Dear SF writers of the world

[james_davis_nicoll]

I hit my lifetime tolerance for heroic tales of children drafted into draconian, high mortality super-soldier programs justified as required for the greater good sometime around the end of the novel version of Ender's Game. Please adjust your story lines accordingly.

Comments

[halfassured.livejournal.com]

Is it OK if it's not heroic?

I actually kind of want to see this trope inverted sometime so that it's really old people recruited out of nursing homes, but I can't think of a plausible way to do it short of just going with some sort of anime-style "old people have magical hero powers" rationale.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

John Scalzi's Old Man's War.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Watch on the Rhine.

(be careful what you wish for)

I've thought of a way to send old people in space. Postulate that full-body cyborgs are a lot better in space, and that people don't want to become full-body cyborgs if they have a choice. "So, I see you have terminal cancer..."

James: have you seen the Nanoha serieses?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

No.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Heh. Nanoha's pretty firmly on the heroic side of the equation, though. (Well, except for the "no child labor laws" thing.)

What about Puella Magi Madoka Magica, AKA "Magical Princess Faustus"? That one's screwy.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

"Old guys recruited for One Last Incredibly Vital Mission"? That trope was old when Noah was a pup.

Clive Cussler even managed to pull it off with (a very carefully not named) James Bond in "Night Prone".

[halfassured.livejournal.com]

I'm imagining more a situation where the elderly (potentially civilians) are preferentially chosen to fill the ranks of a large-scale endeavour. Looking at the synopsis, Old Man's War sounds like it fits the bill; might have to read that.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the Old Man's War universe really makes a lot of sense on extended scrutiny, but the justification here is a bit like mindstalk's idea about the cyborgs. To get into a milspec super-body, you basically have to die and have your mind uploaded. And it's a one-way trip from home, because the Colonial Union doesn't let the people of Earth even know anything about what's really going on off the planet. And, while admittedly nobody on Earth knows this for sure, you're deep in the shit forever after. So they recruit old people.

But there are also clone-soldiers with brand-new personalities (the Ghost Brigades of the second book), who seem to be used to commit war crimes for rather Enderlike reasons. So Scalzi's working both ends of the spectrum.