Starship Troopers

Classic, military, first person sci-fi

There are a lot of nasty and brutal details about military training in a made up future where a man doesn’t have to go to the army, so it must be even worse when a man must do it. But in addition to those we have chapters where the main character wants to leave the army and where he describes too many technical details about his super high-tech infantry suit—both feel too slow and boring. Well I guess a third of the military training part isn't necessary here.

The bugs action starts only at 50% mark and very quickly ends switching to an officer school and after a long time we get a bit more action. But literally 30-40% of the book—probably even more—is military philosophy discussions, talking about duty, describing some regular soldier’s tasks. And all of this is written in a not very interesting way and goes for too long. So mostly it’s a military lecture.

Also there’s almost no description of the enemies, some unusual military slang that can be hard to understand and chapters don’t have any breaks in them while they can last for 30-60 pages.

So the movie is so much better.

Read this one 21 years ago. Doesn't have too much in common with the movie of the same name. Short book, fast read.

This is an excellent book. Do not let the pathetic movie adaptation prevent you from reading this.

VERY different from the movie. Some of the technology doesn't hold up and the politics are, well, what they are, but it lived up to its reputation.

It's certainly a very immersive book. There were some parts I personally disliked, but overall a great read

I don't know why they thought this needed a movie, or how they made it better than the book without making a good movie.

Half the hand-wringing about the book’s totalized society evaporates when one reads it alongside the acid trip of Moon Is A Strange Mistress. Like the Beatles, the wonder is that the same middle of the 20th Century could hold such a centrifuge within itself.

“Starship Troopers” is less of a space-fairing action novel and more of a futuristic military procedural manual. It won a Hugo in the 1960s, was cheered for its take on a future military, and garnered many positive reviews at the time.

So, what is it about? Well, this is where it gets kind of murky. On the surface, we follow a young man named Juan “Johnny” Rico as he joins the military, particularly the mobile infantry. A war is raging between humans and a bug-like alien species.

Let me curb your enthusiasm a bit. If you were thinking about going to grab the butter-flavored popcorn to sit down to a book of action, this is not going to do it for you. Your popcorn will become stale long before you reach the end. It does have a few combat sequences, but for the most part, it is an ideological dive into fairly narrow political viewpoints.

First and foremost, this book was not for me. I am not all that interested in talking about the controversial aspects of the book, such as its pro-war symbolism, voting rights, dehumanizing, or human moral psychology. All one has to do is pick up a history book for a lesson in these matters. If dreamy political idealism is your thing, this might do it for you.

The structure has quite a bit of exposition, and the info dumps are quite rampant. For me, these sections really stuck out. You have to make up your own mind if you feel these ideals are preachy or have enough introspection to garner a more worldly conversation. I'm just pointing it out.

A positive: I sort of liked the descriptions of the spaceships, the suits, the weapons, and the powered armor specifically, which seems to be a staple in most modern military books, movies, and games.

An enjoyable read. Certainly a bit of a slow burner with a lot of philosophy of government and war which I found interesting.

It won the Hugo. It is a classic. I had expectations. I enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land. I had seen the movie.

I was underwhelmed. I knew it was different than the movie, but I think what happened was that in transforming it from a YA novel to an adult novel, it kind of landed in a limbo that was less than the sum of its parts.

There was a lot of philosophizing. It is known for that. I didn't take it as preachy, or necessarily as a manifesto of Heinlein's personal beliefs. He explored issues, and that doesn't mean he espouses them.

I was in the Navy for ten years. I felt there was a lot of wink-wink, nod-nod such that when he was overblowing the rah-rah spirit of military he was doing it tongue-in-cheek. There is a kind of eye towards the military that someone who had been in the military, like him, would resonate with.

One of the chapters that resonated the most with me was the one where he was describing being assigned to a Navy ship that had women on it. It is absolutely true the rivalry between branches of the armed services, particularly between Navy and Marines. And there is nobody more rah-rah than Marines, in my experience. So the rivalry felt true. The opinion of the Navy that all other branches are unnecessary because the Navy could take care of it all is shared by many. In real life we always heard a saying that “the Army has more boats than the Navy and the Navy has more planes than the Air Force.”

