Rating: 
Summary: Forget the movie!
Review: If you thought you knew what Starship Troopers was about because you saw Verhoven's horrible abomination of a movie, forget everything you think you know. Starship Troopers is a thoughtful exposition of Heinlein's views regarding freedom, natural rights, social responsibility, and the necessity of violence in defense of civilization. Whether you agree with his positions or not, this book forces you to at least confront them. Thinking about them is your responsibility. In addition to the exposition, Starship Troopers is a slam-bang action novel that hovers on the more realistic fringe of space opera, and is responsible for introducing some of the things we now consider standard concepts, like personal battlesuits. If you're into military SF action, you'll enjoy this book. If you're into political exposition, you'll enjoy this book. If you like both, you'll be ecstatic.
Rating: 
Summary: Great
Review: Just plain great. The commentary on society is much better than the actual war story.
Rating:
Summary: Just scratches the surface...
Review: I thought this book was a little superficial in its treatment of the "Hero" archetype. Contrary to the first reviewer I would say that this book is anything but rational. The archetypes and myths employed in this book have been examined much more closely by non-fiction authors such as Joseph Campbell, Jung and Freud. Heinlein has just taken an old myth and covered it with a sci-fi veneer. Nevertheless, it is entertaining. For those of you with honorable tendencies I recommend "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius recorded the thoughts collected in this book while on campaign with the Roman legions. He was also emperor at the time. His ideas are morally courageous, well thought and grounded in practical experience.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the Movie
Review: I must admit that I did not get around to reading this book until after I'd seen the movie. I liked the movie, and so I figured "why not read the book" well... the Book, aside form being dang near a compleatly diffrent story from the movie, was, in my humble oppinion, way better. I am a big fan of the war based sience fiction type books. I think the Bigest thing that Cought on me about this book was that its not telling the story about a guy that joins the millitary, and goes off to fight some aliens, It's telling you a story about how joining the millitary and going off to fight some aliens has changed from a once dumb civilian, into a soldier, and a citizen. It's about how Juan Rico, evolves from a boy to a man, and from a follower into a leader.
I particularly liked the use of technology, and how for as cool as it is, it's not even an issue in the book. The book didn't get all carried away with fancy weapons and armor, but instead gave you a basic outline and let your own imagination fill in the rest. There were a lot of Socialistic idiologies, in this book, but I still liked how their govenment was set up, and I think it's too bad we couldn't make a system like that work in today's sociaty.
It's definatly a deep read, with a lot of questions that you may find you ask yourself, but that's part of the joy I found in reading it. so if your looking for some straight "balls to the walls" action like you saw in the movie, this might not be your book, but if your in for some real Sci-Fi that'll keep you woundering what'll happen next, and just who Rico will become in the end, this is your meal ticket!
Rating:
Summary: It's been said
Review: As a veteran Marine, I believe this is the only utopian book ever written that I can stomach. That's right....UTOPIA. Forget the war, focus on the society. Everyone getting up in arms about this book is someone who is anti-military, anti-service, and anti-American. (And more than likely a coward) :)
Rating:
Summary: 'Find the cost of freedom . . . '
Review: The screen version of this classic SF novel is less an adaptation than a counterargument. In a way that's appropriate; Heinlein was certainly trying (or at least expecting) to generate loads of controversy with this work. But if you're about to read _Starship Troopers_ for the first time, it's only fair to warn you that _whatever_ you think of the film, you'll be disappointed if you expect the book to resemble it very much. (Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Ed Neumeier took incredible liberties with, and sometimes even directly contradicted, the book on which their film is 'based'. It's a fine film on its own terms and I think it's been unjustly maligned. But it's not this novel; it's the next round in an ongoing dispute with this novel. And whatever else the movie has going for it, its _military_ action is incompetent to the point of silliness.) I've been reading Heinlein for nearly forty years now. I don't think this is one of his best three or four novels, and it's never going to be one of my personal favorites either. Nevertheless, it _is_ a genuinely great work of SF and raises issues that genuinely deserve to be raised. Whether you buy Heinlein's own _answers_ is a different matter. The 'arguments' presented by the characters in the novel are mostly aimed at straw men. ('My mother says violence never settles anything', indeed.) This is perhaps forgivable since so much of Heinlein's positive case is so good. But I'm not persuaded that the society he imagines in this novel would be as functional as he seems to think. At any rate, its essential socio-political point -- that authority and responsibility are a coordinated yin-yang pair and an imbalance between them puts the world out of whack -- is extremely well taken. (It applies more broadly, too.) Its account of what it means to be a human being (as opposed to an economic animal) is darned good too. And this is where the real meat of the novel lies. You see, the _story_ here isn't about the war with the Bugs; it's about Juan Rico's coming of age. As a character (not Rico) remarks at one point: 'I had to perform an act of faith. I had to prove to myself that I was a man.' If you grok that, you'll grok the novel. (Yes, Heinlein tells this story in the context of military service, but its theme applies much more widely. And lest you think the novel is too autobiographical here, note that Heinlein -- a Navy man -- locates his story not in his own branch of the service but in the 'poor bloody infantry'.) The stuff about the Bug War is a different deal. This aspect of the novel was very much a product of the anticommunism/Cold War era; I don't think it's survived all that well and I'm not even persuaded it was all that terrific at the time. But it's background, not main plot -- and at any rate Heinlein is surely right that a cap trooper in the Mobile Infantry isn't going to be involved in setting the Federation's diplomatic policy; Rico's own story doesn't depend on whether the politicians are 'right' to send him into combat. One of Heinlein's greatest, then, but not the absolute cream. Anyway, don't get scared off either by the movie or by comments from readers who didn't grok it. Whatever you think of the Old Man, he was no fascist.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining story.....thought provoking commentary.
