"Federal Service" in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers
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The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers James Gifford Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers has been called one of the most controversial science fiction works ever written. Few who are familiar with science fiction as a whole would dis- agree. Although it contains no sex and no bad language, this relatively short novel contains the detailed exposition of several ideas that have proven almost explosively controversial, within the realm of science fiction and without. Central to the controversy is the book’s notion that a voting franchise must be earned by a would-be citizen. A franchise is not given to anyone, for any reason, until they have served a term (defined in the book as two years) in Federal Service. The book makes clear that the great majority of citizens do not bother with a term or a franchise; indeed, the protagonist’s father is a wealthy and successful businessman who is proud of his family’s hundred-year record of non-service. The govern- ment makes no attempt to recruit or entice volunteers; in fact, they work at dissuading would-be inductees by emphasizing the hard and brutal nature of service and the fact that those who enlist have no choice of service—they put themselves entirely at the government’s mercy for the duration of their term. The minimum age of enlistment is eighteen, male or female, and there appears to be no upper limit. The protagonist’s father, past forty, enlists later in the book. No one may interfere with a deci- sion to enlist. In the words of the protagonist, Juan Rico, early in the book, after his best friend Carl has announced his intention to enlist: So I told [Carl] I was joining up, too. He gave me an odd look. “Your old man won’t let you.” “Huh? How can he stop me? And of course he couldn’t, not legally. It’s the first completely free choice anybody gets (and maybe his last); when a boy, or a girl, reaches his or her eigh- teenth birthday, her or she can volunteer and nobody else has any say in the matter. [Ch. II, p.21] Furthermore, it is made clear that no citizen who wants to enlist can be turned down for any rea- son, except for lacking the mental competence to understand the decision. The doctor giving Juan his induction physical examination makes this plain: I asked one of the doctors what percentage of the victims flunked the physical. He looked startled. “Why, we never fail anyone. The law doesn’t permit us to.” “Huh? I mean, excuse me, Doctor? Then what’s the point of this goose-flesh parade?” “Why, the purpose is […] to find out what duties you are physically able to perform. […] The only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrists decide that you are not able to under- stand the oath.” [Ch. II, p.29] ©1996 by James D. Gifford. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated in any form, paper or electronic, without express written per- mission of the author, except as otherwise provided in this notice. This work may be reproduced in its entirety for personal or academic use without explicit permission or payment of royalty as long as the work is not duplicated in any modified form. Permission for quotation of portions of this work exceeding ‘fair use’ limits is also granted provided each such quotation or group of quotations is accompanied by a full citation of the work’s title and author information. Quoted material in this work taken from Starship Troopers (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959) and Expanded Universe (New York: Ace Books, 1980), both by Robert A. Heinlein. Use of this material is believed to be within the copyright ‘fair use’ doctrine. I am deeply indebted to David Dyer-Bennett ([email protected]) for his inspiration and basic research into this work’s topic. I am also grateful to the many correspondents who, in a variety of electronic forums, helped create and shape the opinions expressed in this work. The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers 2 The simple notion that a vote must be earned, or paid for, instead of being freely granted to every person who reaches a certain age—or owns a certain amount of land or property, or is of a certain gender or race—is in and of itself capable of causing violent controversy. In a later essay published in the 1980 collection Expanded Universe, Heinlein explores a range of options for limiting the vote to citizens willing to accept the responsibility for their actions along with the simple right. However, it is not my intent to explore the ramifications of whether it would be good to limit the franchise in any of the ways Heinlein suggests. We have here a novel whose central notion is that the franchise is limited, and that franchisees must be discharged veterans of Federal Service. The term “veteran” is used throughout the book to designate a citizen who has completed his or her term of service and earned a franchise. As for “discharged,” it is made clear that serving members of Federal Service do not have the vote: Why, I had gone through all this to get my franchise, hadn’t I?—and if I went career, I was just as far away from the privilege of voting as if I had never enrolled…because as long as you were still in uniform, you weren’t entitled to vote. [Ch. XI, p.129] 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: 1. 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. 2. 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 Ser- vice positions. There has been an extraordinary amount of argument over which answer is correct. There is evi- dence 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. Heinlein’s Commentary The 1980 collection Expanded Universe contains several dozen shorter works by Heinlein, many never before published or never reprinted after their initial magazine appearances. In between this valuable material is even more valuable commentary by Heinlein on the works, his writing career and his own life. One of the previously unreprinted pieces is a newspaper ad for the ”Patrick Henry League,” cre- ated by Heinlein and his wife to drum up support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. In 1958, Pres- ident Eisenhower was considering a unilateral cessation of nuclear weapon testing, based on a Soviet promise to make it joint. The Heinleins were adamantly opposed, given the Soviet Union’s poor record of promise-keeping, and the Patrick Henry League was the result. Eisenhower suspended nuclear testing. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union ignored its promise and resumed testing with some of the largest and “dirtiest” weapons ever detonated. Heinlein was infuriated. He stopped work on the novel that would become Stranger in a Strange Land and wrote Starship Troopers in a white-hot fury. Like most of his novels, it was completed in a few weeks. Although written as a juvenile novel for Scribner’s, following his other immensely suc- cessful novels in that series, it was rejected and was eventually published as an adult novel by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers 3 In the interstitial material following the Patrick Henry ad in Expanded Universe, Heinlein com- plains in detail about the critics’ response to Starship Troopers over the years. One by one, he demol- ishes their arguments in crisp, angry prose. At first, however, he makes the following curious statement: “Veteran” does not mean in English dictionaries or in this novel solely a person who has served in military forces. I concede that in commonest usage today it means a war vet- eran…but no one hesitates to speak of a veteran fireman or a veteran school teacher. In STAR- SHIP TROOPERS it is stated flatly and more than once that nineteen out of twenty veterans are not military veterans. Instead, 95% of voters are what we call today “former members of federal civil service.” [ellipses and emphasis in the original] There is certainly nothing ambiguous about that, and an author is certainly the last word on his or her work. (At least, so I believe; those with deconstructionist leanings are free to visit the egress at this point.) And yet… Heinlein is wrong on this point. Flatly so. This commentary is often cited by those who believe in answer number two; it is often the source of their belief in the correctness of that answer.