I was reading a wonderful blogpost by the Scottish author Charlie Stross called Rethinking Space Opera. In it Stross linked to an essay by Michael Moorcock called Starship Stormtroopers written in 1977. That’s an essay I first read when I was in high school and going through the first of many huge Moorcock phases. I was obsessed with The Dancers at the End of Time, and the weird and wonderful adventures of Jerry Cornelius.
I recently published a science fiction novel called Daedalus. In interviews and discussions I regularly cite The Dancers at the End of Time as a significant inspiration for the book, and it is. The image I paint of the far future is very Moorcockian. In Daedalus I also reference Starship Troopers a lot; and boy do I mean a lot. And by that I mean the film Starship Troopers, not the fascistic ImaginationLand of Heinlein's original serial. Because at its core Daedalus is a comedy. But it's also a space opera, by any definition of the term, and it’s also at times deeply, merrily fascistic.
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