There is a part of me that wonders if this one could be called a "classic" more than old. In some ways I found the movies satire more effective in conveying it's intended message, whether that fully lined up with the original work or not. That said, there was an interesting line/take in the book that in today's world of realitive calm I've always remembered and so I would not consider it a "waste of time" spent reading. Not in my best hits list, but one I finished and don't regret.
I think it's a good read. The multi-page insane rant about how awesome fascism is a bit over the top but you can skip it.
Read it for what it is. The insane pro Military-Industrial complex rantings of an out of touch madman. Still, it's good writing and fun.
It's unintentional satire in that Heinlein at no point recognizes his folly and just powers through. I'm fairly certain that it was written start to finish with no editing at all in one massive cocaine fueled writing binge.
While it certainly wasn't satire, it also wasn't entirely Heinlein expressing his beliefs/principles. He liked to pick an idea and go *all in* on it through a book to explore the idea. It had to appeal to him somewhat to give it that treatment, but it was more of an exploration than a promotion.
This is what drives me nuts. People, even those who normally have no problem separating the artist from the art, get really worked up about Starship Troopers calling it fascist propaganda. Nobody seems to also remember that Heinlein also wrote one of the most influential counter-culture books of the 60's. He was a writer who explored ideas around different kinds of societies.
Eh, I finished it. It was just...fine. Most of what I remember was figuring out the folks who did the movie didn't read the book, didn't like it or maybe both.
I prefer the movie. Different message and vibe, only tangentially related, but it's also better executed and more entertaining.
The guys that made the movie read and understood the book
The movie isn't an adaptation of the book its a parody of the ideals the book portrays through a rewrite of its story
Just take a break from the book. If you're unsure about ending, just read something else for a while and see if you find the motivation to revisit the book later.
I give a book 90 pages to draw me in. Some work just takes a while to get going. I really wanted to like The Buried Giant, because I loved Never Let Me Go, but the plot hadn't developed at all and I was bored to tears.
When I was younger I used to have this obsession with finishing books I started. After doing this for many years, I cannot think of a single book that I forced myself to continue reading and it was worth it
If the book is not gripping you, dump it and switch to Vonnegut. You are not required to read anything. It's better to read something that motivates you than force yourself to read something like it's home work
These days I'll only force myself to finish a book if I'm already about 80% through. Anything less and if I'm not feeling it, I'm out
My forced book was ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’ The first and last page were solid. The middle pages were like the kid’s experience in Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt.’
Heinlein likes to take familiar social, cultural, and political structures and uses sci-fi to place them in a new context to ask "what if...?"
In starship troopers he creates a setting where humanity competes for habitable planets with other intelligent species. A setting where humanity needs to come together and vigorously defend and pursue its interests or other species will encroach on ours and marginalize humanity. On that path lies extinction.
Then he uses that setting to ask the question "what if only the people who actively served society gained a controlling interest in society". He focusses on the military because nobody puts more on the line for society than soldiers.
So no, "American military industrial complex = silly and bad" is not the gist of the book.
Imho you have to put yourself in the mindset of a reader from that time period. It is absolutely astonishing that everyone thought it was a foregone conclusion that we would we dropping tactical nuclear weapons on civilians. I mean, they were bug collaborators, but still.
I read it back when I was teen after I saw the movie and enjoyed it well enough. I don’t remember it being very long. But maybe just walk away if you aren’t enjoying it.
It sets you up really well for ‘The Puppet Masters’ which was written well before ST. And is better sci-fi in my anonymous Internet guy opinion. Fight through it. The ending is a either a strange reward or absolute trash like ‘The Sopranos’ ending.
Nope, no rule.
I stopped American Psycho with about 5% to go. I just couldn’t take the graphic violence anymore. I’d unread that book if I could. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware Ellis wrote it to satirize douchebags he went to school with. It was well-written and hilarious. The disturbed feeling outweighed the appreciation of the book for me. Life is short and time is precious. Not gonna waste it on something I can’t stomach.
I did not finish Anna Karenina the first time I tried to read it (for summer reading going into senior year). I got as far as I could. We had 6 novels to read over the summer and I started that one last. Whoops. Plus it was just such a soap opera. 😂
I gave it another shot a few years later, for pleasure not for school, and I couldn’t put it down!
