So: here’s the juvenile novel that isn’t a juvenile. Which makes it my “additional addendum” to the juveniles series that I have been reviewing over the last few years.
The background story to this is also as fascinating as the book itself, although I knew little (ie: nothing about it) of that when I first read it. It was a Heinlein novel that was rejected by its original publishers (Scribners) before being eventually snapped up by Putnam’s.
The original plan was that it would be written for the juvenile market, as had Have Space Suit, Will Travel in 1956. (Review HERE.) According to Wikipedia it was written “in part a reaction to his personal riposte to leftists calling for President Dwight D. Eisenhower to stop nuclear testing in 1958.”
Robert James, one of Heinlein’s biographers, explained it in more detail:
“This time, Heinlein had written a deeply felt, intellectually challenging book, which he believed the nation’s youth needed to read. Heinlein was increasingly troubled by the Cold War, and the poor decisions he considered the Eisenhower administration to be making. As he cast his role in writing the juveniles as one of educating the young, he wanted them to think about the nature of citizenship, and promote the essential qualities of freedom and self-responsibility in the next generation. He always made sure there was plenty of excitement and sense of wonder, and this was especially true of this novel – the battles, the powered armor – but he also included issues to chew on to make his audience think. In Tunnel in the Sky, it was government; in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, it was education. Here, it was the responsibility of the citizen to make mature decisions when voting, and to keep in mind the need to think of others at the highest possible scale when casting a vote.”
It was therefore a huge shock when Heinlein’s usual editor, Ms Alice Dalgliesh, and Scribners rejected the novel as ‘inappropriate for young readers’. It was also the last straw for Heinlein. Having had regular run-ins with Ms Dalgliesh throughout most of his time writing the juveniles, he then sold the book to an apparently eager Putnam, where after a few slight revisions, it sold thousands. It was with Putnam that RAH sold his next adult novel in 1961, called A Stranger in a Strange Land.
It is a book that in some ways is actually little different to some of those written earlier, covering the ideals of duty, responsibility and personal growth. Again, Wikipedia says that Heinlein covers many of the attributes that his earlier novels did as well:
“Starship Troopers is a coming-of-age story about duty, citizenship, and the role of the military in society. The book portrays a society in which suffrage is earned by demonstrated willingness to place society’s interests before one’s own, at least for a short time and often under onerous circumstances, in government service; in the case of the protagonist, this was military service.”
Rereading it now, it perhaps reflects something I’ve mentioned before, that it is a novel where the personal views of the author were more explicit than ever. It is the transition point where the writer we would regard as latter-RAH was unleashed, when the story becomes the means of delivering a message rather than vice versa.
There are places where the book still shows the strengths of Heinlein as a writer. The first line is still great: “I always get the shakes before a drop.” (Why? What’s ‘a drop’?) But RAH still likes to mess with us stylistically – we begin in what is the middle of the book, before going back to the start, when teenage Johnny Rico is at college and enlists. I do wonder whether this fast-paced first chapter was an addition to the original version of the manuscript. The second part, where the younger Johnny Rico finishes college and enlists, is more typical of an RAH juvenile. We’ve seen it in many of the others read up to this point. We have Rico’s father, who disagrees with Johnny’s enlistment, and lectures him about it. It’s pretty clear which side of the argument that RAH is on here, although we are reading it through Johnny’s narrative. Thus we can see how upstanding citizen Johnny gets to be involved fighting the alien Bugs.
As before in these books, Heinlein likes to play with gender roles and race. Again, women play an important role, although they are not major characters in the book – “Yes, yes, I know they make better pilots than men do; their reactions are faster and they can tolerate more gee”, says Johnny at one point.
As with other books in this series, like Tunnel in the Sky, the concept of these future soldiers being mixed races rather than of a specific race also subtly appears again. Johnny’s racial heritage is Filipino, whilst his mentor, Sergeant Jelal, is a Finno-Turk from Iskander. However, there are possibly touches of the RAH humour within this as well – the idea of a segregated model community in Buenos Aires, Argentina, written not long after WW2 cannot be a coincidence. (The Boys from Brazil, anyone?)
One of the key elements of this novel is that it is clearly ‘a novel with a message’. I felt, more than ever before, that the plot is merely the means to get Heinlein’s ideas across. This book is big on using moral lectures to get points across. For example, right at the beginning of the novel there’s Rico’s father on the merits (or lack of) enlisting. Soon afterwards we get a speech from the recruitment officer Fleet Sergeant Ho, and this is then, in the next ten chapters, repeated by the various sergeants and officers in charge of Johnny in his training and deployment, who all take their turn. Perhaps most of all, Mr Dubois is the experienced old-timer who teaches Johnny History & Moral Philosophy who is Heinlein’s mentor-figure this time around. As the main mentor-figure Dubois raises questions about duty, responsibility and Citizenship that resonate with Rico. Whilst regular readers will realise that this is expected by now, from Jim Marlow’s Doctor MacRae in Red Planet to Kip Russell’s father in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, this time it comes across as unsubtle and a little heavy-handed.
