry against people who criticize the government-controlled U.S. education “system” isn’t “You hate Education!”, it’s “You Hate Children!” I am SOOOO sick of that retort masquerading as an argument.

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  9. One thought about the military “structure” for exploration teams.

    If you’re going into a potentially dangerous situation, what type of group do you want to be with; a group of college professors or a group of military personnel?

    IMO a group of military personnel is more likely to work as a team when Murphy shows up.

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    1. They do something similar now at the Antarctic stations – there is a clear chain of command and the boss is the boss, but there’s no saluting or standing at attention military monkey business.

      Of course they don’t carry guns or need to stay at their posts under fire either.

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  10. Instead of a Kindle, get a full-sized tablet for reading. Not as conveniently portable as a Kindle, but an 8×11-ish screen gives you a lot more options for sizing and viewability.

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        1. I stay with 24″ for the desktop monitor. Uncorrected, I’m pretty myopic in my right eye, and the left is a mess (macular issues, along with other things). If I sit at the desk, I can read quite well with glasses off. On really rare occasions, I’ll drag out the computer glasses–focus halfway between distance and “reading”. Those are sort of useful when I have to use a laptop as for trips.

          Haven’t looked into setting up a tablet with Linux. I know it’s doable, but yikes.

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  11. 2^128 to cataract surgery. I got my 35 yo eyes back! I’m now no correction on the left and minimal on the right. I have non planar optical axes so I need a prism in the lenses to make them coplanar.

    I’m a fan of L. Neil Smith’s freebooter exploration stories. Hard core A-Cap writing, but fit well with Sara’s Thieves series. Free association instead of armor plated corporations.

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    1. Something we did when I got my cataract lenses. (It worked for several years, then went pear-shaped. See below.) My right eye (dominant) was optimized for distance, with the left (somewhat astigmatic, partly due to corneal scaring) was for reading. Could actually drive without glasses, thought it’s be right-eye mostly.

      This went sour two ways. 1) I was diagnosed with map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy, and the fix was to use a diamond burr to get the corneas smooth again. Unlike the usual expectations, I ended up myopic in the right eye rather than far sighted. The left eye not so much change. However, due to different optics, objects in the left eye are larger than the right. 2) Macular issues, partly epi-retinal membrane, conservatively (ie, partially) fixed in the left eye, thoroughly fixed in the right eye), plus some nerve damage in the left eye make for some interesting, not-quite binocular–vision.

      There’s no surgical fix for the remaining epiretinal membrane. I’ve mused about getting a new lens in the left eye to get matching image sizes, but doubt it’s worth the risks involved. Haven’t tried an eyepatch to block out the left eye when driving, but might give it a shot.

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  12. Now that we live more than say four to five decades, at least a substantial portion of us, and the cultural influence of generations is taking way longer to clear from the culture, it’s important to remember this. It’s important to remember that the circumstances of our childhood are not necessarily more “real” or better than today’s.

    Except that we’re also getting longer overhang on that– my mom was in college when Schoolhouse Rock came out, but I grew up with it a decade or two later, and my kids are, now.

    So we’re getting culture more… sticky…that way, too.

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  13. since you mentioned Drrsden (can you believe its been 5 years?) I am 75% of the way and it is wonderful.

    Really fixes all the issues my friends had with battleground.

    this is the year long major clean up that follows the big disaster movie.

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