[griffinmahon]

I read Starship Troopers and The Forever War back-to-back in like three days, and I wasn't so much of a fan of Haldeman's book, the writing just didn't seem as good to me as Heinlein's and in any case they're nearly identical -- though obviously the relativity thing and time making the "forever" part true was a very good point.

[notahacker]

Saying they're "nearly identical" seems to miss the point that the former is a paen to the military filled with lieutenant colonels waxing philosophical about how duty to fight is the basis of all morality, whilst the latter involves a brazenly cynical protagonist whose thoughts of war mostly involve hoping to find a way out of it...

[griffinmahon]

I actually don't think it's much of an ode to war or anything. I go to the Naval Academy like Heinlein did, and when I read the small details of military life and the grandiose calls to serve, I read them as criticisms or as satire.

[notahacker]

As I understood it Henlein wrote the book at a time when he'd just formed a campaign group denouncing opposition to nuclear testing as a 'communist plot', and spent a great deal of time after the book's publication defending some of the book's more controversial ideas and their compatibiity with his otherwise mostly libertarian views

Agree that it might actually read better with a healthy dose of irony, but just as with Henlein's awkward sex scenes, that's not really the intent.

[sampo]

> paen to the military

I always thought Starship Troopers was meant to be a satire, not praise for war. Just like Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. isn't a patriotic song.

[mikeash]

Given Heinlein's history and politics, I don't think so.

Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it.

[Jtsummers]

> Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it.

Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.

[logfromblammo]

Some people, such as myself, dislike the movie because it was an almost completely unrelated script that was just reworked to have some of the same superficial elements as the book.

It wasn't satirizing anything. It was just capitalizing on name recognition.

But if they didn't do that, fewer people would have watched it, and we would not now be discussing movie vs. book, because they would have always been two separate things. They still are, really.

When I read the book, I didn't see it as either pro-military or anti-military. It was a fictionalization of actual contemporary military experiences into a future sci-fi setting. The reaction should be in the eye of the beholder. The book may have seemed to glorify the military, because the entire premise of the book was that the military had essentially staged a coup against every human government, this making it the keystone of all human society. The rest is just how Heinlein thought things would work if the military were in charge of everything. Some things would work better; some would be worse.

[InclinedPlane]

If you can say with a straight face that it wasn't satirizing anything then you know nothing of the director's work and didn't pay much attention to the movie.

[dragonwriter]

> Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.

It was actually intended as (per Verhoeven) a satire of right-wing, fascists elements perceived in modern American culture that directly associated them with Nazi propaganda; the movie was largely written independently of the book, with rights to the book secured later after superficial similarity between some elements of the movie and the book were pointed out, at which point names, etc., from the book were added. Verhoeven says he only read two chapters of the book.

The film was a satire, but not of the book.

[lhc-]

I'll admit I was guilty of that when I first saw it, as a kid. It took a while before I realized it was actually a critique.

[phlakaton]

I suspect the best way to read any of Heinlein is not to consider whether the story and arguments really represent his views; rather, simply to consider why they should not be yours. Rico is not necessarily a reliable narrator, so even if the book isn't a satire itself, it's fertile ground for one...

[dragonwriter]

> Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it.

I don't so much hate the movie because it was satire, I hate it because it was cheap, lazy, unnecessary satire of either a phenomenon to which the book is at best distantly connected or of a very distant reading of the book.

[iamcurious]

How so? It is the same guy that wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land" after all.

[dragonwriter]

Starship Troopers, its worth noting, was written in something of a fit of political pique that interrupted the writing of Stranger in a Strange Land.

[shepardrtc]

You are correct, it is satirical. But its a common misconception that its some sort of military love-letter.

Edit: So I assume that downvotes now are a form of disagreement rather than a measure of contribution to the discussion.

[dragonwriter]

> You are correct, it is satirical.

I don't think that's the case; I think that it isn't simplistically prescriptive the way that shallow readings usually take it, but I don't think its satire either. Its more complicated than that.

I think that there are a number of things that come together in ST:

(1) Heinlein's concern about what he saw as a then-current political current to dismiss what he saw as clear, current, existential threats.

