is Star Ship Troopers a "classic book"?

Cafe Society
21

I don’t think you can make a ‘sexist’ charge stick to Starship Troopers. After all, the most glamous job in the whole Navy, spaceship Captain, was almost universally female, simply because females were better at it.

I hated Verhoeven’s movie, but one thing I will say about it. I think he got the ‘tone’ of the female leads exactly right. Both of them were variations on the prototypical Heinlein woman - sexy, randy, but tough as nails and practical as hell. Denise Richards’ pilot was better than her male counterpart, and she was tough under fire. Dizzy Flores was the toughest person in the unit, despite wanting to get Rico in the sack.

Heinlein would have liked both of them.

22

Ok, for those who believe the “old man” theory as extruded by Alexi Panshin, which old man exactly was Heinlein supposed to be?

Mr. Dubois(?) from Tunnel in the Sky?
Mr. Kiku?
Sam? (from Starman Jones)
The totally self-centered and cruel (except to women and children) Lazarus Long?
The self-sacrificing and gentle Professor De La Paz?
The wise and kind Jubal Hershaw?
The calm, nearly zen, Balsam the Beggar?
Deetee’s smart but totally obnoxious father from Number of the Beast?
Look: the origin of this theory is from Alexi Panshin, a guy who had major issues with Heinlein (based on the stuff on Panshin’s page here IMO he comes across as an asshole…to see a more (IMHO) balanced look at Panshin’s version of things see here), Panshin published a hatchet job where one of his lies was that Heinlein was only able to write three characters: the “wise old man” who was allegedly Heinlein, the middle-aged guy learning to be Heinlein and the kid. (Plus a generic woman). The theory (and many of Panshin’s other…cough…‘criticisms’…) make little sense, but since he published the first book of “criticism” on Heinlein, the mud stuck.

Anyway, the problem with this theory is, once you actually read the books, you see that Heinlein for all his literary flaws (a tendency to lecture in the middle of the action, for one…) was able to write more than one character and that most of his characters were pretty damned different.

The only thing that Heinlein’s characters had in common (since he wrote about characters of wildly varying ages and both genders) is that they were competent. Heinlein was fascinated by competence…just as Sheckley was fascinated by incompetence and Laumer was fascinated by average characters in situations waaaaaay over their heads.

That said, I agree with NoClueBoy that Starship Troopers isn’t one of Heinlein’s best: the pacing is weak, the memoirs don’t make sense given when they were supposed to have been written, the reunion between father and son is contrived…

But I’d say that yes, it is a classic, despite those flaws: only the short story “The Cold Equations” has the same power to generate fistfight level controversy 50 years later. If it’s still affecting people that much…

Fenris, on a one-man crusade to eradicate Panshin’s idiot theory.

23

A huge second to Fenris, who, as usual, has nailed it dead on. A couple of decades ago, when I discovered there was a book about Heinlein, I stumbled all over myself to order it at a time when I just did not spend money on hardbounds. Panshin’s hack job (in both senses of the word), annoyed me greatly, both for its content and the money wasted on it.

Yeah, Heinlein will toss in a lecture or two in the middle of the action, but, by damn, they are never boring. To me, he is a superb instructor in “History and Moral Philosophy.” I don’t always agree with the viewpoints espoused by the characters in his books, but they do generate genuine thought.

In one of his essays (Expanded Universe? I’m too lazy to get up and check) Heinlein proposed a number of fascinating qualifications for exercise of the franchise: being female, paying an ounce of gold, solving a quadratic equation, etc. Here is yet another premise (only veterans can vote) with ramifications neatly laid out in book length. Then he throws in such extras as absorbing technology,
insight into military training, smoking action sequences and one of the coolest opening scenes in all of SF, IMHO.

A classic? Yeah, you betcha.

24

Hometownboy,

Yeah, the essay on the qualifications for voting is in Expanded Universe. It is in the afterword of Who Are the Heirs of Patick Henry?, pages 396-402 in the Ace paperback edition.

