Robert Heinlein: Starship Troopers

[j d worthington]

Starship Troopers is the first Heinlein book I've read, and I'm not sure I'm up for more at this time.

To be honest, Starship Troopers is on one extreme end of the Heinlein spectrum; Stranger in a Strange Land is (over all) on quite the opposite end, and the bulk of his work falls at various points between. Like most writers worthy of any note, he didn't tend to stay still; rather his views (and expression of same) evolved over time. Should you decide to give him another go, you might want to look at one of the following:

Double Star (a very short novel, so not something which would take up a great deal of your time)
The Puppet Masters
Waldo & Magic, Inc.
Time for the Stars (juvenile)
Red Planet (juvenile)
Citizen of the Galaxy (juvenile)
The Past Through Tomorrow (the bulk of his "future history" stories)

I personally would also suggest some of his later works, but these tend to polarize people quite strongly. If you like any of the above, then might be the time to talk about these later works.

 

[BAYLOR]

I would like to see someone do continuation novel of Starship Troopers.

 

[Rodders]

Big shoes to fill, Baylor.

 

[Deke]

So Heinlein was a naval officer, I wonder why in Starship Troopers he seems to have a very intimate understanding of the psychology of the infantry. There were a lot of little things that he wrote that made me feel like he must have, idk, interviewed a lot of them or some such. Does anyone have any insight on how he managed that?

 

[JimC]

Perhaps he got some of it from his brothers Col Rex Heinlein and General Lawrence Heinlein.

 

[Servomoore]

I very highly recommend Kyle Kallgren's video essay on it and the movie:

Heinlein:

Verhoven:

But I don't recommend Part 3, where he makes it about himself to an indulgent degree.

 

[BT Jones]

Well, I just finished reading Starship Troopers myself, having been bought it as a Christmas present. Having only known the property from the film, I was expecting the book to be far more political and Orwell-esque in its undertones. So I was very surprised to find it to be very shallow on the world-building / political front and more or less just a training / war journal from one character's perspective.

I can't say I found it particularly enthralling (but it seems I am very hard to please on that front), and it obviously suffers from being a 60's book depicting a future we are now all 60 years closer to. The characterizations were cute, but the dialogue not very engaging, and I found the technical aspect of how things worked and looked very underdone (which I suppose is to be expected for the 60's).

Personally, I found it spent far too long on the training aspect, to the extent that the war-clinching final operation almost chapter almost felt tacked on. Some of the lengthy monologues felt a little preachy, also.

Very impressive for its time, no doubt, but like a lot of old Beatles songs now, it didn't really do that much for me.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I read the book not too long ago. What I hadn't realised was how long ago it has been written; it felt much more modern than the 1960s.

I haven't watched the movie in some time, but I did enjoy it. It felt like Verhoeven had made the book into a story. Yes, the satire feels a little too heavily layed on at times (although there are many comparisons to his other movie Robocop; but even so, many people still seem to have missed them, and still see the movie as an out-and-out sci-fi action movie - which it isn't.

If you want to see how ST could be poorly done, then see the sequels. In comparison Verhoeven's version isof Oscar standard.

Back to the book, it was an interesting read, but I doubt I will go back to it again in the forseeable future. But I did see the book through to its conclusion, and I didn't see it as a waste of time (as I did do with The Road).