The verdict
An influential, readable, deliberately provocative novel. A good war story wrapped around a political argument that has not stopped being interesting. Read it knowing the book is making a case, agree or disagree, and you will get what it has to offer.
Quick facts
- Author
- Robert A. Heinlein
- First published
- 1959
- Publisher
- G. P. Putnam's Sons
- Series
- Standalone
- Awards
- Hugo Award for best novel, 1960
- Best for
- Seeing where military science fiction comes from
- Skip it if
- You want the politics kept out of the story
Author Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers is Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel about a young man who joins the military of a future Earth and learns to be a soldier. It won the Hugo award, it is one of the most influential military science fiction novels ever written, and it is also one of the most argued about, because the society it describes is Heinlein’s argument as much as it is a story.
The idea behind it
The book’s central proposition is political. In this future, citizenship, and with it the vote, is not a right you are born with. It is earned through a term of federal service, and military service is only one of the ways to earn it. Heinlein spends real pages defending that arrangement, in lectures delivered by a teacher to a class of recruits, and those pages are why the novel is still argued about sixty years on.
Under the argument is a training story, and a good one. Juan Rico joins up because a friend did and because he does not have a better plan, and the book follows him from a comfortable upbringing through a brutal boot camp into the Mobile Infantry. Heinlein was a naval officer, and the details have the weight of someone who knows what a military is for. The lectures are the politics; the drill is the novel.
The story, spoiler-light
Rico graduates from school into a war he barely understands, against an alien species the humans call Bugs. He is trained by a drill instructor named Zim, who is one of the best-remembered characters in the genre, and then he is sent to fight, badly at first and better later. The war is a war, and the book is not sentimental about it.
There is no clever twist and no mystery. What carries the novel is the texture of military life and the slow accumulation of a case for a particular kind of society. Whether that case convinces you is the reader’s problem, and Heinlein clearly intends it to be.
What makes it science fiction
The technology that mattered is the powered armour. Heinlein’s Mobile Infantry drop from orbit in individual suits that multiply a soldier’s strength, carry their weapons and keep them alive, and almost everything since, from Halo’s Spartans to every game with a drop pod, is downstream of it. For a 1959 novel the ideas are startlingly specific.
The world-building is also the argument. The society is designed to make a point, and the science fiction is the frame that lets Heinlein build a whole political system and then spend a chapter defending it. That is unusual for the genre and it is why the book is taught as much as it is read.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
- Read it if you want to see where military science fiction comes from.
- Read it for the powered armour and the drop, which are better than you expect from a 1959 book.
- Read it if you are interested in a novel that argues a political case openly rather than hiding it in the plot.
- Give it a miss if you want the politics kept out of the story. They are in the middle of the room.
- Give it a miss if you are coming from the 1997 film. That film is a satire of the book, not an adaptation of it.
- Give it a miss if you want character depth. Rico is a viewpoint, not a portrait.
Where to start, and what to read next
It is a standalone, so start here. It is the first half of the classic argument about military science fiction: read it beside Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, which was written by a Vietnam veteran and answers the same questions from the opposite direction. Together they are the best short course on what the subgenre was fighting about.
If you like Heinlein’s voice, his earlier juvenile novels are warmer and less didactic. If you want the powered-armour idea taken further, almost every modern military series owes it something, and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is a direct and affectionate descendant.
The verdict
An influential, readable, deliberately provocative novel. It is a good war story wrapped around a political argument, and the argument has not stopped being interesting. Read it knowing that the book is making a case, agree or disagree with the case, and you will get what it has to offer.
Frequently asked questions
Is Starship Troopers part of a series?
No. It is a standalone novel. Heinlein did not write a sequel, though other authors have written books set in its universe.
Did it win any awards?
Yes. It won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1960, and it remains one of the most discussed books in the genre.
Is the 1997 film an adaptation?
Only loosely. Paul Verhoeven’s film takes the premise and the imagery and uses them as satire, and it is a very different artefact from the book. Do not judge one by the other.
Where can I buy it?
It is available as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.