Remember your training, and you will make it out alive!
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Heinlein said that, later, but it’s not supported by the text of the book
So, in the Starship Troopers universe, any citizen may request a term in Federal Service and be granted that request without anyone’s let or hindrance. Completion of the term is the only way to gain the right to vote.
So, just what is “Federal Service”? There are two commonly given answers, only one of which can be correct:
- Federal Service is roughly equivalent to present-day military service (Army, Navy, Marine), including military support services such as research and development, logistics, labor battalions and intelligence.
- Federal Service is equivalent to general government service, including military service and what we would call “civil service,” the latter being responsible for ninety-five percent of all Federal Service positions.
There has been an extraordinary amount of argument over which answer is correct. There is evidence to support both views, although it is unequally distributed. The evidence for answer one is strong and plentiful. The evidence for answer two is sparse, weak and subjective, although points can be made in its favor. Given the imbalance, it would seem that the argument would have been settled long ago. This would be true were it not for a very strong comment by Robert Heinlein himself, insisting that the latter answer is correct.
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For what it’s worth, I wrote a rather in-depth review of the book here. I don’t see it as fascist, and I think a lot of people misunderstand the actual relationship between the (relatively small) military and the rest of the society.
The text seems to support 1 and something in between 1 and 2.
"He paused, then added, “So why don’t you boys go home, go to college, and then go be chemists or insurance brokers or whatever? A term of service isn’t a kiddie camp; it’s either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime… or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof. Not a vacation. Not a romantic adventure.”
“And you have forgotten that in peacetime most veterans come from non-combatant auxiliary services and have not been subjected to the full rigors of military discipline; they have merely been harried, overworked, and endangered—yet their votes count.”
So maybe it’s debatable if I should have said “non-military” (though a distinction is made for “real military service”) vs “non-combat.” But it still holds that a veteran was anyone who did a stint in federal service, not necessarily real military (i.e. combat ready) service.
As an aside: “harried, overworked, and endangered” … that would that include teachers, right? Just kidding.
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The sequels are just monstrously, tragically bad. I don’t think one can be any more disappointed in a sequel. Everything goes “right” and is novel in the original; everything goes wrong and is hackneyed in the sequels. Some of the casting in the ST:3 is just laughably atrocious: like the woman with almost indecipherable French accent (Cécile Breccia as Link). Weird thing about ST:3 was: the screenplay was by Edward Neumeier, the writer of the original ST, plus it had certain elements of the original Heinlein novel-- and it still bombed. (Perhaps because Neumeier himself was also the director?)
Yeah, guys, the director who made … is a secret Nazi sympathiser.
I wonder if, even with this crowd, you’ll still need a /s to make it unambiguous.
Be sure. Be very sure.
Please, don’t.
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I recommend Starship Troopers 3: Marauder. Special effects are lesser quality, but the satire has come back, this time aimed at fundamentalists. Hey, bugs got religion, too!
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Love Extra Credits.
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I’ve read the biographies of RAH and I’ve always taken The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as closest as to his political ideals: that, yes, there is a role for government to structure, preserve, and protect a basic system, but within that system one should leave as much room for as many personal choices as possible. But RAH was not a blinders-wearing idealist. He didn’t think his view of the way the world ought to be was a particularly stable one. In fact, the very first page of TMisHM is the Loonies, having earned their freedom in a war that cost them a fair fraction fo their population, already voting it away. He knew what ought to be, and what is, are two very different things. And it was in acknowledging and trying to understand the conflict there that’s much of his genius.
I don’t think he had the slightest belief that his ideal view of what a Starship Troopers-style government would last very long, but that doesn’t mean he supported its eventual (and likely inevitable) end-state.
Also, I’m from Buenos Aries and I say, “Kill 'em All!”
IIRC, a popular Jim Crow law was a literacy test, when black people got no schooling at all.
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a set of 30 trick questions.
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Calling the electoral poll tests “literacy tests” is quite euphemistic when you see one of these “tests.” They were simply, most of them, brainteasers that often had no correct answers. The time limit was always ridiculously short. And “passing” almost always required a 100% score-- impossible, since many of the answers had more than one right answer. Obviously, white people, of any literacy level, never had to take the test.
[Page 1 of 3, and this is a 10-minute test that requires 100% passing grade.]
With very first question:
1. Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence.
I’m willing to bet that either drawing a line around (1) or (D) was “correct.” Which means if you select (1) or (D) you lose, because when you do, (D) and (1), respectively, will be the expected “answer.” And, in any case, if you had drawn a line under it or cross it out (instead of “drawing a line around it”), you’d be penalized for that.
Obviously, one of the goals of the test wasn’t just to exclude, but to humiliate and degrade the test taker, to “put them in their place” as second-class citizens. In the same manner that segregated facilities (of lesser quality, size, and cleanliness) were so designed.
It is truly amazing that they existed as they did up until the Voters Rights Act of 1965 and who knows how long this might have continued to exist? Since the VRA only passed because JFK was assassinated and the South was shamed by LBJ into letting it pass. If JFK had lived, civil rights mightve been stifled into the '70s. What a heritage.
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have you heard of Blood of the Tribades?
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The author Jerry Pournelle was infamous for his fascist views.
Here he offers his insights.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/debates/history.html
Rather than abolish the various institutions of the classes, Fascism seeks their cooperation: each will be represented in the Grand Council of the State. Army and Church and Unions and managers and great land owners and small holders and peasants and day laborers will all have their views represented in a Council that presents recommendations to The Leader, who will choose the proper advice and act for the good of all; and if he does not, he can be replaced by that Council (as in fact Mussolini was: he was deposed by his own Council, and the King sent a Colonel of Carabinieri to inform him that he was no longer Il Duce, but a private citizen, and Italy would surrender to the Allies.)
Fascism, in other words, is a form of “socialism” that seeks to end class warfare by requiring the classes to work together, the rich to help the poor (preferably voluntarily) while all are bound by loyalty to the State, which needs to earn that loyalty by providing glory and honor and grand buildings and great institutions, great celebrations and victories in war.
Fascism, in theory, is a critique of liberalism that doesn’t shy at inverting liberalism’s core value-- that the legitimate State stems from individual rights, and the desire to preserve individual rights in the face of would be tyrants,
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I always assumed that part of the shifting politics throughout Heinlein’s books, was that he was using his writing as a way to ‘role play’, or work through various ideas he had about politics and government. Not that he necessarily subscribed to those beliefs for longer than it took to write a book.
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oh, wow. I have not seen those before.
No, it’s more generally authoritarian.
Yeah, this. Unlike most big-name SF authors – Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula LeGuin, Isaac Asimov etc. – whose politics and beliefs remained more or less the same throughout their careers, Heinlein went all over the place. Like you say, he started off as believing in Social Credit, shifted to a more conservative direction, took a sharp swerve towards right around the time he married Ginny, then spent the rest of his career getting more and more libertarian in increasingly weird ways.
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did anyone else spend far too much time on the early web trying to find a clean “would you like to know more?” sound clip to use for the windows error sound? or was that just me?
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