When I started this book, I was a little bit surprised that it’s such a famous sci fi book–the story wasn’t that strong, and there were a couple of flaws that even the Quark writing group would pick up on pretty quickly. By the time I finished it, however, it gave me the urge to do two things: vote for McCain and join the marines…
The story is pretty simple. A boy named Juan Rico (I think that’s his name) is the son of a wealthy CEO and his wonderful wife, and lives pretty comfortably–except that they can’t vote. In this futuristic society, the only people who can vote are those who have put in their time in the armed forces.
This boy is pretty average and mediocre by most measures. He also doesn’t know what to do with his life: his father is pretty forceful about having him take over the family business, but he doesn’t know what he wants for himself. His friends are joining up for the interstellar army, and on a whim he joins them.
Thus begins his adventure, which takes him through a strenuous boot camp and on to fight these horrific aliens, the Buggers. Though he doesn’t know it, a war is just starting between Buggers and Humans, and the survival of either race will hang on the outcome of this battle. As he moves up the ranks and applies for officer training, he learns a number of life changing lessons about war, peace, society, and what it means to be a soldier.
That pretty much sums up the story. There are a couple of twists that I really liked, but of course I won’t spoil the book for you. This novel is not particularly rich in story, or setting, or character–but it is rich in ideas. That seems to be the pattern in older sci fi–you can get away with a weak plot or poor characterization if you make up for it in the thoughts and ideas that you convey.
Some people have criticized this book for basically being a way for Heinlein to preach his political philosophies, but honestly I kind of liked it. I didn’t agree with everything (for example, the idea that morality is learned, not innate, and that people who grow up on the streets without learning right and wrong are a threat to society and must be eliminated), but some of the ideas were really interesting.
For example, Heinlein did a really excellent job showing the camaraderie and feeling of a tightly-knit community among “Rasczak’s Roughnecks,” the platoon that Juan joins. He also develops some really fascinating ideas about democracy and what makes it work. That stuff didn’t come until later, though, so for the first hundred or so pages things were a little bit slow.
You can definitely tell that this book was written a few decades ago. All of the spaceships have this barrier between the men and the women which they call “bulkhead thirty,” and although the privates think a lot about women, there is no sex or pornography anywhere. There is death, but honestly, there wasn’t all that much action–the story focused on the socio-political ideas a lot more than the actual fighting. I felt as if a lot was at stake, but not as much as in The Forever War.
In fact, if I had to compare the two, I would actually have to say that The Forever War is the better of the two. It has a much stronger story, a much deeper and engaging conflict, the characterization is orders of magnitude better, and the setting and technology are a lot more interesting (at least to me). Heinlein’s social commentary in Troopers is much more far reaching than Haldeman’s (after all, Haldeman’s social message is basically “we’re screwed, this earth is going to pot”), but overall, Haldeman’s book was a much stronger piece of fiction. The ending of The Forever War was also a lot more satisfying that the ending of Troopers.
Still, I’m glad I read it. It was a good book, and I can see why it did so well in its day. I’m definitely a fan of Heinlein. However, if it were written today, I don’t know how well it would do–so much of science fiction and space opera now depends on story and characters, and in these areas Starship Troopers isn’t all that strong.
