The Robert Heinlein Wars, Part MDCCLXIV

John Scalzi watches as Dave Itzkoff begins another round of the Heinlein Wars:

Whatever: NYT Review Fallout: There's been some interesting commentary and discussion following Dave Itzkoff's NYT Book Review piece on me and my books, so I thought I'd post links to some of them I've found, for the edification of Whatever readers. In no particular order: Instapundit notes the piece, and has some thoughts on the idea of [Robert Heinlein's novel] Starship Troopers being fascist, roping in Spider Robinson to rebut that claim...

I would dispute Scalzi's claim that either Glenn Reynolds or Spider Robinson has "thoughts" on this issue. I would characterize them as having "reflexes."

I think I had some "thoughts" on this issue some 10^8 seconds ago:

The Starship Troopers novel I read had four layers:

1. Johnny Rico's story: How a young, naive upper-class twit gets transformed into the human equivalent of a Bug warrior--someone who will fight bravely and fiercely without regard for his own probability of survival in the interest not of liberty, utopia, or justice, but of the biological expansion of the human race.
2. The historians and moral philosophers: the military of Sergeant Zim and Colonel DuBois, who seem to me to be, well, fascist in the technical sense of the term. The German philosopher Ernst Nolte's classic Fascism in Its Epoch (and he should know: he's a somewhat creepy character himself) set out four key characteristics of fascism:
   1. strong belief that--through social darwinism--morality is ultimately tied to blood and race, understood as descent and genetic relationship;
   2. strong rejection of the classical "liberal" belief that individuals have rights that any legitimate state is bound to respect;
   3. an assertion, in its place, that what individuals have are duties to the state, seen as the decision-making organ of the race; and
   4. a strong fear of Marxist communism, and a willingness to use communism's weapons--suspension of parliamentary democracy, mass propaganda, rallies, street violence, and so forth--to combat it.
   The sympathetically-drawn teachers in the military preach the first three of these at great length in the novel, and otherwise remind me of dear little Ellen May Ngwethu.
3. The authorial persona, the narrative voice, who adopts the same point of view as do the historians and moral philosophers, and adds on the fourth of Nolte's key characteristics of fascism--the strong fear of Marxist communism, and an eagerness to use its very own weapons (suspension of parliamentary democracy, mass propaganda, rallies, street violence, and so forth) to combat communism. Consider the fear of the Bugs as a mighty adversary ("we were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution" (p. 152)). Consider the invented historical background of the novel, in which the twentieth-century United States collapsed because of its excessive solicitude for individual rights and its worship of the words of Thomas Jefferson and was replaced by the "veterans' government" that made no claim to derive its powers from the consent of the governed. Thus the authorial persona is "fascist"--where "fascism" is not just an insult, but is a descriptive label for a certain viewpoint that has been tragically common in twentieth-century politics.
4. Robert Heinlein, who wrote Starship Troopers at the same stage in his career where he also wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and A Stranger in a Strange Land.

I would, today, add that by now more people remember the Starship Troopers movie than remember the Starship Troopers book. And Paul Verhoeven explicitly uses the visual tropes of World War II movies to make the movie "fascist". As Moe Lane once wrote:

Obsidian Wings: Movies That Must Not Be: Not movies that should not be, nor movies that we wish never were: movies that simply cannot be actually real, because otherwise the fabric of reality would begin to unravel and then we'd have nowhere to put our stuff. All entries to this - well, not contest - must thus be of 'films' that appear to have some evidence of existing for some inexplicable reason. Please note the title, why it Must Not Be and a plausible reason that explains away the aforementioned evidence for existence. For example....

Starship Troopers: While the idea of a Gestapo Doogie Howser does admittedly have a special appeal, if Verhoeven had dared make a movie anything remotely like the rumors he would have been messily assassinated by now by an angry mob of Heinlein fans. He's still alive, right? So therefore he didn't do it and the 'script' that's circulating around is merely a (well-deserved) smear campaign against the director...

UPDATE: Epeus's Epigone wins a decisive victory by deploying YouTube videos banned under the Geneva Convention.

