SCI FI PI

STARSHIP TROOPERS (1959)
By Robert Heinlein

In many ways, Robert Heinlein is an enigma. Along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, he is considered a founding father of modern science fiction, a triumvirate of both intellect and talent that has shaped the way people read and think about Science Fiction. His works span the full gamut of political and social viewpoints, and he is possibly the only Science Fiction author to have two novels win the Hugo award that stand on either end of the socio-political spectrum. as well known as he is for authoring Stranger in A Strange Land, he is equally famous for creating Starship Troopers, a book that was controversial in its day, and still creates waves of conjecture even today.

To say that Heinlein was nothing more than a freethinking liberal or a fascist militarist is to miss the point entirely, however. Above all things, he was a writer, and an excellent one at that. His body of work reads like a cornucopia of human thought - and to fully appreciate Starship Troopers, you must pay careful attention not only to his career as an author, but the man himself. He was never, 'one thing or the other', but all.

Robert Heinlein

Born in 1907 in Butler, Missouri, Heinlein was raised in a religious, conformist environment. He attended the US Naval Academy, graduating in 1929, and served in the Navy until 1934, serving on the aircraft carrier Lexington and the destroyer Roper. He was honourably discharged due to tuberculosis.

He briefly attended UCLA (maths and physics) but among odd jobs, including silver mining, joined an anti-poverty movement. He survived on a pension from the Navy during this time. He turned to writing to supplement his income and was first published in 1939 (the short story, Life-line). He quickly rose to prominence among the Sci Fi community.

Heinlein was seen as the leader of a new branch of science fiction, one that concentrated on social issues, rather than contraptions. His work was seen as avante garde in regards to both socio-political views and gender behaviour.

During WWII, he worked for the Navy as an aeronautical engineer, alongside L.Sprague De Camp and Isaac Asimov. After the war, his talent helped him sell stories to The Saturday Evening Post, a first for a Science Fiction writer. He also began writing a series of juvenile fiction novels, which was to end abruptly in 1959 - with Starship Troopers. He also worked on the feature, Destination Moon, which won an Academy award for special effects.

In 1958, Heinlein began actively supporting nuclear weapons testing. However, in 1961, he published Stranger in A Strange Land, which very quickly became an anti-establishment ('hippie') bible. In 1964, he worked on the campaign to elect Barry 'Mr Conservative' Goldwater President.

After publishing The Moon is A Harsh Mistress in 1966, Heinlein' work became more and more exploratory, with each new novel attempting a new line of thinking or a revolutionary take on a traditional Science Fiction theme.

Heinlein had always been startling in his attempts to redefine both the boundaries of Science Fiction and and social constructs - as far back as 1959, he wrote the short story 'All You Zombies - ', where the main character has a sex change operation and goes back in time, to have sex with themself and then give birth to themselves. Brain-hurting, indeed.

For all his experimentation, he always returned to the idea of writing as primarily entertainment, novels like The Puppetmasters (1951) are well-written romps. Starship Troopers falls into this category, but because of its subject matter and the political ideas that it contains, the fast-paced story of a young man's transformation from civilian to soldier has become a proving ground for both conjecture and comment, with a vast spectrum of criticism arising from the reading - from being too fascist, to being too utopian!

Let's have a look at the book, and see if we can't pick our way through the blast debris of this explosive tome and into the core of what it's all about...

So what is it all about? The book, that is. The fuss - that's a bit too much to deal with in one sitting.




Cool Starship Troopers book covers.

STARSHIP TROOPERS

If you've seen the movie, you'll be surprised at how much of it comes directly from the book, and you probably won't be surprised at the typical 'Verhoevenisms' that pepper it. The 'Nazis are fun!' angle isn't there, although there are some verbatim dialgoue snippets, including political polemics on what 'citizenship' means. This in essence, is the core of the book, that to be a true member of society, you must be willing not only to work for it, but do die for it.

If a society is worth your life, then it must be worth something to you, and thus ensures your active participation. Whilst the book is set in a military environment, it really is an offering for a new system of democracy. The trouble is that it is couched in a very black and white 'fight or die' situation. The famous quote 'Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.' is not wish-fulfillment, but naked, brutal fact. It is this brutality that was taken on board by the movie, but a great deal of the subtlety was left behind. As was a lot of cool hardware.

Heinlein proposes a world without racism or sexism (the hero, Juan 'Johnny' Rico is Filipino, and the best starship pilots are women due to female brain physiology). In essence it is a meritocracy, yet it also contains a moral code. To be able to vote for the Federation, you have to join Federal Service. If you are willing and able, you can join the military, be it the Navy, or the Mobile Infantry (MI) that Johnny joins. If you do not have the physical skills or aptitude, your Federal Service will be served in the logistics for the military or in other branches, replacing the need for a force of civilian contractors who don't have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Federation. Once you have served, then you can vote.

What we see here is the outline of a system of democracy with the ultimate goal of military defence. It's obviously something that sprang from Heinlein's service in the US Navy, having to put up with an array of bureaucracy, corruption and profiteering that goes hand in hand with all military operations. To reinforce this idea of military improvement, the very rank structure of the MI is later revealed, showing Heinlein's desire for a streamlining of military operations, with a minimum of officers.

