Armor
by John Steakley
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Book Summary Information
Author: John SteakleyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1984-12-04
ISBN: 0886773687
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: DAW
Book Reviews of Armor
Book Review: ARMOR --it's not just a metaphor
Summary: 5 Stars
Of course, you realize it was MOST LIKELY a Woman that did it to him.
The hints are very very light.
But you'll have to read it to find out. Won't you?
-The best cover for this story is the one the that the customer view from Catskinner has up on the book/profile. It's a picture that continues around the spine to the back cover of the book. A picture from the 80's. It's a Classic sci-fi tableau.
This story is about a very unique Warrior, the main character Felix. For some reason, he just seems to be -UNABLE- to die in battle. Not that he's TRYING to die, ...exactly. But he sure doesn't seem to CARE if he's alive, either. Entitled "Armor", the story is loosely reminiscent of Heinleins Starship Troopers. But StarShip troopers is a happy-happy waltz through the park, licking ice-cream, compared to the view you obtain through Felix's bleak inner-scape over-laying reality. You catch on EARLY that Felix is, "in a different place". Problem is, HIS view of reality suits the situation PERFECTLY. All through the novel you are trying to figure Felix out, and John Steakley feeds you the smallest tid-bits, barely hints. What you IMMEDIATELY discern is this. While not exactly suicidal, he also does not CARE if he lives. He's running away, -From Himself -from a previous Life. So, as he dresses up in this ultra-modern, ultra-tough, atomic-powered, super-armored version of himself to go out and fight an impossible war against an INNUMERABLE and IMPLACCABLE foe who just... never... quits...
It turns out to be a good thing that death does not scare him. It works for him.
The ARMOR is a metaphor. He's just as alone, in a crowd of humans, naked and Armorless. He's billions of miles away from his fellow man. He hears and SEE's No One, even when he is OUT of the Armor. Everyone else means NOTHING to him. To HIM they are all "dead".
He's psyschologically PERFECT for fighting hoardes of aliens, out in the field. No Humans Around, not really afraid to die. Not really caring if he lives. Only the ARMOR between Him, and Them. He does like to fight. Oh, and that thing inside HIM that never quits, the thing he calls...
...His "Engine"
For some reason, his ENGINE will not LET him die. Even Felix is amazed, because it seems EVERYONE around him dies. But never HIM. While fighting, the "Engine" rises and takes action.
Felix always lives. Always. Even tho' he places himself in the THICK of the worst. At the end of one battle, with the fight over. He just stands there... literally alone, and you FEEL for him as he surveys the remains of people who he knew if only briefly. And he cries. ...as his smoothly running Engine, begins to falter.
Later in the story, "chinks" in his emotional armor appear, as you see his heart attempting to resurface. As you see the great Warrior weaken, you can see that his "Engine" stops running quite so smoothly.
The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water is poisonous. It is home to the most implacable enemy that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has EVER encountered.
From the back cover-
"Body Armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee- the culmination of thousands of years of the armorers' craft. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic-powered battle fortress. But that trooper will have to fight a nearly endless horde of berserk, hard-shelled monsters, the fighting-arm of a species which uses biological technology to design perfect, mindless, war minions that can tear apart that armor in their claws.
Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission."
Later in the book,
"Where the standard warriors suits bore different colors for rank and group, all scouts were black. Flat black. Dull, non-shiny, space black.
'Death black', thought Felix fatalistically, as he watched the five other scouts collect and attach their rifles. ...Then to briefing. ...it was then, for Felix, it began. The hatred first, for the briefing officer. Then his superiors. Then the captain of this ship, and the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick headed idiot humans who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, ... then vanished. And from somewhere inside came a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet. What replaced the loathing and fury was something -cold -and distant and... only impersonally attentive.
it was an odd being which rose from Felix and through him. It was in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature.
'The Engine', Felix thought. 'It's not me. It's my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act.
... And it will do all this-
-While I cower inside."
"There was more to the briefing. More figures of time and distance, more numbers of men and probabilities of enemy. The Engine heard and made note. Felix, watching himself, felt disgust at all that was about to happen and all who had caused it. And once more felt the distance between himself and those about him. Again, as he briefly scanned their armored forms filling the chamber, he thought: "They are all going to die."
With furious concentration, that which kept him Felix...
-Gave itself as fuel to that which would keep him alive."
(Armor pg.18)
But please note. Without strength of Spirit. The Armor does nothing.
And all the other people had the benefit of the same Armor.
It was Felix's spirit.
Summary of Armor
The military sci-fi classic in a striking new package
Felix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind.
This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat-and how the strength of the human spirit can be the greatest armor of all.
Felix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind.
This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat-and how the strength of the human spirit can be the greatest armor of all.
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