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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Starship Troopers
Message-ID: <991@ames.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-May-85 13:47:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.991
Posted: Wed May 15 13:47:46 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 22:08:19 EDT
References: <147@yetti.UUCP> <1331@reed.UUCP> <168@hyper.UUCP> <701@ncoast.UUCP> <1520@reed.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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>> What is it everyone sees wrong with STARSHIP TROOPERS?
>
>	The main problem with Starship Troopers is that it
>glorifies war.  John Rico, the main character, spends most of the
>book watching his buddies get blown away, all the while moralizing
>to himself on the necessity of war.

	It may seem a technical point, but I think ST more glorifies
warriors, than war. I would agree that it argues for the necessity of
war, but I came away with the impression that it was the military virtues
(duty, honor, country) that were supposed to be glorious, not the making
of war.

>In the future of Starship
>Troopers, the planetary government consists exclusively of veterans
>and only veterans can vote.  The overall theme is that people who
>do not wish to serve in the military are social parasites.

	But didn't Heinlein make it clear that service encompassed many
kinds of public service, not just those we usually think of as military?

>	Heinlein reasons his arguments well, though.  The
>government of veterans does not survive because it is morally
>superior to other forms; it continues to govern because it works.

	I thought this was a weak point in the argument presented. Heinlein,
as the Omnipotent Author, portrayed a sytem as working, and then argued
for it on the basis that "it works". I'll grant that this is a legitimate
argument for a character in the book to make, but it's meaningless outside
the context of the novel. The system worked because Heinlein wrote it
that way.

>On the
>whole, it is not nearly as biased and jingoistic as Farnham's
>Freehold.  In that novel he starts out with a nuclear war in which
>the main character, a thin, balding contractor/engineer (sound like
>someone familiar?), is determined to survive the war by hiding in
>his bomb shelter so that he can go out and "kill those pigs who
>killed my country!...I may die, but I'll have eight russian
>sideboys to carry my coffin!" or something like that.

	Alexei Panshin (in HEINLEIN IN DIMENSION, the best study of Heinlein's
writings in print) makes the interesting point that Hugh Farnham is almost
a parody of the standard Heinlein Competent Man. He has the brains and
the skills, but nothing he does in the book works out. He is in effect
an anti-hero, a pawn of his environment, not a successful mover and shaker.
I wonder along with Panshin if this was Heinlein's intent, or if it just
came out that way.

>He and his
>gang are blown into the future where Negros are the dominant race
>and whites are slaves, making the point, in Heinlein's mind, that
>if there were more blacks than whites in modern times then they
>would enslave the whites, etc.
>	I'm not accusing Heinlein of racism.  If it is there, it is
>latent.

	Surely there are no grounds for a suspicion of even latent racism
in this plot? Heinlein's point seems clear enough to me: that racism
is not a trait of whites in particular, or blacks in particular, but
a general human failing.

>Really, though, he has written some things that are shameful.

	If you only mean badly-written, I'd agree, but if you mean the
ideas are shameful, I'd be curious which ideas you have in mind.

>Sometimes I wish he would listen to himself as much as
>others listen to him.  He contradicts himself a great deal.

	Indeed he does, but I wouldn't want to assume he is unaware of
this, or that it's unintentional. Heinlein likes to play with ideas.  I
am often amazed how many people assume that every idea which Heinlein
presents in a favorable light must be a dearly-held opinion of the
author. Surely the many contradictions suggest otherwise? It's always
seemed to me that Heinlein's chief purpose is to stimulate the reader's
rational faculties by presenting unconventional or unfashionable ideas
positively. It's probable that the ideas represent his own beliefs to
some extent, but I'm never really sure. I've always felt that the main
purpose of his polemics was to invite the readers to exercise their
minds by disputing with him mentally while reading, and not necessarily
to insist that we accept the notions.

>Heinlein is self-indulgent, hackneyed, and opinionated, but he is
>still writing with the insight and sensitivity has made him one of
>the three great s.f. writers.  Hopefully, he will do as he has
>always done:  Tell everyone to go to hell and write what he wants
>to write.

 	Hear, hear!

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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