Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was written in a few weeks in reaction to the United States suspending nuclear tests, first published as a two-part serial titled Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on 5 November 1959.

The story is set in a future society ruled by an interstellar government called the Terran Federation and dominated by a military elite. Under the Federation, only veterans of a primarily military federal service enjoy full citizenship, including the right to vote, which is the political arrangement the novel spends much of its time explaining through Rico's training and education. The war is against the Arachnids, known as the Bugs, and the narrator is Juan Rico, whose training and education supply most of the book's length.

The narrative is told in flashback, which is unusual among Heinlein's novels, and the book contains comparatively little combat: the opening raid is brief, with the Mobile Infantry landing, destroying their targets and withdrawing at the cost of one casualty. That disproportion between explanation and action is why the novel is read as an argument about service and citizenship as much as a war story.