It's such a shame the Starship Troopers movie came out when it did, because I saw that and dismissed the book for way too long. Finally, I picked up a copy around ten years ago and damn if the book isn't a whole different animal.
In other words, this isn't my first reading.
Having also read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, I think it's interesting to contrast the philosophies of both of these books. Both are highly individualistic but the similarities end there. This suggests that neither book was written as a polemic by Heinlein but rather as an exercise in imagination, and so on.
Starship Troopers is the story of Juan Rico's adventures in the Mobile Infantry, from his enlistment to his inception as a full officer in charge of his own platoon. It covers several years, and the instigation of a major war which starts after the first third of the book or so.
It's a solidly-written piece of work. The style is clear and conversational, from Johnny's first person perspective. Descriptions are solid and little asides help provide color and fit into the very interestingly built world.
In contrast with Mistress, this book has very little dialect. It's an easy-flowing read that has an excellent pace, never boring and never overwhelming, though the tension does rise quite high at some points.
The character development is excellent. Not just Rico, but the characters around him. We frequently get hard-nosed public-facing initial glimpses of characters, only to find their private thoughts are much more nuanced and interesting.
This book emphasizes the military aspect of military sci-fi. In fact, there is probably more futurism in Heinlein's depiction of history and society than technology. For the former, he comes up with a whole vision of the future collapse of civilization and how discipline, responsibility, and social virtue picked up the pieces. For the latter, we get a fairly vague FTL tech called the Cherenkov drive, advanced medicine but nothing that we would mistake for magic today, the armored suits of the M.I. themselves, and a peculiar emphasis on the use of hypnosis, which just feels outdated today.
There is some action at the beginning and some at the end, with a bit here and there to keep things interesting, but the story is really more about Johnny's growth and training. It's surprisingly literary in that sense.
As always, spoiler section is in the embedded video if you're interested.
If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. Grab a copy here.
Also: This video was long enough that I didn't want to record an addendum, but there's a part in the book where Heinlein refers to a real naval battle and the unfortunate third lieutenant who was court-martialed for leaving his post--not realizing he was at the top of the chain of command!
That officer was William Sitgreaves Cox and you can read about him here:
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