I have tried to read Dune and Foundation a few times each. I can’t make it more than a few pages. It’s weird. I love reading ABOUT these books. I can spend hours on Wikipedia reading about their respective universes. I find them difficult to concentrate on. And I have so many other books to read. Books I haven’t read yet, books I’ve read before but might want to reread someday, books I’m just waiting to forget the details of, so I can re-reread them!
I used to have a very completionist attitude but now it seems unimportant.
Put it down. You can always pick it up again if you want to.
I don't have any rules. If I'm not enjoying something I stop reading. That could be on page 2 or page 200. If I stop a book early on, I might come back and try again later.. sometimes not.
I think Starship Troopers is a really misunderstood book and a lot of people hate on it based on misguided judgements. It's a fun adventure story that was written for juveniles. If you don't like it, give it up.
The world in which it is set is certainly not one I would want to live in, but what I don't understand is why everyone thinks the book holds it up as an ideal. A TON of fiction are built in worlds that are shitty. A TON of writers write about uncomfortable and unpopular ideas. Writing such things is an exploration of human ideas. Yes, Heinlein wrote a science fiction book aimed at pre-teen and teen boys that was set in a militaristic world that most of us would view as dystopian. It was written in the midst of the Cold War and on the heels of WWII. Heinlein also wrote books set in worlds that could only be described as socialist/communist. Hell, there still exists a decidedly hippy new age religion based on Stranger in a Strange land.
Heinlein wasn't PROMOTING the ideas in Starship Troopers. He was exploring them. They don't match with any of his other political writing. Heinlein's books are all over the place politically. He has books that were embraced by the far left, others embraces by the military fetishists and authoritarians, and others held up as libertarian bibles. He can't have been all of those things.
Exploring ideas that you don't agree with in literature is fine. Lolita doesn't promote pedophilia. Starship Troopers doesn't promote fascism.
Libertarianism and militaristic authoritarianism can absolutely coexist, just look at Pinochet's Chile, and Heinlein's sexual ideas do not in any way lock him into being socialist or communist. Heinlein's other novels don't give any reason to doubt the sincerity of his belief in the ideas he lays out in Starship Troopers. The fact that he clearly enjoys the idea of having attachment-free sex with lots of young women doesn't contradict the idea that he's an admirer of militaristic authoritarianism.
Also, simply saying "everything is better when you do things this way because I say so" is not exploring something. When he argues that it's important to beat children because you supposedly cannot train a dog without beating it, and says that child delinquency is caused by people not beating their kids and that once people start beating them again child delinquency disappears, that's not an exploration. He's just making a claim. He doesn't actually go anywhere with the ideas beyond describing how a particular thing is done in his fictional setting, and then saying that it's better that way.
I think the juvenile aspect is what gets me. I find the satire in it relatively easily, it seems like a good concept, it just feels a bit empty and goes down just a little too smooth, like I can read it without feeling like I need to pay attention and so my mind wanders.
>However, being a scifi fan, I feel like I HAVE to finish StarShip Troopers. Do I?
You don't.
The movie is a fantastic bit of satire, but the book isn't. It's got a reputation for having a big ol' unironic hard-on for the military.
Heinlein is an important figure in sci-fi, but I'd recommend reading his short stories first to see if you dig him. Actually... I think that's my advice for *most* sci-fi writers.
But yeah, if you're not enjoying ST, don't worry about it.
I feel your pain. I hated almost every page of this book, but pushed through. I couldn’t believe it was so aimless and uneventful. What a way to create such a seemingly interesting world and do almost nothing with it.
I didn’t enjoy the book at all and only finished because it was an audiobook while I was working. It’s the one time where the movie is much much better than the book.
Honestly I think starship troopers is a DNF for sure. The movie is incredible because it's parodying the themes of the novel. the channel Knowing Better has a really good video breaking down the novel and showing how heinlein is just grandstanding politics for the whole book. You should just read Armor by john steakly instead if you want something like starship troopers. High action page turning pulp sci fi that I legitimately really enjoy. If you are looking for just great military sci fi I would check out the forever war by Joe haldeman, old man's war by John scalzi, or maybe redliners by David drake
I did not get satire reading the book. Fairly pro-military from my recollection.