(2) Heinlein's enduring strong opposition to conscription and view that it was equivalent to slavery.

(3) Heinlein's general frustration with the bureaucracy and politics of the day and feeling that it was due in large part to the incompetence and lack of civic mindedness of the governing class and, the electorate more generally.

ST, though, wasn't utopian -- it wasn't describing the way things should be -- it was an exploration of ideas related to these topics (and, in some ways, a release of Heinlein's frustration around them.)

> But its a common misconception that its some sort of military love-letter.

There's definitely an element of military love-letter -- particularly, to the individual infantryman -- to it.

That's actually one of the few things the common shallow readings get right (Heinlein himself has written as much, subsequently.)

[ghaff]

This is probably the most accurate description of the novel in this thread. I agree that there's no particular reason to think that Heinlein is saying we'd all be better off if tomorrow we took away the franchise from everyone who hasn't served in the military. Nor do I think it's fair to say that the novel is pro-war in the sense of glorifying warfare.

At the same time, based on large swaths of what Heinlein has written (including non-fiction), there's also no particular reason to think that we're supposed to roll our eyes and take as satire the various lectures about honor and duty in the book. Nor take it as a general condemnation of the "military mind" or anything like that.

[dragonwriter]

> I agree that there's no particular reason to think that Heinlein is saying we'd all be better off if tomorrow we took away the franchise from everyone who hasn't served in the military.

Even if the novel was strictly prescriptive, it wouldn't be saying that: federal service wasn't exclusively, or even mostly, military; federal service included the military, but it also included pretty much everything that would be considered "civil service" positions in today's system, and those positions significantly outnumbered the military ones.

[shepardrtc]

I agree with your assessment. I over-simplified it because I'm lazy and its been 15 years since I read it.

[efuquen]

And where exactly are you getting the idea from that it was 'satire'? Everything I've seen Heinlein ever say about the novel straightly points to it not being satire; he was completely serious his thoughts on philosophy, morality, government, society, etc. It may be hard to believe, but I think he meant what he wrote.

[shepardrtc]

How often did Stephen Colbert say his show was satire? He rarely broke character. And I don't recall him ever saying it was satire. But yet it was quite clear that it was. Of course, his method was rather over-the-top. Heinlein's was not.

Here's some reading: http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2012/11/the-joke-is-on-...

[dragonwriter]

> Saying they're "nearly identical" seems to miss the point that the former is a paen to the military

Its been quite a long time since I read Starship Troopers, but IIRC it doesn't read like much of a paean to the military on any but an extremely shallow reading.

[efuquen]

Then I guess I, and Heinlein, read it pretty shallowly, since he's has been quoted as saying his novel glorifies the military. I still really enjoyed the book, but I don't know how you could possibly read it as not a pro military sort of novel. Obviously the point isn't to glorify violence for violence's sake, he attempts to morally justify the use of force in the same as has been customary for generations.

[ArkyBeagle]

For citizens, it was the basis of all political morality/legitimacy . There was a pretty well-kept wall between the citizens and the rest of the populace. By joining up, Rico is disowned by his father. And otherwise, Rico is a square-jawed fkup.

I always took that as a way to keep the economy and the war-machine separate. You get the general vibe that it's an otherwise post-scarcity society.

If you were a citizen, you were part of the part of society that used force. It's the basic Libertarian trope about force in that regard.

SFAIK, ST was based on ideas from the Swiss system, obviously drawn to the exponential.

[benihana]

>a brazenly cynical protagonist whose thoughts of war mostly involve hoping to find a way out of it...

Catch-22?

[justin66]

Catch-22 was mentioned in a blurb on the cover of the first paperback edition. TFW is more subtle than Catch-22, but then again, everything is. Catch-22 pushes the envelope about as hard as a satire could and still be good.

[angersock]

You should probably go back and read the books again, maybe with some more time between readings, and paying more attention to the people and less to the tech. The jaded, alienated Mandella in The Forever War has a lot more to say about the evolution of his society than Rico does.

Armor is yet-another excellent contemporary to both of those books.

[megaman22]

Armor is fantastic. It's up there with Ender's Game on my list of military sci-fi.