[Urbane Guerrilla]

That's why I said operas about Drake and Weber. They're okay, but were I their editor I'd want to work on their style some. I'd want Drake to cut his references to iridium gun barrels to about one per novel rather than one or more per narrated firefight, for instance. There is the pitfall of overdoing, as the Bulwer-Lytton Contest's finalists can show us. Weber at least tries to show his readers some economy and social context, and how they interact, and manages this to be essential to the story and not bog it, not too much -- yet still, his and Drake's baddies both do things in deep space that require incredibly cheap interstellar flight -- like ocean voyaging in the age of sail and a like number of sailing days too.

There will never be anything faint about my praise of Heinlein -- Starship Troopers was seminal to my entire philosophy of life. I seem to have read it at exactly the right time of life. I've managed a suitable degree of values thereby. Yes, that's my boast.