Rating: 
Summary: Schlocky plot; simplistic worldview
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book. I had loved some other Heinlein novels -- mainly Stranger in a Strange Land and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- but this one let me down, bigtime.The plot, for starters, is classic SF schlock -- the bug-like invaders vs. us for control of the galaxy, we can't communicate with them, etc. The book follows one main character, a somewhat-dimwitted and self-deprecating soldier, through the war. There is a lot of preaching about the need to teach harsh lessons to children so they don't grow up to be criminals -- some of which is compelling, some appallingly callous and obtuse. Heinlein creates a militaristic utopia where only veterans get to vote, and therefore crime is virtually nonexistent and everything is hunky-dory. Except, of course, for those bugs we have to go wipe out. The society he creates is two-dimensional -- utopias tend to be -- and so are the characters. They don't grow or stretch any more than in your typical G.I. Joe cartoon episode. This is a curiosity only for die-hard Heinlein fans and scholars.
Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps Heinlein's most important book- a classic.
Review: Before I go further: this book has the same name as the 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie, but nothing else in common. On its own, the movie is an illogical but reasonably entertaining B-grade combat film; as a cinematization of the book, it's a travesty. Don't judge this book by its movie. Set about half a millenium into the future, Starship Troopers is ostensibly and most visibly a book about war - but really a book about politics, about the ethics and application of force. About five times as much space is given to the purpose of combat, the reasons behind it, the political and moral justifications, as is given to the (two, plus a half-page street fight) combat itself. That's not to say that 'message' displaces plot. Heinlein cut his teeth writing pulp and short-stories, and at the time he wrote Starship Troopers he wasn't yet wealthy enough to afford a failed book. The story is well-written, intelligent, and moves fast; there's not a lot of room for characterization, but I like the job he did on Rico (the first-person main character.) Heinlein's writing, as usual, is beautifully to-the-point; for a writer who was originally paid by the word, he doesn't waste them. The book is short, too. Only about a hundred pages; it took me about eight hours to read, the first time. (In the four years since, I've read it at least half a dozen times.) Alongside Stranger In A Strange Land, this is one of Heinlein's best.
Rating:
Summary: Starship Troopers: Required Reading
Review: Starship Troopers is simply a Brilliant piece of writing. It has been labeled as "controversial" by many--I call it inspiring. Many criticize it for being "fascist" but those critics are missing the point aimed directly at them. It gives a frighteningly realistic prediction of a society that is afraid to punish bad behavior and demand responsibility from its citizens, trading common sense for well-intentioned nonsense. The result is the ultimate in pragmatism--you now have to earn that responsibility (by serving in the military), because society has proven itself unworthy of the unearned gift handed to it. Is it a call for this type of system? No, it is a warning. I call it inspiring because it begs us to look at our own actions and society, and to consider the ramifications of our popular (perhaps misguided) philosophy. It inspires me (and I hope others) to not let our society become what Heinlein describes. In my view, his pragmatic world predicts the failure of our society to fulfill its responsibility. One could argue that we have already gone far down the path that Heinlein predicted in 1959. Heinlein doesn't describe a hostile takeover of our society'he predicts its fall due to the citizens' failure to act responsibly. Legal residents (non-voting members of society) enjoy many rights and freedoms, however no political responsibility or authority. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and would encourage it as required reading for political science courses--not as an example of a model to follow, but as a portrayal of the consequences of taking what we have for granted. It is often difficult to look at something objectively, and see the problems that one helps to foster or create. This book forces us to look at our own society, and our role in it. This book isn't a manifesto, it is a wake-up call for us to match the authority we are gifted as voting citizens with an equal part of responsibility. I am sorry to hear that this message is being lost or obscured. Read this book, and think about your role and responsibilities as a citizen.
Rating:
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...
Rating:
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?
Rating:
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
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
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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