Robert Heinlein: Starship Troopers

[Urlik]

even the glorification of the warrior isn't neccesserily fascistic
the political setup of ST is a militaristic meritocracy and its main aim is to be able to defend its borders
there is no conscription and all the warriors are volunteers who want to serve
the only penalty for not serving is not having a vote.
the unfranchised civilian population are free to earn a living, they aren't slaves except in the sense that they are wage slaves, just like us.

[BeerClark]

Originally Posted by Tobytwo

I don't know: Fascism occured in so many variations that even Orwell, who knew it backward, had trouble defining it much beyond "bullying". Nazism (rather than, say, Japanese fascism) works as an allegory up to a point, although the absence of a leader-god weakens it hugely. I don't think either Heinlein or the ST world is fascist, although it is militarist. In the ST world, anyone who is not MI is to some extent a sissy pansy pinko, who should be forever counting their blessings that the army is there to defend their lily-white backside. However this doesn't necessarily mean the ST system of government is fascist rather than just plain brutal (and a bit dim).

On the subject of brutality for its own sake, here is a slightly queasy proposition, made (perhaps) in mockery by Brian Aldiss: the real theme of Starship Troopers is not politics, but masochism

The more I think about this, the more one thing keeps coming back to me: ST is not a great dystopia, or utopia. It simply isn't in the same league as 1984 or Farenheit 451, and the RAH who wrote it would see their basic kindness and humanity as signs of weakness. It lacks the decency of either of those books, and I think it's this that really stops it being a first-rate vision of another society. Whether or not Heinlein was himself a nice guy, the ST world lacks any sort of kindness or pity. And as the British and Americans demonstrated in WW2, you do not necessarily have to become pitiless in order to defeat pitiless people. I'm not sure that Starship Troopers truly understands this.

I don't remember Rico looking down on civilians throughout the book. Maybe he saw himself and MI as elite over EVERYONE else (vets included!) almost as MI men being self appointed heros. But to me he seemed more proud of protecting the civilians as part of his career.

And as far as the pity... well, there wasn't much. But I thought he at least showed a glimmer when he threw the random bomb into the group of Skinnies.. I thought he actually felt a little relieved that it was one with a warning timer. Of course, any pity he might have shown was detached at best. But regardless, what soldier has the convenience of pity? Its kill or be killed. They may not want to kill their enemy, but they can't sit around feeling bad about killing them too much. I don't think WWII American and British soldiers were much different from Rico. I'd say thats especially true in the Pacific given the Japanese attitiudes during the war.

The only real brutality I saw in the book was when Rico made mention that humanity HAS to expand and conquer. That its just humanity's nature.

[Tobytwo]

Certainly there's little pity for the aliens, but I wasn't really thinking of them so much as for other humans. The aliens don't do anyhting much to deserve pity (they take prisoners, but who knows how they treat them), and it would be pretty reasonable for a soldier to despise them. What I really meant was that the only run-ins Rico has with civvies tend to be fights, shopping (I'm sure he says of one planet that the civilians were ok because they called him "sir") and experiences where he looks down on them.

This makes sense given the voting setup, but my point is that it encourages a situation where the MI look down on the very people they are there to protect. Being a caste apart encourages them to do this.

Of course, things might be different among voters who merely accepted hazardous jobs instead of being in the MI, but Heinlein doesn't really go into that. Maybe the fleet have a different viewpoint altogether? I suppose we come back to Rico's very narrow viewpoint, which conceals a lot and makes a lot of different interpretations possible.

[Urlik]

I think everyone who reads ST should then read Revolt in 2100 before making assumptions on RAH's politics

just started rereading revolt and I'd forgotten just how good it is and how quickly the story grips the reader

[icundell]

the only penalty for not serving is not having a vote.

But apart from that....

[Urlik]

well not having the vote does remove one from the decision making process

[Zanussi]

Never mind the History and moral philosophy, get on with the action! I tried to like the book but it failed of my expectations, guess I am just a low-brow shoot em up fan at heart, I was vaguely reminded of a series of books I read a huge amount of time ago that sadly I cannot now recall title or author, but were set in WWI and the author preached of the "honour" of using the bayonet and refraining from "touching trigger" in a trench fight. Both authors managed to eject me from the story and left me looking puzzled at the book in my hands and wondering if they had been written in soft crayon by the occupants of a padded cell.

What a shame the film was hijacked by the anti-war theme, all those Nazi/Stalinist propoganda clips, boy the Director had a low opinion of our intelligence did he not? Hello! We get it okay? Enough already! Harry Harrison did it a lot better in "Bill the Galactic Hero."

[ghost8772]

Actually, the feel I got from the story that if it was a pure translation from book to screen, it would be like all the other war movies, monotone main character describing their situation as it plays across the screen