Comments

[fairhavenhorn]

Interesting, I just watched the movie and reread the book, reaching a different conclusion. I think it is much closer to advocated a kind of communism (albeit non-Marxist) than a kind of fascism. Your four points are appropriate, but my reaction was:

1) This is right. But further, the book is a classic presentation of the coming-of-age/ hero story. These have been such a staple of fascist and communist literature that these associations can overwhelm the actual content.

2) This strikes me as a misreading. The underlying philosophy is a different one: "any one who volunteers their life in support of the government will obtain the priviledges of a citizen". But it is not based on race, genetics, religion, etc. It is based purely on the notion that only those who give to society are fully members of society. Those who will not give to society are tolerated, and it appears that their basic human rights are respected, but they have no voice in the direction that society takes.

I'm not sure what label to give that. It is a common enough thread in many political views. But it is closer to communism than fascism, because parents, race, and religion have no part. It is more "party member" vs "not party member". Heinlein adds digs against communism, but more in terms of the need to accept that even non-party members have basic rights, and that party membership must be truly voluntary.

3) Again, it seems more a communist push than a fascist push.

4) Agreed.

[Hmmm... I read the facts that Bugs are not allowed to join the MI as important here...]

[Cranky Observer]

Great post - one of the best I have ever read on this topic.

But I will make my basic point in relation to this discussion again:

> 3. The authorial persona, the narrative
> voice, who adopts the same point of
> view as do the historians and moral
> philosophers, and adds on the fourth of
> Nolte's key characteristics of
> fascism--the strong fear of Marxist
> communism, [...]
> 4. Robert Heinlein, who wrote Starship
> Troopers at the same stage in his career

Heinlein was a strange guy whose political philosophy underwent several changes over the course of his long lifetime (during which he experienced the social changes of the 1930s, 1940s, 1960s among others - quite a change from 1935 to 1975).

But above all he was a *** professional writer of fiction ***, and he earned his daily bread writing fiction among other things. Did he have his own point of view? No doubt. Did he overlay his own POV into some or all of his works? Probably. Which ones, and what was his POV? I certainly can't answer that question, and I am deeply suspicious of anyone who claims they can.

As I said over on Ygleasis' site: if Heinlein had received requests for paid work from the Daily Worker and the Journal of the John Birch Society on the same day, do you think he would have turned either assignement down? My understanding based on his autobiographic musings is: as long as he thought the checks would clear he would have taken both assignments. And done his best to satisfy both clients. A person with that approach to writing is hard to catagorize.

Cranky

[Tracy Lightcap]

Heinlein was a modern James F. Cooper; all the characters sound like Natty Bumpo and the dialogue is hackneyed, but the guy knew how to drive a plot. I use the Moon is a Harsh Mistress in my utopias and dystopias course to good effect; the students actually read the book!

There is no mistaking the fascist overtones in some of his work, however. The interesting thing is that his earliest stuff involves a series of novels - he only finished a couple - about the establishment and overthrow of a religiously based fascist dictatorship in the US. It is hard to reconcile the author of Starship Trooper with the anarchist libertarian of Moon or Stranger. One gets the impression that he thought that an external threat to the species would almost automatically invoke authoritarian responses. Could be; maybe future generations will find out. I'm inclined to think that Pournelle and Niven in the Man - Kzin stories are closer to how we would actually respond.

Still, I think if we are trolling for a sci-fi writer with real fascist creds, we'd be closer by citing Gordon Dickson then Heinlein.

[Cranky Observer]

Two more quick comments:

One paragraph of SST that tends to fly by is when one of the "History & Moral Philosophy" teachers (the OCS one I think) asks the class to explain why their society uses the service/citizenship system. After 3 or 4 teacher-pleasing tries by the students at explaining the first principles that make their form of society superior, the teacher laughs and says, "No. We have this form of society becuase it works for us at the moment. That is all.". That statement undermines a bit of the authorial-absolute-fascism theory IMHO.

And here is an interesting essay on literary criticism of SF, fantasy, and horror:

http://truepenny.livejournal.com/482813.html

Cranky

[Alan]

I agree with fairhavenhorn. The society depicted in Starship Troopers is in no way fascist. It is a meritorcarcy where absolutely anyone regardless of background has irrevocable rights.

Rico's father in the story is a rich man but he cannot vote because he never served. He resents people getting the vote where he cannot because he is richer than they are. So plutocracy is specifically rejected.

The story often gets mis-read as fascisim because of its strong military and war orientation. Much of the backlash against it has to do with the Vietnam era resentment against the military where it was fashionable to call soldiers "baby killers" and "tools for the Man." I hope we have grown beyond that.

The recruiter tells young Mr. Rico that if he had come in blind, deaf, and a wheelchair they would be required to find some way he could serve, "perhaps by counting caterpillar fuzz by touch." Heinlein makes it clear that in order to earn franchise that any government service will do -- not just being a soldier. However you don't have any voting rights until you do. And you don't get to choose your form of service.

Starship Troopers is one of those endless debate threads that occur over and over again on the Internet, making the same points as if they never had been before, so I'll stop now.

What is more interesting is how the movie was oddly different. It had none of the earnestness of the book -- it was all played as satire. For example the propaganda films teaching kids to stomp on bugs to make it clear to them who was the "enemy." And the gross rape of the Bug prisoner scene where Patrick Harris's action is obscured by a CENSORED sign. It is pretty clear that the movie-makers understood the book fully, and decided to depart from the "moral philosophy" vein for whatever reason.

[Anderson]

I don't buy Nolte's take on fascism, which seems to me inextricable from nationalism/racism. The Bugs are not Other the way that the Jews or the Slavs could be "Other", because the scary thing about the Other is that he *can* participate in and degrade "our" society. (N.b. I'm describing Nazi attitudes, not sharing them.) The Bugs are simply too different -- there aren't any humans advocating joining the Bugs, & if there were, the Bugs would kill them.

I can't recall whether the society in "Starship Troopers" was militarist to start with, or a reaction to the Bug threat. The latter, right? To that extent, it could be taken as a warning. A sufficient threat to the community will always propel the military to # 1, unless the community dies instead.

[Felix]

Worth recycling here, 'cos it's been a while and I'm sure a couple of you haven't seen it before: the description of Starship Troopers the film as "Triumph of the Will 90210". Still looking for the name of the person who came up with that small piece of utter genius.

[Ken Houghton]

Noted in his defence: Verhoven (b. 1938) experienced WW II directly, as a Dutch citizen being overrun.

RAH experienced WW II in Philadelphia, at the Naval Depot.

The difference in perspective is noticeable, but should not be taken to mean that a novel that can be interpreted as he did should necessarily be seen that way. (And certainly Joe Haldeman saw it closer to the Verhoven version than the fairhavenhorn version.)

[Roger Albin]

I don't think there is much doubt that Heinlein had Social Darwinist tendencies, and he is not the only SciFi writer with these views either. For example,look at some of the work of Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle. As for fascism, this is a more complicated question. Starship Troopers, very much influenced by the period of the Cold War in which it was written, certainly shares the fear of Communism and the cult of violence characteristic of fascist movements. On the other hand, its worth remembering that Johnny Rico is not the blue-eyed Aryan Nazi hero, and other soldiers in Starship Troopers are what we would now call multi-cultural. Its likely that Heinlein deliberately chose a Hispanic hero to make a point about contemporary racism. Similarly, Starship Troopers features female characters who are equal to men in both capacity and responsibilities, quite different from the fascist cult of masculinity. It makes some sense to see Starship Troopers as a piece of Cold War Liberalism.
Heinlein's own political attitudes tended to vary over his life. We The Living features a sort of progressive era concept of social engineering/technocratic utopianism. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, probably his best novel, has a definite libertarian slant.

[fairhavenhorn]

Mr Houghton, RAH graduated US Naval Academy in 1929 and was invalided out with tuberculosis in 1934. Try again. He did lack war experience due to his birth date, but did volunteer and did serve. His politics ranged all over the landscape over time, from left wing to right wing, up and down.

I just see relatively few differences between the communists and the fascists. The primary ones are nationalism, racism, sexism, and religion. Fascists consider those important, and communists do not. Starship Troopers indicates that these were completely unimportant, hence my view that it is much more communist than fascist.

Communists and fascists also differ on economic and regulatory policies, but Starship Troopers gives almost no description of those.

[Captain Button]

Roger Albin wrote:
"On the other hand, its worth remembering that Johnny Rico is not the blue-eyed Aryan Nazi hero, and other soldiers in Starship Troopers are what we would now call multi-cultural. Its likely that Heinlein deliberately chose a Hispanic hero to make a point about contemporary racism."

