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Newsletter November 2025 - In you must go

So what about my experience? Had I been wrong all those years?

Todd

28 Nov 2025 — 3 min read

Unrelated photo of brightly lit dragonfly sculptures I took at the San Francisco Botanical gardens light show. It was such a cool installation, I had to share even thought it bears no relation to the newsletter below.

Happy Thanksgiving,

At least for those of you in the US. We had a fun day with family and friends, grub and games. I hope everyone had a good November in general.

Day job and life kept me pretty mentally exhausted, so I didn't make a lot of progress on the writing front. I did have a chat with a fellow choir member who also happens to be a literary agent. She recommended that I use Publisher's Marketplace to search for agents. The query tool is decent, but the real benefit is that it shows info about the agent's recent and long-term deals. Some of the agents I had been about to query turned out to not have many (or any!) deals in my genre. While that's not necessarily a deal breaker, it definitely means I need to do more careful research and rework my list before I query.

Like many people, I enjoy video games as a way to destress, and recently, a fellow dad pulled me into a game called Helldivers 2. It's a co-op shooter game heavily based on the film version of Starship Troopers, including the heavy satire. It's pretty over the top, and the gameplay is quite challenging and fun. I die a lot, but so far it's been pushing me to experiment and learn to play better, rather than being frustrating. I also joined an excellent community of "HellDads". Having a squad of likeminded folks to chat with while trying to complete missions is a ton of fun.

Why do I bring it up? Obviously, to get more people to play with. But also, so I can talk about Starship Troopers and art. You see, I read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein as a kid, and I enjoyed it as a military sci fi. I didn't remember much of the detail, but years later, Paul Verhoeven of Robocop fame, directed a movie based on the book. I LOVED the movie. Fun action, great special effects, acting, and all the biting satire that I remembered from the book.

Imagine my confusion when I heard that many fans hated the movie and thought they had ruined the book by adding in the satire. What? It was clearly there in my hazy memory, so I chalked it up to another case of "Oh, Internet. Really?"

Many more years later, Eldest Child got into the lore of Warhammer 40K, a game that also derived from Starship Troopers and features a heavy satire military sci fi setting. I picked up a fresh copy of the original book and reread it, planning to share it with Eldest Child.

That's where it got interesting. At first I saw the old satire, ready and waiting for me. But then, I started to wonder if, wait, maybe he's for real, and the book isn't satire. Yikes!

I did a little research and found an article about the book by Michael Moorcock, a contemporary of Heinlein and author of the Elric of Melnibone novels. In the article, Moorcock confirms that, yes indeed, Heinlein was for real and Starship Troopers was more of a suggestion than a satire. Double yikes!

So what about my experience? Had I been wrong all those years?

No! It's all good. No crisis of faith. Years ago, I recall someone saying that once an artist puts their art into the world, it's no longer solely their creation. Now a significant component is the interpretation of the person observing the art. Art is like a Rorschach test. Or that cave on Dagobah from Empire Strikes Back.

Luke: What's in there?
Yoda: Only what you take with you.

I try to remember that advice with my own writing and leave little breadcrumbs of suggestions so as many people as possible can connect with the characters, situations, and settings. Youngest Child is reading the first draft of Under the Diamond Moon right now, and has already said they loved that I included X or Y characters which helped them connect to the story. All I did was hint and leave possibilities open, and they brought their own self to the story.

Bottom line, I feel comfortable sharing Starship Troopers with Eldest Child, because I know they'll read it similar to how I read it. But, instead, I got them to try out Helldivers 2, because as our family motto goes: