[EatingPie]

Eternal thanks to bill_mchale, Xenophon (nice tux!) and Elfwreck (nice... er... hat!) for adding summations of Starship Troopers. You saved me from having to read that piece of crap again!!!

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

With all due respect to you and your class, I think they got it utterly wrong.

I met Heinlein. I know people who knew him reasonably well. He was certainly unhappy about being invalided out of the Navy and unable to serve actively in WWII, but ST is not a product of his frustration.

Hey, I'm flexible. So then product of "unhappy about being invalided out of the Navy." Works just as well.

BTW, that's pretty cool you got to meet him. Hope you got a book signed! Be worth a frickin' mint today!

You are confusing structure with theme, and do not recognize the type of book he was writing.

I say again, _Starship Troopers_ is a coming of age story.....

Stories, not story. I stand by my assertion. And I don't see anything in your explanation (cut for brevity but up there ^ ) that contradicts what I said. I even admitted it functions as a coming of age story. That's just not the be-all, end-all of the book.

The structure is important because the didactic elements (I refuse to say "theme" because it's heavier hande) appear interspersed between the stories.

Reread the book.

I once again would like to thank Xenophon et. al.!

Heinlein isn't pushing military theory (and the theory would be of dubious value if he were, because the concepts rely on technology unavailable when the book was written.)

Heinlein was pushing responsibility and the notion of citizenship. He's discussing what is required to be a member of a functioning society, and that the converse of rights is responsibilities. If you do not accept and discharge responsibilities, you will be unlikely to get or retain rights, because rights require a functioning society to grant them.

Technology is irrelevant because I'm not speaking of "how you use weapons" when I speak of "military theory." I am speaking of how things are structured, the social and political structuring as it were, and some of the strategies employed. That is what the sergeant spends a lot of time teaching in the classroom.

Also, what you are including here would be a part of what I'm calling "military theory." The emphasis in the book was on the military, how the military should be structured, and how society should be structured when considering the necessity of a military. It's "social theory" at the end of the day, but I am using the term "military theory" to key in on what I saw as Heinlein's emphasis. How the military should be structured, and how society should be built around that.

Johnny Rico grows up in the MI. He learns to be responsible, first for himself as a Trained Private, then for his mates as an NCO, and finally in part for the human race as a commissioned officer. It's a story of moral development, and Rico's growth and change can be charted by the different answers he gives to "Why we fight" at different parts of the book.

Essentially, Rico is a character in literature. He is presented with a challenge, and must either grow and change to meet the challenge or fail and possibly die. In his case, the challenge is a threat to the existence of his society and his species by an antithetical alien society, but the story is fundamentally about growth and change.

All good and fine. That all occurs in the short story portion, not in the classroom portion, which is the (IMHO) thinly disguised teaching-the-reader-how-things-should-be section. As I have argued previously.

If you think what he was teaching was military theory, you probably shouldn't attempt to read Heinlein, because you've completed missed his points. He's saying stuff that was sometimes covered in high school social studies classes. (Hopefully it still is, but I'm cynical about current education.)

It sounds very much like you have a monopoly on "what Heinlein means" here. I completely missed his points? Even the times when I have agreed with you? As I clarified above, it is military-social thought. And I felt that the classroom settings really obviated Heinlein's intent.

Let me provide a citation...

<http://www.amiannoying.com/(S(uzrrkh45qjz1cqntc1hbquau))/view.aspx?id=11266&collection=286>

His novel, 'Starship Troopers,' was criticized because its strong militarist content oriented to young readers, earning him the reputation of being a fascist....
Starship Troopers' inspired a popular game in 1976, based upon his own knowledge in military strategy, and today is considered a cult piece of collection in memorabilia items.

Yes, it's a YA "coming of age story." But it's also heavy on the "military theory." Both things. Not just one or the other. Note that I never intended to argue that it was exclusively "military-social theories" just that it was primarily a vehicle to teach said theories.

Essentially, whenever people live together in groups, there must be agreement on what constitutes acceptable behavior, and what the ground rules of the society will be. There have been a wide variety of approaches to societies throughout human history, and ST touches on an assortment. But as ST makes clear, the one that exists in the world it portrays arose after the collapse of a previous one in the stress of a major war. It's hardly the only kind possible, nor is it necessarily the "best". But it passes the utterly pragmatic test: it works, and continues to function and provide a society most folks find acceptable.

Now, here, you sound very much like you are agreeing with me!

Nope. That chain of logic is not strong enough to support that conclusion.

Yes, Hubbard published the first material on Dianetics in the pages of John W. Campbell's Astounding.... [Cut again for brevity.]

I'm not sure how you're disproving that Dianetics influenced some of the philosophies in Starship Troopers. Well, actually, you didn't.

My point in citing Campbell was to give evidence that Heinlein was aware of Dianetcs. And that this certainly lends credence to the notion that it made its way into Starship Troopers.

Kind of like...

But I don't think you'll find much of Dianetics underlying the philosophy in ST. Dianetics is largely a straight rip of Freud, though Scientology is firmly against orthodox psychiatry and considers Freud an abomination. I suspect Hubbard was mostly filing off the serial numbers and preventing people from discovering where he got the ideas. But Freud had published _The Interpretation of Dreams_ in German in 1899, and it had been translated to English by 1911. It seems quite likely Hubbard was aware of Freud's work.

Yep! The "awareness" argument! Same one I gave about Heinlein/Dianetics!

I'm trying really, really, really hard not to pull out ST and re-read some stuff. I so hated the book. So, instead, I will cite a site.

<http://www.amiannoying.com/(S(uzrrkh45qjz1cqntc1hbquau))/view.aspx?id=11266&collection=286>

He[inlein] was friends with writer L. Ron Hubbard and applied his theory of dianetics in several works.

Not conclusive, since ST isn't listed explicitly. But it certinaly lends merit to what I've been saying... and keeps me from reading that thrice-damned book again!

-Pie