Dorsai!

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I don’t insist that you believe Dorsai! is the best novel of military SF ever written: one could make a pretty good case for Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. I will, however, insist that those two novels (first published within weeks of one another in 1959) are in combination the standard against which the subgenre of military SF must be judged.

Everybody who’s attempted a complex task knows that there are more ways to go wrong than there are to do the job right. Dorsai! and Starship Troopers are a useful illustration of the diversity nonetheless possible between first-class works, even within a category as narrow as military SF. Heinlein’s novel focused on the individual soldier and the social forces that molded him. Dorsai! is an investigation of the problems of high command and the qualities that produce the ideal commander.

The differences in approach aren’t so much apples and oranges but rather the drive and driven plates of a clutch: both command and execution are necessary for a military system to work. In my opinion, Dickson and Heinlein have explored these segments of the system not only as well as anybody in the field has done, but as well as anybody is likely ever to do.

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