Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Starship Troopers
Book Review: # 1 Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
My first read in the SF genre was Starship Troopers. It is still a good read in 2008 as it was when it was released. Why you ask? We are starting to drift slowly to the political tones of this book. It is also a good space-faring shoot-um-up. Please buy and read and re-read like I didBook Review: "Ultimate cost for perfect value..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Starship troopers, as you may have noticed, is a love it or hate it book. There are hundreds of review here which either shower endless praise on it or decry it as a piece of fascist trash. But is it a good book?The answer is yes. Sure, that's a subjective answer, but there's very good evidence that this book could be considered objectively "good." Look at all the negative reviews. Many contain several paragraphs (or one big paragraph if the person can't punctuate) about what the reader hates about the book. Many even say things like, "It might be a good book, if..." Some say it's written very well but they hate what Heinlein has to say; others say the converse. With critics like this, who needs praise?
Personally, I love the book. My second favorite Heinlein, besides The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and one of my favorites ever. I would say it should be read in schools, but I wouldn't want the little morons getting soured to Heinlein at such a young age (when I was a little moron I hated Huck Finn and Hamlet, until I read them on my own). I'd like to dispel some myths about ST, and I consider myself qualified to do so because of the sheer number of times I've read it.
First, the main theme of the book is neither about militarism or beating children. It goes something like this: a society (or civilization, or individual...) that is not ready, willing, and able to fight for its rights is in danger of losing them. I'll agree with that. There's lots of justification for this (such as the above quote in bold) and even if you don't agree with it all it makes for good reading. All this and a bug war, with the first ever debut of mobile armor suits.
The society in the book may or may not be facsist, depending on your definition of the word. An 11th grade history textbook (which is blatantly liberal and makes no apologies for it) defines fascism as "a system of government characterized by a rigid one-party dicatatorshipp, the forcible suppression of opposition, private enterprise under centralized government conrtrol (the book's full of oxymorons too), and belligerent nationalism, racism, militarism, etc." Well, I wouldn't call retired soldiers a political party, oppression is not suppressed forcefully and free speech is protected, private enterprise is--from what I could tell, private, there are no nations and thus no nationalism (world-ism? spieci-ism?), there are few differences between races in this unified future and thus no racism (althoug there are still many different religions, none of which seem to be discriminated against), and the society doesn't seem much more militaristic in a war than the US was during WW2.
But I'm rambling; I should let the book speak for itself. There are nearly 500 reviews here, most containing strong feelings about Starship Troopers. You're obviously missing something by not reading it. Click the buy button, for the everlasting glory of the infantry.
Book Review: "You wanna live forever??"
Summary: 4 Stars
Just finished this, and I've got to say: for a book that is almost all background story, I really had a hard time putting it down. Heinlein has a knack for taking what should be a run-of-the-mill, sci-fi 'zine rejection list-style story and making it into something really interesting.
My big problem with this book was that there were far too many moments in which the narrator, Rico, says something along the lines of, "It was a huge battle, but I won't bore you with the details..." What??, I asked in disbelief. Aren't the details... well... the book? I think this could have been a fantastic and epic book had he gone ahead and given us the gory details. TELL US about the battles with the bugs. TELL US more about basic training. Go on, we're not scared!
But otherwise, this book is a real page turner. Highly political and drastically more thoughtful than the movie based on it, it's not going to be for a lot of the guys who saw the movie, but a few might get a kick out of it. As for regular sci-fi novel fans, you've probably either read it already or know that you need to. This is a classic, and with good reason.
Book Review: 'Find the cost of freedom . . . '
Summary: 5 Stars
The screen version of this classic SF novel is less an adaptation than a counterargument. In a way that's appropriate; Heinlein was certainly trying (or at least expecting) to generate loads of controversy with this work. But if you're about to read _Starship Troopers_ for the first time, it's only fair to warn you that _whatever_ you think of the film, you'll be disappointed if you expect the book to resemble it very much.(Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Ed Neumeier took incredible liberties with, and sometimes even directly contradicted, the book on which their film is 'based'. It's a fine film on its own terms and I think it's been unjustly maligned. But it's not this novel; it's the next round in an ongoing dispute with this novel. And whatever else the movie has going for it, its _military_ action is incompetent to the point of silliness.)
I've been reading Heinlein for nearly forty years now. I don't think this is one of his best three or four novels, and it's never going to be one of my personal favorites either. Nevertheless, it _is_ a genuinely great work of SF and raises issues that genuinely deserve to be raised.
Whether you buy Heinlein's own _answers_ is a different matter. The 'arguments' presented by the characters in the novel are mostly aimed at straw men. ('My mother says violence never settles anything', indeed.) This is perhaps forgivable since so much of Heinlein's positive case is so good. But I'm not persuaded that the society he imagines in this novel would be as functional as he seems to think.
At any rate, its essential socio-political point -- that authority and responsibility are a coordinated yin-yang pair and an imbalance between them puts the world out of whack -- is extremely well taken. (It applies more broadly, too.)
Its account of what it means to be a human being (as opposed to an economic animal) is darned good too. And this is where the real meat of the novel lies.
You see, the _story_ here isn't about the war with the Bugs; it's about Juan Rico's coming of age. As a character (not Rico) remarks at one point: 'I had to perform an act of faith. I had to prove to myself that I was a man.' If you grok that, you'll grok the novel. (Yes, Heinlein tells this story in the context of military service, but its theme applies much more widely. And lest you think the novel is too autobiographical here, note that Heinlein -- a Navy man -- locates his story not in his own branch of the service but in the 'poor bloody infantry'.)
The stuff about the Bug War is a different deal. This aspect of the novel was very much a product of the anticommunism/Cold War era; I don't think it's survived all that well and I'm not even persuaded it was all that terrific at the time. But it's background, not main plot -- and at any rate Heinlein is surely right that a cap trooper in the Mobile Infantry isn't going to be involved in setting the Federation's diplomatic policy; Rico's own story doesn't depend on whether the politicians are 'right' to send him into combat.
One of Heinlein's greatest, then, but not the absolute cream. Anyway, don't get scared off either by the movie or by comments from readers who didn't grok it. Whatever you think of the Old Man, he was no fascist.
Book Review: 90210 in space
Summary: 4 Stars
So it's got very little to do with the book, which is a very thoughtful social commentary on why nations go to war. As long as you can disavow yourself of the hope that the movie sticks close to the book, you can enjoy this for what it is - a funny little action flick with bugs in space - great for an afternoon's entertainment, but certainly not thought-provoking.