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Summary: One of Heinlein's Essential Reads
Review: Heinlein's controversial classic is at once compelling, entertaining, and thought-provoking. If you go into this book looking for a shoot-em-up (perhaps along the lines of the movie), then you will be disappointed. That's not what this book is about. True, there are sequences at the beginning and end of the book where interesting battles take place, but it's the political/sociological philosophy in-between that is the meat (and point) of the book. True to the word of his famous "Tanstaafl!", Heinlein here proposes a society where the right to vote is not an intrinsic right, but has to be earned. The book has been critized for being fascist, but these people are not digging deep enough. This is a deep book in the fact that it has a lot to say, and manages to be both readable and entertaining while staying on it's pulpit. It takes a good reader to accomplish this task (Heinlein himself did not always succeed at it, though, when at his prime, he was the best at it), but he certainly does here. One of his best books, and I've read nearly all of them. Totally essential SF primer, and required reading for anyone in or interested in the military or anyone who has ever asked the question "Why do we fight?" Surely, that is all of us...
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Summary: Great, Often misunderstood piece of scifi
Review: While many consider this the archetype "boy with guns" novel, it is actually a deep and compelling examination of society and citizenship flanked with action packed fight sequences.The questions Heinlein asks are all worthy of examination. What makes a citizen? What is the meaning of responsibility? What are people's obligations to each other and to their society? When the movie removed the philosophy in favor of showy violence it also took out the heart that made this novel great. Indeed, it was reading this as a teenager that first peeked my interest in political theory. Unfortunately, many people have decided that this novel represents the author's ideal society. Interestingly, Heinlein has an enormous body of work that argues for every social structure from fascisms to anarchy. What makes his work great, is that each is in some ways compelling in the context in which he presents it.
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Summary: Starship Paratroopers or Starship NAZIS? part 1
Review: Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers written in the 1959 is an important book EVERY U.S. military man should read and should be on the required reading lists of all the services. Its currently best-seller #7 of U.S. Army West Point Military Academy Cadets at Amazon books, so this is encouraging. However, its really two books, Book 1 describes a Technotactically advanced Space Paratrooper force that thinks and uses egalitarean teamwork. When most people refer to "Starship Troopers" this is what they think of: Space Paratroopers jumping from space in capsules, re-entering the earth's atmosphere, then landing by parachute inside an armored, powered "superman" suit with devastating weapons, situational awareness, an ability to fly for short distances using leg jets. Basically the armored tank and the infantryman have merged into a "mechanized human". We follow one recruit, Johnny Rico from basic training to combat to OCS and some more combat against sub-terranian alien bugs, impervious to stand-off, even nuclear firepower. He and his team-mates help each other out as they fight to save mankind. Heinlein in amazing anticipation of events predicts: 1. The desirability of masses of individual Paratroopers flooding an enemy system of defense
2. The inability of firepower even nuclear to subdue enemies gone to ground, and the need to have ground forces
3. U.S. and Russia teaming up to fight Red China (?)
4. All-Volunteer Force not having enough things to do
5. Men wearing ear rings as socially acceptable
6. Women as combat pilots
7. Need for Situational Awareness means to be mind and hands-free; page 102; "And that is the beauty of a powered suit: you don't have to think about it. You don't have to drive it, fly it, conn it, operate it; you just wear it and it takes orders directly from your muscles and does for you what your muscles are trying to do. This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and notice what is going on around you...which is supremely important to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped--say with a stone ax---will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier" "Starship Troopers" is the unspoken inspiration behind the U.S. Army's effort to digitalize the individual fighting Soldier called "21st Century Land Warrior or "21st CLAW". Heinlein if alive today would be pleased. But overall he may be alarmed that his vision is being used to complicate the fighting processes instead of simplifying them. His warning above should be heeded. He also brilliantly foretells and describes a dazzling array of technologies that we actually have today from beacons to Soldier global positioning systems to night sights. He paints a picture of a "Super Infantry". He clearly understands the need