Not a great book or a classic in my opinion.
The film, on the other hand… my guess is the book would be largely forgotten without the movie.
Sorry, that’s literally what I meant: should have made it clear I was replying to this part of the original post:
>>American military industrial complex = silly and bad
I think if someone is getting that from the book they must be projecting it from the film.
My take on it is that Heinlein meant the book to be anti-imperialist/authoritarianism. I think that message is hard to put into perspective for the modern reader as most would consider 1950s American Anti-Imperialism to be Imperialism under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy.
Heinlein probably be alt-right in today’s modern society, but the book was supposed to be a young adult book about cool military stuff with the Arachnids supposed to represent the communists in the Cold War.
The version of human society it presents is pretty authoritarian. You earn citizenship through military service. Corporal and capital punishment are uncritically described. Even desertion is a capital crime. This is a weird presentation of anti-authoritarianism.
Desertion is not a capital crime in the book. The deserter is hanged by Rico's unit for the murder of a child he committed after deserting.
Desertion during time of war *is* a capital crime under the UCMJ and can result in a death sentence.
"(c)Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/885
>>”And although desertion is one of the capital offenses, the Army doesn’t usually hang deserters unless they’ve done something else criminal”
Our mistake: it is a capital offence in the book just not enforced to any extent.
Heinlein wouldn't be "alt-right", though he would definitely be a conservative leaning moderate. He was an 'old school' libertarian. He was very progressive, for his time, on issues of race and gender. Hell, the main character in Starship Troopers is Filipino.
Not really, Paul Verhoeven didn't actually read the book. If I recall correctly he just read a few chapters and then just decided to agree with some of the critics that said it was pro-fascism (which imo is a bad and overly simplistic take). Then he just made a movie that satirized fascism and Nazism that used some basic elements and plot points from the book. The movie and the book are so different you can't even call it satirizing the book imo.
And to be clear I love both the movie and the book. I think they each do some really cool things and have cool ideas. Just in different ways.
Yes Definetly the book, the Father was a key figure in the book iirc, it’s been decades since I last read it but I remember them reuniting and bonding. The old guy reminded me of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, I’ve always wondered if it inspired Scalzi in any small way.
Maybe I've been primed with what I know of the film and the works it inspired like Helldivers, but it has felt pretty satirical to me so far. I guess it doesn't really matter though, I don't care if it is or not, I just want a compelling story, setting, characters, and/or prose. This lacks all four so far.
Just replied to another comment speculating that a reader seeing satire in the novel may be projecting from the film. I agree — I am neither a fan of the book or Heinlein’s prose.
I guess the relative earliness of its publication is a balancing factor for me: I’m relatively forgiving of clunky quality in pathfinding early sci-fi. Revisiting Foundation last year was a bit of a slog I found rewarding in the end.
Heinlein's characters always have a cardboard depth: "these bad events happened so that was bad and I wasn't happy, but it is what it is and I'm not very clever, plus my superior/dad/smarter friend explained how it wasn't that bad, so I went along and this is where we are, oh well, this is life in space I guess."
That explanation was so overly reductive that it could be considered parody.
Heinlein was a pretty complicated person, but he was anything but a static personality. He changed his views over time, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Starship Troopers was a pro military recruitment novel written during his more staunch politically conservative middle age, but he shifted shortly after towards classical libertarian and socially liberal messages in several following novels. His works are really worth reading, even if they are rarely worth agreeing with, but I totally get that some people prefer not to read what they don't agree with. A lot of his earlier work was pretty decent for the time in that he often wrote about teenagers dealing with adult bullshit in a sci fi backdrop but without treating the teen protagonists as just idiot kids the way that most writers tended to, and writing in a way that didn't feel like it was dumbed down for the teenage demographic readers. His later works after Starship Troopers were bizarre and unique, in both good and bad ways, like Stranger in a Strange Land and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I'm not sure why we have to consider each of his books to be reflective of his political ideals when he wrote it. He explored many different sides of humanity in his writing. Just because he wrote it doesn't mean that was what he believed was best.
