Sunshine Patriots

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill earlier this year and I am so glad he gave me a copy of his Sunshine Patriots. I like military science-fiction but the last few years I'm having more and problems with the whole gung-ho aspect of it. Sunshine Patriots is the anti-Heinlein. Scathing, acerbic and just plain (very darkly) funny it is the story of a group of jarheads just trying to survive. Campbell makes a few poignant critiques about capitalism and commercialism but - even more - he writes science-fiction that deals honestly with questions about race and racism. Too often scifi just assumes race will be a thing of the past in the future. Campbell puts the lie to that notion and he does it in a no-punches-held-back way.