to "force an entry" by his Paratroopers (Starship Troopers) descending rapidly from space in enormous numbers with decoys and debris from their capsules creating a flood of blips on enemy radars too numerous for him to contend with. This anticipation of the essence of ballistic missile (the starship trooper in his capsule is a re-entry vehicle) defense was written by a man in the 1950s before we even had such things as satellites and sub-orbital ballistic missiles! The irony is that the very reasons Heinlein uses for describing how his "Starship Troopers" would be impossible to stop applies to the current National Missile Defense debate. We should in the interim develop a high-altitude mass tactical individual parachuting system with delayed opening chutes as Heinlein proposes to better avoid enemy air defenses in the 21st century. When/if space combat becomes a reality, the flood of individual re-entry capsules makes a lot more sense than packing the men into a landing spacecraft which provides a convenient target for the enemy to destroy. This is the book we all love.* Yet this is all BAIT. Heinlein starts the book off with the attention-getting battle in the supertrooper gear to try to later on sell you on his POLITICAL AGENDA or what I call "book 2". He is saying that if you like the military "Mobile Infantry" (MI) force presented (essentially the self-reliant, U.S. Army Airborne Paratrooper in futuristic space gear), you need to change the way the U.S. government is run to the way Heinlein sees it should be. To have mechanized humans, you must have a mechanized SOCIETY. There is no "free lunch" as his school professor/mentor retired MI LTC DuBois would likely tell Rico. Heinlein flat out proposes that the U.S. Constitution and its ideas of each human being having intrinsic citizenship rights in his starship future will be eliminated. Clearly, this is a subversive book that is a direct cultural attack on the Constitution of the U.S. which Heinlein as a former U.S. Navy officer was sworn once to uphold. *The recent Hollywood film is a disgrace that failed to depict Heinlein's vision of space Paratroopers when we easily have the visual technology to do this and chose to instead mock the entire book with glib presentations of generations X/Y actors having sex and co-ed showers together then getting massacred by space bugs because they have no armored suits or tanks and only standard 21st Century 5.56mm assault rifles to shoot at the bugs. Maybe the Director, Paul Verhoeven hated the book's neo-fascism philosophy and decided to make his own trashy movie to trash it? Maybe someday someone will actually read the book and create a video game that depicts Paratroopers in powered space suits dropped from space?
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Summary: Fresh and On the Bounce
Review: Unlike too many reviewers, I will be brief. This novel has not gone stale in the years since it was written - it's still fresh, fresh, fresh. Fundamentally a soldier's tale that could apply to a warrior from any era, the timelessness of the subject matter is only highlighted by the future setting. The author's arguments in favor of a form of government grounded on service and personal responsibility are, if anything, more persuasive than the must have been when originally written in view of what one may consider the snowballing decay of contemporary society here at the beginning of the 21st century. This is classic military fiction, classic science fiction, still highly plausible, and a wonderful read. Recommend without qualification
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Summary: Heinlein's finest work
Review: Like so many great books, Starship Troopers was very poorly adapted in the 1997 film ... The hard sci-fi elements are exceptional (a Heinlein trademark), but the investigations of why we fight and die are even better. The story avoids the cliches of love and war (found so readily in the movie). One of the few genuinely meaningful works of sci-fi literature.
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Summary: A good, not great, sf novel
Review: Its not even close to being Heinleins best novel and is most assuredly not the best military sf. For that, check out The Forever War sometime. Now that is a masterpiece of military sf. This one is only good. Thats all. Nothing more. Something tells me that most of the over the top reviews on here are first time readers and below the age of twelve.
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Summary: StarShip Troopers-The real story
Review: WARNING!!!!! This book only slightly resembles the movie! Which depending on how you liked the movie is probally a good thing. The book like the movie(in this way only) follows the life and military career of Johnny Rico and his adventures with the mobile infantry. The book covers Rico's days in basic and his eventual rise in the MI.Filled with famillar faces and places but will take on new forms. (Dizzy to be one of them) the book is an enjoyable read. with ups downs and some surprises and disappointments.You can see some of heinleins obvious political subtext that he hides in his stories but if you want a great miltary read with eanough sci-fi elements. go for it.
