STARSHIP TROOPERS
On more step down memory lane, rereading Heinlein’s juveniles. I am not sure if STARSHIP TROOPERS counts as his last juvenile or his first grown-up book, but it is included in the SFBC bound edition called OUTWARD BOUND, which includes two other RAH novels between its covers.
STARSHIP TROOPERS is a coming of age story where a young and somewhat feckless Juan Rico goes through boot camp, finds out that the infantry turns boys into men. He is at first opposed in his ambition by his wealthy father, but in the final scene we see, in a very brief but delightful reversal of fortune, that the father now serves as Rico’s NCO in a platoon he has risen through the ranks to command. My grade: Heinlein’s best juvenile.
But let me qualify that grade. As a reader, this is one Heinlein’s best work for kids. As a writer, I see evidence of the same slap-dash, first-draft carelessness of craftsmanship which marred PODKAYNE of MARS. The plot here is that there is no plot.
Despite this drawback, it is a seminal work. This book started the sub-genre known as Military SF. The powered exoskeleton, described in the same loving tech detail as Oscar the space suit in HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL, is really the star of the show.
As a speculative science fiction book, STARSHIP TROOPER succeeds on two levels.
Let me define the prime quality a speculative science fiction book must contain in order to be considered speculative fiction. It must contain speculation. That is, it must take some unreal technology and speculate about the realistic ramifications thereof, exploring what impact on human life, laws and customs, love and suffering, might obtain.
This definition, by the bye, dear reader, should tell you why certain concepts clearly unscientific wiggle themselves into SF. Mind reading and psychic teleportation are flatly impossible according to our present scientific understanding of the universe. But DEMOLISHED MAN and TIGER TIGER (STARS MY DESTINATION) are two of the best SF books ever. Why? Because Mr. Bester plays fair with the speculations: if men could read minds, how could a murderer fool a detective? In a world where everyone teleports, how do you lock up the criminals? He thinks through feasible answers to these queries. A mind-reader in a ghost story, on the other hand, or a saint who can be two places at once in a hagiography, would not be shelved with the SF in a bookstore, because in these works that fantastic element is introduced either for horrific atmosphere, or for devotional. No speculation about how it would really work, the nuts and bolts, is present.
In the case of STARSHIP TROOPER, there are two speculations. First, from the invention of the bow to the gun to the rifle to the bazooka, technology has placed the killing power of whole armies into the hands of a platoon, or even a squad. Heinlein extrapolates that one step further and assumes one infantryman would have the fire power of a whole army. What is the impact on society and human life?
Second, assume a society, like that of the Romans, where the vote was restricted to those willing to sacrifice their lives in the defense of the state, either in military service, or some other form of federal service. What is the impact?
Heinlein’s first answer: when every infantryman controls the firepower of an army, even the lowest grunt in the infantry would be molded by careful and rigorous training, absurdly rigorous, that he might be entrusted with such awesome lethality, and would be honored with the highest dignity a democracy can bestow: suffrage.
Heinlein’s second answer: a society that restricted suffrage to veterans, but who allowed anyone to volunteer, would have a very highly motivated and patriotic all-volunteer army. (Keep in mind that no one on Earth (except Canada) had an all-volunteer army at the time TROOPERS was written, 1959, before the Viet Nam war). Also, people normally not allowed to serve, such as women, would be fighting-men equal with any man. (again, the concept of women servicemen were still a rare and radical idea in Heinlein’s day. While there were WAC’s in WWII, they were not front-line troopers.) Note also that the scene right after the opening, when Rico decides to join the service, is because he dotes on a girl who is volunteering. At that time, women in combat was as science fictional a notion as women astronauts. Or as women shaved bald (which a pilot does in order to keep her hair out of the way in zero-gee).
The society described has values consistent with the badass, no-nonsense, tain’t-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch machismo we have seen crop up in other Heinlein books. First, corporal punishment, with flogging and hangings, has been reinstated—although one can hardly call this an SF device, since this was preferred mode of punishment for civilized nations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Second, veterans are the only ones entrusted to teach history and philosophy, and this is a not-so-subtle tweak at modern academia, whom Heinlein (and the present writer) believe teaches values and philosophies not geared to producing good citizens or establishing the survival of the race. Otherwise the society is not so very alien to our own. The customs and practices of America in the 1850’s would seem stranger to a modern lad than the customs described in the Terran Federation Rico serves.
I must pause to say a word, or, rather, clear my bowels, to answer the notion that this book is fascistic, or that Heinlein was a fascist for writing it. The charge is too stupid to merit an answer. My whole rebuttal to this consists of a rude noise from my buttocks, and in so doing, I have equaled or excelled the intellectual endeavor of those who bring this charge. The tale takes place in the mere opposite of a fascistic background: a democracy where anyone of any race, Jew or German, may vote, once he serves his time. The free enterprise in the system is not dependent on citizenship, nor is there any evidence of state control of the economy, state-welfare, collective ownership of factories, or any other aspect of fascism, naziism, or totalitarianism. Oh? Are you puzzled that I am mentioning state control of race relations and economics when discussing fascism? My comments are only meant for those who know what the word ‘fascism’ actually means, not people (and you know who you are) who merely use it as a swear word to describe political opinions you have not the civility to rebut honestly.
