I had been meaning to read this for a while, and am glad I finally got around to it. I have a bunch of unrelated thoughts, which I'll just list below in no particular order of importance.

- I'm sure I am not the first to note this, but Starship Troopers is nothing like the '90s movie that shares its name -- not in plot, tone, or any other respect, other than a few of the main characters' names being left unchanged. The book is far, far superior.

- This book was very far ahead of its time, in terms of sci-fi ideas, with the M.I.'s mechanized suits and the ships' Cherenkov drives (FTL/hyperspeed/warp drives); gender roles, as women were starship pilots in the Terran Navy; and racial diversity, with the cast being extremely multi-racial for 1959 when it was written.

- I was almost turned off from reading Starship Troopers when I heard it called "military propaganda," but found the arguments for the military to be fairly balanced. While the slant is obviously pro-military -- the main character did choose to join up, after all -- the military is never glorified. There are scenes of corporal punishment, arguments and frustrations with military decision makers, a number of violent and unnecessary deaths, and grizzled veterans with numerous missing limbs. Their cause is never made out to be righteous, either. The entire military system is also set up as volunteer-only, with no penalties for dropping out at any time, separating it from the dark days of Vietnam-era America.

- This quote from Rico's History and Moral Philosophy teacher, written over 50 years ago, sums up more or less everything that is wrong with our society now:

There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

All in all, this is not only a classic, prototypical sci-fi novel, it is also an interesting look at military organization and the philosophy of social responsibility and duty. A must-read for fans of those genres.