Starship troopers was written in 1959 so it predates the ban by a bit at least. (I assume there was already research on it being bad in the works then, as ST goes out of its way to decry the social sciences as fake research, but their moral system which is based on math (never explained in the book, which is prob good as it would be highly contradictory, as going to war to save a few POWs is seen as just, no matter the number of lives lost) is correct. It is a really weird book to read in 2020).

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I've actually read Starship Troopers a long time ago and it's probably not too far out of line politically from other "silver age" SF. Heinlein had a weird career...

FWIW from memory Samuel R Delany (Black gay SF author) wrote somewhere that the realization that Johnny Rico was from the Philippines (he speaks Tagalog near the end) was very liberating for him personally as a form of inclusion. And Heinlein could probably truthfully state the only way he was "racist" was he was against the Bugs but for the entire human race.

The movies' lack of any PoC character whatsoever was probably Verhoven's way of playing with the Nazi imagery.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The movie and the book are a lot closer together than you would think btw. Might want to give it a re-read, esp with what you know now about the common (far)-right arguments. Not that the arguments in the book are good mind you, it mostly falls back on 'this is a science trust us' which is quite weak.

The movie also does have black people in it, in fact the strategic savior of the human race was a black woman. Source (the rest of the propaganda clips also has quite a lot of poc in it, even if the principle cast included none.

And that brings me back to the racism in the book, while it doesn't have overt 'I need to shout slurs at nonwhite people' racism, it contains quite a lot of 'other species/animals/countries (it nicely never uses the terms in a racist way, but it speaks about these groups in similar matters, so it is quite obvious that this just leads to racist bs as we have seen a lot in our times) as in conflict and the one breeding faster (!!!) wins the conflict. It seemed clear to me on which side of the debate about for example native americans vs europeans the book would be (I'm from city X and I say ...).

Other fun fact about the book vs movie. You prob know the 'violence solves more problems bla bla bla' 'what would the cityfathers of hiroshima say' lines from the movie, these are also in the book, but there the argument (due to in part being about animals) is worse.

So long story short, I'm happy for Samuel R Delany that there was some liberation for him which is good (also note that the realization about the non-white people should have come a little bit earlier as the girl is called Carmencita Ibanez (I'm very western European btw, so I might be wrong here as I'm not that great about all the subtleties of various racial interplays in the Americas), also she was apparently a bit of a hussy according to Juan "Johnnie" Rico) esp as it was a different time, and science fiction from that era can be dire (before that it gets even worse!) compared to our current morals, but the book itself is still very problematic (it gets weirder if you interpret the book as being told by an unreliable, slightly dumb nepobaby, which imho the book supports).

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

yes, it was deliberate choice (along with using nazi-borrowed uniforms and tons of visual quotes from fucking leni riefenstahl.)

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 6 months ago

And for many people, the references whooshed over their heads in low earth orbit.