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Summary: Response to microtherion
Review: It figures that some Swiss guy would be so vociferous in his objection to the line of thought in a book like this. This is a nation that has always done its best to avoid having to fight for anything ( with the possible exception of its bankers keeping as much stolen Jewsih loot as they can and its valiant fight for privacy of banking laws so that the Swiss can increase its already swollen average national income) and even with its "brave" militia, I know of few instances when the Swiss have repelled a determined enemy attack. I feel that it is somewhat ironic that our Swiss missy would object to some of the themes that "she" mentions, but when I take into account that most of Europe only likes the US when they need to repell an invasion from the determined Hun, it would figure. I have read this book too many time to count and have already reviewed it on this site. I still find the argument about the Nazi comparison to be completely off base. This is why: 1. The so called brutal treatment of the recruits is often mentioned. At this point there is a great deal of anxiety that we have "dumbed down" our training to the point that our troops may not be able to fight adequately in the next conflict. As a veteran myself of the Gulf War, the ROTC training that I went through could have been much tougher and I know now that more difficult training would have been helpful. Secondly, the MI seem to be nearly elite trops and the training methods for the elite are always more difficult. I am not advocating the beating of troops, but I do feel that if it were more demanding it can't hurt. What is prottayed in the book was reasonable to the men at bootcamp and they knew the risks of their behavior, so it was not excessive in the context of their organization. 2. The concept of earning citizenship status is mentioned. True, military service is only one of the areas mentioned. If you read the book carefully it is clear that the military wants to encourage other branches of the Federal Service to the young people who come to enlist. The argument that only the soldiers make the decisions is false. The character in the book is in the military so that is all that is explored, but it is clearly implied that there are other ways to gain citizenship. I might add that this might not be a bad idea for all of our young people to have to choose the military, peace corps, or some other service obligation to gain certain rights. 3. Our Swiss sissy also claims that this is not for young readers who are impressionalble. Let us asume that you are in complete opposition to the political premise of the book, how can reading about this hurt to make your point? First it is clearly a STORY and whatever the political views, it is a book that glorifies putting others first, teaches about duty and honor, shows men and women as equals and emphasizes the need for a life of education. If you like it there are things to take out, but it is still not a bad story. Again, you claim to fear a loss of freedom, then advocate restricting the reading of a book about what you disagree about. Didn't the Nazi's practice the banning and burning of books???? Perhaps the stolen Jewish fortunes in your banks will help ban more books. In conclusion, this book was in the cargo pocket of my DCUs while in the gulf. Johnny faces many of the same challenges that I faced as a new officer and I found the book to be a comfort, an old friend so to speak, and it was also helpful to think that being confuseed and not having all the answers can be ok at times. A great book and a complete 5 star in my rankings.
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Summary: "Ultimate cost for perfect value..."
Review: Starship troopers, as you may have noticed, is a love it or hate it book. There are hundreds of review here which either shower endless praise on it or decry it as a piece of fascist trash. But is it a good book? The answer is yes. Sure, that's a subjective answer, but there's very good evidence that this book could be considered objectively "good." Look at all the negative reviews. Many contain several paragraphs (or one big paragraph if the person can't punctuate) about what the reader hates about the book. Many even say things like, "It might be a good book, if..." Some say it's written very well but they hate what Heinlein has to say; others say the converse. With critics like this, who needs praise? Personally, I love the book. My second favorite Heinlein, besides The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and one of my favorites ever. I would say it should be read in schools, but I wouldn't want the little morons getting soured to Heinlein at such a young age (when I was a little moron I hated Huck Finn and Hamlet, until I read them on my own). I'd like to dispel some myths about ST, and I consider myself qualified to do so because of the sheer number of times I've read it. First, the main theme of the book is neither about militarism or beating children. It goes something like this: a society (or civilization, or individual...) that is not ready, willing, and able to fight for its rights is in danger of losing them. I'll agree with that. There's lots of justification for this (such as the above quote in bold) and even if you don't agree with it all it makes for good reading. All this and a bug war, with the first ever debut of mobile armor suits. The society in the book may or may not be facsist, depending on your definition of the word. An 11th grade history textbook (which is blatantly liberal and makes no apologies for it) defines fascism as "a system of government characterized by a rigid one-party dicatatorshipp, the forcible suppression of opposition, private enterprise under centralized government conrtrol (the book's full of oxymorons too), and belligerent nationalism, racism, militarism, etc." Well, I wouldn't call retired soldiers a political party, oppression is not suppressed forcefully and free speech is protected, private enterprise is--from what I could tell, private, there are no nations and thus no nationalism (world-ism? spieci-ism?), there are few differences between races in this unified future and thus no racism (althoug there are still many different religions, none of which seem to be discriminated against), and the society doesn't seem much more militaristic in a war than the US was during WW2. But I'm rambling; I should let the book speak for itself. There are nearly 500 reviews here, most containing strong feelings about Starship Troopers. You're obviously missing something by not reading it. Click the buy button, for the everlasting glory of the infantry.
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Summary: Starship Troopers
Review: This book is DEFINATELY not the movie, so if you expect it to be, you will be dissappointed. I found the book readable, but I did not find it engrossing. It is mostly a narrative with little in the way of dialog or interaction between characters. It is written in the first person, and because of that, it seems to dwell almost completely on the main character's experiences with little discription of scenery or other characters. About half way into the work, I found that it did not keep my interest.
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