Ratings238
Average rating3.7
When military sci-fi is mentioned, Starship Troopers inevitably comes up as one of the type examples of this genre. Robert Heinlein's classic of the genre has been debated many times - does it glorify the military too much? I think that debate has been had enough and I am not really the best person to ask around it. More to the point for me is - is this a good book?
The novel follows the story of a member of the Mobile Infantry - the Starship Trooper of the title. It follows his career across the training and various engagements that lead to a climactic battle against the ‘bugs'. In many ways this is a standard war novel - you can see similar stories of training and combat in real world scenarios. The Sci-Fi aspects in some ways are fairly incidental.
Of the Heinlein's I have read, this one had the style that has aged the most gracefully. Whilst some of the themes in say Stranger in a Strange Land have not aged well, the power of the military-industrial complex is still as relevant today as it was back in the 1950s. I quite enjoyed this and as a dive into more classic SciFi this was a pleasant trip