NL: Starship Troopers

This time we read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

I'll be honest. I read this, not when it came out (I was only 4!) but in high school. I remember quite liking it. I read it again, some time later, and didn't. Like it, that is (and I was even a sergeant at the time). Oh, it's not the most awful of Heinlein's books - it's not the one that made me stop reading him all together. In fact, like most of his early stuff or his juveniles, it's quite readable.

Oh, if you've read other stuff by him, you can see some of his weird and unattractive ideas hanging around. As is usual for the earlier novels, women are sort of not really there. Sure, there's Johnny's crush, the one that motivates him to join the military in the first place. But she's not a major character, and the whole pedestal/sexual willing submissiveness that poisons later books doesn't show, except for the fact that the combat troops are exclusively male. And there's Johnny's mother, who conveniently dies so that his father can discover his masculinity again. And the obnoxious girl in the civics glass who is there so DuBois can deliver his lectures ("My mother says violence never settles anything!" "Tell that to the city fathers of Carthage." Of course violence settles things; the question is, does it settle them well, considering that it usually settles them permanently?) But they aren't really characters. And Heinlein's desire to limit the franchise is less obnoxious in this book that in the ones where he wants only, say, people who can solve quadratic equations in their heads to be able to vote. Of course, there is that old "flogging is good for kids" and "capital punishment is good for society" thing...

But I'm not going to talk abut Starship Troopers. Instead, I'm going to recommend a book heavily influenced by Heinlein, whose author acknowledges his debt in the afterword even as he offers us something far, far better than anything Heinlein ever wrote.

The book is John Scalzi's Old Man's War. Like Troopers, it's the story of a man who enlists in the army, not knowing exactly what he's in for, and who finds himself fighting in battles across the galaxy to defend humanity from aliens. Like the cap troopers, the combat infantry of the CDF are enhanced - in Troopers by their armor, in Old Man's War by genetic manipulation as well as technology. And in both books, the enemy is alien, allowing their dehumanization to proceed much more easily - and with far different implications. Here, as in everything else, Scalzi's exploration of the theme is deeper and more profound than Heinlein's.

That the soldiers in the CDF are all over 75 means they're much more complex people, with far different reactions to what they encounter than the high school kids of Heinlein's book. (Not to say teenagers aren't complex, but they aren't ... as fully formed; plus Heinlein doesn't want complexity.) Old minds in bodies made young again react differently than young minds do.

Also, women are fully represented in Scalzi's world and in his military. Women fight alongside the men. Interpersonal relationships - sex, love, family - are important John's love for his wife dead Helen and the woman who was given Helen's genes are important elements of the story. (And they never flog their daughter.)

Scalzi is also interested, and deeply, in the politics of the Colonial Union, the organization that runs the CDF, prosecutes the wars, and control's Earth's access to space. Things somewhat unclear in Old Man's War are made clear over the next two books (The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony) and you'll probably want to read them, but the first book stands well on its own; the point of view of a soldier looking up at the government is pretty good, though it's complicated by John's (Scalzi's soldier-hero is named John Perry) Earth-bound complete ignorance of the state of play in the galaxy. His position and Johnny's are similar, and they both progress from private to officer, but their journeys are very different.

The morality of war is explored by both, and you won't be surprised to learn that I think that Scalzi's take is better than Heinlein's. Particularly in the second book, but in this one, too.

If you liked Troopers, I think you'll like Old Man's War - and if something about the former left you uneasy (vaguely or explicitly), I'm quite certain you will find Scalzi's novel(s) far more to your taste.



(next time: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I'm looking forward to this, as I've heard a lot about that book but never read it. Join us, why don't you? Just read, and post something - not necessarily a review, just something inspired by the book - on May 29. Here's the home page of the NL for further info.)