Gunslinger Girls like Starship Troopers?

I am not refereing to that movie, but to the original novel by Heinlein. In it there are "K-9 units"

The K-9 Corps is an elite division of the Terran Federation military. Troopers are trained with neodogs, dog-like creatures genetically enhanced that serve as elite scouts.

Soldiers in K-9 are selected after intense psychological evaluation, as the bond between the soldier and his neodog (or "caleb") is more intense than any human marriage or relationship. If the master is killed, the neodog is killed at once. If the dog is killed, doctors restrain the master and slowly put his mind back together.

I've always felt that this is how the organization sees the girls and their handlers.

Disturbing, but somehow touching at the same time...

I've always hated Heinlein, more so when I got to know him personally. The guy was a snob. So was his wife and sister, who taught at my old High School- Brooklyn Tech, thus the reasons why he dropped by the school, and show off in class.

Kurt Vonnegut was a my fave of my known authors. He used to drop by the Apple/Mac Users group with floppy disks asking for help to get the files off them! He was a great guy and ate pizza with the rest of at the end of group meetings. Later on in life, due to some court case he would not give details on, he released a book under the name of Vincent Campos (or Kampos). I forget the title of the book, but it deals with a WWII Solider who survives a battle that his friends didn't and how he makes an attempt to continue on.

Hmm, interesting correlation. Though I think in GSG, the relationship is only that way in one direction.

ElfenMagix wrote:Kurt Vonnegut was a my fave of my known authors. He used to drop by the Apple/Mac Users group with floppy disks asking for help to get the files off them! He was a great guy and ate pizza with the rest of at the end of group meetings. Later on in life, due to some court case he would not give details on, he released a book under the name of Vincent Campos (or Kampos). I forget the title of the book, but it deals with a WWII Solider who survives a battle that his friends didn't and how he makes an attempt to continue on.

That is so cool. Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. Slaughterhouse-Five
is a treasure. It’s really awesome that you were able to meet him.

Danjo3 wrote:

ElfenMagix wrote:Kurt Vonnegut was a my fave of my known authors. He used to drop by the Apple/Mac Users group with floppy disks asking for help to get the files off them! He was a great guy and ate pizza with the rest of at the end of group meetings. Later on in life, due to some court case he would not give details on, he released a book under the name of Vincent Campos (or Kampos). I forget the title of the book, but it deals with a WWII Solider who survives a battle that his friends didn't and how he makes an attempt to continue on.

That is so cool. Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. Slaughterhouse-Five
is a treasure. It’s really awesome that you were able to meet him.

Met him? I can dare say I can call him friend.
Funny- he was an avid Apple II user until his final 5 years when he switched to Mac, and that was because he ran out of sources of 5.25" disks! He owned a PC... once. An upgrade from an Apple in the mid 1980s, it burned him by destroying 'a very important disk.' He never went back to PC ever since.

As for Heinlein and his Starship Trooper Dogs? NO. Dehumanization was Heinlein's favorite things to do. If you were not up to his level, he would put you below it- naturally, he was a snob. The girls are more human than their handlers, and as I argue in my fanfiction stories, "No matter how much is taken away from the body and is replaced with technology, does not make you any less of a human... or a person."

Hmm, interesting correlation. Though I think in GSG, the relationship is only that way in one direction.

I think the toll can go both ways, though the handlers will have to live much longer with it

As for Heinlein and his Starship Trooper Dogs? NO. Dehumanization was Heinlein's favorite things to do.

I haven't really read that into any of the works of that I've read.

MadHatChemist wrote:
I think the toll can go both ways, though the handlers will have to live much longer with it

Funny how you say that as that's how I originally intended Alpha to be. Although he's a cyborg, he's constructed in such a way that he will live and age normally(albeit slower). He will live through seeing each generation come and go.

Who knows, Alpha might live long enough to see Fernando III grow up.

And take that 'retirement' job at BTHS as a Janitor.

Later, grown-up Fernando III wonders why he sees a bottle of absinthe at Grandpa's marker come Christmas time. Year after year, without fail.

I've always hated Heinlein, more so when I got to know him personally. The guy was a snob. So was his wife and sister, who taught at my old High School- Brooklyn Tech, thus the reasons why he dropped by the school, and show off in class.

Kurt Vonnegut was a my fave of my known authors. He used to drop by the Apple/Mac Users group with floppy disks asking for help to get the files off them! He was a great guy and ate pizza with the rest of at the end of group meetings. Later on in life, due to some court case he would not give details on, he released a book under the name of Vincent Campos (or Kampos). I forget the title of the book, but it deals with a WWII Solider who survives a battle that his friends didn't and how he makes an attempt to continue on.

Cool, benifits of living in America, huh? Actually, although I know what you mean, it sounds strange to think of snobbishness without British social classes. I definately got the impression from his books that he was contemptuous of opinions he disagreed with, or people he felt irresponsible or unable to cope.

The only famous Sci-Fi writer I ever met was Brian Aldiss at a lecture. Just as from some of his books, he seemed a complete dirty old man, but very pleasant.