The other part of that chapter, about the sequestering of the women except for officers, and standing guard to make sure people didn't go forward of the restricted area rang true, also. I've seen many times where military men would code-switch in the presence of women, even though some military women were rougher and cruder than some of the men. There would be less swearing, more deference, and constant guard against fraternization. It is a potent dynamic. I was on submarines, and there were no women. Now they do allow women on submarines and I'd love to talk to someone who has experienced that, especially a woman to get her point of view.

Back to the story, the first half of it was okay because I kind of knew where it was going but not quite. The second part was less enjoyable because I always gloss over when they start using lots of ranks of services I'm not familiar with, and describing platoons and squads and other groupings of personnel that I don't know the difference between.

The mission for “Operation Royalty” was interesting and enjoyable, and the end of the novel was satisfyingly open-ended for there to be a sequel. Perhaps on further reflection or reading, now that I know what to expect, it will increase in my estimation. It did inspire me to pick up Heinlein's Expanded Universe book to read more about the backstory of this story, and I look forward to exploring more of his works.

8/10

There is little plot but there is character development in the form of Johnnie Rico going from impulsive deciding to join the military, to choosing it as a life career to leading a platoon in a battle.

It is not my thing, as I find the endless military procedure, details, structure, etc. very boring. Yes, there's aliens, spaceships, and fantastic technology, but the science fiction seems almost superfluous here.

Heinlein had a fun, easygoing writing style so it's not as dry of a read as making it out to be.

Superficially it appears to be a celebration of military, war, and discipline but there is a more important point that he was getting to, one of responsibility to the group (family, colleagues, fellow citizens of where you live, etc.) as opposed to focusing on yourself as an individual.

“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.”

Violence is horrifying and should be a last resort, but I think Heinlein was emphasizing the notion of making sacrifices to a greater good rather than glorifying war.

Actually read this a while ago and forgot to update my status. Also forget a lot about the book but I think I liked it?

I knew about this book, hard not to. Never seen the movie before, though, I don't watch many. But I guess, it was time to get on this one.

Johnnie is a normal high school student in the future, where space travel is readily available. Though there is one more thing about said future; only people who have served in their version of (space) army have the right to vote. They are the only full rights citizens.
Now our Johnnie doesn't join because he is just so passionate about the whole thing. He does because a friend also does, just like a cute girl from his class.
Then, while he is training... a war with space bugs starts.

When we read books about the future or a utopia/dystopia, the focus is usually someone special. Someone who changes the world, someone who causes big events to happen. A genius, a hero, someone like that. Johnnie is good at what he does, he puts in effort and is a good person, but he is not unique. He is not some magical special person. He is just one who gets caught up in events and does the best he can. It makes the book much more approachable; you can totally understand Johnnie.
It also helps with a lot of the technical details. I'm not someone who is super knowledgeable about science, but hey. The protagonist isn't either. He explains how the in-universe things work in practice, so you understand what's going on, but at the same time, it doesn't go into such details that make it difficult if you are not into science. Which was a great decision; it doesn't date the book too badly.

For a novel that plays out in space, it is not huge when it comes to scale. There are only a few more important characters and they are used sparingly. The story feels much more intimate this way, with interactions only being used without the full relationships between the characters fully portrayed. A lot of it is not even resolved; without spoilers, there are a couple of times when we are told Johnnie wants to/will meet someone again and we never get to see that.
We also often don't see the reactions to deaths, just get told it happened. You could think it makes things less emotional, but overall, this is a book with very little theatrics.

What it has a lot is people thinking about... society, I suppose. How it works, how we make it work. Those parts can be a bit dense, but they are never drawn out and I don't felt preached at. Possibly because as those things were mentioned, Johnnie was also learning and trying to understand them. I'm not even attempting to explain said things in detail, though, just read it. Mr. Heinlein did a better job than I would.

I think this is a good choice for even people who are not that deep in sci-fi and I understand why it's condsidered a classic.

I started off liking this book well enough, the military training section held my attention and seemed to have an interesting take on the price and hardship of military service, plus with the unique wrinkle of this world only allowing the right to vote for those who have served a term of that service.

