Like many, I know Starship Troopers from the cult classic 1997 movie. Although the movie is campy and satirical fun, the premise and world building is interesting and so I was curious how different the original book would be. While there are similarities in general strokes, the book is a lot less narrative in both story and structure than the movie.
Juan “Johnnie” Rico feels a bit directionless as he approaches high school graduation, yet his friend Carl is enthusiastic about joining the service. Johnnie goes against his parents’ wishes and enlists with Carl, yet after aptitude testing, is placed “low” with the Mobile Infantry. Johnnie admits he is pretty normal to average in academics, and while he is at first surprised that he placed low on many of the military’s aptitude tests, he commits to putting his all into training for the MI.
Many chapters of Starship Troopers read almost as self-contained vignettes on topics such as discussions in Johnnie’s Moral History and Philosophy class, the brutal rigors of basic training, how the MI combat suits operate, a chapter(and a half?) on Johnnie studying Math for his officer training, to a bizarre and seemingly out of place chapter advocating for physically disciplining children. The side characters we know from the movie: Carl, Carmen, & Dizzy (a man in this,) are mentioned a few times each without much back story or build up. To be fair, the movie is a little better about attempting to fully realize each of these four characters, whereas the book only focuses on Johnnie’s POV. And to go further, the movie is actually better at satire and about driving home the whole fascist regime exploiting its people by requiring military service for citizenship thing.
Heinlein focuses more on the technical aspects of this world, as well as the military structures and chains of command (these in depth description are quite dry.) The characters and their stories very much came secondary to those pieces of world building. There are a few nuggets of wisdom along the lines of history repeating itself and war is both brutal and necessary for powerful regimes, but substance falls short in the wake of technical minutia. As such, I felt mostly detached reading Starship Troopers, which was a little disappointing as I was wanting more action and character building scenes as well (Klendathu isn’t even mentioned until half-way through the book.)
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