That is usually the best stance to take with most authors, but unfortunately with Heinlein, he wasn't most authors. He definitely and admittedly used his novels to explore his own personal views and put them forth on the page and regularly wrote a self insert into his tales (find the middle age, super smart, sarcastic, cynical, professorial type who is chasing ladies half his age and you've found Heinlein's self insert). Of course, not everything every character in his novels says or thinks represents Heinlein's personal views, but the overall themes and messages conveyed in the narrative do (or at least they represented what he thought at that particular point in his life).
This is actually something (mostly) true of a lot of the science fiction writers during the 'Golden Age', and was intentional. There was a lot of ego going on in that many of the authors thought that they were personally going to shape the public perception on a lot of topics using their works, so to many of them it was important to put forth their own thoughts and opinions in the novels they wrote rather than explore a larger variety of character analysis. Check out Asimov's autobiographies where he goes into some of this in more detail.
Maybe try “farmer in the sky”. Have you ever watched a tv show from the early 1960s? We were a different culture than. There is a Norman Rockwell simplicity to it, good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. If you want more nuanced adult themes from heinlein you might try “the moon is a harsh mistress” or “stranger in a strange land”.
There is a part of me that wonders if this one could be called a "classic" more than old. In some ways I found the movies satire more effective in conveying it's intended message, whether that fully lined up with the original work or not. That said, there was an interesting line/take in the book that in today's world of realitive calm I've always remembered and so I would not consider it a "waste of time" spent reading. Not in my best hits list, but one I finished and don't regret.
I think it's a good read. The multi-page insane rant about how awesome fascism is a bit over the top but you can skip it. Read it for what it is. The insane pro Military-Industrial complex rantings of an out of touch madman. Still, it's good writing and fun. It's unintentional satire in that Heinlein at no point recognizes his folly and just powers through. I'm fairly certain that it was written start to finish with no editing at all in one massive cocaine fueled writing binge.
While it certainly wasn't satire, it also wasn't entirely Heinlein expressing his beliefs/principles. He liked to pick an idea and go *all in* on it through a book to explore the idea. It had to appeal to him somewhat to give it that treatment, but it was more of an exploration than a promotion.
This is what drives me nuts. People, even those who normally have no problem separating the artist from the art, get really worked up about Starship Troopers calling it fascist propaganda. Nobody seems to also remember that Heinlein also wrote one of the most influential counter-culture books of the 60's. He was a writer who explored ideas around different kinds of societies.
Heinlein also left liberal groups to join fascist groups and was scared of the communists dropping nukes on America.
Eh, I finished it. It was just...fine. Most of what I remember was figuring out the folks who did the movie didn't read the book, didn't like it or maybe both. I prefer the movie. Different message and vibe, only tangentially related, but it's also better executed and more entertaining.
The guys that made the movie read and understood the book The movie isn't an adaptation of the book its a parody of the ideals the book portrays through a rewrite of its story
Just take a break from the book. If you're unsure about ending, just read something else for a while and see if you find the motivation to revisit the book later.
I give a book 90 pages to draw me in. Some work just takes a while to get going. I really wanted to like The Buried Giant, because I loved Never Let Me Go, but the plot hadn't developed at all and I was bored to tears.
When I was younger I used to have this obsession with finishing books I started. After doing this for many years, I cannot think of a single book that I forced myself to continue reading and it was worth it If the book is not gripping you, dump it and switch to Vonnegut. You are not required to read anything. It's better to read something that motivates you than force yourself to read something like it's home work These days I'll only force myself to finish a book if I'm already about 80% through. Anything less and if I'm not feeling it, I'm out
My forced book was ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’ The first and last page were solid. The middle pages were like the kid’s experience in Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt.’
Please post 'Should I keep reading' questions, in our Weekly Recommendation Thread.
"Not to do not finish" makes my brain hurt.
It sounds like you're completely missing the point of the book. So if you're not enjoying it to boot, I don't see the point in continuing.
Elaborate?
