Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975827Also, "Flash Gordon" is not "quality SF," it's "sword and planet adventure romp."  When Flash Gordon is dueling Ming the Merciless and they're using swords on the deck of a spaceship, this is NOT serious.

And I like it that way!  I like my entertainment lighthearted and escapist.

Same with Star Wars, which makes me wonder why people got hung up on the galaxy rotating. It is science fantasy.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975827Also, "Flash Gordon" is not "quality SF," it's "sword and planet adventure romp."  When Flash Gordon is dueling Ming the Merciless and they're using swords on the deck of a spaceship, this is NOT serious.

And I like it that way!  I like my entertainment lighthearted and escapist.

Exactly. I love the old Flash Gordon strips and serials but they're hardly what anyone would refer to as 'quality sf' more science fantasy.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975827Also, "Flash Gordon" is not "quality SF," it's "sword and planet adventure romp."  When Flash Gordon is dueling Ming the Merciless and they're using swords on the deck of a spaceship, this is NOT serious.

And I like it that way!  I like my entertainment lighthearted and escapist.

Lighthearted, entertaining, escapist  science fiction is quality science fiction.

And Flash Gordon is awesome whether he's drawn by Alex Raymond or played by Buster Crabbe or Sam Jones.

Quote from: Spike;975814Biologically it is absurd.  If a society loses half its male population, in one generation they will have achevied total replacement. If a society loses half its female population, in one generation they have... half their population missing.

Societies that put females on the front line, particularly in the young, military and (consequently) fertile ages, are demographically doomed.

In the past war hardly lead to the complete decimation of those fighting. The entire society was not mobilized to fight. In the modern era of total war many more civilians died in the world wars than the actual combantants, rendering your argument mildly absurd.

Quote from: Dumarest;975854Lighthearted, entertaining, escapist  science fiction is quality science fiction.

And Flash Gordon is awesome whether he's drawn by Alex Raymond or played by Buster Crabbe or Sam Jones.

Flash Gordon was not literature so the whole discussion is nonsense. Confusing comics for short stories and novels. Leigh Brackett and Burroughs would have been better comparisons but they are hardly free of sexual or racial politics are they?

Quote from: Voros;975883In the past war hardly lead to the complete decimation of those fighting. The entire society was not mobilized to fight. In the modern era of total war many more civilians died in the world wars than the actual combantants, rendering your argument mildly absurd.

Germany lost 75& of it's army and 46% of it's male population in World War 2, which renders your rebuttal completely absurd.

Quote from: Voros;975885Flash Gordon was not literature so the whole discussion is nonsense. Confusing comics for short stories and novels. Leigh Brackett and Burroughs would have been better comparisons but they are hardly free of sexual or racial politics are they?

Just because you dislike something doesn't make it "not literature." Plug away with your biases, though.

I doubt Brackett and Burroughs are considered "literature" either, but then again neither is most of science fiction.

And I don't care, as long as it's fun.

Quote from: DavetheLost;975958I doubt Brackett and Burroughs are considered "literature" either, but then again neither is most of science fiction.

I prefer Harlan Ellison's take on science fiction or speculative fiction. Due to its roots in pulp magazines, SF is actually the court jester of the literary world. Capable of capering about and poking fun at royalty all the while telling dangerous truths that many do not take seriously but are important as cautionary tales.

Quote from: Spike;975814Biologically it is absurd.  If a society loses half its male population, in one generation they will have achevied total replacement. If a society loses half its female population, in one generation they have... half their population missing.

Societies that put females on the front line, particularly in the young, military and (consequently) fertile ages, are demographically doomed.

Assuming that the majority of children are born to roughly monogamous coupling situations (i.e. not where each returning male soldier starts having kids with massively multiple females survivors), what difference will the gender make? It would seem that an equal gender distribution of survivors would be optimal.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;975965Assuming that the majority of children are born to roughly monogamous coupling situations (i.e. not where each returning male soldier starts having kids with massively multiple females survivors), what difference will the gender make? It would seem that an equal gender distribution of survivors would be optimal.

Maybe it would help if you didn't start with that assumption?

Quote from: HappyDaze;975988Maybe it would help if you didn't start with that assumption?

It's the right assumption for eg Post WW1 Europe.

But I don't agree with Spike's argument. A society that loses half its women, the other half have average 4 kids each and the population is recovered in 1 generation. Historically it was land carrying capacity that limited population (or in Africa disease). And most wars don't result in loss of half the combatant population.
But I think it's questionable whether a warfighting organisation generally benefits from including female combatants. My suspicion is that segregated units like the Kurds have can be combat effective and a net asset, but I suspect not so much for integrated units, with some rare exceptions (especially insurgent/guerilla units). And a lot depends on culture, some cultures like that of the USA seem particularly ill suited to including female combatants, whereas it works for the Kurds currently - but I suspect if they ever gained their own State this might change.

Edit: My own sci-fi-fantasy setting does of course include butt-kicking CSMC (Consortium Space Marine Corps) female Marines. Because it's cool.

Quote from: Spike;975942Germany lost 75& of it's army and 46% of it's male population in World War 2, which renders your rebuttal completely absurd.

Those numbers aren't enough data to determine anything about the overall casualties of WWII. They can't even be meaningfully compared to each other.

Guys, quit bringing the political shit into the RPG threads.

Quote from: Dumarest;975947Just because you dislike something doesn't make it "not literature." Plug away with your biases, though.

You're getting your panties in a twist over nothing. Literature means prose or poetry. It is not comics or films.

I'm not using the term as a judgement but as a description, obviously. Considering we've already had discussions on Burroughs, E.C. Tubb and Leigh Brackett, whose writing I clearly admire, why you would assume I meant anything snobbish is rather odd.