Your basic point is valid, but Johnny Rico is actually Filipino.

'At the end of the book, Rico makes reference to [Ramon] Magsaysay, a great Filipino hero, and mentions that his family's native tongue is Tagalog (the principal language of the Phillipines). Many Filipinos have Spanish names. Q.E.D. Rico is Filipino.'
http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/rahfaq.html#0503

[mike shupp]

"Still, I think if we are trolling for a sci-fi writer with real fascist creds, we'd be closer by citing Gordon Dickson then Heinlein."

Uh-hhh.... The same Gordon Dickson who wrote NAKED TO THE STARS - virtually a scene-by-scene refutation of STARSHIP TROOPERS?

[Roger Albin]

Captain Button, your correction is accepted gratefully. I think I'm mixing up the novel with the (terrible) movie version. Johnny Rico's Filipino origin underscores the point about Heinlein's anti-racism (as you wrote). Heinlein would have encountered Filipinos during his service in the inter-war Navy. Filipinos were allowed to enlist in the US Navy but allowed to serve only in rather subordinate positions; cooks, servants, etc. In the interwar Navy of Heinlein's youth, Filipino officers would have been as unthinkable as female officers. Thanks again.

[Michael Sullivan]

Mr. Delong writes that a key tenet of fascism is, "1. strong belief that--through social darwinism--morality is ultimately tied to blood and race, understood as descent and genetic relationship." and then later asserts that the authority figures in the book and the author preach this value "at great length."

Where in the world do you get that? I have very little idea what you are referring to. As far as I recall, blood and race are referred to hardly at all in the book.

Unless you simply mean that the Bugs are the inherent villains of the piece, implacably amoral. But, first, they are not preached about at any length. The Bugs are more or less just there. They are hardly ever referred to in any of the History & Moral Philosophy scenes, and as far as I can recall never contrasted with the protagonists. Certainly, I think that Anderson's comments above are cogent: the Bugs make for a lousy analogy for the Nazi conception of Jews, which is intrinsically tied up in the idea that the Other is there, with you, that you might sympathize with them, that discipline is needed not to counteract their military force, but their moral corruption.

If anything in the Starship Troopers universe holds the place of the subtle, insidious evil, it is the spoiled rich kids that Rico initially is, and goes to school with, or Rico's father prior to his own military reformation, or the malcontents in bootcamp with him. But these "evils" lack any kind of blood/race/descent pattern, and in fact are not implacable -- they frequently reform.

[Matthew Cooley]

I'm shocked this is even an argument. The Starship Troopers world most certainly was not a meritocracy, unless you meant the people could advance in society as far as their ability to kill would take them. I like Heinlein's books, but the world he described in Troopers is a dystopia fundamentally opposed to democracy. Whether it was facist or hyper-militarist is a matter of semantics.

[Roger Albin]

Matthew, this isn't a matter of semantics. Fascism had several specific, definite features, and defining it on the basis of one feature - militarism, seriously impairs the ability to understand it as a historical phenomenon and to recognize it as dangerous force in the contemporary world. Wilhelmine Germany, for example, was a self-consciously militarist state but there was clearly a difference between Imperial Germany and the Nazi state. A particularly good review of the historical literature on fascism is Robert Paxton's recent monograph (much more informative than the Nolte cited above; Nolte's views were distorted by his focus on Nazism). David Itzkoff's comments about Starship Troopers in his recent review of Scalzi's book reflect this kind of historical ignorance.

[ajay]

Matthew Cooley: The Starship Troopers world most certainly was not a meritocracy, unless you meant the people could advance in society as far as their ability to kill would take them. I like Heinlein's books, but the world he described in Troopers is a dystopia fundamentally opposed to democracy.

Earth in the book is not a military dictatorship, but a democracy (hence the voting rights issue) - there's no suggestion that competent soldiers gain power in any sense other than being promoted in the military. In fact, serving soldiers don't have the vote. Your comment doesn't seem to correspond with the text itself.

[James Killus]

While Heinlein was certainly (and self-avowedly) a Social Darwinist, and while he also liked to mix political opinions and speculations into his works, I think that the usual discussions (debates, arguments) about Starship Troopers miss what Heinlein was most interested in doing in the book.