But then it took a nosedive for me. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between the voice of a character and the voice of the author, but any scene where a professor or authority figure was monologuing to the main character in a class or where ever and convincing him of some shitty opinion on things like corporal punishment or inalienable rights it was just extremely preachy and pretty disgusting.

Aside from morally questionable content, I just got bored about halfway through as well. There are long drawn out sections where the chain of command and the general makeup of a platoon is discussed. I ended up skimming through a lot of the later parts of the book as I considered dropping it and I just couldn't be bothered to read through it closely.

Here's hoping I enjoy the movie more!

Normally I give books I dislike the benefit of the doubt when they have such a high rating; maybe I'm not astute enough in the literary sense or maybe I just have not reached the age yet when I can assess something critically when I don't like it. I am human. I am prone to error. My opinions may not have enough nuance, especially when they disagree with the general consensus that Starship Troopers is actually a good book. A great one. A literary classic even.

But believe me when I say it: this is THE worst book I have ever read. Period.

And unless I deliberately go out of my way to find a book that is worse than this, this book will remain to be one of the most unpleasant, condescending, and agonizing experiences I have ever had with a book. This book is pure militaristic propaganda and going in with knowledge around the debate of whether this was actually a satire or not should have been more than enough to signal me to avoid this book.

I usually never finish books I don't like. Life is too short for that but I decided to stick with it to really justify my opinion. My attention waned and I don't feel like I got all the nuance due to my mind glazing over words, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs - but this time around I was a masochist.

To avoid the book's politics is to avoid this book entirely. This book was written in response to Heinlein objecting against Eisenhower's decision to cease testing on nuclear weapons in 1959 and coinciding with Heinlein's health related discharge from the military, not allowing him to see combat he decided to make sure he got a taste of it by writing about it, making sure to infuse his politics within it and make this pro-recruitment propaganda that the US Army came around to recommend years later.

This book follows the story of a young soldier in the future (“Johnnie”) as he goes from a reluctant man who yearns to join the military despite facing disapproval at home to a super competent military officer in the face of an endless war against evil bugs invading their planet.

But really, the premise for this book may as well be cited for false advertising. This book never needed to be science fiction in fact. Aside from fighting a future war with powered armor, this book barely has anything to do with high tech. You would expect some grand epic space battle - but getting to that point is an excuse to spend over 70-80 pages (or basically half) dedicated to boot camp and how it operates.

Not necessarily a bad thing, boot camp is the best part of the movie Full Metal Jacket. So you would assume that this would build character and give depth to worldbuilding, my criticisms of this be damned. But that's the thing: it doesn't. So much of the book is dedicated to the day to day routine of boot camp; the importance of the food and being able to sleep in any condition. Or marching. Or hearing about how officers try to justify their cruel punishment is not a violation of the 8th Amendment and how they are forced to whip their men when they don't want to.

Much of this is just an excuse for the author to go on tirades as to how veterans should be the only people eligible to vote and participate in democracy and hold a job. Much of this is an excuse for the author to explore false conflict as Johnnie struggles to continue and dedicates an entire chapter (!) to thinking about the pros and cons of being a soldier. Society collapsed because parents didn't punish their children enough, not because of a massive energy crisis, political corruption, or an economic recession. No, because this generation is bad unlike the previous generation which had no problems whatsoever.

There are no characters in this book, there are simply mouthpieces to espouse propaganda. They go on speeches, monologues, and soliloquies about how great it is to be in the military and why we should cower and quake before soldiers and let them run the government. We can't forget about how a lot of it is just talking about how the military is organized into platoons and squads, just a whole lot of exposition and false conflict that leads to more exposition.

The protagonist isn't this cool everyman we relate to and see him become strong, we see him instead do guard duty and eat dinner. We hear about the cool stuff rather than see it. His character arc into macho man isn't given the depth it needed because surprise! - it's not given enough time.

If there is some merit to it being science fiction, it's that the enemy is a bunch of faceless bugs without a motive. Sounds like Heinlein's trying to purposely dehumanize the enemy and make them out to be monsters. Because war is always justified when you cannot reason with the enemy!

This is a book in the way that you could put two pieces of bread together and call it a sandwich. This is just a collection of words together that was vetted by the US Military to enlist with the occasional reference to space thrown in so you don't realize you're reading a 250 page pamphlet.

