Hey Strangelove, Verhoeven is trying to make a statement about authority, fascism, the military and prejudice. By the end of the movie, if you can get past the bad sci fi, you realize that he has painted the Federation as fascist warmongers persecuting the poor bugs. He is trying to show the dangers of authoritarianism. I think he's a loon personally, and don't really like his movies. And I hate what he did to a fantastic piece of military sci fi. Heinlein essentially created the military sci fi genre with this book, that and Gordon Dickson's "Dorsai", which was published in the same year, set the standard for military science fiction. Too bad everyone who never read the book and only saw the movie now think that the book is a cheesy ray guns and bugs from outerspace story.

I've heard that Bear's novels Forge of God, Anvil of Stars are to be made into movies. I am a fan of Bear, though I've not read this particular series (I can never find the first one, and end up with something else), I wonder if it will be as badly treated as Stroopers. website: http://www.gregbear.com/A55885/Bear.nsf/pages/300071 Do SciFi books get worse treatment in film than other genre?

Okay, I'm stumped. Expalin the Lennist aspects of SISL and ST. I'm just not seeing it.

I think willis finds the revolution in Stranger to be Leninist, it is organized like the old communist revolutionary organizations and it only allows you in if you are considered to be a "good revolutionary". Of course, the test for that is whether you want Luna free, or not, no one gives a damn about your politics. Minor problem there since bolshevik/communist/leninist organizations always cared deeply about your political orientation. Starship Troopers, I assume he says it has a leninist bent because of the requirements of service to the state before you can govern the state. But, this idea goes back much further than Marx and Lenin. It goes back to the Greek city states, and some elements of the idea are also found in Republican Rome. The design of the government in ST makes me think that the concepts are modeled after the ancient greek city states, not Leninism. There is no trace of political orientation being a requirement for the franchise or being able to govern. The only requirement is a willingness to voluntarily enter Federal Service and potentially place your life on the line for the state. It's a poor interpretation of what Lenin believed and tried to implement in the Soviet Union, or a poor interpretation of the book. They really only resemble each other on the surface, a deeper look reveals the contempt Heinlein held authoritarian systems like Lenin's in.

Lenin broke with the other socialists over the issue of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Specifically, whether the party should be the organiser and controller of the country. He felt that only the communist party should be permitted to organise politically and that all other parties should be banned. Pary membership was nominally unpaid and required that members do outreach or missionary work propagandizing socialism and generally organizing voluntary group efforts. I refer to 'Starship Troopers' as a Leninist fantasy because in 'Starship Troopers' they only allow veterans to be cops, to be ideological teachers in school, and to vote. In the real world this approach did not work, anywhere it has been tried. People would pretend to be real communists, join up, take over, and loot the system. I think it will never work until biotechnology allows us to change human nature or do selective breeding or something. 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' was a libertarian fantasy. I don't believe that a libertarian society will work either. People will underraise little local governments or gangs and tax you. They will start with weak or cowardly people and expand in power till they start going after you. I don't know any way to organise a minimalist government. Socialism may be the ground state for humanity. We did, after all, evolve as hunter gatherer pack animals. Fascism is sort of Leninist because it was organised in a Leninst fashion by right wingers trying to build a counterweight to Leninsm. It also had an organised party that forbade other political organisations. Depends on whether it was Nazism, classical Italian Fascism, Phalangist, Baathist, or whatever variety for techniques and methods. If you believe that people must demonstrate loyalty and considerable (and I do mean considerable, like several hours per week) extra effort to be allowed to participate in taxation and lawmaking, you may wind up joining or starting some kind of Leninst movement. And then I will kill you. No kidding. Bullets or ballots and you can choose either. I'm for democracy, even when the bastards don't vote my way. If I'm right, they'll eventually see the light. Though judging by how long people have been voting Republican, I may have to rethink my position.

Heinlein wrote this book, the last of his "juveniles", at the start of Vietnam. His audience, the boys who had spent the last ten years reading his books in the boy scouts magazine, were facing the draft and he played well to the concerns of that generation. It was a masterful play on marketing, as well as being a good book. The publisher that his contract was with refused the book, allowing him to break free of a mutually unsatisfactory contract, and the book was snapped up in a day to become a bestseller. Growing up across the road from Camp Arthur Currie (Currie Barracks by then, and later Canadian Forces Base Calgary), it was a novel experience to look out my kitchen window and imagine that the soldiers dropping from Hueys were being fired out of the cargo bay of a starship. The movie was best described as "Beverly Hills 90210 Neo-nazis in Outer Space". The book is far more subtle. Because it is so introspective, film can never do it justice.

An astute reader of Heinlein will note that he had no fear of naked girls. Had he built the "Dizzy Flores" character up at all in the novel, the one they used in the movie could very well have been the one he made - except his character would have been a redhead in tribute to his own wife, Virginia.

swift99 wrote: "Heinlein wrote this book, the last of his "juveniles" I'm with you on all but this. This book is not a Heinlein "juvenile" and was not intended to be one. In several places in Heinlein's correspondence and notes in other books he makes this pretty clear. Other than that, agreed.

“Fascist” is such an over-used term that it has lost practically all meaning politically, and is now used only in a polemical sense. That is if you’re against something just call it fascist - doesn’t matter if you’re left or right. Orwell said that over 50 years ago. Not that fasicism was well defined originally either - remember it was Mussolini who came up with the word. The human civilization of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” I think, is better termed a “Spartan” state than a fascist one, which is to say that instead of having a military dictatorship it is ruled by a pseudo-democratic military society where citizenship and other aspects of political participation are determined by your service in uniform. Israel would be the closest thing to a Spartan state in today’s world, along with Rhodesia 30 years ago. I don’t think Heinlein was in favour of such a society, since in the rest of his books he was anti-government in general. He might have supported such a set up though if confronting the faceless hordes of the bugs, which is clearly a metaphor for the communist hordes of the cold war (it helps to remove the personal identities of your foe whether you’re writing fiction or propaganda). Many other of his stories referred directly to that threat, particularly the novel “Sixth Column,” which was about the resistence to a Soviet/Red Chinese conquest of America. That book also takes a jab at religion, which was another of Heinlein’s bogeymen. As to the "Starship Troopers" movie, I thought it was strictly tongue-in-cheek when it came to the politics - like sanman said. Heck, the officers only needed swastika armbands to complete the Gestapo look.

I've said my piece on the politics of Starship Troopers, but for completists out there, may I recommend 'The Rainbow Cadenza' by Schulman? It has a hilarious scene where the graduates of the conscript whore's academy parody the passing of the insignae scene from 'Starship Troopers'.