''Starship Troopers: Dominant Species'' which brought back the Power Suits and K-9 Corps.]]
's novel ''Armor'']]
of '' Uchû No Senshi '']]
''Starship Troopers'' clearly influenced many later science fiction stories, setting a tone for the military in space, a type of story referred to as Military Science Fiction .
- John Steakley 's novel '' Armor '' was, according to the author, born out of frustration with the small amount of actual combat in ''Starship Troopers'' and because he wanted this aspect developed further. The themes are similar, it also contains exoskeletons and insect-like aliens.
- John Scalzi 's novel ''Old Man's War'' is, according to the author (in comments to this blog post ), explicitly patterned after ''Starship Troopers''; in the book's acknowledgments, he thanks Heinlein for "debts that have become obvious."
- , as it was in Heinlein's novel, and its military is headed by a Sky Marshal , as in Heinlein's novel. Also, the Marines wear powered combat armor.
Conversely, for a Tuberculosis infection and served out WWII doing R&D at the Philadelphia Navy Yard . For his part, Heinlein praised Haldeman's novel as outstanding science fiction, although he disagreed with the politics.
One of the most striking commonalities of the two novels is the degree to which military veteran characters in both find themselves estranged from their own culture, alien strangers in a strange land that they paradoxically are willing to die to defend, no matter how much their society looks upon them as oddities. The protagonists of both novels learn to build their own societies amongst their comrades, their brothers in arms.
Harry Harrison 's book '' Bill, The Galactic Hero '' is often considered a criticism of Heinlein's book, though his other parodies, like '' Star Smashers Of The Galaxy Rangers '' ( 1973 ) also lampooned the military SF typical of ''Starship Troopers''.
In recent years, John Ringo 's popular science fiction novel series Legacy Of The Alldenata (popularly known as the Posleen series) featured a more explicit homage to Heinlein's book. A series of novels traces the events surrounding a massive, late 20th Century series of invasions of Earth by a hive-like but non-arachnid alien race called the Posleen, which have been fought for centuries by a coalition of various alien races, who provide technical aid to allow the armed forces of Earth to resist the invasion, and also serve as Colonial Troops on other planets invaded by the Posleen. Various science fiction writers and ex-military personnel are recruited, some rejunvenated, and develop various naval and ground forces based on science fiction novels. One effort is the development of Armored Combat Suits to be deployed in various ''Mobile Infantry'' Battalions.
in '' Aliens ''.]]
- James Cameron 's '' Aliens '' movie incorporated themes and phrases right out of the novel such as the terms "the drop" and "bug hunt" as well as the cargo-loader exoskeleton. The actors playing the Colonial Marines were required to read ''Starship Troopers'' as part of their training prior to filming. {Link without Title}
- A large number of works of Japanese Anime , such as '' Mobile Suit Gundam '' and '' The Super Dimension Fortress Macross '', feature giant human-controlled robots which are deeply influenced by the Mobile Infantry Suits. The anime '' Blue Gender '' could be influenced by Starship Troopers as well as the show consists of giant insectoid monsters (the Blue) and Mecha similar to the Mobile Infantry Suits called Armored Shrikes.
''.]]
- Sierra Games ' '' Tribes '' series of First-person Shooter Computer Game s is influenced by the book, most notably in the core gameplay element of rocket-assisted powered armor that allows the combatants to bound over the terrain in giant, arcing leaps. During a training mission in '' Tribes 2 '', the training voice uses the phrase "on the bounce", from the novel.
- In the '', soldiers use Powered Battle Armor, which behaves much like the suits in ''Starship Troopers''. Various classes of suit exist, used by friendly and enemy forces. A notable difference is that the soldiers are not dropped from orbit, but instead jump from fast low-flying dropships (which may themselves be dropped from orbit from inter-planet transports). Paul Neurath later commented that he "had the concept for a squad level 3D tactical game loosely based on the fiction of ''Starship Troopers'' and '' The Forever War ''". {Link without Title}
''.]]
- Many of the thematic elements in '' series appear to be drawn from the novel, for example, the use of individual "drop pods" to deploy troops in a Cutscene in Halo 2 , and the use of strength-enchancing armor worn by Supersoldier s being used as Shock Troops .
- ''Olympica'', a troopers must storm the tunnels and strongpoints of a hive-mind enemy ("Webbies") to capture a central computer (akin to a brain bug).
- Starship Troopers has also had a strong influence on the BattleTech sci-fi universe. BattleTech features multiple societies in which military and political leadership are intertwined in various degrees. Powered Armor (Battle Armor) also features strongly after it's fictional introduction as part of The Clans . BattleTech is notedly popular among Starship Trooper fans.
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