On Killing - Dirty Harry Wants You!

On Killing: 
The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(1995, 1996) by Dave Grossman

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Go to the short review on Amazon.com!

It's not often that I read a bad book with a good reputation, so it is bittersweet to bite into On Killing. The text teases me with more baloney than a cynical critic can possibly chew--it took me four months to write the review--and yet I am horrified to see that people still eat it up. Obstensibly, On Killing is about its subtitle: "The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society". But Reader Beware! From the front cover in, Grossman plays havoc and unleashes the bats from belfies.

The creepiest claims crawl out of otherwise sedate prose, often cloaked in the authority of scholarship. So I don't blame people if they miss the thesis: post-Sixties media, particularly video games, movies, and television, is programming Americans into homicidal zombies at a scale to rival nuclear holocaust. To get there, the reader first has to navigate 300 pages of heart-rendering tales about soldiers and trauma, liberally dotted with poems and pat assertions. If this sounds like a massive non-sequitur for a central argument, you could be right.

In form, On Killing is a patische of popular 1990's genres: the self-help book, the warrior's code book, the moral panic book, and the attack modern liberalism book. There are so many competing interests, as the author attempts to demonstrate expertise across a range of subjects, that it tends to diffuse the objectives.

The result reads like the effort of a science enthusiast, not a scientist. Unable to settle upon a hypothetical methodology, it veers from the specious to the ludicrous. Most notably the heavy use of conspiracy theories, neologisms, and urban legends. The supporting quotes and case studies have a habit of contradicting Grossman’s own points. Otherwise, they tend to be irrelevant; many chapters and sub-chapters consist entirely of padding. A pattern of long and fallacious set-up, followed by weak punch-lines.

Which is why I’m disappointed that so many adults disagree with me. Reading other reviews on Blogger and Amazon.com, it is apparent that intelligent, educated, experienced elders have appraised this book with all the insight of a potato chip (if you will pardon a return to the food metaphor). I could hardly find any critical reviews at all, positive or negative, not even in a Google search. Indeed, the more lunatic the book gets, the less fans seem to challenge it. As each argument goes on, it becomes more nakedly erroneous or hysterical, until the hot air sends both the book and its readers into flight from reason—the falcon cannot hear the falconer. And if a Yeats reference isn’t enough for you, consider that all those 1930’s dictators were correct--that a big lie, told often enough, becomes truth. The common credulity can also be expressed as a cinematic methaphor--Bug, the stage play and movie where a good-but-broken hearted woman is swept up into the delusions of her schizophrenic boyfriend.

No wonder the wise folks fall for this foolishness. Yet you don’t need me to pump-start your brain. All that is required is to break the hypnosis of rhetoric—from there, you can restore your intellectual will against pseudo-intellectual ills.

"It begins innocently with cartoons..." - page 308.

Footfall - Elephants Attack!

Footfall (1985) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
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My father was a fan of science fiction and horror, and of course both Niven and Pournelle adorned his shelves. Footfall, a semi-hard science romp against communist space elephants, wasn't the first of their books to cross my path, but it is perhaps the weirdest. Published during the early years of SDI and Space Shuttle mania, the book was a concious attempt to sell fans on Ronald Reagan and his expensive efforts to win the Cold War.



Despite the rather obvious politics of the book, it remains a fun story. It helps me, at least, that the book offers a glimpse into certain mentalities of my childhood. With a cast of dozens, characters sometimes disappear as quickly as they arrive, but the authors deserve credit for trying to give us a global view of a world war, even if seen through the bifocals of West versus East. I found the alien technology to be particularly fascinating. The authors worked to make the aliens advanced, but plausibly so. Their portrayal of military space systems--and the importance of orbital power--is perhaps terribly pat. Nevertheless, it remains as inspiring techno-drama.

They don't skimp on the non-military tech either, giving the invaders a realistic insertion into our solar system. Warp drive and teleporters need not apply here. Nor exotic detection--those space commies are picked up on astronomical plates, and the book does well in showing how even a large alien ship could hide in our own solar system for years, feeding off asteroids while it refuels and assembles its invasion force.

Don't fret that the book will wear at your ideological edifices--it is far too goofy and dated to suceed at its goal. A year later the Challenger exploded and people began to realize the space plane was a bit more difficult to manage than the Saturn-style rocket. Meanwhile, SDI and its sucessors climbed higher and higher into that deficit sky, producing so little for so many tax dollars and resources. On the other hand, I think the basic concept of a shuttle and space weapons are sound; they just needed a lot more sense and farsight to make them sing. So there's no shame in reading this book, no matter your own beliefs. Reading it may even illuminate some of the tropes and icons which unconciously emerge in my own fiction.