First, the book is a loving memoir of basic training in the military. Many of the characters described undergoing that training are somewhat stereotypical because, in fact, most young men of military age are somewhat stereotypical. ST came out at a time when WWII and the Korean War were in recent memory, and the participants recognized themselves and their children (like me) recognized their parents' war stories. Not everyone saw combat, but everyone went through basic training.

Secondly, and maybe even more importantly, Heinlein loved gadgetry, and he was truly in love with his vision of the "Battle Suit" and spent a great deal of text explaining the wonders of "negative feedback" and its use in the suits' control. If he'd had more time (or perhaps more knowledge) he'd have continued into a full description of proportional/integral/derivative control theory.

Questions about whether or not a society at war is fascist (or authoritarian) are mostly beside the point. Of course it was. But that isn't what Heinlein was writing about.

[Matt Ruff]

> The story often gets mis-read as fascism
> because of its strong military and war
> orientation. Much of the backlash against
> it has to do with the Vietnam era
> resentment against the military where it
> was fashionable to call soldiers "baby
> killers"

Heinlein's M.I. are baby killers, though. The first-chapter assault on the Skinnies is a terror raid against a civilian population; Rico and his mates do a sweep through a city lobbing bombs and nukes at buildings whose identity they aren't even sure of. And, y'know, the power armor is cool and all, but they're committing what we would consider a war crime, and one that almost certainly involves the deaths of lots of innocent children.

[rdb]

http://www.agapow.net/divertimenti/starship-troopers
Link to Paul Agapow's Postviews review of the movie
(Tuberculosis on the Sid and Nancy scale).

[Tracy Lightcap]

For Mike:

No, the Gordon Dickson whose main work was a story of an ubermensh rising from a world that specialized in military training. You remember, right? And you no doubt also remember the way democratic worlds are portrayed in the Childe books also? And how the whole business transcends politics through the genetic superiority of the main characters? And so on and so on.

I mean I like Dickson for the same reason I like Heinlein - real good plots. But, let's face it, there's a strong fascist element shining right through his best.

[eyelessgame]

I can't pretend to know what RAH thought of his novel as he wrote it, or thought of it later, but a few relevant pieces of information gleaned from some authoritative RAH bios:

- Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers over a period of about six weeks, during sustained fury over the US agreeing to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He pretty much was convinced we were signing our death warrant at the hands of the nefarious Reds.

- Heinlein showed evidence of not remembering the contents of the book two decades later (when dictating the interstitial material in 'Expanded Universe').

As such, taking it too seriously, or looking for any profound meaning in a book written in a continuous non-ground-state of mind, is probably a bit futile. It's pretty good war porn; it raises some interesting ideas that are worth a few late-night undergrad bull sessions working out why they're wrong; but it's not what you'd call exceptionally deep.

The sort of analysis I think I'd like to see on that novel is a comparison of the authorial position with the authorial position of most of the rest of Heinlein's novels, as an analysis of what happens when a man goes temporarily insane with fear and anger and stays that way long enough to write an entire novel. Could have some post-9/11 relevance...

[Jonathan Goldberg]

The reflections of our host and the posters above are far more philosophical than mine. What I took away from ST was mostly that

1) It is very difficult to win an arguement with a teacher while a student in his class. It's his game, played on his field, by his rules,
with him keeping score.

2) RAH did not own a dictionary, and in particular had a totally mistaken idea of what the word "unalienable" means.

[NBarnes]

Alan: "I agree with fairhavenhorn. The society depicted in

Starship Troopers is in no way fascist. It is a meritorcarcy

where absolutely anyone regardless of background has irrevocable

rights."

Uh, there's no graceful way to ask this, so I'll be blunt.

Are you deranged?

Sure it's a meritocracy, in that anybody that can survive on the

front lines of the political leadership's insane wars is

graciously allowed to be part of the next generation of the

political leadership. One's ability to make the decisions that

run the society is entirely based on your ability to survive

whatever the people that you couldn't vote for or against decide

to send you to do for them. And, of course, the non-voting

population has plenty of rights... held entirely at the

sufferance of the voting population. A 'right' that you cannot

enforce is a right that exists only at the sufferance of the

voting citizenry (ask a Jew to clarify this point for you if it's

unclear). I'm pretty sure that there are important gradients in

how 'irrevocable' a right is between how US citizens would

consider the word and how the non-voting majority of Starship

Troopers would consider it.

fairhavenhorn: "It is based purely on the notion that only those

who give to society are fully members of society."