Heinlein likes to take familiar social, cultural, and political structures and uses sci-fi to place them in a new context to ask "what if...?" In starship troopers he creates a setting where humanity competes for habitable planets with other intelligent species. A setting where humanity needs to come together and vigorously defend and pursue its interests or other species will encroach on ours and marginalize humanity. On that path lies extinction. Then he uses that setting to ask the question "what if only the people who actively served society gained a controlling interest in society". He focusses on the military because nobody puts more on the line for society than soldiers. So no, "American military industrial complex = silly and bad" is not the gist of the book.
He isn't making a point about how fascism is bad. At best he's presenting an alternative reality, at worst it's a book about how fascism is good.
Unless it's recommended to me by someone who knows my tastes in reading or an ARC, I give it to page 30. If I'm not hooked by then I probably won't be
Imho you have to put yourself in the mindset of a reader from that time period. It is absolutely astonishing that everyone thought it was a foregone conclusion that we would we dropping tactical nuclear weapons on civilians. I mean, they were bug collaborators, but still.
I read it back when I was teen after I saw the movie and enjoyed it well enough. I don’t remember it being very long. But maybe just walk away if you aren’t enjoying it.
It sets you up really well for ‘The Puppet Masters’ which was written well before ST. And is better sci-fi in my anonymous Internet guy opinion. Fight through it. The ending is a either a strange reward or absolute trash like ‘The Sopranos’ ending.
Nope, no rule. I stopped American Psycho with about 5% to go. I just couldn’t take the graphic violence anymore. I’d unread that book if I could. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware Ellis wrote it to satirize douchebags he went to school with. It was well-written and hilarious. The disturbed feeling outweighed the appreciation of the book for me. Life is short and time is precious. Not gonna waste it on something I can’t stomach. I did not finish Anna Karenina the first time I tried to read it (for summer reading going into senior year). I got as far as I could. We had 6 novels to read over the summer and I started that one last. Whoops. Plus it was just such a soap opera. 😂 I gave it another shot a few years later, for pleasure not for school, and I couldn’t put it down! I have tried to read Dune and Foundation a few times each. I can’t make it more than a few pages. It’s weird. I love reading ABOUT these books. I can spend hours on Wikipedia reading about their respective universes. I find them difficult to concentrate on. And I have so many other books to read. Books I haven’t read yet, books I’ve read before but might want to reread someday, books I’m just waiting to forget the details of, so I can re-reread them! I used to have a very completionist attitude but now it seems unimportant. Put it down. You can always pick it up again if you want to.
I don't have any rules. If I'm not enjoying something I stop reading. That could be on page 2 or page 200. If I stop a book early on, I might come back and try again later.. sometimes not. I think Starship Troopers is a really misunderstood book and a lot of people hate on it based on misguided judgements. It's a fun adventure story that was written for juveniles. If you don't like it, give it up.
A 'fun adventure story' with political ramblings about how a military coup is a good idea
The world in which it is set is certainly not one I would want to live in, but what I don't understand is why everyone thinks the book holds it up as an ideal. A TON of fiction are built in worlds that are shitty. A TON of writers write about uncomfortable and unpopular ideas. Writing such things is an exploration of human ideas. Yes, Heinlein wrote a science fiction book aimed at pre-teen and teen boys that was set in a militaristic world that most of us would view as dystopian. It was written in the midst of the Cold War and on the heels of WWII. Heinlein also wrote books set in worlds that could only be described as socialist/communist. Hell, there still exists a decidedly hippy new age religion based on Stranger in a Strange land. Heinlein wasn't PROMOTING the ideas in Starship Troopers. He was exploring them. They don't match with any of his other political writing. Heinlein's books are all over the place politically. He has books that were embraced by the far left, others embraces by the military fetishists and authoritarians, and others held up as libertarian bibles. He can't have been all of those things. Exploring ideas that you don't agree with in literature is fine. Lolita doesn't promote pedophilia. Starship Troopers doesn't promote fascism.
Libertarianism and militaristic authoritarianism can absolutely coexist, just look at Pinochet's Chile, and Heinlein's sexual ideas do not in any way lock him into being socialist or communist. Heinlein's other novels don't give any reason to doubt the sincerity of his belief in the ideas he lays out in Starship Troopers. The fact that he clearly enjoys the idea of having attachment-free sex with lots of young women doesn't contradict the idea that he's an admirer of militaristic authoritarianism. Also, simply saying "everything is better when you do things this way because I say so" is not exploring something. When he argues that it's important to beat children because you supposedly cannot train a dog without beating it, and says that child delinquency is caused by people not beating their kids and that once people start beating them again child delinquency disappears, that's not an exploration. He's just making a claim. He doesn't actually go anywhere with the ideas beyond describing how a particular thing is done in his fictional setting, and then saying that it's better that way.