If you are still interested in books about Heinlein, I would recommend Robert A. Heinlein A Reader’s Companion by James Gifford. A very comprehensive listing and overview of almost everything he wrote. The only things he leaves out are items restricted by Heinlein’s instructions.

25

Fenris and company :
(By the way, F – great piece in Teemings!)

I love Heinlein, but I have to disagree with you about Panshin. I think he goes overboard at times, but I think Heinlein in Dimension is a useful and valuable book. It’s certainly (despite the occasional harsh phrase) the work of someone who has read and re-read the Canon a lot. I think what he’s criticizing are the flaws he sees in his favorite author. I note that your criticisms of ST are similar to the comments Panshin made.

Spider Robinson’s essay “Rah!Rah!R.A.H!” notwithstanding, Panshin isn’t a hack. IIRC, he won a Hugo for Rite of Passage (which strikes me as a pretty Heinleinian book). (And, according to Robinson, James Blish is the originator of the “Heinlein as his own characters” theory, in an essay called “Heinlein, Son of Heinlein”. Although Panshin seems to be the champion of the idea.)
I suspect that Veerhoeven or the screenwriter for ST (Forgot his name) read Panshin, because the film opens with “recruiting film” action, just as Panshin describes it.

26

Thanks Lok. I have read much about Heinlein over the years, and I tend to be more on the Robinson team than the Panshin squad, but I’ll look up Mr. Gilford’s book.

And I greatly respect CalMeacham’s opinion as well. It’s been at least a decade and a half, maybe two, since I read Panshin’s book. IIRC, I felt Panshin was overly critical, fell into the critic’s trap of mistaking the opinions expressed by the characters as sock puppets for the author’s own views, and in general missed most of the philisophical points raised.

I may have to actually check out Panshin’s book again, but I stand flatly by the Starhip-Troopers-is-a-classic crowd.

27

Ferris’ second link is to a page by Gifford. Unfortunately, he does not seem to be doing much with it. I would be interested in seeing exactly what he has to say about Panshin.

I personally prefer both Double Star and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to Starship Troopers, but it is definitely a SF classic.

Lok

28

I agree with Lok, myself. For some reason the most striking and popular Heinlein books, the ones that even non-sf people have heard about and might have read – Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land – are his least typical. But maybe that’s why they stand out. Apparently ST started out as one of his juveniles, but it ended up very differently. It is, I believe, the novel that broke the relationship with the publisher of his juveniles, so after that he didn’t write anymore of them (he had been pumping them out, one a year, for about a decade), so he took it to a different pubvlisher. As I think he reamrks in ** Grumbles from the Grave**, it surprises even him that this book continues to sell, year after year, yet it generates more irate letters than any of his other books.

One element of Panshin’s criticism about ST sticks in mu mind – that ST doesn’t compare well with his early juvenile on a similar theme – Space Cadet. (The term is humorous now, but Heinlein is the one who popularized the term, and probably invented it. There are various claims that the 1950s TV series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was based on Heinlein’s book, and that he acted as advisor, but I don’t know how much truth there is in this. ) I any event, in Space Cadet we see the hero go through a sort of future Annapolis, slowly learning how to become an officer, just as Rico does in ST. The difference is that the character development of SC is missing in ST. Heinlein also isn’t as heavy-handed with the moral theory in SC. By the way, it’s always bugged me that there are alternative systems of government in the juveniles, but no one ever complains about these – only the one in ST.)

29

I know I’ll never agree with most of y’all SF fans on this, but I think Starship Troopers is one of the poorest-written books I’ve ever read. I thought the descriptions were terrible, the characters were barely one-dimensional, and the lectures were appalling. The closest equivalent novel I’ve read is Jesus Christ the Vampire, a similar barely-concealed political rant from the other end of the spectrum.

Heinlein in both his fiction and his nonfiction comes across to me as a megalomaniacal hack.

As for SF folks that are gonna be remembered in 100 years, Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke may be among them – but so will be Le Guin, Dick, Orwell. I think Le Guin especially will be remembered, as someone who worked in the genre with a rare craft.