I say again that there is no plot to this novel, if by plot we mean a structure of events determining the choices in the next event, a conflict leading to a climax. What is the conflict in this book? A boy goes through boot camp and becomes a man, while listening to a series of political lectures. That is not a plot.
The war with the Klendathu is likewise not a plot. In a story where the war is the plot, and not the background, the war or battle is fought, the enemy does things, the friendlies do things, and the battle or the war is won. Indeed, one of the eerie things about this book is the utter absence of information about the causes or course of the war. Consider that the first scene, the only actual battle scene in the book, consist of a raid against the allies of Klendathu, the ‘Skinnies’, a race of whom we hear nothing about again. The point of the scene is to show the drive and sacrifice of the infantrymen, and that no one is left behind. Next there are scenes of Rico’s training in boot camp, his service, his commission to Officer’s Candidate Training. At some point during these episodes, the raid and police actions against the Klendathu pass some invisible turning point, and war is declared: offstage. There is a disastrous battle described toward the middle of the book, a major setback for the Terran cause. This is meant to show that war is not glorious, not matter how glorious the heroism of those who fight it. At the end of the book, Rico has men under his command, and the end of the war in not in sight. War is simply a given.
At no point does anyone mention what the war is about or who started it or why. Of course, Heinlein does this deliberately to make a point: the professional soldier does not care about what the war is about, once it starts, or who started it or why. Moralizing about the causes or the course of the war is a luxury for peacetime.
It is actually a rather Homeric point of view, if you think about it. War is simply a given. As long as human beings are human beings, they will fight. Heinlein makes this point in other works, particularly a scene in METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN, where a peaceful utopia turns out to be possible only when men are turned into strange, thoughtless beings.
I also notice a weakness in the book that comes to my attention only because I have just read PODKAYNE OF MARS and HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL. Heinlein’s bad guys are the most cardboard and pointless Black Hats of all sciencefictiondom. The evil spy of PODKAYNE is not up to anything, does not have a plan, she merely exists. Likewise with the Wormfaces of HAVE SPACE SUIT. They are merely bad because they are bad, but they are not actually doing anything. Contrast any Heinlein Black Hat with, for example, Lex Luthor, who, in the first SUPERMAN movie, buys up Nevada property so that he can nuke the San Andreas Fault and sink California into the sea. In order to do this, he must intercept and reprogram two missiles, and in order to nullify Superman, he must send a high-frequency sound wave that only dogs can hear, in order to trick the hero into his underground lair, and open a lead box with a meteorite that robs him of his superpowers … and so on. It may be a comic-booky plot, but it is, by Thunder, a plot. Lex takes steps to achieve his goal, and can be defeated by steps taken to counteract those steps. Heinlein cannot even write a plot to the level of a comic book. The Wormfaces of SPACE SUIT are up to … what? Kidnapping Peewee’s father. Why? To what end? The spy in PODKAYNE wants to stop Uncle Tom from going to a space conference, at which will be decided … what? For that matter, the beast in NUMBER OF THE BEAST or the evil Time Travelers in CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS are up to … what? They appear from nowhere and shoot at the good guys. That’s all. Likewise here.
The Klendathu have joined a war with Terra to do … what? What political goal do they seek? None. There is no point to the Bugs. They are on stage merely to be Bugs, merely a symbol: inhuman, collectivistic, totalitarian. As a symbol in a children’s story, they work just fine.
Heinlein points out (incorrectly) that the instincts of the bugs will allow them to run their society along communist lines, and from this he denounces communism as against human nature. Heinlein is being too generous to communism: it is an economic theory nonsensical from its axioms, and could not work as an economic system for any type of beings of any kind. Communism abolishes the price system, which abolishes economic calculation, that is, the concept of economizing. (Only small organizations where one manager can inventory and economize all factors in play, such as a family run by a father, can resources be economized without recourse to a price system to measure the relative value placed on the factors of production by the various members.)
For a more grown-up story, however, the Black Hat ought to get his five minutes to say his say. Even the terrorist in Steven Gould’s JUMPER got a chance to speak his side, and the book was better for it. Good golly Miss Molly, even the Klingons in the STAR TREK episode “Errand of Mercy”got a moment to complain about the Federation strangling their trade. Makes the villains seem realistic. No Bug has a say in Heinlein.
STARSHIP TROOPERS is a book about coming of age. It is a book about the rights and obligations of citizenship: the weight of duty. Rico makes a feckless decision to join the Service. Later, he is wilting in boot camp, and ready to quit: a letter from an old teacher puts the heart back in him, and he realizes he’s grown into his boots. Rico secretly overhears the hated Sergeant express concern about the trainees under his command: a moment of maturity. An evening of R&R shows him how powerful and dangerous he and his buddies are compared to civilians. Rico is growing.
Best of all, since Rico is in the service, there are no female characters of note, and so we weary readers are not exposed to Heinlein’s famous sexual liberation theology. There is no Jill Boardman or Star the Sexy Space Empress telling us sex is fun and prostitution is an honorable profession and monogamy is merely a foolish local earth-custom.
Instead we get to hear lectures on how harsh life is, and how soldier must kill the enemy in combat to prevent the enemy from killing him. This is a perfectly noble and sensible philosophy for any marine to have, or policeman, or anyone who must do harm to the guilty in order that the innocent might be spared. It is not, of course, a Christian philosophy, but then again Heinlein was not writing STARSHIP CHAPLAINS, which would be an interesting book in its own right.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
