Heinlein was a Fascist?

This essay was written and appeared in this space four years ago, but I thought I would reprint it now:

I just finished rereading Robert A. Heinlein’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, and I was left with an odd question lingering. Blazoned on the cover of my paperback edition boast the words “controversial best seller!” Why is this book controversial?

Science Fiction is something like a game or thought-experiment played with the reader: the author invents a counterfactual premise but uses the props and setting of the real universe to make the counterfactual seem as likely as possible. The game is to draw out the real world consequences of the non-real premise. If there actually were invisible men, so asks H.G. Wells, would they not have to walk among us nude? Not for the science fiction writer is the magical invisibility that turns your clothing transparent but not what you pick up in your hand.

In the case of STARSHIP TROOPERS, the speculation is about futuristic infantry. What happens when the advances in technology give a single trooper the firepower of a modern platoon, or even a battalion? If a footsoldier has a tactical atom bomb in launcher, what kind of trooper, and what kind of warfare, would it have to be? What are the social implications? Who could be trusted with such firepower?

There is a second speculation: what if the franchise of the vote was limited to veterans? What kind of society would emerge?

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.