Starship Troopers: Meh.
Fair. I expected more from my first Heinlein book, Starship Troopers . The story gets bogged down in military minutia and I found myself thinking, "get on with it..." As for the characters' philosophy of morals, it was oversimplified, hyper-masculinized (based on contemporary stereotypes) dogma attempting to justify what, in the history of the civilized world, has always failed - rule by the military. It must fail either because by its very nature it will get conquered from without or toppled from within due to the oppression necessary to sustain it. I don't know if Heinlein believes all this, but his characters did. For example, the idea of no moral instincts. Sounds good, that we're born with a tabula rasa , but it isn't true, nor is it provable, and even if it were, it wouldn't prove what he thinks it does. There is no moral tabula rasa . The ability to think morally presupposes a capacity to do so. You can preach morals at sea...