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I saw the movie a few years ago, and so I read this book on a whim. Its very different to the movie. The book is interesting, although it does have a tendency to slide into rants about the moral responsibilities which come with having an electoral franchise. The book is also very pro military in its stance, although that's fair enough (an author without an opinion would be a boring author).

Overall, I thought this book was an enjoyable read.

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As a fan of Science Fiction I went into Starship Troopers with huge expectations. This is Robert A. Heinlein after all, a man considered to be one of the big three SciFi writers. So, Starship Troopers was my first Heinlein novel and it was a hug disappointment. I immediately disliked the first person narrative. These are, in my opinion, difficult to do well. Here we have a first person narrative from a young man of average intelligence. This means that the prose isn't exactly of the highest quality. Call it snobbery if you like, but I want to read something that is better than what I could write. Come to think of it, the only time I liked the "dumbed down" prose was in Flowers for Algernon. But I digress, back to Starship Troopers.

I don't mind reading propaganda or about ideologies that differ from mine, but I like them subtle. Heinlein hammers his pro-military utopia down our throats with blunt edged force. We spend far too much time in classrooms and boot camps where the characters merely act as mouthpieces for Heinlein's philosophy. The only anti-military character is the protagonist's father who is later involved in one of the most incredible (read improbable) storylines ever written.

So, why not a worse rating? For one, the "pulpy" parts are good. When Heinlein forgets the philosophy and has the space marines fighting on an alien planet the novel is genuinely interesting. It's also impossible to ignore the novel's influence. To my knowledge this is the first space marine novel and it would go on to inspire several dozen others. The influence of Starship Troopers also extends beyond the page and onto the movie screen (James Cameron's Aliens) and video games (Starcraft).

All-in-all this is a case of missed potential. I leave the book with a new respect for Paul Verhoeven's movie adaptation which, in hindsight, isn't too bad. ( )

The classic military sci-fi novel “Starship Troopers” by Robert A. Heinlein even after all these years -1959- lives up to its controversial and cutting edge reputation. And while there were times that I felt that the story-arc was getting too bogged down with the mediocrity of rank and military brinkmanship, the overall sense of Mr. Heinlein’s chronicle was refreshing. Mr. Heinlein’s vision was obviously the building blocks for many future military sci-fi novels. ( )

Starship Troopers is many things, but most of all it is the tale of square-jawed, humble average Joes who find in themselves the grit and courage to confront an implacably evil foe. In short, it is a World War Two adventure story. The ragtag group of misfits is drawn from all over Earth instead of all over America, and they are fighting killer arachnids from outer space instead of Germans or Japanese, but the book's heart nevertheless remains firmly planted in 1944. What distinguishes it from a raft of similar material is Heinlein's deep feeling for military esprit. There are actually only two battle scenes in Starship Troopers, which is more about training than it is about fighting. Specifically it is about the way that training brings people into the culture of an army with its weird mixture of insularity and open-heartedness, brutal aggression and profound fellow-feeling, and the edge of contempt for the civilian world that soldiers require in order to stay in top fighting condition. Even the gripping final battle scene is effective primarily because it resembles non-fiction accounts of combat, where soldiers spend most of their time in a state of anxious boredom, second-guessing everything they see, and falling back on routines ground into them during training as a way of staying alert and beating back the fear.

Despite its personal focus, Starship Troopers is probably most famous for the politics of its future world, and the extent to which those may be seen as uncomfortably right-wing. Ultimately I find this complaint overstated, but you can see where someone might get the idea. Most striking is the novel's conceit that people must do some kind of Federal service in order to win the right to vote. The reason, Heinlein makes clear in one of his many didactic asides, is that only the experience of being a soldier can give a person the sense of responsibility for his fellow man necessary for making decisions to benefit society as a whole. This idea has all kinds of problems, but those don't derail the book because Heinlein doesn't really explore it. The most interesting aspect of this arrangement–the fact that civilians seem completely untroubled by this rule because they don't see the point of voting anyway–is mentioned then dropped. Heinlein cares more about who will make it through basic training than politics.