I think this is an underrated book. It was enjoyable and it's easily recommendable.

Hard to believe the same guy wrote this wrote A Stranger in a Strange Land.

What a glorious mindfuck, this one.

When military sci-fi is mentioned, Starship Troopers inevitably comes up as one of the type examples of this genre. Robert Heinlein's classic of the genre has been debated many times - does it glorify the military too much? I think that debate has been had enough and I am not really the best person to ask around it. More to the point for me is - is this a good book?

The novel follows the story of a member of the Mobile Infantry - the Starship Trooper of the title. It follows his career across the training and various engagements that lead to a climactic battle against the ‘bugs'. In many ways this is a standard war novel - you can see similar stories of training and combat in real world scenarios. The Sci-Fi aspects in some ways are fairly incidental.

Of the Heinlein's I have read, this one had the style that has aged the most gracefully. Whilst some of the themes in say Stranger in a Strange Land have not aged well, the power of the military-industrial complex is still as relevant today as it was back in the 1950s. I quite enjoyed this and as a dive into more classic SciFi this was a pleasant trip

I enjoyed the book.
It's very fresh and aged well.
Only downside is the lack of a solid plot - it's mostly Rico's biography and some military skirmishes.

An overall good read. I really enjoyed the story, but felt that it ended really quickly and could have been further expanded. The book was much better than the movie. To be honest the movie barely followed the story line at all.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. I appreciated the philosophy on duty and maybe the more mundane parts of being a solider, something I'll never be. However, there were parts I flat out disagreed with, namely the rant that corporal punishment is good and social workers and child psychologists were wrong. He points toward hitting dogs and rubbing their noses in their accidents as proof that he's right.

There's so much wrong in one small paragraph. Hitting teaches that hitting solves problems, it usually doesn't. Positive reinforcement is generally the best way to train a dog and crazy enough it works great for kids too (maybe not all, but it's worked great for my kid who was deemed spirited by quite a few people). Additionally, social workers and child psychologists can do remarkable things for us as a society and the idea that if we just hit people more is so reductive that I'm kinda flummoxed by it.

All of that said, there were parts of the book I really enjoyed, I'm just not sure I'd go around recommending it to everyone. I think it hits hard with it's idea and philosophy and duty and I can't think of another book that does it nearly as well, but there's a lot of baggage that goes with it.

Big fan of the movie but never read the book, until now. Some give it negative reviews due to the vast differences between the two, the fact that the book concentrates mainly on the troops training and character development, whereas the movie more on the fighting. I liked those differences. In this way, the two complement each other and you can go from one to the other and see a journey.
Others say it is not really science fiction but of course it is, with its battle suits and arachnid beings, just subtly done.
As for Heinlein displaying too much of his political views? Don't a lot of writers? Aren't a writers opinions the basis of many books?

Meh.

This is one of the few books where as it turns out, the movie was better. There's some action, and you get a bit of hearing about the neat equipment that gets to be used, but that's really it. The rest of the book is more the internal journey of someone who joined the military because his buddy and the hot girl from his school were joining, to getting through basic, and then deciding to make a career of it during the bug war.

One thing I did notice was as soon as Rico got over his hump, from then on out the government and military could do no wrong. In fact, that's what it seemed the system was set up to be, that if you wanted a right such as voting, you would need to buy into complete and utter loyalty to the government no matter what. The attitudes from the higher-ups to both soldiers and even to civilians seems to be “You're too stupid to understand this so just let us handle all the big thinking for you, okay?” That's where the book loses me, making the assumption that anyone not at a certain level in the system is just stupid.

I don't think I'll be reading this one again anytime soon.

There are a few things you can always count on in a Heinlein book. Women have equal if not more strengths as men. A lot of free thinking about sex and politics. This book does not disappoint there. Johnny Rico joins the military with his friend and because of a girl. He moves up the ranks quickly. Then a war breaks out and he has to really grow up. I kept getting the story confused with [b:Old Man's War 51964 Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) John Scalzi https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487044882s/51964.jpg 50700]. It's obvious there that Scalzi read this book and used the aliens as type. Bug-type that is. LOL. I like some of Heinlein's other books better but this was enjoyable.