Ep 769 - Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

Andrew Cunningham (0:02)

This is a HeadGum Podcast.

Craig Getting (0:05)

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Andrew Cunningham (0:42)

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Craig Getting (1:00)

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Hey everybody, welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

Andrew Cunningham (2:28)

My name is Andrew, of course.

Craig Getting (2:31)

Of course.

Andrew Cunningham (2:32)

If he's Craig, then I must be Andrew. It's the only name that's left.

Craig Getting (2:35)

That's how it works. And there's no one else here, right?

Andrew Cunningham (2:39)

Nope.

Craig Getting (2:39)

Right?

Andrew Cunningham (2:40)

Yes.

Craig Getting (2:41)

I'm looking around, listening around. No, we're not.

Andrew Cunningham (2:45)

There's no, there's no cutesy guests.

Craig Getting (2:47)

There's no one else on the call.

Andrew Cunningham (2:48)

Nobody else is on the call.

Craig Getting (2:49)

Except the NSA.

Big government, probably. Whoa, whoa. I mean, anybody can listen to this show.

Andrew Cunningham (2:57)

Yeah. Yeah.

The NSA could listen, I guess. We release it publicly.

Craig Getting (3:02)

That means we're popular.

Andrew Cunningham (3:03)

But every week, the spooks at the NSA know, and you know too, that we are a book podcast. And every week, one of us reads a book that we've never read before. We tell the other person about it. We have a couple of larfs. We have a couple of learns. We have just a good old time for everybody in the whole family.

Craig Getting (3:23)

Yeah.

Andrew Cunningham (3:24)

And this week, Craig, you read a fascist bug book.

Craig Getting (3:29)

Well, it's not about fascist bugs, interestingly enough.

Andrew Cunningham (3:33)

You read a fascist book about bugs called...

Craig Getting (3:36)

I read Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, which is a book about a military society where you only get to vote if you have completed your military service. And violence is one of the best answers to anything.

Andrew Cunningham (4:00)

I read that he was inspired to write this book in part because he was really worried that the US was going to stop testing nuclear weapons, but that the Soviets wouldn't stop testing nuclear weapons.

Craig Getting (4:13)

There's a specific incident that we'll talk about, yes.

Andrew Cunningham (4:17)

And then he also, he originally wrote a treatment of the story, Heinlein did, as a story for kids, and his publisher was like, no thanks.

Craig Getting (4:26)

Well, he'd been writing juvenile novels.

Andrew Cunningham (4:28)

And he was like, well, I'm never writing children's books ever again.

Craig Getting (4:32)

Yes, yes. We shall talk about Robert Anson Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, which many folks, myself included, probably first encountered as the 1997 film.

What's a word that sounds like adaptation that means sort of adaptation by Paul Verhoeven?

Andrew Cunningham (4:53)

A story with the same name.