I’m quite familiar with the Starship Troopers franchise, but it’s been described as a parody of Heinlen’s work rather than being true to it.
What were his philosophies, and were they actually so fascist and controversial that all the movies based on his work had to be made into parodies?
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I’m not sure what his “real” philophies were, but his novels had certain themes that ran through them.
1 – Variations on marriage, such as “line marriages” where the marriage has multiple husbands/wifes. People join (by vote of others) and then eventually die as they age. There are senior wives and husbands, with perogatives, often symbolic. The idea is the marriage can last an open ended amount of time. Based on all his stories, it’s clear he’s put a lot of thought into this.
2 – People should learn to be independant.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
3 – A weird combination of libertarianism, and devotion to the State. In some stories, the State is powerful and has hard rules we must follow to prove we are worthy of being citizens (Starship Troopers), to far more libertarian systems of minimal government and people running things locally (too many stories to list)
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