Which doesn't mean there aren't some ideological howlers. A long digression in which a cantankerous war veteran, high school teacher, and Robert Heinlein surrogate reveals that the fall the of XX Century American Empire was brought about by naive liberals' mollycoddling of "juvenile delinquents" lets you know in no uncertain terms that this book was published in 1959. And since I've heard Heinlein described as a libertarian author, the scene when the main character's father renounces his career as a successful industrialist to enlist as a grunt because being "just a producing-consuming economic animal" was no life for a real man stuck out as just about the most un-libertarian thing I'd ever read. But even though Heinlein's belief in military service as a never-fail instiller of civic altruism is hopelessly naive (as history's long parade of putsches, death squads, and bloody-fisted juntas will attest) I don't detect in it any fascist longings. He is just telling things from the point of view of military men, who necessarily feel that they are privy to a world that civilians are not.

In addition to whatever it offers in its own right, reading Starship Troopers also gave me a deeper appreciation of Paul Veerhoven's 1997 film. That adaptation is good not because it is faithful to the book but because it is complementary. Each covers what the other leaves out. Where the book is gung-ho, the movie is poker-faced satire. Where the book's depiction of combat is tense and restrained, the movie is big, loud, and gory. Most famously, the movie dusts a layer of oblique but unmistakable Nazi imagery over Heinlein's tale of John Wayne wholesomeness. It's still a World War Two story: it's just not clear whose side we're on. Fortunately, Veerhoven has a miraculously light touch with the whole Nazi thing which keeps his movie from melting into a puddle of snark. More so than most book-film pairs, these two are of a piece. ( )

I have been re-reading this book since my late teens - I'm 53 now and still both enjoy the story and admire the moral questions raised. There are many other very good reviews here, so I won't repeat them; I will say that I have never seen it as either fascist (though there is a subtext against communism, which is not surprising for the period) or glorifying war. But nobody has commented on the fact that we discover right at the end that the protagonist is a Filipino, which must have come as a considerable shock back in 1959 to the thousands of young white males at whom it was aimed. Also, Heinlein manages a lightness of touch when considering gender equality, compared to later works (yes, I am a woman). ( )

Unlike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the Lazarus Long tales, Heinlein presents his moral sentiments here rather poorly. In those books the value of the societies was demonstrated through the action of the story. Here, it is asserted as almost self-evident by the teacher of the narrator's History and Moral Philosophy Class.

The exception is with regard to the nobility of military service. Heinlein's idealized Mobile Infantry does present a plausible picture of a military in which competence is a baseline and nobility of action is valued greatly.

Heinlein's imagination is as bountiful as ever, and the book, though sometimes frustrating, is never boring. ( )

Do not judge this book by the 1990s film, they share little more than the title. Robert Heinlein is one of my favorite authors of science fiction. His novels Stranger In A Strange Land and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress are both excellent examples of the science fiction genre. With this novel Heinlein does not disappoint. The descriptions of combat in the first chapter effectively hooks the reader into the story. Interestingly, very little of the books deals with actual combat (only the beginning and end). The rest is a fascinating description of future society and the training that is needed to join the Mobile Infantry. The book also presents some thought provoking ideas on what it means to be a citizen and just who should have the right to become one. ( )

I read this book in a very short amount of time. I don't know what it was, but it was just like 'the drop' as far as I'm concerned. The book is ideology in a cocoon, but as I read it, I felt like I was really experienced a fleshed out world.

Heinlein truly produced a masterpiece with Starship Troopers. I implore anyone to read it, but please don't let your politics get in the way. Just take the ride. ( )

Not Heinlein's best, but far from his worst. I enjoy rereading it at intervals.

For me the main interest is in the political system proposed here, and the description of military psycology. I suspect that the later is fairly acccurate, bearing in mind when it was written. (The gender roles would need to be very different today.) The first is a different matter. You would have to make sure that there was really no way people could use money/influence to get cushy jobs. ( )

Starship Troopers is one of the finest examples of science fiction ever produced. It races through the career of Johnnie Rico from his internal debate about joining the military through his career to eventual officer status. The description of intergalactic warfare is one that has permeated science fiction thinking and there are numerous rip-offs that have made millions without altering a slice of the combat Henlein offers.

