Back in high school, I probably saw was too many movies, and I do remember going to see Starship Troopers, and aside from the gratuitous nudity thrown in there, I remember enjoying it. Then I talked with Jeff years later about that movie and he hated it because he had read the book, and it was a horrible betrayal of the book. Fast forward a few years and my son decided for his pick to read Starship Troopers for his summer book and a movie. This means I don’t have the usual Starship Troopers book club, but I did have a happy boy who got to watch lots of bugs exploding.
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Starship Troopers book
Warning, this is my understanding of the Starship Troopers book, because I still haven’t read it. Superman loves military sci-fi, so he jumped at the chance to read it.
Johnny Rico signed up to fight bugs, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Will he survive training, and more importantly will Johnny survive fighting the bugs?
Robert Heinlein is known for his political/military sci-fi, and this is one of his better-known books, which is why it was prime material for adaptation. The book has a nuanced discussion of war and the politics involved in that.
Unfortunately, the director of the movie had a movie and a message he wanted to make that was completely divorced from the book, but that makes for a great opportunity for a discussion.
Starship Troopers book club
Since Superman read Starship Troopers as an independent read, I primarily asked him what he thought about it, and then left it at that.
Oddly, there are not a lot of Starship Troopers book club discussion questions to easily find, but here’s what I found:
- Starship Troopers reddit thread
- Bare bones Starship Troopers discussion list
- General book thoughts
- Starship Troopers snacks
Starship Troopers snacks
As a surprise for Jeff one year I took him to go see the Rifftrax Live of Starship Troopers, and I tried my very best to see if they had a version of that you could rent, because they conveniently had an ape delivering balloons show up during the first nude scene, and I forget what they did for the second nude scene, but sadly I was not able to get that version, so we used the traditional version with the audio Rifftrax to listen go along.
- Big Worms- gummy worms, there are so many gummies here
- Third or Fouth War- newspapers and the big debate on which war it was, graham crackers with marshmallow fluff and melted chocolate chips
- bugs- gummy bugs
- Disease- there was a big problem with disease, so we chose Big Red, because the Superman felt that represented it well
- Rations- basically meat pies
- Drop Ship- round cookies I bought somewhere, because Superman said the drop ships were circular
- Laser guns- I was super lazy and just grabbed a handful of pretzel sticks
- Troopers- my kids current favorite Sour Patch Kids
- Bugger Eggs- whoppers
More book and a movie to read and watch
- Pride and Prejudice book club
- 10th Grade books made into movies
- Time Machine book club
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream book club
- Ready Player One book club
I read a lot of Heinlein when I was younger. I am thinking of him not as a military sci-fi writer but rather as one with unconventional ideas about marriage (several books depicted unions where multiple partners share each other freely). I haven’t read Starship Troopers but I can assume that there are some of sexual themes there as well, hence the nude scenes in the movie. Luckily, Superman is old enough to deal with that 🙂
You’ve put me in a mind to read it again. I’ve never seen the movie, but from what I’ve heard it must be very different. There’s very little actual violence in the book at all – which is interesting for a book about a military society!
The director of the movie/scriptwriter had a story they wanted to tell, and really didn’t care one whit what the actual story of the movie is.