Daniel

30

I agree with Fenris and Lok. ST was a great book. It was the first Heinlein I had read as a young lad of 12 but it’s stuck with me to this day. I get the feeling that every Heinlein novel attempts to expound a virtue or message to it’s readers. That was Heinleins greatest virtue. That of the teacher. After reading ST and SIASL I had to start rethinking my world views that I had formed at a young age. I consider Heinlein to be my teacher of the world. I took somthing from every book he has written and continue to ‘grock’ as I grow older.
As for ST the movie. This is what happens when you give a German director control over a story that is more ‘modern day Roman legonair’ than anything else. Why do the Germans feel the need to constantly tell the world that they’re sorry for WWII. We all know what happened, and we all remember. There is no need to dwell on it. Look at the uniforms the officers wear. Could Carls uniform be more Strubanfeurer if he tried? Looks like somthing straight out of a Nazi concentration camp.

I got the feeling that duty and honor should be rewarded from Star Ship Troopers. This is odd given Heinleins obvious anarchistic view of life. I find myself identifing more with Manny and Dr. de la Plaz from TMIAHM than any other characters in fiction. I vote that ST should be considered a classic. And I put it to anyone else to tell me why it SHOULDN’T when it’s subject matter is still relevent today.

31

Nuh uh. It’s what happens when you give a Dutch director control over the story.

:slight_smile:

Daniel

32

granted, i don’t know who half those people are due to my lack of remembering character names, but i feel Heinlein is definately:

The old guy from The Moon is a Harse Mistress
the teacher from Starship Troopers
Lazarus Long and his Grandfather
the father guy from Number of the Beast

He just uses himself as the old man to explain whatever political or science theory needs explaining, while they retain the same common sense personality.

33

At the risk of offending his fans, I’d agree. Admittedly I’m not widely read with Heinlein, but I thought it was barely above-average hard sci-fi-with-a-message, albeit much earlier than anyone else was doing it. I’m sure most will disagree vehemently, but I really didn’t think it was particularly special.

34

Like I said, I don’t think Starship Troopers is Heinlein’s best and if you don’t like his lectures, I can see why he comes across as megalomanical. You might want to try (if you haven’t already) his earlier stuff, before he started lecturing.

For me, I don’t mind the lecturing 'cause I enjoy his authorial “voice”, but I’ll agree that it messes up the pacing in Starship Troopers

I’ll agree that LeGuin will be remembered, if only for the stunningly good The Dispossessed (by far her best work). I wasn’t as enamored with The Left hand of Darkness, I don’t think she succeeded in creating a gender-neutral society. (On rec.arts.sf.written there’s a running joke about “Good Urusla” and “Bad (or Evil) Ursula”: “Good Ursula” teaches, entertains, and dazzles us with brilliant prose and stunning characteriztion (The Dispossessed) “Bad Ursula” shreiks at us in a shrill, grating voice (the dreaded The Word for World is Forest. Yeah. You don’t like Viet Nam. It’s bad. We get it.)

Maybe we could come up with something similar for Heinlein: “Lecturing-Heinlein” and “Lecture-Free-Heinlein” :smiley:

Fenris

35

Quoth DanielWithrow:

I’m not sure I would classify Le Guin as the same genre as Heinlein et al. She’s definitely one of the top writers of soft SF (I would rate either her or Poul Anderson as best in the genre), but soft and hard SF don’t really overlap too much. It’s maybe not comparing apples and oranges, but it’s at least apples and pears.

And Tars Tarkas, how is it possible that Heinlein is simultaneously La Paz from Mistress and (what’s his name) the teacher from Troopers? The only thing that they have in common is that they’re old and talk about politics. The philosophies they hold, though, are pretty much diametrically opposed.

So, does Heinlein think that a strong state is good or bad?

36

I agree, although my “bad ursula” example is Tehanu. All the other books in that series were fantastically wonderful, especially The Farthest Shore and The Other Wind. But Tehanu just felt like she’d had a year of being cranky at men and decided to write a book about it.