The story of Rico was originally written in serial format and to some extent that does show but the two combat sequences that form the introduction and conclusion of the story are as good as it gets. In between the extraordinary battlefield descriptions sits Rico's tale as he meets an enormous cast of characters most of whom only have a brief moment but for each is some exposition of the universe that Rico and the Mobile Infantry inhabit.

At it's heart Starship Troopers is more an exploration of an advanced society redesigned to cope with existential threats to the human race. Henlein takes shots at our current system of government and the way it promotes short-term populism over long-term collective interest. Henlein is right on the money and in the Starship universe, only those who are prepared to sacrifice for the good of the many have the right to vote.

Sacrifice happens frequently for the Mobile Infantry despite their advanced weaponry, armour, and tactics. Minor characters die off at world war one rates and the casual ease with which death is accepted is uncomfortable. It is not truly clear why Rico pursues his career in the military or really why most of the others involved do given their free choice and that only the very best of society make it into the ranks. The very few who are mentally and physically capable and who also are prepared to place the greater good above even their own lives are an aspiration far beyond anything in the current generation. ( )

Pre09:
Nothing like the movie people. Nothing. It's all about one man's journey through military school. Issues of right and wrong. And a little tiny bit of action.

All-in-all, it's okay but boring. ( )

I started to read this book as part of my 'read Sci Fi classics I somehow missed entirely in my adolescence' phase. Having seen the movie and enjoyed it for its campy fun, I was eager to dive in. (Although apparently the two bear very little resemblance.)

I was rather dumbfounded at how much I enjoyed it. I find it difficult to remember that this book was first published in 1959 - it reads like something fresh and fun and, save for a few instances where Heinlein's future/our past is mentioned, doesn't feel dated. Maybe this very fact says something about the nature of wars, and the people who fight them. I think Heinlein would be pleased with this in some ways, because it's a question he deals with in no small fashion.

Starship Troopers can be read as a fun romp in military sci-fi, an account of Johnnie Rico and his trip from high school to boot camp to interstellar soldier of the first order. You can pretty much leave it at that if you want - and it /is/ fun! Johnnie's voice reads well and his descriptions of military training, tech, and philosophy are frankly fascinating in places. Heinlein's world isn't anything terribly spectacular, but it /is/ solid, and his tech is neat and well-done.

More importantly, maybe, the lack of flash is part of the point - Heinlein uses this romp to explore questions about war, about fighting, about sacrifice and loyalty and basic human nature and what persists from century to century, as well as questions of societal organization and politics. There are a few times when it feels a bit heavy-handed, but they're rare, and I think that a canny reader can read this and find more questions than answers - which is just the way I like my sci fi.

The beauty of this story is that it says something significant about what it means to be a human, yesterday, today, tomorrow, next century. And it does it in a bright, shiny package filled with explosions and powered armor suits and spaceships and a protagonist interesting enough that I didn't mind at all spending a few hundred pages in his head.

Minor spoilers: The one downside is that this is a book without a strong and complete narrative - it's a character piece, used to reflect an event and a society and to ask big questions. Given that, it lacks a strong 'end' - by which I mean, a strong resolution. Strangely, though, I found I didn't mind this. It worked okay for me. I think that given what Heinlein was doing - that given the character he'd set up and the mentality he'd shown us - it made sense, and it lent itself well to the feeling of a war that never ends, of /war/ that never ends, of what humanity is with or without wars. The lack of ending fit well, I thought, but I could see how it might bug others.

This is my first Heinlein - now I can't wait to read more. ( )

One of Heinlein's top 5! ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1151943.ht...

Well, it's a classic but very much of its time. It is a Bildungsroman about Juan Rico, who volunteers for the spaceborne infantry and grows up fighting for humanity against the alien Bugs. The writing is pacy and entertaining; the twist in the tail is that Rico, having learnt about life and been tested repeatedly in combat, ends up as his own father's commanding officer.

