Starship Troopers

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What's funny is that the movie completely turns around the point of the book and the director never finished reading the novel...he read through the first few chapters and became both "bored and depressed".


Anyways, the book is based on a flawed philosophy that I see taking more and more hold over the culture at the cost of our freedoms and opportunities.

That, um, never fracking happened in the novel. Perhaps you should try reading it.

The movie was called Starship Troopers because Verhoeven was well into production on a movie he had co-written, entitled Bug Hunt, which was supposed to be an over-the-top parody of militaristic societies, much as RoboCop was intended as an over-the-top parody of corporate culture, when someone on his production staff pointed out the vague similarities between his movie and an old Heinlein novel. Verhoeven's lawyers purchased the film rights to Starship Troopers; Verhoeven then renamed the movie, renamed his characters (honestly, casting Casper van Diem to play a character named Juan Rico, whose family spoke Tagalog at home?), and kept absolutely nothing else about the novel.

In the novel, the Klendathu (the "Bugs" to the guys who had to fight them) were just as technological as the humans they fought; the primary difference in warfighting styles were that the Bugs didn't used powered-armor exoskeletons (that's what made the Mobile Infantry "mobile"), and since the human forces were interested in saving any humans taken captive during the war, they didn't bomb Klendathu population centers (whereas Juan's mother was killed while visiting relatives in Buenos Aires when the Bugs nuked it - and his friend Carlos, who was working for the federal government as an experimental physicist, was killed on that same raid, when the Bugs nuked the Pluto research station on their way out of the Solar system).

The novel isn't really about the war, though; it's about courage, and honor, and sacrifice, and earning your place in society. The Federation would let anyone live there, pay taxes, make money, hold almost any job there was; there were a few jobs, mostly having to do with public safety (cops, firefighters, that sort of thing) that were reserved for veterans of public service (NOT necessarily military service - just whatever the Feds decided they needed you for for at least two years), and only veterans could vote or hold public office. (One of the History & Moral Philosophy instructors in the book also pointed out the reason to keep the system - because it seemed to work well enough, after being established by veterans of WWIII. Didn't mean it was "the best possible system", just one that worked.) You had to volunteer - no draft allowed, Heinlein abhorred the draft - and they made it hard to get into the service, and easy to quit at any time (well, except if you were in the military - then you couldn't quit in the middle of combat, you'd have to wait until after the shooting stopped).

It's really quite good, IMO, although the modern audience must keep in mind that it was intended as a juvenile novel in the 1950s, so there is absolutely no swearing, and only a roundabout reference to the idea of sex.

The movie, on the other hand, sucks sweaty donkey balls. And not just because of the travesty it makes of Heinlein's intended message, but also because it can't even follow its own internal logic, as Wombat points out.

Faster than light mass drivers. Please recall that Starship Troopers is a work of science fiction which is a medium giving the author some latitude to do social criticism and social satire.

Your basic objection, taken literally and to the logical limit, would condemn any work of science fiction that entertains faster than light propulsion.

ruveyn

Yet amusingly most of America failed to get what Starship Troopers was actually about, even in the massively obvious Film mash-up, and with Verhoeven's unsubtle and clumsy attempts at allegory. (Also painful obvious in Robocop.) How did anyone miss this, I wonder?

Doogie Howser SS anyone? (Or Barney Stinson SS these days) given the popularity of that "How I met your Mother" show.

The animated version was substantially more like the book than the film ever was.

FTL mass drivers??? Heinlein was once an engineer - he would never have had truck with such silliness.

The problem here is, some folks have seen Verhoeven's movie, and come to believe it has even the slightest relationship to a Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning novel.

The Klendathu (Bugs, Pseudo-Arachnids) in Heinlein's novel traveled in starships and used nukes, guns, and conventional-explosive missiles, just like everyone else. (Well, I assume the Skinnies used some sort of similar weapons, as there's no mention of Rico's unit being re-outfitted after the Skinnies became "co-belligerents" against the Bugs, and something was fired at Cpl. Rico's armor during the battle at the beginning of the novel...) There was no nonsense about giant cannon-bugs farting rocks through space at FTL speeds with pinpoint precision. That's from the movie Verhoeven was working on originally, before he decided to co-opt and corrupt Heinlein's work.

I think it's more schlock than it is serious.

I am an outside observer, so my perspective will be somewhat skewed, but I think the opposite is, in fact, the truth.

I think that the so-called benefits reserved to the military are illusory. Young people are lured into recruiting with an insidious bait-and-switch, with promises of education after discharge that are reneged before the ink is dry on the recruiting form.

