Robert A Heinlein

There's an epilogue where a minor angel gets to meet "Archangel Michael", newly freed from a stint as a mortal. The conclusion is rather obvious.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

huh. I forgot that bit too.

interesting. Guess it really is time for a heinlein reread :)

Doodles

I love Job. It gave me an appreciation for women without a sense of humor.

x 4 Heinlein was always deliberately vague about his religious beliefs. A letter of his to his wife reprinted in Grumbles From the Grave makes it sound as if even he wasn't sure what they were. He admits the appeal of agnosticism in the "there's a divine power but it's nature is undefinable" way actually dismisses atheism and sounds vaguely fond of pantheism

Trump delenda est

And of course Lazarus Long is aggressively agnostic, in the sense that he believes that human beings made all that stuff up for their own power and self-aggrandizement and the Real Truth is unknowable.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Interesting that in the later books like Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Lazarus is portrayed as a complete asshole.

Trump delenda est

While still being Better Than You™. Just a dick about it.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I imagine after the first few centuries, "been there, done that" does tend to contribute to assholishness.

Mind you, I seem to recall he wasn't exactly the most pleasant person back in Methuselah's Children, either.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Indeed. Lazarus was an unrepentant dick way back from the start.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Let's face it, Heinlein made more lampshades than Tiffany.

edited 21st Sep '16 5:54:20 PM by StrikingViking

What did Starship Troopers really mean? I've only ever seen the movie but I can get access to the book. It might be worth a read after my Star Wars binge.

Contuing the discussion brought up in US Politics, the common defense of the military service for citizenship requirement is the idea that non-military positions are also available.

However, isn't there some mention of non-military positions in-universe deliberately being as unpleasant as possible. So like the idea being that rather than a "cushy" position as an alternate to military service, you're looking at more like picking up nuclear waste.

Very broad question. Heinlein loved writing works with social and political commentary, even if they did not strictly agree with his own opinions, which themselves evolved over time. Throughout his career, one of the standout themes (aside from incest and nudity) in his writing is Libertarianism, particularly the type involving the social contract. He strongly believed that a person deserves only as much from society as he or she is willing to contribute to it.

Starship Troopers, for its part, has several themes. One is an endless war against a seemingly implacable enemy that's basically mobilized a good chunk of humanity (and was, supposedly, an allegory for Communism). Another is the idea of personal responsibility. The system of government in the novel is based around the principle that, in order to exercise your franchise, you have to have enlisted in the Federal service. Voting and the holding of public office are privileges allotted to people who have in some way contributed to society. You get freedom of speech, assembly, and so on, regardless of whether you've done public service.

Worth noting is that military service is only one path to earning the franchise. There are plenty of other ways — you could be a street sweeper or dog catcher, but as noted above () there's a common theme of the jobs being unpleasant and thankless. As the story is primarily focused on the war, of course the protagonist chooses to enlist in the Mobile Infantry, but a point is made that he could have chosen other jobs.

According to the Wikipedia article, Heinlein was attempting a very broadly focused Author Tract. He was an ardent proponent of nuclear testing, believing that a strong nuclear deterrent force was the only way to prevent a total, devastating defeat at the hands of the Soviets and Chinese. He also wanted to address what he saw as the decline of U.S. culture as people began expecting the country to do things for them without doing anything in return. In the backstory of Starship Troopers, the current system of government evolved as a result of social collapse following a losing war with China.

edited 30th Mar '17 2:06:47 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

As far as running for office, I think that should be the standard. Somebody who has risked life and limb and Been There for the sake of others. That should be the only sort of person to run for an actual office. To vote . . . ? Yeah, no, let's not limit who can vote outside of making it be citizens only. Living, breathing, actual citizens. Let's not extend the whole "Corporation as a person" idea to votes, because that would be beyond criminal.

I've read blurbs and trope pages about the novel, but other than the bare facts of "an intelligent race of bugs attacked Earth with asteroids and we went after them" I don't know the thematic meaning of the story.

ETA: Thank you for the clarification on some of it. Like the supposed Soviet angle.

edited 30th Mar '17 2:04:48 PM by Journeyman

You really should read the book rather than go off the movie. They're as different as night and day, and the movie strips out or skimps over a lot of the nuance and social commentary and changes a lot of things. Like the fact that Johnny Rico is actually Juan Rico, a Filipino, or that the bugs are not some bestial swarm but an actual civilization and society comparable in development to humans.

But I would agree that in order to run for any sort of public office, one should have a record of public service first. At the very least to weed out some of the opportunists and business moguls trying to manipulate the government for their own ends.

edited 30th Mar '17 2:10:55 PM by danime91

@Fighteer- Thanks for the response and clarification.

Not quite sure how to express this, but something still seems "off" about that set-up, even if the non-military jobs aren't physically dangerous. Because like on one hand, you have military service, which as onerous as it is, even if you aren't fighting genocidal Bugs, has a prestige. And then on the other hand, the non-military jobs are as you say deliberately thankless and unpleasant. Seems like in-universe it would be a way of "marking"/shaming people who didn't choose military service. And presumably hints at Heinlein's contempt for peaceniks out of universe.

Also, this line from The Other Wiki is a bit disturbing, "The Federation is required to find a place for anyone who desires to serve, regardless of skill or aptitude (this also includes service ranging from teaching to dangerous non-military work such as serving as experimental medical test subjects to military service." (emphasis added).