Bullshit.

Rico's father is a rich, successful businessman. He sells, he

buys, he talks to his neighbors, he marries and has children, he

is a (by all accounts vocal) part of the public debate. By any

sane standard, he has contributed his share and more to society

(as if he owes society anything in the first place, as if he must

buy his rights from the state; re: DeLong's points 2sub3 and

sub4). And yet he cannot vote. Why? Because he failed to

volunteer as cannon fodder for his political masters' wars. This

isn't anything like the egalitarian fantasy you seem to be

projecting onto the system in your post. Instead, it's a brutal,

exclusionary, and arbitrary system that systematically ensures

that only people who's been carefully trained and borderline

brainwashed are allowed into the ruling clique.

And let's not overlook Matt's point; when the book opens, Rico is

committing what we would consider to be war crimes against a

civilian population of intelligent, humanoid aliens with whom

humanity is fully capable of communicating and negotiating. Why

are we at war? We're never told, but it's nothing so bitter as

to prevent humanity and the skinnies from allying against the

bugs later in the book. It's hardly as if the leaders of this

society are proud but wise and just philosopher-generals. The

book opens with an apparently pointless, bloody, awful war

(perhaps, one very like the one Verhoeven experienced as a child

in The Hague during the Nazi occupation?); humanity hardly seems

to miss a beat in moving from fighting the (ramen) skinnies to

fighting the (truly varelse) bugs.

[NBarnes]

Bleh. Copied from Notepad. Sorry for formatting. :/

[MBunge]

"Rico's father is a rich, successful businessman. He sells, he buys, he talks to his neighbors, he marries and has children, he is a (by all accounts vocal) part of the public debate. By any sane standard, he has contributed his share and more to society (as if he owes society anything in the first place, as if he must buy his rights from the state; re: DeLong's points 2sub3 and sub4). And yet he cannot vote. Why? Because he failed to volunteer as cannon fodder for his political masters' wars."

Uh, no. Rico's father cannot vote because he has not demonstrated that he really cares about anything but himself or his immediate family. His "contributions" to society, as you describe them are simply by-products of a life lived to satisfy himself. In STARSHIP TROOPERS, veterans vote because they've demonstrated a concern for the whole society (or all humanity) by their willingness to risk their lives in its defense. The conceit of that system is that it's supposed to weed out anyone seeking political power for their own ends, which would work about as well in the real world as most science fiction conceits.

Mike

[James Killus]

Just as a point of information, in Starship Troopers, it was not actually necessary to participate in warfare to be franchised. That's pretty inevitable, since the process worked in peacetime as well. But it was necessary to participate in some sort of regimented, good-for-the-community service.

Starship Troopers was also Heinlein's most avowedly "Kiplingesque" work. His most anti-communist work was Puppet Masters.

[mds]

"Just as a point of information, in Starship Troopers, it was not actually necessary to participate in warfare to be franchised."

No, but it was necessary unless one was physically unable to participate. One could not choose to work at the soup kitchen; one signed up for military service, and went where one was assigned. And if you were able in body and mind, you became a soldier. That way, no namby-pamby Quaker appeaseniks with their pacifist beliefs could pollute the franchise.

I would be careful about the apparently popular equation that "miltary SF" == "fascism," though, as seems to be espoused by Citizen Lightcap. A libertarian society of mercenaries is not particularly similar to a jingoistic nation bent on conquest. Nor does there seem to be a particularly fascist message to Donal Graeme's failed attempt to force progess on humanity by the point of a gun. It failed, after all, and he even realized it was stupid to have tried. No, the next step in human evolution combined the sum total of human knowledge (particularly artistic knowledge) with mysticism gleaned from proto-Exotics and the lifelong dream of a former firebrand journalist. All this created a highly individualistic path to enlightenment. Yeah, I can just hear the jackboots marching in the background. Now, the Others were conquering everything in sight motivated by their perceived genetic superiority, but I'm fairly sure they were the bad guys.

