by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright Dec 2010
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein was the first science fiction story I ever read, way back in 7th grade or so (1960). This book was the first inspiring book I read by myself, and started me on a years-long devotion to reading science fiction. It was really inspiring. I loved reading about the military experience of duty and honor and the really neat tactics of power armor-based combat. It all truly felt... powerful! And the idea of becoming a responsible person before becoming a voting citizen made a lot of sense.
In 1997, I reread Starship Troopers, and as I read it, I was surprised: it didn't feel like I was reading the same story. My impression the second time was of a "Sands of Iwo Jima in Space" instead of something entirely new and different. (and I was kind of shocked at how much living forty years had changed my perspective!)
Either way, the heart of the story was power armor, how to use it, and how its presence affected peoples' thinking. In this story Heinlein proposed that to become a citizen -- someone who voted on how to run the government -- a person needed to first demonstrate some responsibility to the community. That part still sounded good to me, but in this 1990's time frame I discovered that for taking that stance many critics labeled this book as supporting fascism.
I read the book again because in 1997 I saw the Starship Troopers movie, and saw that the director had missed the point of the story entirely by taking out the power armor. Without power armor, the soldiers were transformed into World War One "over the top" infantry who would be discouraged from asking "Why?" before they marched off into a do-or-die situation, and because of that, they lost any reason to be "responsible for the community" in the heads-up sense that Heinlein was emphasizing in his book version of the story. Unlike the book, the movie really was about a Fascist/Spartan "Come back with your shield or on it." mentality.
These changes in what I read, and misinterpretations in what I saw depicted in the movie, inspired me to write my own version of the power armor story, and you can find it in my short story "The Ticket Out" in "Tips for Tailoring Spacetime Fabric Vol. 1".
So in the end, I still found the book inspiring, but the movie a whole lot less so. Yeah, this is one of those "read the book, you'll like it a lot better"-cases.
In 2010 I read the book once more. And, once more, my impression of it changed dramatically... I was now reading it as a sixty-something man.
What I saw this time was... Yeah! This really is a young man story! This is about a young man discovering his measure. It's about discovering his physical capabilities through facing hardship, and discovering the importance of responsibility to making the community he is part of run well.
I could also now see much more clearly the fascist elements in Heinlein's vision of this future world. But, I still wouldn't call his vision fascist. The point of those elements was injecting responsibility into governing. It looks fascist because there is so much emphasis on military and duty in the story, but those should be the center of this story because... this is a young man's tale.
All of the above said, here is a technofiction review of weaknesses I saw in the story in my 2010 reading:
o The major flaw I see in Heinlein's vision is he distinctly separates the economic from the responsible. The clearest example of this is that the protagonist's father, scion of a rich family, is not a citizen. Somehow, the father doesn't feel threatened by not being able to vote, or impeded by it. And in the story he's far from alone. This makes me wonder: What do the citizens vote on? Is it just where to locate the next veteran's lodge? With some thought, the best real world example of what he seems to be portraying is a banana republic where the military has just had a coup. In sum, separating the economic so distinctly from the government does not make real-world sense.
o Like other popular writers of the 1950's, Heinlein does not catch the enormous differences computers and communications will make to how information flows and how decisions will be made. He does a wonderful job of describing how power armor will work, but a not so good job on how social relations, and command and control, will happen in the Information Age that will accompany a Power Armor age. One specific example: his pilots have to be good at math.
o Boot camp-style hazing increases and decreases in inverse proportion to the external threat the recruits perceive. I entered the military at the peak of the Vietnam War build-up, and experienced a basic training that was heavy on teaching and light on hazing. There was no need to haze to get our attention, we recruits knew we were headed into a life-and-death situation.
Heinlein describes an over-the-top hazing situation, which implies this is happening in peace time. It also implies that there are a lot more recruits than positions to be filled in the military -- they can afford to have a lot try and let a lot go, and that implies a sort of Hollywood/Rock Star employment situation. The question is: Why would the military have so many aspirants that it could afford to be this picky and choosy? Is it just about the voting? Once again, Heinlein seems to have divorced economic considerations from the choices the people in his world make. In my 2010 reading this is all the more so because the casualty count he describes is so high -- old men count casualties with a lot more concern than young men.
o The concepts of swift justice and being broadly trained are comfortable ones, again, especially for young men's thinking. And this is another example of Heinlein not taking economics into consideration. Where's the tradeoff? What are these recruits not spending time or resources on?
In sum, in this 2010 reading I see a story that really is a lot more satisfying young adult fiction than future foretelling. Heinlein has an agenda -- he sees young people going to hell in a hand basket -- and he thinks military experience and its teaching of responsibility can do a lot to counteract this.
This time I see a story where military and economics are so divorced from each other that there's little reality to the situation, and computer and communication advances have made the tactics and military environment he describes look obsolete.
But, it's still a good young adult read about duty, responsibility, and friendship under fire. It feels a lot closer to the Afghan War experience than the Vietnam War experience.
-- The End --