The book should probably come with a warning that it may be too intense for adults.
I read it as a kid, and devoured all the ideas, though, oddly, I did't become militaristic or in any way right-wing. Vietnam was going on, and you could see where real wars end up.
The review by James Davis Nicol highlights the stuff that I thought was cooool as a kid, and gagged at as a grownup:
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/r... [jamesdavisnicoll.com]...Rico is a very young war criminal in scenes where the "demonstration of firepower and frightfulness" (heh: now, "shock and awe") includes toasting a church congregation of the "Skinnies" with his flamethrower, and looking for the town's water treatment plant with his micro-nuke. (After a 25-year career with the local waterworks, I know that's germ warfare...)
And it sinks in that the basic philosophy is that humanity must grow, must colonize forever, to live, constantly expanding through the galaxy, and that any species also wanting the same "real estate" must be fought. The word "liebensraum" does come into the mind.
Heinlein had a few philosophies to expound, of course, and the whole rest of the book is built around having some reason to have a busy military with occasional heavy losses and routine light losses. Oh, and a need to assault planets from space with anything smaller than nukes.
He wanted to look right inside the mind of a military volunteer who understands that this will likely enough cost his life or at least limbs, and accepts it as the noble thing to do, to sacrifice the, ah, One for the Many. It is made clear what the movie did even better, that Rico, while well-indoctrinated with the understanding of this nobility, that only those who have done this are worthy of voting rights, really joins to impress a girl. (In the promo book for the movie, writers said they asked actual Soldiers and vets if that was corny. They were told with grins that it is still common.)
The key to the training section (classic military book structure: first bit is training camp, then on to the story of actual battles; see Full Metal Jacket, Dirty Dozen, etc) is that when Rico internalizes and accepts the noble reason rather than the girl reason, "The noblest fate a man can endure is to place his mortal body between his beloved home and war's desolation" (I just typed that from memory...jeez.), then the torturous training camp is suddenly almost easy.
Heinlein's defense in "Expanded Universe" noted the book is "militaristic" specifically to the Army/Marines, rival services to his beloved Navy, where at least you usually die with a full belly and not frozen in a trench; that it's a love letter to the heroic sufferings of "the doughboy, the duckfoot....the thin red line of heroes". This is hardly more militaristic than the displays at most American parades and football games, and obviously, Veteran's Day. That's fine.
It's setting up that story in a world where human expansion makes war with aliens inevitable, that's the problem. And the war-crime stuff. He could have set up his war-needing-environment with a need for pure defense of home, and outlined some rules of war descended from Geneva Conventions rather than the chapter "Caesar Chastens Gaul" of his memoir.
That he was pushing out the endless-expansion thing instead is all the more problematic in that the Bugs were a pure Communism by nature, oddly enough, and the real geopolitical concern of the time was that the First World (us) was in a game of Risk with the Second World (communist countries) fighting over the rest of the global real estate. Tends to make anybody even faintly left look askance. I was mercifully unaware of all this, enjoying it at 11. (1970) And on re-reads though teen years. I missed Vietnam by both nationality (Canadian) and a few years of time; Boomer Americans were probably clearer on it.
Salon.com seems to have lost the 1997 review that nailed the movie's total failure to show Heinlein's OTHER purpose for the novel, which was pure cool SF. The suits. The combat suits. There's a whole chapter where the trooper rhapsodizes his love for his beautiful work tool, the Suit. The movie just ditched the entire thing, because it made characters hard to see and they never grouped. The suits mean a platoon is spread out over huge areas, hundreds of metres apart, not able to see each other except though VR displays. It made them much more like modern warplane aviators, "train 30 days, work 30 minutes". Heinlein had a whole belief that this was the future of warfare the US must pursue to be supreme, and was advocating a research direction only now hitting the horizon.
There's just no dang doubt in my mind that this popular 1959 novel is the real genesis, after a little creative borrowing, for the 1961 comic, Iron Man. The refinement of that suit in the recent Marvel movies could have almost been taken from the novel's description, in many cases, though much further (no talking computer interface in the novel; really, no computer control...) So there's no need for an ST remake to get the suits added: we already have several movies about them!
It's setting up that story in a world where human expansion makes war with aliens inevitable, that's the problem. And the war-crime stuff. He could have set up his war-needing-environment with a need for pure defense of home, and outlined some rules of war descended from Geneva Conventions rather than the chapter "Caesar Chastens Gaul" of his memoir.
Well, sure, he could have done all that, if he was preaching a pure morality tale of the unimpeachable nobility of the foot soldier. Or if he was trying to preach that the best possible government was a representative government made entirely of and elected entirely by veterans.
But, here's the thing. Heinlein was smart enough that if that had been his goal, he could have done something like that. Instead, he gives us a world where the government is explicitly waging a war for liebensraum, and does order
This Nicoll guy is a lively and interesting writer. His writing is opinionated (IMHO that's a plus). But he gets the facts of Starship Troopers unforgivably wrong.
Rico is a very young war criminal in scenes where the "demonstration of firepower and frightfulness" (heh: now, "shock and awe") includes toasting a church congregation of the "Skinnies" with his flamethrower
Nope. Some quotes from the book:
It was getting to be less healthy to be anywhere, even moving fast. [...] Nevertheless the home defenses
Truly simple systems... require infinite testing.
-- Norman Augustine
Heinlein meant well, but it is disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
The book should probably come with a warning that it may be too intense for adults.
