Starship Troopers...

Grrreat book! Heinlein was a master!

The movie was a nice piece of kitch as well...

[video=youtube;Yh8qd0VKPAE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh8qd0VKPAE[/video]
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Although I enjoyed the movie and the book, they were totally separate products. The movie was all shoot-em-up in space. The book was a serious treatise on the nature of what individuals owe the state, and what the state owes individuals, plus filled with martial values like duty and honor. Concepts that are ripe for snark now days but used to mean something.

 

Yep, the book has many interesting ideas about the meaning of government and citizenship, and offers some thoughts on the failure of the kind of system we have now that, frankly, seem to be holding true as time progresses. The movie tried to bring in some of this material, of course, but it does fall far short of what the novel gives us.

 

Agreed! Duty and Honor are a strength in some and a lack in others.

Agreed again but I found the movie amusing in it's clear Kitschyness. Of course, many things have flipped since the book was written...

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

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Even when Heinlein wrote the book they meant nothing - There was huge critical reaction to what was seen by many a simple glorification of war

 

2-Dimensionals...

[video=youtube;QcQn5pAG3Sw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcQn5pAG3Sw[/video]

 

Lol!!!

[video=youtube;WkJQ3seomLo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkJQ3seomLo[/video]

Sorry! Couldn't help myself!!!
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that those book critics didn't understand the book they were reviewing.

 

And nothing to do with Heinlein being an A grade dick - He was famous for his straight backed, the military is the answer to everything attitude. He was ex navy and pretty quick to remind you about it and how that made him a better person than you

 

Lol. I haven't seen any of the sequels all the way through. Kelly was cute though!



You know, I think this would make an excellent "remake" if they took it seriously and stayed close to the literature.

 

You knew him personally then? You've got to remember that Heinlein was writing Stranger in a Strange Land while he was writing ST. Heinlein is reputed to have said, "there is a technical term for a person who thinks that an author believes in and advocates everything in his stories, that term is 'idiot'" (though this is also attributed to Larry Niven). RAH also loaned Philip K. Dick money long after most others had given up on him (according to Divine Invasions, Dick's bio). He was a complicated man with complicated beliefs that don't fall neatly into left/right ideologies.

The politics in ST (the book) are far from the most interesting part, which is the technical business of how he thought war would be carried on in the far future. This stands in sharp contrast to Stranger, which is largely about how we will relate to each other after the Singularity, (a concept central to the book but never mentioned in it) is achieved.

The movie, of which I saw only one and cannot BELIEVE there was a sequel, was the biggest stinking pile of (*)(*)(*)(*) I ever saw on a movie screen and an insult to a fine author. The only thing good about it is they made it after Heinlein was dead, for it surely would have killed him otherwise.

 

No it is an opinion based on reading Grumbles From the Grave and the John Campbell Letters as well as Asimov's The First 21 as well as first hand accounts from members of the Sydney Futurian's Society who met him in the mid 50s

Starship Troopers and the Roads Must Roll are the two stories that Heinlein really showed who he was as a person. I am well capable of distinguishing between what an author writes and the person. If I was not I would not have read just about everything Heinlein, Bob Shaw, or Arthur Clark wrote not to mention others. About the only critique of the book I have disagreed with is the charges of racism. The central character is probably Hispanic and Zim is clearly black.

 

That has nothing to do with the issue you mentioned that I was responding to; which is, the book reviewers saw this book as simply a glorification of war. Whether Heinlein was a dick or not... eh I dunno. Never met him, but he has been one of my favorite science fiction authors; even the stuff he wrote when he started going crazy.

If he felt that his military service made him a better person than you, well, on that I kind of agree. "The moral difference between a soldier and a civilian is that the soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member. The civilian does not."

Unless you had an unsatisfactory run in with Heinlein and have reason for a personal grudge, then who cares if he was a dick? If I judged the art by the artist, I would probably never read another work of fiction or watch another TV show or movie again. Many of those people are downright contemptible, but I can enjoy a Woody Allen movie without approving of him banging his daughter. If you cannot enjoy a book or other entertainment because the creator might be a dick, well you should drop out of those sort of leisure activities all together.

 

No - I was responding directly to your comment about those that criticized the book did not understand it. I am saying they did understand it as well as the man who wrote it. I never said I disliked the book or other writings from Heinlein quite the reverse would be true. I am pointing out the criticism of the book was valid, and in some cases (such as Joe Haldermen) came from people who have first hand experience in war.

 

Then your argument is that Heinlein did glorify war, therefore Starship Troopers glorifies war.

Just because the man is proud of his military service doesn't mean he's glorifying war.

 

No when you try to have the editor of Astounding charged with giving comfort to the enemy simply because he thought the US should beat Japan then clean up Germany, thats not proud, that's just nuts.

 

Oh, no question that Heinlein was something of a militarist in his personal opinions. He graduated from the Naval Academy and was an officer for 5 years. You'd have to be surprised if he wasn't. However, his work experimented with just about every kind of future conceivable. In "Stranger" it was hippy. In "Troopers" it was militarist, In "Farnham's Freehold" it was flat out Fascist and that's one he didn't win a Hugo or even much critical acclaim for. I just don't think his heart was in it.

 

OK, I don't know anything about that, but I guess your conclusion is, Starship Troopers glorifies war.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

 

He was very surprised when he got nominated for the Hugo for Starship Trooper, and actually won. And Farnham;s Freehold you can sort of see what he was trying to do, and again a book he has been tagged a racist

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Sure and consider this - It is a tribute the author we are debating the merits of a book released over 50 years ago

 

It's been many years since I last looked at a biography on Heinlein but I do recall that he gradually shifted perspectives in his personal ideology from somewhat conservative to somewhat liberal. So the Heinlein those people knew in the 1950s was not the same Heinlein of the 1970s. Not entirely anyway. Some people do change over time and he was probably one of those sorts of genuine individualists.

 

Oddly enough he seemed to fluctuate a lot. There is some evidence he had strong left wing attitudes when he was young, moved to a more conservative attitude from reaching adulthood and into middle age and adopted an almost hippie life style during his last marriage.

 

He was a complex individual. I recall in his book The Number of the Beast (came out around 1980 as I recall) his core characters accidentally entered the heavily militaristic E.E. 'Doc" Smith universe of the Lensmen and they got out of there lickity-split because they had heavy duty drugs on board their vessel and that alternate universe definitely frowned on such a thing. It was a fleeting glimpse into the mind of someone who'd contemplated what ultimate conservative militarism was likely to turn into . . . and was not a big fan of the concept.

 

LOL I can not tell you how much I disliked that book. Never have I seen so much written to explain so little