“Tanks” concludes, with a roar.
I liked this story. It has the Leinster sense that ordinary people with their ordinary habits and ordinary weaknesses, are still strong and capable of doing big things, and what is important often goes unnoticed by the eye. This is more or less the opposite of the nastier side of sf/f’s tendency to tell stories of wish fulfillment, where one Supuh Speshul Geenyus saves all those declasse morons who laughed at him in school. Spinrad’s The Iron Dream is not particularly kindly, but he’s right that if you take elitist Speshulness too far, it’s where totalitarianism comes from. (And if you despise the football players and cheerleaders too much in print, they will not be buying your books.)