I read it as a kid, and devoured all the ideas, though, oddly, I did't become militaristic or in any way right-wing. Vietnam was going on, and you could see where real wars end up.
The review by James Davis Nicol highlights the stuff that I thought was cooool as a kid, and gagged at as a grownup:
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/r... [jamesdavisnicoll.com] ...Rico is a very young war criminal in scenes where the "demonstration of firepower and frightfulness" (heh: now, "shock and awe") includes toasting a church congregation of the "Skinnies" with his flamethrower, and looking for the town's water treatment plant with his micro-nuke. (After a 25-year career with the local waterworks, I know that's germ warfare...)
And it sinks in that the basic philosophy is that humanity must grow, must colonize forever, to live, constantly expanding through the galaxy, and that any species also wanting the same "real estate" must be fought. The word "liebensraum" does come into the mind.
Heinlein had a few philosophies to expound, of course, and the whole rest of the book is built around having some reason to have a busy military with occasional heavy losses and routine light losses. Oh, and a need to assault planets from space with anything smaller than nukes.
He wanted to look right inside the mind of a military volunteer who understands that this will likely enough cost his life or at least limbs, and accepts it as the noble thing to do, to sacrifice the, ah, One for the Many. It is made clear what the movie did even better, that Rico, while well-indoctrinated with the understanding of this nobility, that only those who have done this are worthy of voting rights, really joins to impress a girl. (In the promo book for the movie, writers said they asked actual Soldiers and vets if that was corny. They were told with grins that it is still common.)
The key to the training section (classic military book structure: first bit is training camp, then on to the story of actual battles; see Full Metal Jacket, Dirty Dozen, etc) is that when Rico internalizes and accepts the noble reason rather than the girl reason, "The noblest fate a man can endure is to place his mortal body between his beloved home and war's desolation" (I just typed that from memory...jeez.), then the torturous training camp is suddenly almost easy.
Heinlein's defense in "Expanded Universe" noted the book is "militaristic" specifically to the Army/Marines, rival services to his beloved Navy, where at least you usually die with a full belly and not frozen in a trench; that it's a love letter to the heroic sufferings of "the doughboy, the duckfoot....the thin red line of heroes". This is hardly more militaristic than the displays at most American parades and football games, and obviously, Veteran's Day. That's fine.
It's setting up that story in a world where human expansion makes war with aliens inevitable, that's the problem. And the war-crime stuff. He could have set up his war-needing-environment with a need for pure defense of home, and outlined some rules of war descended from Geneva Conventions rather than the chapter "Caesar Chastens Gaul" of his memoir.
That he was pushing out the endless-expansion thing instead is all the more problematic in that the Bugs were a pure Communism by nature, oddly enough, and the real geopolitical concern of the time was that the First World (us) was in a game of Risk with the Second World (communist countries) fighting over the rest of the global real estate. Tends to make anybody even faintly left look askance. I was mercifully unaware of all this, enjoying it at 11. (1970) And on re-reads though teen years. I missed Vietnam by both nationality (Canadian) and a few years of time; Boomer Americans were probably clearer on it.
Salon.com seems to have lost the 1997 review that nailed the movie's total failure to show Heinlein's OTHER purpose for the novel, which was pure cool SF. The suits. The combat suits. There's a whole chapter where the trooper rhapsodizes his love for his beautiful work tool, the Suit. The movie just ditched the entire thing, because it made characters hard to see and they never grouped. The suits mean a platoon is spread out over huge areas, hundreds of metres apart, not able to see each other except though VR displays. It made them much more like modern warplane aviators, "train 30 days, work 30 minutes". Heinlein had a whole belief that this was the future of warfare the US must pursue to be supreme, and was advocating a research direction only now hitting the horizon.
There's just no dang doubt in my mind that this popular 1959 novel is the real genesis, after a little creative borrowing, for the 1961 comic, Iron Man. The refinement of that suit in the recent Marvel movies could have almost been taken from the novel's description, in many cases, though much further (no talking computer interface in the novel; really, no computer control...) So there's no need for an ST remake to get the suits added: we already have several movies about them!
Re: (Score:2)
So what you are saying is that it has been decades since you read the book and do not remember any of it in the slightest?
Re: (Score:2)
No, but I'm gonna go ahead and say you're a doosh canoe.
Re: (Score:2)
It's setting up that story in a world where human expansion makes war with aliens inevitable, that's the problem. And the war-crime stuff. He could have set up his war-needing-environment with a need for pure defense of home, and outlined some rules of war descended from Geneva Conventions rather than the chapter "Caesar Chastens Gaul" of his memoir.
Well, sure, he could have done all that, if he was preaching a pure morality tale of the unimpeachable nobility of the foot soldier. Or if he was trying to preach that the best possible government was a representative government made entirely of and elected entirely by veterans.
But, here's the thing. Heinlein was smart enough that if that had been his goal, he could have done something like that. Instead, he gives us a world where the government is explicitly waging a war for liebensraum, and does order
Re: (Score:3)
This Nicoll guy is a lively and interesting writer. His writing is opinionated (IMHO that's a plus). But he gets the facts of Starship Troopers unforgivably wrong.
Rico is a very young war criminal in scenes where the "demonstration of firepower and frightfulness" (heh: now, "shock and awe") includes toasting a church congregation of the "Skinnies" with his flamethrower
Nope. Some quotes from the book: