Who Cleans the Toilets on the Death Star?
By ignoring the drudgery of military life, sci-fi unwittingly transforms itself into propaganda
by Karlo Yeager Rodriguez
We had a phantom shitter on my ship. Other seamen who shared cleaning duty warned me about the danger, and I winced every time I prodded the hidden corners of our division’s head. What would possess someone taking a hot shower to pause their lathering to squeeze one out onto a paper-swaddled hand and gently deposit it in the nearest protruding bulkhead? I didn’t understand it then, and I certainly don’t get it now.
From 1988 to the beginning of 1991, I was a part of the enlisted crew of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy. I’m far from the only writer of sci-fi and fantasy to have served a stint in the Navy. Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, even Gene Roddenberry were in the Navy, and it’s generally understood that real-world militaries have had a strong influence on the shape of sci-fi in general – in particular “mil-sf” – but I’ve yet to read military science fiction that includes details like phantom shitters or the sheer amount of cleaning and other menial labor required to keep things in–forgive me–ship shape.
This absence is understandable given the general desire for character agency, as well as the old military truism that “shit rolls downhill”: the least desirable duties and tasks usually fall to those on the bottom rung of the hierarchy. In a military setting, writers are more interested in characters who can move the plot, and that probably doesn’t mean the people cleaning the shitters. Stories often follow generals, admirals, and other officers because even though they may need to answer to their own higher-ups, they are granted some latitude in how to carry out their duties. They pass down orders through the junior and non-commissioned officers until it reaches the grunts who do a lot of the actual work. Being at the bottom of the military hierarchy, a grunt’s not given much wiggle room to interpret an order. Worse, military codes of justice impose harsh penalties on grunts who think they’re smarter than their superiors. Again: Shit rolls downhill.
And that’s if there’s any acknowledgment of grunt work at all. In John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, even though John Perry and company are infantry, there’s little if any mention of anyone swabbing decks or shining brass fittings. Starship Troopers covers Private Johnny Rico’s basic training, but leaves out any descriptions of cleaning the barracks or folding and refolding uniforms so that they’re inspection-ready. If a soldier can’t fold their own socks according to regulations, the logic goes, how can they be trusted to carry out more complex or challenging orders?
Most people don’t join the military out of reverence or duty: they join the military because it’s one of the few options they have.
Part of this trend could be an overabundance of reverence for the military. Having been part of the armed forces, I’m certain this reverence isn’t necessary—or even healthy. Sure, people put their lives on the line, but it’s also one of the only well-paying jobs a poor or marginalized person can get right out of high school. Most people don’t join the military out of reverence or duty: they join the military because it’s one of the few options they have.
But, you may ask, why wouldn’t cleaning and menial tasks be automated in the future? It’s a valid question, but one that assumes other people will address it. This handy bit of sci-fi logic overlooks the fact that a military is a vast labor force that can be coerced—via the chain of command—into taking on “other duties, as needed.” Sure, a military’s primary purpose is to hang the threat of violence over the heads of another polity, but in the meantime there’s food to cook, passageways to clean, toilets to scrub, and so on. A professional military can be used to carry out these other tasks because it costs less. It also leads to soldiers being used for incongruous and insidious functions, such as “diplomatic missions” teaching children in occupied territories how to dance La Macarena. This helps mask the brutal nature of military occupation and manufactures consent for imperialism.
Given how often mainstream entertainment, including superhero films among many others, is subsidized by the Pentagon, perhaps honest depictions of grunt work are viewed as “negative portrayals” and subject to funding getting cut for such projects. After all, if military life was shown to be as tedious as the life of a fast food worker, how useful could it be as a recruitment tool? While it’s not clear how much films and television “wag the dog” with respect to the written fiction that once inspired them (and is increasingly shaped by them), it can subtly influence whether military science fiction writers include these details in their written work. This erasure of most grunt work from military science fiction is at best romanticizing a rather mundane job; at worst, it serves—intentionally or not—as imperialist propaganda.
If military science fiction were to accurately reflect just how much of a soldier’s day is spent, for instance, waxing, stripping, and re-waxing the same stretch of passageway every couple of days, it might better reflect just how boring military service can be. There is the risk, of course, of frustrating readers who have come to expect adventure, epic battles, and straightforward heroism in their military science fiction. But maybe frustrating those readers would be for the best. To paraphrase Francois Truffaut’s famous observation about anti-war films: there might not be such a thing as an anti-war military science fiction novel, but showing the tedium and absurdity of military life would at least be a start.
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez is originally from Puerto Rico, but now lives where Maryland keeps all of its cows. His fiction has appeared in places like Nature Futures, Uncanny Magazine and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. You can find him at karlo-yeager-rodriguez.com and on Twitter at @kjy1066.