Review: This book, written in 1959 in Cold War America, follows young Juan Rico during his military service in the Mobile Infantry of the Terran Federation. RAH uses the evolution of Rico from spoiled rich kid to responsible soldier as a backdrop for musings on society and government. In this society of the future,the right to vote is granted only to those who have served a three year (or more) hitch in the service of the government. RAH uses the lectures of Mr. Dubois and the Officer Candidate School instructor to emphasize the old issue of rights vs. responsibility. Although I don't consider the book fascist, as some readers do, I can see why it was considered radical. Calling for a restricting of suffrage goes against our democratic sensibilities, but it's an intriguing idea nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and wildly entertaining
Review: Being a big fan of all things sci-fi, I had long wished to read what is perhaps the most famous of Heinlein's books: Starship Troopers. I was expecting a sci-fi/adventure. What I got was incredible. It's no wonder Heinlein is considered one of the masters of science fiction. Whereas other authors might try to develop one idea over the course of a novel, Heinlein throws ideas at you so fast that sometimes you may need to reread a passage once or twice. A change of political system, a change of justice system, interplanetary warfare and the evolution of the human race are all merely TOYED WITH in this book. The real core of the story is about a young man who comes from a wealthy background and thinks he knows what he wants out of life who finds himself way over his head in for the ride of his life, after deciding on a whim to spend a few years in the armed forces (to join his best friend). Getting back to what I said before, there is action in the first chapter of this book. After that, most of the book is dedicated to describing the technology, social system, and life of our protagonist in the future. But don't let that get you down. The way that the situations are described and conversations are carried out is incredibly entertaining, and more than once I was laughing histerically at things that the hero of our story was saying to himself. If you love cool sci-fi technology you certainly won't be bored, as all manner of cool weaponry and gear (not to mention the AWESOME battle armor) of the future are described in a way that really gets your imagination going. The real story here is about the training combat that our hero goes through, and the change that it has on him as a result. It's a story of tragedy and triumph, joy and despair, fear and valor. This is not only a great sci-fi, but a great book in general. If you like science fiction (and especially if you like Heilein) you owe it to yourself to give this book a read.
Rating:
Summary: Liberty does not come cheaply
Review: In a world fraught with moral decay and increasing decadence and moral relativism, Starship Troopers espouses such noble, yet somehow forgotten, values as duty, honor, discipline, selflessness, & civic virtue. The classroom lectures of Col. Dubois in his History and Moral Philosophy class vibrantly resonate the most sacrosanct pursuits in life, namely those of liberty & freedom, and the fact that they do not come cheaply. As Dubois so incisively states, "Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost." As the MI is constantly reminded, one must always be "on the bounce" and eternally vigilant. Instead of Juan Rico and his MI troopers nonchalantly waiting for the Bugs to attack them, they take the fight to them. As Col. Dubois invokes the cogent example of Carthage, he espouses, and rightfully so I might add, that no war was ever won by sitting back and waiting to be attacked; to do so is quixotic at best, suicidal at worst. Overall, a great book that proves both entertaining & provocative - much more so than the watered-down movie.
Rating:
Summary: Classic social commentary
Review: Maligned by a movie with which it shares a title and some character names but little else, Starship Trooper remains one of the classic works of a giant of the sci-fi genre. Like most of the great titans who turned it from a pulp genre to serious literature, Heinlein used his work to develop complex and often thought provoking critiques on society. Starship Trooper is no exception. Like many of Heinlein's works, this novel's lead character is a young man (to his fault Heinlein could not write women but to his credit before the end of his career he rarely tried) who makes a decision on a lark (joining the Mobile Infantry) and then learns about the universe and becomes a man. In the hands of a lesser writer, the novel would become a kind of interstellar version of British 19th Century gone to sea novels. Heinlein, however, uses it as a platform from which to engage in a biting and thoughtful commentary on the state of society in 1959. Here we are offered an interesting theory of citizenship, the relationship between violence and political power, and the idea of rights. Interestingly, many assume this novel was written in the 1960s or 70s because of its apparent preoccupation with the idea of runaway crime and fear. Heinlein at the end of the staid 50s was prescient in what he saw as the coming threats to society. A rabid anti-communist, readers will also find interesting in the sort of society that Heinlein presents as the ideal opponent of a perfect communist system. What makes this work exceptional is that all of these subjects are rolled neatly into a riveting read. I first read this novel in my early teens and it opened my eyes to a whole range of questions while still keeping me entertained. Controversy still rages among many about what the author intended with this book. Was he presenting an idealistic utopia of civic virtue or a militaristic dystopia bent on conquest? Read it and join an argument that will continue to rage for years to come!
| 
