Starship Troopers

Robert A. Heinlein

1959

This is easily one of Heinlein’s more controversial novels.

It is basically the story of Juan ‘Johnny’ Rico and his time in the military fighting the Bugs in a ‘Them-or-Us’ conflict.

What raises this from what would be a fairly middling MilSF novel to being of the most talked about books of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the political baggage that comes with it.

For the background to this story is such that the military have effectively taken power – sort of because you have to have been in the military before being considered a citizen (though you can be taxed as a non-cit) though serving military do not have the vote. There are a number of reserved occupations that must be held by Vets including the teaching of History and Moral Philosophy, the study of how the current civilisation came to be (a nice way of providing an info dump (See here for a definition for Info Dump) relatively painlessly). Corporal punishment is also institutionalised with public flogging a definite possibility.

Much of the story is told in flashback with Johnny describing the way he has come to be what he is at the moment. For Johnny is a member of the Federation’s Mobile Infantry, each member of which is a walking nuclear cannon.

Starship Troopers is one of the earliest novels to use the powered combat suit (See here for a definition for Combat Suit) that has become such a stock in trade of the SF scene. Although the MI seems to have been mainly used in police actions on the Federation’s own planets, as Johnny works his way through boot camp, a new enemy becomes clear; the Arachnids. Strange spider like beings, this race does not like humans and after the Arachnids had hit Buenos Aires, incidentally killing Johnny’s mother, the humans don’t particularly like the Bugs either.

Another thing that really got people going was the Paul Verhoeven movie adapted from the book. People who did not know the book accused Heinlein of being a Nazi. Those who knew the book, after initial excitement, were even less complementary about Verhoeven.

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