The MI itself is something special, and not quite what you saw in the film. The third film in the trilogy, Marauder, actually comes close to showing what the original MI equipment looked like - powered, armoured and weapon-heavy suits.

In the book, each soldier is ejected in a 'coffin' from an orbiting ship. The coffin ablates in the atmosphere, sending shards down with the troopers to confuse ground based tracking systems.

Each trooper lands miles apart, because their powered armour is capable of 'hopping' vast distances, and their weapons are formidable. Think something akin to Iron Man and you are getting close - although with more nukes (nukes were big in the fifties, especially the idea of mini-nukes) - it's a fair bet that everything from Iron Man to Robotech owes a debt to the MI of Starship Troopers.

In the book, it's not just the bugs that the humans are up against, but the 'skinnies'. It's a hostile galaxy, and the MI have a long history of getting into the bloodiest of any fighting, dropped off in small squads to go in where the Navy cannot be effective with orbital bombardment.

The vast distances involved mean that life on board ship mimics the troop-carriers of WWII, with a separation of Army and Navy on board (especially with females in the Navy). Heinlein describes on board interaction and behaviour with practiced ease. Life is easier on ship, but boring, but nothing quells the fear each time Johnny has to 'drop'.

Before Johnny joins up with Rasczack's Roughnecks, he has to go through basic training for the MI. The book flashes back and forth from current fighting to Johnny's training, from rebellious teen to hardened grunt.




More cool Starship Troopers book covers.


The book mirrors the shocking brutality of the training events described in films like Full Metal Jacket, and of course the film of the book, but surprisingly tempers the military discipline and absolutism of the whip with the point of view of the commanding officers, who justify their actions with the knowledge that the harsher the training, the tougher the soldier. They care more than they let on. But they create fighting machines that accept death as a way of life.

Johnny's offhand discussion of deaths in training come at the end of a gruelling experience that sees public flogging and hanging as part of military life. It's this back-to-basics physicalism that really hits you (and Johnny) who could, if he wanted to, quit at anytime. And he almost does. But if he did, he would have to renounce citizenship. The citizenship that is worth dying for.

The History & Moral Philosophy classes that he attended in school have laid the groundwork for his loyalty and understanding of a Federation created to protect humanity at any cost. It is the moral certainty that comes with military certainty that really gives Johnny his strength. Is this brainwashing? Sure. Is it the way to make a good soldier? Certainly.

That said, the military is not held up in the book as a paragon of efficiency and virtue. When it comes down to it, the only military that gets glorified is the ordinary grunt, and the lower rank officers - those on the front line who have to make brutally honest calculations and risk horrific maiming and death so that their society may live.

The book's faults lie perhaps in the tendency to preach and a central hypothesis of 'us or them' that is overly simplistic when applied as human metaphor. Perhaps that is the problem - when the book is analysed for meaning, it floods with as many possibilities as the reader can imagine.

Racism - humans versus bugs and skinnies? Maybe - until of course you realise that Johnny is Filipino, and his platoon has at least five races. Anti-communism? Humans versus a hive-mind? Perhaps. 1959 was a good year for that. Utopianism? A world too good to be true? C'mon! A Utopian war-economy? Puhlease! Militaristic? Umm. What are you on? Interstellar war novels tend to be militaristic. The constant reminders of those killed and maimed in the book mean you cannot really see it as an endorsement of 'war as a way of life'. It's like saying the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan tell us that war is a 'day at the beach'.

Perhaps it's better to just let the adventure take you into the viciously brutal world of futuristic space combat, and see a boy become a military man, imbued with the rich traditions of the fighting soldier. The good and the bad of the Federation are laid out for you to judge for yourself.

The lesson of Starship Troopers? Wars exist. That's bad. The people who fight them have to be tougher, more committed and better equipped than the rest of us. That's good. How do we get a society that breeds someone consciously and sensibly able to volunteer for that? - well, try the construct of The Federation. And that's it.

After almost fifty years, it's still a hell of a read. No matter how you read it.

AWARDS FOR ROBERT HEINLEIN

Heinlein won four Hugos: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (67), Stranger in a Strange Land (61), Starship Troopers (60) Double Star (1956) he was also awarded a 'Retro Hugo' for Farmer in The Sky (51) in 1994. He was nominated for Job: A Comedy of Justice (85) - the year William Gibson Won for Neuromancer, Friday (83), Time Enough For Love (74) Glory Road (64) and Have Space Suit - Will Travel (59).

He was the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master winner 1975. The title Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master is bestowed upon a living author for a lifetime's achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy. You only get it if you're a living Sci Fi legend.

HEINLEIN MOVIES

Destination Moon 1950 (Rocket Ship Galileo),
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, 1950, (Space Cadet)
Project Moonbase, 1953
The Brain Eaters, 1959, (The Puppet Masters, uncredited, sued by Heinlein)
Uchu no Senshi (Japanese) (Starship Troopers) (1988)
Red Planet, TV mini-series 1994
The Puppet Masters, 1994
Starship Troopers, 1997
Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles, TV series, 1999
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004)
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008)

DID YOU KNOW? - BET YOU DIDN'T!

The phrase 'There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch' was popularized by Heinlein in his novel, The Moon is A Harsh Mistress (1966).