Book recommendation: Armor by John Steakley

John Steakley is probably most famous for his later work Vampire$ which was made into a movie by master of horror John Carpenter.  But I also loved his earlier work Armor

Initially the book resembles Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but without the politics, with infantry troops wearing high-tech atomic powered battle armor and fighting bugs.  But the book moves into a psychological exploration into what can happen when a man reaches his limits in experiencing horror and then has to go back for more again and again.  And Steakley is much better than Heinlein at writing action scenes.

This book is Science Fiction but could have easily been set in WWII, Vietnam, or some other war.  I think the only scifi tech essential to the plot was where characters are using advanced technology to relive the protagonist’s experiences in the first person for themselves.  Essential mind you... the armor is also just all around cool.

The first part of the book begins in a war of extermination on a distant poisonous world between mankind and a monstrous race of three-meter tall insects.  The main character is Felix, a man running from his past and with a death wish.  Unable or unwilling to hill himself, he has instead joined the military as a form of suicide.  But instead he finds himself surviving battle after battle as everyone else around him dies instead of him..

The second part of the book follows the exploits of an anti-hero protagonist.  The infamous space pirate Jack Crow (no - not Jack Sparrow, and this was written before Disney came up with that name in 2006).  After a prison break Jack finds himself beholden to a band of deserters from the war.  In exchange for their aid in his escape Jack must aid the mutineers in capturing an isolated research facility, which has the means to refuel their stolen starship. 

In the third part of the book intertwines the two stories. Jack has become friends with the members of the research facility he infiltrated and begins to regret that he has to betray them to the mutineers.  The facility is researching why mankind is loosing the war and has the recorded memories of Felix from the first part of the book.  Jack and the researchers relive, in the first person, the recorded memories of Felix and experiencing them for themselves as if they were Felix.

But the plot really isn’t what is important in this novel.  It is Steakley’s ability to write the words that convey the adrenaline, fear, and psychological consequences of combat and the psychological effects of violence and suffering better than I’ve probably ever seen in another book of fiction.  At several points in the book I found that I had to set the book down and go do something prosaic and benign for awhile to reset my own emotional equilibrium.

Steakley is also an unusual writer.  He tends to ignore traditional elements of “good writing” style when it suits him, such as using run-on sentences and sentence fragments.  I’ve had some people say this ruined the book for them but I actually felt it strengthened the story.  The story is a first person account its being told by people that don’t have perfect diction.

Armor was just re-released this year as an audio book narrated by Tom Weiner who did an awesome job.

If you liked the technology and aliens of Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and the contemplation of human nature in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War or John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War I’d recommend John Steakley’s Armor .