'I think I had some "thoughts" on this issue some 10^8 seconds ago:'

10^8 seconds ago? Put down the "Accelerando" and step back slowly, Professor. (Until Stross put a cribsheet in "Glasshouse," I had to keep my own handy just to keep chronology straight.)

[Michael Sullivan]

NBarnes: You state that we don't know why the humans and skinnies are at war in the beginning of the book. This is incorrect. Humans and skinnies are at war because skinnies are aiding and abetting the bugs, and humanity hopes to convince them (violently, through terror raids, apparently), that this is a bad idea.

I would certainly submit that the opening terror raid is the most morally problematic part of the book. To a certain extent, I think that you have to look at that through the lens of WWII, in which massive bombing campaigns against civilians were considered an ordinary part of war... But even so, the personal and targeted nature of the raid, the talking bomb, attacking what Rico supposes might have been a church, all are more than a bit chilling.

[NBarnes]

"Uh, no. Rico's father cannot vote because he has not demonstrated that he really cares about anything but himself or his immediate family. His "contributions" to society, as you describe them are simply by-products of a life lived to satisfy himself. In STARSHIP TROOPERS, veterans vote because they've demonstrated a concern for the whole society (or all humanity) by their willingness to risk their lives in its defense. The conceit of that system is that it's supposed to weed out anyone seeking political power for their own ends, which would work about as well in the real world as most science fiction conceits."

That's certainly the perspective of the book's narrator in many ways, but it's TOTALLY CRAZED. The idea that the only way to really contribute to society is through military service, that other civic contributions that we all make by being part of society don't count, is pretty clearly a fascist one.

[wkwillis]

For those of you who haven't actually read the book, be aware that it was very unusual for any volunteer to see military service. Most of you would have wound up working in old age homes or delivering the mail or something. Only the guys who were football jocks or such would have even been considered for infantry service, though there is a paragraph where Rico's egghead best friend is listed as killed while serving in a military R+D facility raided by the Bugs.
The idea of a patriotic vanguard with control of society is technically Leninist, not facist.

[andres]

"The idea of a patriotic vanguard with control of society is technically Leninist, not facist."

Wrong, young grasshopper. The idea is at least as old as Plato's _Republic_, where an idealized class of Guardians, who are invulnerable to the various pathologies of self-interest (greed, corruption, etc) are the actual leaders of government and everybody else puts up with their benevolent decisions.

This idea finds many, many variants, from Lenin's vanguard party to Tolkien's ring-vanquishing Hobbits to Heinlein's "Civics for Rambos".

[MBunge]

"The idea that the only way to really contribute to society is through military service, that other civic contributions that we all make by being part of society don't count, is pretty clearly a fascist one."

There's nothing in the book that says that other contributions to society don't count, just that they don't entitle you to the franchise. The idea that democracies should limit the franchise is probably as old as democracy itself. Today, 17 year olds can't vote and neither can felons in many states.

STARSHIP TROOPERS government is based on the old idea that if you just have "The Right People" in charge, everything will work out. Heinlein's way of choosing those "Right People" is actually irrelevent. The genius of The Founding Fathers is that there are no "Right People".

Mike

[James Killus]

"- Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers over a period of about six weeks, during sustained fury over the US agreeing to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He pretty much was convinced we were signing our death warrant at the hands of the nefarious Reds."

eyelessgame, the "authoritative biographies" that you seem to have used as source material somehow overlooked the fact that "Starship Soldier" (the magazine serial), and the hardcover version of Startship Troopers were published in 1959, and the first Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was in 1963.

It's possible to argue the Heinlein was a visionary, but to suggest that he was in a fury because of something that was going to happen in 4 years, well, nobody's _that_ good. On the other hand, there are some biographers who are that bad.

[jerry]

Saw the video and well if I swung that way, I'd have to say that's the sexiest Tim Curry ever. Even better than Rocky Horry. Wow does that spandex make him look hot and bulges in all the right places. I didn't see Sarah Brightman though, she must've had a very small part indeed, where was she?

(I think you're being way too harsh on Spider Robinson.)

[Larry]

Courtesy of Google:
(10^8) seconds = 3.16887646 years