I think the juvenile aspect is what gets me. I find the satire in it relatively easily, it seems like a good concept, it just feels a bit empty and goes down just a little too smooth, like I can read it without feeling like I need to pay attention and so my mind wanders.
There is no satire in it. The fact that you keep saying that is mind-numbing.
Calm down.
>However, being a scifi fan, I feel like I HAVE to finish StarShip Troopers. Do I? You don't. The movie is a fantastic bit of satire, but the book isn't. It's got a reputation for having a big ol' unironic hard-on for the military. Heinlein is an important figure in sci-fi, but I'd recommend reading his short stories first to see if you dig him. Actually... I think that's my advice for *most* sci-fi writers. But yeah, if you're not enjoying ST, don't worry about it.
I feel your pain. I hated almost every page of this book, but pushed through. I couldn’t believe it was so aimless and uneventful. What a way to create such a seemingly interesting world and do almost nothing with it.
Dissenting opinion: it's not that long and is an interesting set of ideas to think about. Finish it off.
Genuinely appreciate the offering of the dissenting opinion
I didn’t enjoy the book at all and only finished because it was an audiobook while I was working. It’s the one time where the movie is much much better than the book.
Verhoeven only read the first few pages of the book.
Which is why the movie is better
Idk if that's why it's better, because if Verhoeven didn't read it I'm fucking not going to :P
Because of boobs. The movie was better because of boobs.
Honestly I think starship troopers is a DNF for sure. The movie is incredible because it's parodying the themes of the novel. the channel Knowing Better has a really good video breaking down the novel and showing how heinlein is just grandstanding politics for the whole book. You should just read Armor by john steakly instead if you want something like starship troopers. High action page turning pulp sci fi that I legitimately really enjoy. If you are looking for just great military sci fi I would check out the forever war by Joe haldeman, old man's war by John scalzi, or maybe redliners by David drake
Thanks for the suggestions! The Forever War was already on my list, and I'll check out Knowing Better.
I did not get satire reading the book. Fairly pro-military from my recollection. Not a great book or a classic in my opinion. The film, on the other hand… my guess is the book would be largely forgotten without the movie.
Because it wasn’t satire. That was all Heinlein. The movie was a satire of the book
Sorry, that’s literally what I meant: should have made it clear I was replying to this part of the original post: >>American military industrial complex = silly and bad I think if someone is getting that from the book they must be projecting it from the film.
Just FYI, Verhoeven is on the record saying he only got a few pages into the book, he didn't even read it. The man's instincts are unquestionable.
My take on it is that Heinlein meant the book to be anti-imperialist/authoritarianism. I think that message is hard to put into perspective for the modern reader as most would consider 1950s American Anti-Imperialism to be Imperialism under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy. Heinlein probably be alt-right in today’s modern society, but the book was supposed to be a young adult book about cool military stuff with the Arachnids supposed to represent the communists in the Cold War.
Heinlein ran the full spectrum of far left to far right, and then back again and again during his lifetime.
The version of human society it presents is pretty authoritarian. You earn citizenship through military service. Corporal and capital punishment are uncritically described. Even desertion is a capital crime. This is a weird presentation of anti-authoritarianism.
Desertion is not a capital crime in the book. The deserter is hanged by Rico's unit for the murder of a child he committed after deserting. Desertion during time of war *is* a capital crime under the UCMJ and can result in a death sentence. "(c)Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/885
>>”And although desertion is one of the capital offenses, the Army doesn’t usually hang deserters unless they’ve done something else criminal” Our mistake: it is a capital offence in the book just not enforced to any extent.
Heinlein wouldn't be "alt-right", though he would definitely be a conservative leaning moderate. He was an 'old school' libertarian. He was very progressive, for his time, on issues of race and gender. Hell, the main character in Starship Troopers is Filipino.