If anything, American society is a plutocracy in which the healthcare and education opportunities belong to those who have access to money--either those with money, or those with access to the patronage of those with money.

Concerning the Starship Troopers, them movie resembled the book by Heinlein very little.

If you want to see what the novel was about without reading the novel then see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers

a featured article on Wiki.

ruveyn

Yes the movie only borrowed a few scenes and concepts found on the first couple of chapters of the novel.

In the novel, civilians were the equivalent of permanent residents in the US today (green card holders). They can do everything the citizen can except vote, hold office or work in federal or gov. jobs. Citizens in the novel did have some additional perks over non-citizens.. which are VERY similar to the benefits armed forces veterans receive in the US today.

The concept of citizenship through service is used today as well..except its limited to military.

The real difference is that Heinlein envisioned a society where civil service was the same as military service when it came to how the individual 'worked' for the gov.

For example, an individual who is a medic wanting to be citizen would sign up for civil service. Once he was in civil service he would be almost the same as a soldier..he was given a basic pay, told when and when to practice medicine during his service time.

Imagine if the US gov was set up that way. Universal Healthcare would be provided at an affordable cost because there is always going to be an 'army' of health professionals in service... among many other things. Even construction workers repairing roads.

Think about it..if you were told that if you, for 4 years, would be paid by the gov. at a rather low wage, for doing the job you're doing right now.. and with the benefit of receiving extra training during those 4 years.... in exchange of being able to vote, hold office, work in gov. jobs AND have free healthcare for yourself and your underage children plus a guaranteed pension when you retire... would you do it?

I sure as hell would.

One of the points Heinlein made is that if the situation requires it, everyone who can fight does fight. There are no able-bodied people permanently "behind the lines".

ruveyn

In the MI, which is the only service Rico had experience of, anyway. There is a mention of one poor bloke, almost too old to enlist, who flunked out of MI Basic Training because he was physically incapable of handling it. You apparently aren't required to take medical retirement; Rico encountered the man again aboard one of the transports - he'd transferred to the Navy, and become a cook.

There's also his friend Carlos, who worked in the experimental physics labs on Pluto; and then there were the psychics (they were officially officers, but were not required to perform in any except their own specialities. "If it makes a telepath, or a remote sensor, or a lucky man happier for me to salute and call him 'sir', I'll do it"). Basically, the MI would only staff with fighting men - they figured if there was anything they needed done that they couldn't handle themselves, they'd hire someone.

Let's face it, there may have been legions of fit young men and women working as paramedics, or bodyguards for politicians, or testing life-support equipment on Titan - the only part of Federal service we got to see was that occupied by Juan Rico, who was doing exciting stuff. (As he should have been - who wants to read a novel about a man who goes to work each morning, goes home in the afternoon, and watches TV? That's what we do!)

In the book WE had faster than light propulsion. The bugs didn't. They didn't even have space flight. How would they know we existed and why would they attack us?

I have a love/hate relationship with Heinlen's work. He was a great story teller as long as you could swallow his bizarre philosophy that seemed to be an unlikely mix of libertarianism, jingoism, National Socialism, honor and free love.

His characters would get all weepy over cute little kittens and then shoot someone dead for trying to cut into a movie queue.

Wombat, the Pseudo-Arachnids most certainly did have starships in the novel. They hit Buenos Aires with nuclear weapons. The giant rock-spitting bugs are from the movie. Please read the novel before attempting to critique it - there should be a copy available at any well-stocked library nearby, or you can borrow one from an SF freak. Once you're read it, of course, you'll probably want to go to a bookstore and buy your own copy...

I did read the novel. I have read and bought every single book that Heinlein has ever written.

As for the library that is another matter.

Libraries around my area have NO books by Heinlein. No books by Asimov. Not even any books by Marion Zimmer Bradley. They don't even have any books by classic authors like Rudyard Kipling or Mark Twain.

Why? Because they only have so much shelf space, so they buy new crappy books and throw all the classics in the trash.

I have read every major science fiction novel back to Doc. Smith, H.G. Wells, L.Ron Hubbard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Vern. Not to mention the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

I weep that those great classics are just not available these days.

Not available to you.

As pointed by another poster, that was the case in the MI not in all the military or civil services.

and again, this is largely found in the US military today (since WW2 actually). All rear area support personnel are trained in basic infantry combat just in case they are needed to fight. The Marines have all their personnel trained as full infantrymen even if they're construction crews or pilots.

The MI in the novels had a lot in common with the USMC.