The Super Soldier Trope In Sci-fi, Explained
War is an extremely common backdrop, setting, and storyline for almost every genre of fiction, but sci-fi war is often the most spectacular and the most vicious. A fantasy war might see the exchange of magical fireballs or the attack of nightmarish creatures, but sci-fi is where fans can find entire planets reduced to dust.
The science part of science fiction necessitates a more direct focus on the implements of war than on the factions involved or the soldiers doing the fighting. Lengthy loving descriptions of fantastical orbital lasers, heat-seeking antipersonnel rail guns, or existential weaponry that erases the victim's place in time fill the genre. Thankfully, there is one time-honored way to turn a character into one of those exquisitely tuned killing machines.
Take A Closer Look At Halo's Weapons Arsenal
The super soldier is a warrior to their core. Powerful, capable, and unstoppable, they are the living weapon that their superiors believe will win the war. Some are created through generations of selective breeding, autocratically grabbing the reins of genetics to produce the ideal subject. Others are born normal and given dubious scientific enhancement to become something entirely abnormal. There are many different types of super soldiers, but they all exist to wield power on behalf of those who created them. Super soldiers can be individualist heroes, loyal servants of their commanding officers, amoral henchmen, or deadly villains. When the author of a text decides to make their soldiers super, they solve one problem while raising several questions.
The trope allows for the presence of theoretically mortal humans in the midst of all the aliens and robots without the audience assuming they'd be instantly atomized.
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