Starship Troopers
A review of not the movie
Dear M,
Starship Troopers is such a rich and solid book that now I use it as a litmus test. A man can have any number of objections to Heartburn, or Anna Karenina — hell, even to the Bible. But if he picks up Starship Troopers and says it’s “okay” I wonder if something is deeply wrong with him as a man. And if he tells me the book is "fascist” I have a hard time believing he bears the image of God.
The reason this sounds bombastic is because almost everybody my age saw the movie first, and it was written and directed by a couple of weenies. Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier were such a couple of soyboys, in fact, that they turned the fiercely masculine, anti-communist, duty-and-honor space epic into a campy, silly parody of itself. And why? Because they didn’t like Heinlein’s vibe, and they really wanted to piss off the fanboys.
So they hired Doogie Howser to play military intelligence. They dressed him in an SS uniform to highlight “the dangers of fascism” — a tactical mistake, since he was the best-dressed guy in the entire movie. They had people do backflips while playing high-school football. They had men and women showering together and serving side-by-side in the infantry. And probably worst of all, they had the space marines, 300 years into the future, leading janky, directionless charges that look like they came from 300 years in the past.
The mechanized armor? Totally left out. Corny propaganda reels? He added them in. The bug wars that were almost a footnote in the novel were the main feature of the movie, and every conversation of real depth and insight was totally nixed. I admit Starship Troopers is a fun movie. But that’s primarily because it's stupid.
In the novel the best parts are Johnny Rico's flashbacks and boot camp. There you’ll find conversations about what makes the young act out, why the West is falling apart, who should get to vote and why, and why communism doesn’t work. There are short treatises on what a soldier is and what makes a good one, why self-discipline is an essential virtue, and why struggle is the only thing makes life valuable. If that last part left you scratching your head, definitely pick up this book.
Starship Troopers is brimming with a militaristic and almost Roman virtue. It was written by a man's man who loved being in the Navy, served honorably, and always looked back on it with fondness. He held no illusions about what makes society run well and where Western Civilization was heading, and he put these things in a space story about men fighting bugs because writing it that way was fun.
The prose is solid and straight-forward even seventy years later. The book itself is short and sweet, and the narration by R.C. Bray on Audible is perfect. The Marines put it on their list of recommended reading up until the reign of Barack Obama, when it was deliberately cut. (If this doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the book, go pick up the autobiography of Chandler Bing instead).
And that's why I use Heinlein as a litmus test. With other great books you catch a whiff of charm, and wit, and wisdom. With this one there’s a strong musk of testosterone and honor — and like so many other virtues, you can only smell it if you have it.
Yours,
-J
May 11th, 2026