So yeah, it's nice that teaching is an option (although it doesn't sound like choice is involved), but someone who creates a setting where being subject to medical experimentation is an alternative to military service probably doesn't much like anyone who hasn't chosen the military if physically able.

Edit- I also recall some Author Tract in the book in terms of both supporting corporal punishment in schools as well as as a penal punishment. As you allude to, although it's more complex than the stereotype, I don't think the the book can't really be handwaved as just pro-public service. The world it imagines seems decidedly reactionary. Not Fascist, which I think is unfair, but it's the kind of world you'd imagine being created by a rock-ribbed conservative who hates "hippies".

edited 30th Mar '17 2:25:38 PM by Hodor2

He WAS a military man, though I don't think a combatant one. So it makes sense he might not like the civilians. From what I've heard, outside of the groups that get in the news for bad things like rapes, stuff is a lot more compartmentalized and tidy in the military. There isn't any of this sloppy bossing code stuff like "Being a team player" meaning "ignore your job description because we expect you to do everything, even if it's actually above your pay grade."

While I don't think we should go so far as having a Citizen corps restricted to military access, I can understand why a military background might actually make one more qualified to run things than a civilian one might. People like John Mc Cain notwithstanding.

One of the things stressed about Starship Troopers' Mobile Infantry was that "everyone fights, from the chaplain to the cooks". So yeah, definitely a slant of pro-military. And really, the whole "voting is only for citizens is only for people who served" thing is not all that far removed from how males in the US have to register with the Selective Service if they want to register to vote. Sure, the draft hasn't been active for decades, but the list is still there.

I don't think Heinlein "hated hippies", but one must recall that he was writing Starship Troopers for a very specific audience: that being the U.S. military, whom he was trying to convince to prepare for what at the time seemed like a very real chance of World War III.

However, he very consistently expressed disdain throughout his writing career for people who expected society to do things for them without being willing to contribute to said society. He saw two options in that regard: get off your ass and contribute, or put your money where your mouth is and go start your own society where you can make your own rules.

That's not necessarily a big-C "Conservative" viewpoint, but is definitely a Libertarian one. And Heinlein was most definitely socially liberal in the sense that he considered matters of personal consent to be none of anyone else's business.

edited 30th Mar '17 4:04:24 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

My interpretation was just that it was less glamorous than a military posting, akin to being a "desk jockey" in the police department, or being a stooge in the command center. After all, A Real Man Is a Killer, and failing to meet the standard for that would be a slap to the ego for someone like Rico.

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"

They explicitly and deliberately were dangerous. The whole point of Federal Service is that it proves you are willing to risk your life for the good of the country. That is the one and only requirement of Federal Service. It's not that you earn the right to vote by providing a benefit to the country — if that was the case, then you could do it by being a brilliant scientist, or just by being rich as hell and donating a ton of money to the government. No, the point of Federal Service is to prove that you deserve the right to vote by proving that you're willing to put what's good for the country before what's good for you, personally.

That doesn't mean that it's some sort of mass Russian Roulette where they're trying to get people killed, either. They still take all possible precautions — no one wants to deliberately kill people during their service. But outside of the military, other examples of service include things like field-testing space suits. They make things as safe as possible — but there is some risk.

Of course, at another point in the book, he makes a point of the fact that this system isn't perfect, and certainly isn't the only workable system, it's just the one they ended up with — largely as accident of history. (The government collapsed not long after a major war. Just-returned veterans stepped up in an unofficial capacity to prevent anarchy on the streets. They were able to work together because being veterans gave them a reason to trust each other, so they only let other veterans join them in restoring order. Eventually it grew from purely local efforts to rebuilding the government, and they kept the "just veterans" rule intact.)

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Also, something I kinda found woven into the book's narrative was that the system was designed to weed out people who might not share the values of the existing government of service. There was an example of someone who was in the MI for the franchise, who came in saying that he was going to be a politician and do big things, and he got tossed out (and nearly hung) for striking his training sergeant. The mandatory-to-take-not-mandatory-to-pass Ethics class reinforced that.

This isn't libertarian so much as conservative, by itself. However, plenty of Libertarians I knew (back when I was one of them) displayed a fair amount of that sort of attitude - that only those who were loyal to libertarian principles should be allowed any say in the government. (The reasoning was more blatantly self-serving than with Heinlein, however.)

The idea seems to be that Federal Service is explicitly designed to weed out people who go into it for self-aggrandizing reasons. One must have a true calling to serve one's country in order to make it through the program.

Now, objectively, we can think of plenty of ways in which such a system could be gamed from within and eventually succumb to corruption, jingoism, and similar problems. But that wasn't the angle Heinlein was writing towards.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Starship Troopers also includes corporal punishment for common offenses. Class members mention being spanked or beaten (with a belt) by their parents as completely normal discipline, and Johnny himself receives a public whipping for not following proper regulations in a training exercise. One trainee who deserts and murders a little girl is hung by the MI, and their training battalion goes into mourning over it, even though the trainee was only theirs for a few days.

The ethics teacher defends this use of violence in discipline during class, and Johnny has an internal debate over whether the death penalty is appropriate in the case of the murdering trainee. His conclusion is "yes".

To be fair, desertion alone is a hanging offense even in our modern military. Add in murder of a child? Yeah, the conclusion is obvious.