My First Time

Earlier this week, for the first time ever, I threw a book in the trash.

I was standing on the platform at the Mt. Vernon Square Metro station, reading Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. I'd been reading it for the last four days, and for those four days, the book had been pissing me off. But when I got to the point where Dubois, Heinlein's stand-in, began to deride the decadencies of twentieth century democracy--for more than 10 pages--I gave up.

Turns out, I could take the endless philosophical debates. I could take the fascistic utopia crap. And I could (barely) stomach the straw men arguments he used to prop up his militaristic house of cards. But all three? C'mon. I'm 44 years old. I don't have time to waste.

Besides, I've never had the patience for the brittle libertarianism common among the most devoted SF fans.

Survey says: Mean, boring, and wrong. Verdict: Compost.