Starship Troopers

I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.

I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I would call this one of the modern classics.

Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.

This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.

That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.

The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.

I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.

I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.

TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.