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The Nature of “Federal Service”in Robert A. Heinlein’s

Starship Troopers

James Gifford

Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel

Starship Troopers

has been called one of the most controversialscience fiction works ever written. Few who are familiar with science fiction as a whole would dis-agree. Although it contains no sex and no bad language, this relatively short novel contains thedetailed exposition of several ideas that have proven almost explosively controversial, within therealm of science fiction and without.Central to the controversy is the book’s notion that a voting franchise must be earned by awould-be citizen. A franchise is not given to anyone, for any reason, until they have served a term(defined in the book as two years) in Federal Service. The book makes clear that the great majority of citizens do not bother with a term or a franchise; indeed, the protagonist’s father is a wealthy andsuccessful businessman who is proud of his family’s hundred-year record of non-service. The govern-ment makes no attempt to recruit or entice volunteers; in fact, they work at dissuading would-beinductees by emphasizing the hard and brutal nature of service and the fact that those who enlisthave no choice of service—they put themselves entirely at the government’s mercy for the durationof their term.The minimum age of enlistment is eighteen, male or female, and there appears to be no upperlimit. The protagonist’s father, past forty, enlists later in the book. No one may interfere with a deci-sion to enlist. In the words of the protagonist, Juan Rico, early in the book, after his best friend Carlhas announced his intention to enlist:

So I told [Carl] I was joining up, too.

He gave me an odd look. “Your old man won’t let you.”“Huh? How can he stop me? And of course he couldn’t, not legally. It’s the first completelyfree choice anybody gets (and maybe his last); when a boy, or a girl, reaches his or her eigh-teenth birthday, her or she can volunteer and nobody else has any say in the matter. [Ch. II,p.21]

Furthermore, it is made clear that no citizen who wants to enlist can be turned down for any rea-son, except for lacking the mental competence to understand the decision. The doctor giving Juanhis induction physical examination makes this plain:

I asked one of the doctors what percentage of the victims flunked the physical. He lookedstartled. “Why, we

never

fail anyone. The law doesn’t permit us to.”“Huh? I mean, excuse me, Doctor? Then what’s the point of this goose-flesh parade?”“Why, the purpose is […] to find out what duties you are physically able to perform. […]The only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrists decide that you are not able to under-stand the oath.” [Ch. II, p.29]

©1996 by James D. Gifford. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated in any form, paper or electronic, without express written per-mission of the author, except as otherwise provided in this notice. This work may be reproduced in its entirety for personal or academic use withoutexplicit permission or payment of royalty as long as the work is not duplicated in any modified form. Permission for quotation of portions of this workexceeding ‘fair use’ limits is also granted provided each such quotation or group of quotations is accompanied by a full citation of the work’s title andauthor information. Quoted material in this work taken from

Starship Troopers

(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959) and

Expanded Universe

(New York: Ace Books, 1980), both by Robert A. Heinlein. Use of this material is believed to be within the copyright ‘fair use’ doctrine.I am deeply indebted to David Dyer-Bennett (ddb

ddb.com) for his inspiration and basic research into this work’s topic. I am also grateful to the manycorrespondents who, in a variety of electronic forums, helped create and shape the opinions expressed in this work.

The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

The simple notion that a vote must be earned, or paid for, instead of being freely granted to every

person who reaches a certain age—or owns a certain amount of land or property, or is of a certaingender or race—is in and of itself capable of causing violent controversy. In a later essay published inthe 1980 collection

Expanded Universe

, Heinlein explores a range of options for limiting the vote tocitizens willing to accept the responsibility for their actions along with the simple right.However, it is not my intent to explore the ramifications of whether it would be good to limit thefranchise in any of the ways Heinlein suggests. We have here a novel whose central notion is that thefranchise

limited, and that franchisees must be discharged veterans of Federal Service. The term“veteran” is used throughout the book to designate a citizen who has completed his or her term of service and earned a franchise. As for “discharged,” it is made clear that serving members of FederalService do not have the vote:

Why, I had gone through all this to get my franchise, hadn’t I?—and if I went career, I wasjust as far away from the privilege of voting as if I had never enrolled…because as long as youwere still in uniform, you weren’t entitled to vote. [Ch. XI, p.129]

So, in the

Starship Troopers

universe, any citizen may request a term in Federal Service and be

granted that request without anyone’s let or hindrance. Completion of the term is the only way togain the right to vote.So, just what is “Federal Service”? There are two commonly given answers, only one of which canbe correct:1.

Federal Service is roughly equivalent to present-day military service (Army, Navy, Marine),including military support services such as research and development, logistics, labor battalionsand intelligence.