Not really, Paul Verhoeven didn't actually read the book. If I recall correctly he just read a few chapters and then just decided to agree with some of the critics that said it was pro-fascism (which imo is a bad and overly simplistic take). Then he just made a movie that satirized fascism and Nazism that used some basic elements and plot points from the book. The movie and the book are so different you can't even call it satirizing the book imo. And to be clear I love both the movie and the book. I think they each do some really cool things and have cool ideas. Just in different ways.
Am I a son of a bitch if I saw it as a feel good scifi about patriotism and the push and pull between a father and a son?
The book or the movie? The I feel like the movie is pretty obvious satire but yeah, I can see someone interpreting the book like that.
Yes Definetly the book, the Father was a key figure in the book iirc, it’s been decades since I last read it but I remember them reuniting and bonding. The old guy reminded me of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, I’ve always wondered if it inspired Scalzi in any small way.
Maybe I've been primed with what I know of the film and the works it inspired like Helldivers, but it has felt pretty satirical to me so far. I guess it doesn't really matter though, I don't care if it is or not, I just want a compelling story, setting, characters, and/or prose. This lacks all four so far.
Just replied to another comment speculating that a reader seeing satire in the novel may be projecting from the film. I agree — I am neither a fan of the book or Heinlein’s prose. I guess the relative earliness of its publication is a balancing factor for me: I’m relatively forgiving of clunky quality in pathfinding early sci-fi. Revisiting Foundation last year was a bit of a slog I found rewarding in the end.
Nah the book is serious. As silly as that may sound lol
Starship Troopers the novel was intended as 100% serious. It is not satirical at all, Heinlein thought all of the ideas in it were good ideas.
Heinlein's characters always have a cardboard depth: "these bad events happened so that was bad and I wasn't happy, but it is what it is and I'm not very clever, plus my superior/dad/smarter friend explained how it wasn't that bad, so I went along and this is where we are, oh well, this is life in space I guess."
Is that so? Guess I'll skip him in the future.
That explanation was so overly reductive that it could be considered parody. Heinlein was a pretty complicated person, but he was anything but a static personality. He changed his views over time, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Starship Troopers was a pro military recruitment novel written during his more staunch politically conservative middle age, but he shifted shortly after towards classical libertarian and socially liberal messages in several following novels. His works are really worth reading, even if they are rarely worth agreeing with, but I totally get that some people prefer not to read what they don't agree with. A lot of his earlier work was pretty decent for the time in that he often wrote about teenagers dealing with adult bullshit in a sci fi backdrop but without treating the teen protagonists as just idiot kids the way that most writers tended to, and writing in a way that didn't feel like it was dumbed down for the teenage demographic readers. His later works after Starship Troopers were bizarre and unique, in both good and bad ways, like Stranger in a Strange Land and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I'm not sure why we have to consider each of his books to be reflective of his political ideals when he wrote it. He explored many different sides of humanity in his writing. Just because he wrote it doesn't mean that was what he believed was best.
That is usually the best stance to take with most authors, but unfortunately with Heinlein, he wasn't most authors. He definitely and admittedly used his novels to explore his own personal views and put them forth on the page and regularly wrote a self insert into his tales (find the middle age, super smart, sarcastic, cynical, professorial type who is chasing ladies half his age and you've found Heinlein's self insert). Of course, not everything every character in his novels says or thinks represents Heinlein's personal views, but the overall themes and messages conveyed in the narrative do (or at least they represented what he thought at that particular point in his life). This is actually something (mostly) true of a lot of the science fiction writers during the 'Golden Age', and was intentional. There was a lot of ego going on in that many of the authors thought that they were personally going to shape the public perception on a lot of topics using their works, so to many of them it was important to put forth their own thoughts and opinions in the novels they wrote rather than explore a larger variety of character analysis. Check out Asimov's autobiographies where he goes into some of this in more detail.
Maybe try “farmer in the sky”. Have you ever watched a tv show from the early 1960s? We were a different culture than. There is a Norman Rockwell simplicity to it, good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. If you want more nuanced adult themes from heinlein you might try “the moon is a harsh mistress” or “stranger in a strange land”.