Heinlein's Military Background and Political Views
Heinlein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, and served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for five years. He served on the then new aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1931, and as a naval lieutenant aboard the destroyer USS Roper between 1933 and 1934, until he was forced to leave the Navy because of pulmonary tuberculosis. Heinlein never served in active combat while a Navy officer and he was a civilian during World War II doing research and development at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Heinlein's non-combat Naval service would become a point of contention in later criticism of Starship Troopers.
According to Heinlein, his desire to write Starship Troopers was sparked by the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958 calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. In response, Robert and Virginia Heinlein created the small "Patrick Henry League" in an attempt to create support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. During the unsuccessful campaign, Heinlein found himself under attack both from within and outside the science fiction community for his views. The novel may, perhaps, be viewed as Heinlein clarifying and defending his military and political views of the time.
Read more about this topic: Starship Troopers
Famous quotes containing the words military, background, political and/or views:
“The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The average Kentuckian may appear a bit confused in his knowledge of history, but he is firmly certain about current politics. Kentucky cannot claim first place in political importance, but it tops the list in its keen enjoyment of politics for its own sake. It takes the average Kentuckian only a matter of moments to dispose of the weather and personal helath, but he never tires of a political discussion.”
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)