Much of the next five chapters or so retell Rico’s training in the Mobile Infantry, where he manages to turn a negative into a plus. In the fine traditions of making progress Johnny goes from being a lowly grunt in one of the less well-regarded elements of the military where he survives basic training, a flogging, being busted back to private and a near-court martial to end up as a Platoon Commander in active service. Again there’s other mentors, such as Sergeant Zim, to guide his progress.
When war is declared in Chapter Ten, we are back where we started: with Johnny in a battle against the aliens on Klendathu. There’s lots more battles, more deaths, all for the greater good. Lastly, because Heinlein can’t resist a twist, Johnny ends up as a Platoon Commander with his once- dissenting father one of his sergeants.
I remember reading this when I was about 13. I had read a few Heinleins by then but was excited by the prospect of reading this one because, in that simplistic teenage view of the world, I thought it would be a typical war story, with soldiers fighting aliens and spaceships, futuristic weapons and robotic suits. Honorable deaths in gruesome battles for the greater cause. And, to some extent, it is.
But now, on re-reading, I can see perhaps why the publishers were a little alarmed, particularly in the relatively straight-laced 1950’s. There is a lot of death. It doesn’t always go well, either. If the soldiers aren’t decimated in battle, then they are beaten, flogged and hanged for misdemeanours in this futuristic army version of the Foreign Legion. More worryingly, I can now see that, thirty-something years on and with a more complex view of such matters, Johnny is actually involved in what might be seen as relatively dubious activities even as part of a war, destroying homes and shooting civilians, albeit alien ones. (Although after the publication of the novel, thoughts of the war in Vietnam in the 1970’s seem to strike similar chords of disquiet.)
Perhaps more worrying is the fact that at about two thirds of the way through the book there’s a lot of talk of military rules and regulations, the conventions that are maintained in peace and war and the importance of lines of command. I can see that some of this is useful but from a plot perspective, it’s really not. As a teenager reading this, it would be dull. As an adult reading it, it was… often dull. Instead, its purpose is to allow Heinlein to speak interminably about the importance of maintaining discipline and order, like the military do, and put forward that idea that it is only through these that a better world can be had.
Of course, from the cynical 21st century, I couldn’t help feeling that this maintenance of ‘the good ol’ days’ means that it includes some out-of-date traditions – the segregation of men and women, of flogging and hanging, on the rare occasions it is deemed necessary. (Which may be why Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War might have worked better for me in that aspect. It’s not perfect, but it is, in my opinion, better.)
And this is where, in my opinion, Starship Troopers differs from the earlier juvenile books. There are elements that would not entirely work for the audience it was originally designed for. Its importance is not the plot but the message, more than ever before. Troublingly while reading it, and more than ever before, I got this image in my head of Heinlein feeling that he needed to write because ‘the truth must be told’, and this was his first chance to really do so. Message dominates plot, and the plot becomes less enjoyable as a result.
Alternatively, I can see that Starship Troopers is a book with issues that deserve discussion, even if their end result is something that I personally disliked. My other issue is that the way that it is written and presented begins that idea that only Heinlein’s view is right, and anyone who dares to want something different is damned for thinking so. This will happen more in his later books, too. I do get the feeling that Heinlein would have called me ‘a leftie’ and looked on me with distain at this point – the change from Heinlein the liberal, black-listed because of his left-wing principles, to Heinlein the right-wing libertarian is now rather complete.
Starship Troopers is perhaps a fitting place to end these reviews (though there is still the chance for a review of Podkayne of Mars, which was regarded by many as a latter-day juvenile novel.) For many it is the point where many readers say ‘Cheerio’ to his novels, going from plot-driven adventure tales with a message, to message-tales where the style predominates plot. It is perhaps where Heinlein begins to feel confident enough to allow his own voice to be more explicit, where the expounding of thought and reflection overrules his traditional template. His later novels continue to challenge but alienate many at the same time. To me, Starship Troopers is the point at which that transition becomes more noticeable, although I have mentioned signs of this previously.
In summary, then, is Starship Troopers worth reading? Yes, even if only to see how things have changed. There are parts of it that read very well, that show those stylistic touches and skill that Heinlein’s earlier work engaged the reader with. Undoubtedly Starship Troopers has been an influence on the whole mil-SF sub-genre, and you can see elements in other’s work such as Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Joe Haldeman, John Scalzi, Neal Asher and many of those writers from Baen Books that are writing successfully today. It is a book that gives us a glimpse into the military mind and shows the reader how the working of an active military group across planets could work. It was the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
But is it Heinlein’s best? For me, not so, for the reasons I have given above. There are others, more contemporary writers, who I think may be able to get the same message across without doing it ‘the Heinlein way’. That’s not to diminish the importance of this book, but perhaps to illustrate the more important effect it once had.
My advice would be to look at it, read it, and then decide whether it is for you. I did not find it to be a waste of time reading it, but I wouldn’t say that it was my favourite Heinlein experience either. It is clear to me, more than ever upon re-reading, that Starship Troopers is at a boundary point, between a Heinlein clearly feeling constrained by his older juvenile work and the less restrained, more adult work of an author with a message that was to come.
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
First Published December 1959 by G. P. Putnam’s. First published in an abridged version by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as “Starship Soldier”, October & November 1959 and in the UK edition of F&SF July & August 1960.
Virginia Edition. Book III published April 2008.
ISBN: 9781897350058
208 pages
Review by Mark Yon