I read several Heinlein works when I was in my early teens; Starship Troopers is the only one I’ve read as an adult. I do remember there being lots of preaching in Job and Stranger. At the time I really liked them both; I don’t know how I’d feel about them now.

Daniel

37

Personally, I side with the ST is a classic group, although I do prefer The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

38

They are the tool of Heinlein to lecture about whatever political or philisophical point he is trying to make in that book. They still come off as an extension of Heinlein and allow him to interact with his characters in the story, and is usually a father figure or role model for the characters, which i take to see that he views as his children. Those characters are all overdramatic, but spout wisdom left and right and become the driving force for whatever view he is expressing in said novel.

Granted, i have no clue what he really thought, ( i seem to recall discussion that he hid his politics) but the majority of the books i’ve read of his seem to think that a strong government (or a dictator of some sort) is good, as long as he follows a libertarian philosophy and leaves the people to do whatever they want. Of course, i could be wrong (has happened before, once)

39

Chronos, I think he was basically a libertarian. But also a patriot. Probably his ideal society would be one where not much govt was needed, because (a) the majority of citizens behaved properly without any need for laws or officials to make them behave properly, and (b) the majority of citizens were willing to step forward and tackle any job that needed doing, clean up any mess that occured, and so on.

I don’t doubt that Troopers generated more angry letters then any of H’s other books, but personaly, if I’d ever written him about a book that annoyed me, it would have been Farnham’s Freehold. It’s the only one of his books that I really don’t like.

I don’t really get why so many people seem to object so strongly to the idea of having to earn the right to vote. Fighting over the details, yes – how hard or easy should it be / what kind of work should people have to do / etc. But the basic idea? I think it’s a good idea. If people had to earn the right to vote, maybe they’d value it enough to excersize it. Maybe they’d take it seriously, and pay some attention to what their govt is getting up to. The important thing would be to make sure that everyone had the opportunity to earn it. And I think H made the point in Troopers that this was the case. Something about, if a quadraplegic showed up wanting to serve, they would have to come up with something for him or her to do.

40

The first Heinlein book I read was Stranger in a Strange Land, which I found to be disappointing. I liked the first third of the book, but got bored with Jubal’s straw men and Michael’s orgy cult.

I then read Starship Troopers. I had enjoyed the movie as a cheesy scifi adventure, and still do, although the novel has a much better and obviously more complex story. As someone who had not read the book before the movie, I wasn’t subject to the disappointment a fan would have of seeing the novel ruined on film. Still, I hope that some day a more accurate film version will come out.

I thought that the book Starship Troopers was good, although I didn’t think much of Heinlein’s writing style. He took some good ideas and presented them poorly. I ended up finishing the book, thinking that it was pretty good, but not thinking “What Heinlein book should I read next?” I suppose I’ll pick up another Heinlein book if I find one used, but I’m in no rush.

The term “classic” is ambiguous and can mean many things, but if I were forced to apply it, I would say that Starship Troopers is a scifi classic, but not a classic. It’s a scifi classic because of the story, which is what makes it scifi. However, the telling of the story is lacking, which prevents it from becoming a classic. I guess in this case the content makes it a classic in its genre, but its form falls short in making it an overall classic.

Then again, I find Hemingway’s prose to be horrible, but enjoyed the story of A Farewell to Arms. I guess to me that would make it a classic in the genre of war stories and not the overall classic most people consider it to be. I suppose this shows how the term “classic” and the criteria thereof can take on many forms.

This would also make Dune a potential classic in my book (no pun intended), as I enjoyed both the story and the telling of it. Both of the PKD books I have read I enjoyed, and plan on reading more. Are they classics? It’s hard to use a term in contemplation of one’s own tastes and that of a scifi fan audience, and even further that of a general audience (for instance, can one call a book that one hates a classic?). I created a flawed standard for “classic” and Starship Troopers failed to meet the standard. Take it for what you will.

I know I have been reading these boards for awhile when I say to myself “Uh-oh, Fenris is bashing that Panshin guy again…” :wink: