Movies that are better than the book

[I.D.10-t]

Not just vote, but hold office. In addition he had a thing about physical punishment, something that was hinted at in the movie, but put into detail in the book especially concerning youth crime (theories that are not quite mainstream these days). I would say that the book and movie both had a authoritarian streak to it and the book has more command structure because the movie did cut about 1/3 of it where he is "promoted" up the ranks. Not really surprising if you are dealing with a armed forces setting though and "Stranger in a Strange Land" had a much different feel.

...as for the technology, I still think of him hopping place to place in the mechanical bunny suit when I think of the book, maybe your imagination was better than mine.

[swizzlestick]

All the parts that worship power; particularly the part where only soldiers get to vote.

Frankly, that's not much of a rebuttal. Now you have to point out the parts that "worship power". Whatever that means.

Many societies have restricted the ability to vote. Felons can't vote in the United States, for example. I am opposed to mandatory pubic service for all citizens, but it's been proposed several times. The novel states that only ex-members of the Federal Service could vote, but much of that service was not combat related. And service was only two years in peacetime. I'm not arguing for such a thing, but that would not seem to fall under common definitions of fascism or power worship.

I have taken a few minutes to scan through a copy again. This is a novel with a main character that goes through arduous basic training for an elite military division - sort of SEALS in the future, I guess. Anyway, the washout rate is about 90%. It's from a recruit's point of view, so you would expect him to have to learn about military authority. If it was a novel about the Catholic church, I would expect a similar focus on authority. But I didn't run across any parts that focus on "power worship".

Doing a quick Google search, as many of us tend to do these days, I came across the following quote from Poul Anderson. As a well known science fiction author and one of Heinlein's contemporaries, Anderson was more than willing to publicly disagree with several of the ideas in Heinlein's books.

"I never joined in the idiot cries of "fascist!" It was plain that the society of _Starship Troopers_ is, on balance, more free than ours today. I did wonder how stable its order of things would be, and expressed my doubts in public print as well as in the occasional letters we exchanged. Heinlein took no offense. After a little argument back and forth, we both fell into reminiscences of Switzerland, where he got the notion in the first place."

Switzerland? Some more googling has convinced me that Heinlein did borrow the basic idea of military service as a prerequisite for citizenship from the Swiss. (I also have a better understanding of why Hitler did not invade Switzerland during the war. You might be interesting in doing the same search.)

But I must apologize. We have drifted far away from the topic at hand. It doesn't really matter if you like or hate Starship Troopers, the book. I just don't think it's fair to say the movie was better than the book when neither the director nor the screenwriters made any attempt to be honest to the original. Pick any book you do like and I am sure you would be unhappy if the director ignored most of the original plot and made the characters unrecognizable. Maybe such a movie could stand on its own, but how can you really compare it to the book when it has so little in common?

[Denny]

I've noticed that few people, that are not ex military, are pro mandatory pubic service for all citizens.

I've also noticed that military coups are generally from voluntary military.

[s1m0n]

This is a book about an earth which:

- has gone so far beyond 'military dominated' that its government and society have both been entirely subsumed by the military,
- while engaged in a permanent and all-encompassing race war of anhihilation
- fought via huge, mechanical ubermensch [power!] suits. Extended passages extol the glory of the suits, showing how much more powerful human soldiers become when they climb into one. Joining this army will turn you into superman!
- at the end of which the protagonist surrenders his qualms, has his own Winston Smith epiphany; and decides to subsume himself into the permanent military accompanied by the faint sound of the author cheering from backstage.

Heinlein of this era was the most didactic SF writer on the scene, barring perhaps Elron Hubbard. None of the subtext in his books is accidental, and most of it's not even all that sub. Heinlein had clearly read Ayn Rand, and although I can't recall whether she gets a namecheck in ST, Rand definitely does show up in The Moon is Harsh Mistress (a much better book, IMO), where during a political discussion Rand's is identified by the authorial sock puppet as the political ideology closest to his. ST is Heinlein's Atlas Shrugged.

Some writers create settings, because that setting is what best suits the story they want to tell, or because they've found a character or angle that require it. Robert A Heinlein is not either of those writers. In his books the politics came first, they are what the book is about, and he means every bit of it. This became more and more obvious the older he got, until you get to books like Friday or Time Enough for Love, where the topheavy bulk of RAH's opinions on politics, sex & love drowns the narrative.

[s1m0n]

PS: check out the kickass June '52 edition of Popular Mechanics, which has a feature on the futuristic house RAH had designed and built.