Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein
Johnny Rico is a high school grad wondering what to do with his life. Convinced by his high school civics teacher and his friend Carl that Federal Service was right and natural, he signs up over his father’s objections. This first person narrative follows Johnny and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, while involved in an inter-stellar war against the “Bugs”. Johnny goes through boot camp, does “drops” against the “Bugs”, and sees his share of action. He makes friends, gets promoted, and embarks on a sometimes-bloody but ultimately glorious future.
This juvenile fiction novel, written in post WWII cold war 1959 has stirred up controversy due to some of the radical themes he espouses in the telling of Johnny’s story. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein proposes that full citizenship, including the right to vote, ought to be a privilege reserved solely for veterans of public service, most commonly military. Only those who have personally shown willingness to lay down their lives for freedom are capable of properly appreciating freedom and are thus more deserving of its full benefits than those who haven’t.
Heinlein may have expected, and even hoped to encourage discussions on the ideas he espoused in Starship Troopers. Like it or not the novel’s “controversial” politics challenged adult readers to question their convictions and consider such ideas as duty, altruism and patriotism.
Posted by Janice B @ CS
It’s not Heinlein’s politics that bothered me, it was his facile writing style and clunky word choices. One of those authors from the so-called “Golden Age” (along with Asimov, an even worse writer) whose literary reputations were grotesquely inflated. Give me Alfred Bester any day…
Cliff Burns
October 1, 2007