Books - Starship Troopers

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	Books - Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1959. The first-person narrative is about a young soldier named Juan Rico and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit equipped with powered armor. Rico progresses from civilian through recruit, NCO, and finally to officer, against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an insectoid species known as "The Bugs". Through Rico's eyes, Heinlein examines moral and philosophical aspects of capital punishment, juvenile delinquency, civic virtue, and necessity of war.

Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960 and helped create a sub-genre of literature known as military science fiction. It is on the reading lists of the U.S. Army and Marines, and is the only science fiction novel on the reading list at all four U.S. military academies. Starship Troopers has been adapted into several films and games, most famously the 1997 film by Paul Verhoeven. The novel has attracted controversy and criticism of its social and political themes, which many critics believe are militaristic, and which some feel are sympathetic to fascism.

Background: The writing of Starship Troopers

Robert A. Heinlein wrote from a military background because he had been a commissioned U.S. Navy officer and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. According to Heinlein, his desire to write Starship Troopers dates back to April 5, 1958, when he and his wife read a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. In response, the Heinleins created the Patrick Henry League in an attempt to drum up support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. During the unsuccessful campaign, Heinlein found himself under attack both in and out of the science fiction community for his views.

Heinlein stopped work on the novel that would become Stranger in a Strange Land
and wrote Starship Troopers sometime during 1958 and 1959. Starship Troopers was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October and November 1959 as a serial called Starship Soldier, and as a novel in December by G.P. Putnam's Sons. Although originally written as a juvenile novel for Scribners, it was rejected and was eventually published as an adult novel by G. P. Putnam's Sons. In many ways, Starship Troopers marked a turning point for Heinlein. Beforehand, he had mostly published juvenile novels for Scribner's. However, following their rejection of Starship Troopers, he ended his longstanding relationship with them, and began writing books with more adult themes.

Plot summary

Starship Troopers takes place in the midst of an interstellar war between the Terran Federation of Earth and the Arachnids (referred to as "The Bugs") of Klendathu. It is narrated as a series of flashbacks by Juan Rico, and is one of only a few Heinlein novels set out in this fashion. The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvette Rodger Young, about to embark on a raid against the planet of the "Skinnies," who are allies of the Arachnids. We learn that he is a cap(sule) trooper in the Terran Federation's Mobile Infantry, a 22nd-century unit that is analogous to a combination of the Marine Corps, Airborne forces, and the French Foreign Legion. The raid itself, one of the few instances of actual combat in the novel, is relatively brief: the Mobile Infantry land on the planet, destroy their targets, and retreat, suffering a single casualty in the process.

The story then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school, and his decision to sign up for Federal Service over the objections of his father. This is the only chapter that describes Rico's civilian life, and most of it is spent on the monologues of two people: retired Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, Rico's school instructor in the subject of "History and Moral Philosophy," and Fleet Sergeant Ho, a recruiter for the armed forces of the Terran Federation.

Dubois serves as a stand-in for Heinlein throughout the novel, and delivers what is probably the book's most famous soliloquy on violence, and how it "has settled more issues in history than has any other factor." Fleet Sergeant Ho's monologues examine the nature of military service, and his anti-military tirades appear in the book primarily as a contrast with Dubois. (It is later revealed that his rants are calculated to scare off the weaker applicants).

Interspersed throughout the book are other flashbacks to Rico's high school History and Moral Philosophy course, which describe how in the Terran Federation of Rico's day, the rights of a full Citizen (to vote, and hold public office) must be earned through some form of volunteer "military" service. Those residents who have not exercised their right to perform this Federal Service retain the other rights generally associated with a modern democracy (free speech, assembly, etc.), but they cannot vote or hold public office. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the 20th century western democracies, brought on by both social failures at home and military defeat by the Chinese Hegemony overseas (assumed looking forward into the late 20th century from the time the novel was written in the late 1950s).

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Books - Starship Troopers

Background: The writing of Starship Troopers

Plot summary

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