☰

Top

Starship Troopers

by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959

Published: 2022.03.01

Home > Book Reviews > Robert A. Heinlein > Starship Troopers

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry.

★★★★ (of 5)

 

Starship Troopers is one of Heinlein’s most well-known and influential books. It was his second Hugo Award winner for Best Novel (after 1956’s Double Star), beating out Dickson’s Dorsai! and a Vonnegut book for the 1960 trophy. It is usually cited in short lists of “notable” Heinlein works, alongside Stranger In A Strange Land (1962 Hugo winner) and sometimes The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (did not win the 1966 Hugo due to Dune). Along with Dickson’s Dorsai!, this novel is often credited with popularizing the subgenre called “military science fiction” — though certainly neither was first. (For an earlier precursor, see H.G. Wells’ The Land Ironclads from 1903). Further, Starship Troopers has been cited as the inspiration for the powered armor suits that now are incredibly common in all types of media, including video games (like Halo), movies (see Iron Man and the mech suits in the second and third Matrix films), and many later sci-fi books like John Steakley’s Armor (1984).

And, of course, this novel was the basis for the 1997 action film Starship Troopers, starring a white U.S.-born actor as the Filipino main character Juan Rico.

Having just finished re-reading Heinlein’s juveniles, the change in tone here was stark — this novel wasn’t written for children. Like many of his juvenile novels, it is a coming-of-age story — the reader follows Johnnie (Juan Rico) from his late high school days through boot camp in the Mobile Infantry and eventually to Officer Candidate School all against the backdrop of an interstellar war against the “Pseudo-Arachnids” or “Bugs”. But the tone and style, as well as the overtly violent content, set it apart from previous books. (Heinlein did submit it as a juvenile, but it was rejected by Scribner and then picked up by G.P. Putnam’s Sons with a few revisions to make it more marketable to adults.)

One of the few Heinlein books told in a non-linear fashion, the book opens with Johnnie and his platoon about to drop into a war zone on an alien planet — the first 20 pages are a description of this battle. Then in Chapter 2 the story jumps backward to when Johnnie was in high school, a pampered only child in a wealthy civilian family, who didn’t intend to join up for Federal Service but is kind of peer-pressured into it by his best friend and a cute girl (both of whom are joining and Johnnie wants them to think he has what it takes too). The rest of the book features plenty of flashbacks to scenes in one of Johnnie’s high school classes — “History And Moral Philosophy”.

The author’s worldbuilding prowess is on full display in this novel. Set in a somewhat distant future (I don’t think the book ever makes it clear how far in the future it is, but Wikipedia says it’s 700 years from present day), all the societies and governments of the 20th Century have collapsed and the “Terran Federation” arose in their place. Apparently formed by military veterans, the new government is not democratic — only veterans are allowed the vote and only veterans can hold certain positions of importance in the government. Corporal punishment is the primary form of behavior correction — public lashings have replaced fines and hangings have replaced jail sentences. Futuristic technology (including faster-than-light space travel) permeates the society, but oddly 20th-Century items still show up — like textbooks. (Even aboard starships, which prioritize mass, studying is done with old-style paper textbooks and pencils.)

Read in the context of the late 1950s, most critics have assumed that the “Bugs” represent the communist enemies of the United States, and therefore the Terran Federation represents the United States. Through first-person narration, then, it looks a lot like Heinlein is in favor of U.S. domination of the globe and prefers a more militaristic society in order to accomplish this. Interestingly, the book (and Heinlein) was criticized from both sides: while some thought it too militaristic, even promoting fascism, others complained that military service in the book was entirely voluntary (at the time, the U.S. still used the involuntary military draft). It has also been hotly argued for decades whether Heinlein was preaching his own beliefs through the novel or was merely describing a fictional society and had no personal stake in it. (Personally, I think it’s the latter. In the majority of his other works, his characters tend to lean libertarian — much the opposite of the tightly controlled, militaristic society depicted here.)

The novel was also criticized as presenting a hypothetical Utopia based on the unproven idea that somehow military veterans would make better voters and/or leaders due to having proven their devotion to their society by military service. Writer Philip José Farmer complained that “a world ruled by veterans would be as mismanaged, graft-ridden, and insane as one ruled by men who had never gotten near the odor of blood and guts.” Again, I don’t think it’s clear that Heinlein was proposing these ideas; I have encountered many dozens of believable Heinlein characters espousing ideas clearly not those of the author. For me, it is entirely believable that he wrote those phrases from the mouths of the characters (who had grown up in the society and were indoctrinated to believe in it), while not holding the beliefs himself.

Another criticism is that the novel is racist. This one strikes me as absurd. Yes, clearly the human characters in the novel use slurs for the Bugs (including “Bugs”), but among the humans themselves, Heinlein presents a society that has moved past racism and ethnicity-centered prejudice. The main character is Filipino and is conversant in Tagalog. (I suspect this was a rare feat for white sci-fi authors of the time.) Johnnie’s crush — the one that got him to enlist — was one Carmencita Ibañez. Throughout the book, many secondary and incidental characters are clearly not white (even on the first page, Johnnie’s commanding officer is a “Finno-Turk” from Iskander — a planet named after a Mulsim ruler). While it is true that including non-white characters doesn’t equal a non-racist book, there simply isn’t any evidence of racism in this one, and I would argue that including so many “diverse” cast members in a military sci-fi book in the 1950s is certainly leaning in the correct direction.

When it comes to sexism, the book contradicts itself repeatedly — exactly in line with Heinlein generally. It seems to lean progressive by depicting all Space Navy pilots as women (because they are simply better at it), by making it clear that Carmencita was leaps-and-bounds smarter than Johnnie, and by having Federal Service open to anyone with the ability to understand the oath — regardless of gender or other circumstances of birth. But at the same time, the Mobile Infantry is entirely male, from top to bottom, to the extent that after boot camp many recruits have trouble believing women actually exist, only to ogle them unashamedly when finally obtaining shore leave. When he does catch sight of women after his initial training, Johnnie can only comment that they are “wonderful” and that seeing them reminds him why he’s fighting. In this sense, women are still objects — possessions to be protected even to the extent of war.

As for the writing itself, it’s more mature than most earlier Heinlein offerings, not only in the sense that it was for adult readers but in that the writer seemed to have matured beyond pulp magazine efforts and actually attempted to show his qualifications as a true writer. The depictions of military training and combat, despite being set hundreds of years in the future, received much praise from actual veterans as to their accuracy and believability. (This is the only Heinlein book I ever asked my Dad to read, and his primary praise of the book was how much the boot camp descriptions reminded him of actual boot camp from his time in the 1960s U.S. Army.) I also thought the writing was praiseworthy for what it left out — because it was written a bit like a journel, Johnnie sharing his thoughts — and when we write journals we often leave out details that we assume everyone would know. For example: what a spaceship looks like. Johnnie never says what a spaceship looks like, which is a departure from most sci-fi novels, then and now, because he would think it ridiculous to describe what a spaceship looks like in a time when everyone is familiar with spaceships. Additionally, Johnnie’s inner monologue is well done — he starts off with different opinions than he ended up with, and the transition is believable, based on experience and the advice of those with more expertise.

For me, the downside of the writing wasn’t the “preachy” flashbacks to History And Moral Philosophy class — those actually seemed necessary for the story and were quite informative as to the mindset of the society in the book and why the characters believe and act as they do. The downside was the seemingly endless descriptions of military organization — how many men to a platoon and who got promoted to sergeant or lieutenant and which positions were left empty in the chain of command and how the various units were deployed across battlefields and so on. I don’t know enough about past or current military organization to know whether Heinlein was simply showing off his knowledge or whether he was impressively inventing some new method of military organization. I just know that at times it went on and on and on, often in places where the story should have been picking up the pace. This was a mild annoyance at worst, but popped up often enough for me to remove most of a full point.

 

Conclusion

I remember the book having a strong impact on me when I first read it as a teen in the late 1980s. One thing that startled me was the idea of morality expressed in Juan Rico’s class: basically anything that supports survival “beyond the level of the individual” — which was quite the departure from what I thought of as morality and gave me something to think about. Maybe that’s what I liked most about the book, then and now, is that it gives one something to think about. But it also tells a compelling story with few distractions.

 





comments powered by Disqus