Starship Troopers is a novel from Robert A. Heinlein, one of the most famous writers of classic science-fiction. Its story is really simple: youngster Juan "Johnie" Rico joins the army, goes through tought boot camp and then fights as Terran Mobile Infantry trooper in intergalactic war against Bugs, which is a nickname for arachnoid aliens. As you can guess, it takes place in future, when Earth is ruled by soldiers - only army veterans can vote and become politicians.
As a war story it's pretty lousy - we're not told much about the war, Rico or other characters, except how cool they are if they happen to be high-ranking army officers. This book is mostly about the process of "becoming a soldier" and philosophical musings on nature of war and duty. It seems as if author wanted to share his views on this and instead of writing an essay, he wrote a novel about it. My guess is that he wanted to influence young readers, who would rather read adventure sci-fi novel than what-if essay.
The society depicted in Starship Troopers is basically an utopia, it runs so well that it couldn't run any better. Problem is that it couldn't possibly work in real world - for one thing, it completely ignores the human factor. High-ranking officers are perfect, make the right decisions, love their subordinate soldiers and fight alongside them. These "perfect soldiers" will eventually become wise voters and responsible politicians. This is totally unrealistic, in reality there would be also ordinary, stupid and evil soldiers who would make army service significantly less pleasant for people like Johny Rico, and subsequently as politicians would probably create a more military-oriented society than democracy which is described in the book. Heinlein criticizes Plato's ideal state, but he's unable to come up with anything better.
That said, I agree with some of Heinlein's thoughts:
- army service should be voluntary
- every soldier should fight, non-fighting jobs in army should be done by civilians
- only soldiers should vote and become politicians
There's also a weird discrepancy in this book - war is quite brutally depicted, Johny scorches aliens with flamethrower and fires nuclear bombs on cities, but on the other hand, there's not a single mention of sex. Johny adores girls and is "delighted to be in their presence", but he only goes out on a date several times, he never even kisses a girl. Puh-leez! Young infantry trooper, each fight can be his last, delighted with the mere presence of girls, and all he thinks about is moral philosophy!
All in all, if you are looking for good action novel, there are definitely better choices out there - I can recommend The Puppet Masters from the same author, fast-paced action thriller with some food for thought as well. Starship Troopers is more philosophical and biased (which is always bad for philosophy), but I still liked it, so it's a mild recommendation.
And my opinion about army? Somewhere in between Starship Troopers (the book) and Full Metal Jacket (the movie).
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