There are two major problems with the book for today's reader. The first and simpler one is sex: there basically isn't any. Rico and his colleagues are all men except for the pilots who are all women. It is possible (and I think probably intended) to read all Rico's encounters with the opposite sex as purely platonic, though in a gentlemanly desirous sort of way. The only lasting relationships are between comrades. One can read all sorts of possibilities into that, but I will spare you.

The other, this being Heinlein, is more complex: it is the politics. In this future world, only veterans of the armed forces are full citizens with the right to vote, and this is an additional motivation for enlisting. Heinlein certainly mainstreams his political culture throughout the novel more convincingly than some of his imitators, complete with jibes at today's bleeding-heart liberals, but are we really meant to believe that this is his preferred alternative? One can read the evidence in various ways, but I think we can exclude the possibility that Heinlein actively thinks it is a bad idea, particularly given the uncritical admiration of the military way of life which permeates the narrative. Though perhaps it is at least in part a challenge to the reader to work it out for yourself. ( )

I will say, without giving too many spoilers away, that this book is nothing like the movie of the same name that is now a cult classic.

The writing style is very matter-of-fact and in first person, from the point of view of Johnny. And I really really like it. The only strike against it, in my book, is that women characters are non-existent. But really, it isn't as though women are seen as less, they're actually seen as better in the intelligence-heavy military positions, and our main character is at the bottom of the food chain, a "common" line soldier, infantry, shock troops, and therefore just doesn't encounter them very often. I'd prefer to see an army where women are just as good in shock troop positions as in the starship pilot's seat. That's really my only sticking point with this book, though.

Otherwise, the action is good, the story is good, the tone is realistic and conversational, as though Johnny is sitting there with you years later describing the scene to you. ( )

great book! ( )

Probably be best to read this while young and before you have seen the Hollywood movie. ( )

This classic SF novel has inspired a whole genre of anime (mecha/powered armor/mobile suits) and is arguably the ur-text of military SF. Is this a fascist novel? Well, there is no leader principle at work in the text, but its world was certainly constituted by a Freikorps of veterans who set the global polity "right."

Heinlein intentionally distorts history when he makes his political arguments. For example, he attributes the origins of social work to liberal and psycological interventionism with respect to juvenile delinquency, when in fact the field was invented to intervene on behalf of children who were being abused by adults -- their parents. Also, social work started as a distinct field from psychology. The takeover of social work by mental health professionals really didn't "take off" until the 1950s. ( )

I've gone back and forth on 4/4.5 stars on this one a few times--I think 4 is probably right.

Using the vehicle of an instellar war, Heinlein wrote a commentary on social and military virtues as he saw them. Many won't agree with his positions on these issues, but it is still thought-provoking. Plus, it's a darn good yarn.

It also has the distinction...in my opinion...of winning the Worst Movie Made from a Good Book Award. Paul Verhoeven's 1997 flick rewrote the story into something truly ludicrous, but attempted to compensate for it with horrifically wooden acting. ( )

http://home.comcast.net/~ktoonen/summ... ( )

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I have to be frank and admit to a hell of a lot of disappointment with this book.

Crappy movie adaptation notwithstanding, it promises lots of "military adventure," but doesn't really deliver, instead displaying the ins and outs of military life, first in Basic, then in officer school.

The metaphors are so transparent and obvious it's like being hit over the head, but worse are the pages and pages of didactic lectures from "teachers" professing what is clearly Heinlein's views on militarism.

What is advertised as a rollicking adventure instead tries to be military propaganda, a thesis on citizenship, and a soldier's coming-of-age tale -- except it never really succeeds at any of them all that much.

http://www.scifi-review.net/starship-... ( )

I believe this book too often gets weighed down by being labelled as fascist. The book deals with an extrapolation of the US Marine Corps, and it seems perfectly reasonable and even necessary to me that such an organization be a tad extreme, in order to maintain its martial excellence. The book was an easy read, even through the long-winded explorations of politics. The actual plot of the book is somewhat lacking, but it leaves much to the imagination, which I consider a good thing. ( )