Federal Service is equivalent to general government service, including military service and what

we would call “civil service,” the latter being responsible for ninety-five percent of all Federal Ser-vice positions.

There has been an extraordinary amount of argument over which answer is correct. There is evi-dence to support both views, although it is unequally distributed. The evidence for answer one isstrong and plentiful. The evidence for answer two is sparse, weak and subjective, although points canbe made in its favor. Given the imbalance, it would seem that the argument would have been settledlong ago. This would be true were it not for a very strong comment by Robert Heinlein himself,insisting that the latter answer is correct.

Heinlein’s Commentary

The 1980 collection

Expanded Universe

contains several dozen shorter works by Heinlein, manynever before published or never reprinted after their initial magazine appearances. In between thisvaluable material is even more valuable commentary by Heinlein on the works, his writing careerand his own life.

One of the previously unreprinted pieces is a newspaper ad for the ”Patrick Henry League,” cre-ated by Heinlein and his wife to drum up support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. In 1958, Pres-ident Eisenhower was considering a unilateral cessation of nuclear weapon testing, based on a Sovietpromise to make it joint. The Heinleins were adamantly opposed, given the Soviet Union’s poorrecord of promise-keeping, and the Patrick Henry League was the result.Eisenhower suspended nuclear testing. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union ignored its promiseand resumed testing with some of the largest and “dirtiest” weapons ever detonated.Heinlein was infuriated. He stopped work on the novel that would become

Stranger in a Strange Land

and wrote

Starship Troopers

in a white-hot fury. Like most of his novels, it was completed in afew weeks. Although written as a juvenile novel for Scribner’s, following his other immensely suc-cessful novels in that series, it was rejected and was eventually published as an adult novel by G.P.Putnam’s Sons.

The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

In the interstitial material following the Patrick Henry ad in

Expanded Universe

, Heinlein com-

plains in detail about the critics’ response to

Starship Troopers

over the years. One by one, he demol-ishes their arguments in crisp, angry prose. At first, however, he makes the following curiousstatement:

“Veteran” does not mean in English dictionaries or in this novel solely a person who hasserved in military forces. I concede that in commonest usage today it means a war vet-eran…but no one hesitates to speak of a veteran fireman or a veteran school teacher. In STAR-SHIP TROOPERS it is stated flatly and more than once that nineteen out of twenty veterans are

not

military veterans. Instead, 95% of voters are what we call today “former members of federalcivil service.” [ellipses and emphasis in the original]

There is certainly nothing ambiguous about that, and an author is certainly the last word on hisor her work. (At least, so I believe; those with deconstructionist leanings are free to visit the egress atthis point.)

And yet… Heinlein is wrong on this point. Flatly so.This commentary is often cited by those who believe in answer number two; it is often the sourceof their belief in the correctness of that answer.But Heinlein is still wrong on this point.

The Nature of Federal Service: A Summary

Rather than laboriously build the chain of evidence and present conclusions on the way, I preferto summarize my interpretation of the nature of Federal Service here, then present all of the evidencepro and con afterward.My interpretation is based on the text of

Starship Troopers

, and reasonable inferences therefrom:–Federal Service is closely akin to military service in our era, with no significantaspects of what we would consider “civil service.” It does have significant military-support divisions and positions, such as logistics, intelligence and military R and D.–All explicit and unambiguous references to Federal Service in the novel make it clearthat it is military/military support in nature.–The assumption of the characters is that Federal Service is military in nature.–Nowhere in the novel does it state or significantly imply that any discernible fractionof the volunteers are placed in “civil service” positions—certainly not nineteen out of twenty of them.–The few references that support the “civil service” notion of Federal Service are vague,ambiguous and require non-objective reading of the text.–Many of the arguments for the “civil service” version of Federal Service pile supposi-tion on guess on analogy, and ignore explicit passages to the contrary.Heinlein’s statement is incorrect. The book does not “flatly state” that any significant fraction of Federal Service positions are civil service-like even once, much less “more than once.”

The Nature of Federal Service: The Evidence

The text of

Starship Troopers

has many passages explicitly describing Federal Service, and manymore in which a character implies something significant about its nature. I intend to make at leastbrief reference to each of these passages.References are indicated by chapter (Ch. II, Ch. XI, etc.) and by page number (p.22, pp.45-47,etc.) These page numbers refer to the 1980 Berkley Book paperback edition of

Starship Troopers

andshould be identical with or close to those of most paperback editions.

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Federal Service

Discussion of the concept of federal Service in Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers

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