Books like Starship Troopers
What should you read after Robert A. Heinlein’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Robert A. Heinlein
- 1959
- Military science fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Starship Troopers
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchArmor
John Steakley
Steakley took the powered suit and the bug war and asked what they do to a man's head rather than his career. The obvious next book.
- Powered armour drops
- War against an alien hive
- A teenager becoming an officer
- Bleak where Heinlein is proud
Great matchOld Man's War
John Scalzi
Scalzi cheerfully admits the debt: enlistment, training, first contact, promotion, all of it, with the lectures swapped out for jokes and a much lighter touch.
- A teenager becoming an officer
- Boot camp in detail
- An argument you may not like
- Comic tone throughout
Worth a look — with a warningFoundation
Isaac Asimov
The other pillar of the same era: Asimov arguing about how civilisations are governed while Heinlein argues about who gets to vote. Ideas first, people a distant second.
- An argument you may not like
- Lectures inside the novel
- Citizenship you have to earn
- No soldiers and no combat
Best for the argument you may not likeThe Forever War
Joe Haldeman
Haldeman fought in Vietnam and wrote the direct rebuttal: same conscript, same alien war, opposite conclusion about what service does to a citizen.
- An argument you may not like
- Boot camp in detail
- War against an alien hive
- Anti-war where Heinlein is not
Best for a teenager becoming an officerEnder's Game
Orson Scott Card
A child put through a military school and pointed at a hive species. Heinlein's civics lesson, rewritten as a story about what the training costs the trained.
- A teenager becoming an officer
- War against an alien hive
- Boot camp in detail
- Much younger protagonist
Great matchHalo: The Fall of Reach
Eric Nylund
Straight-ahead military SF built on super-soldiers and orbital drops. If you read Heinlein for the hardware and the unit, this delivers with no philosophy attached.
- Powered armour drops
- Boot camp in detail
- An argument you may not like
- Tie-in fiction; workmanlike prose
Worth a look — with a warningThe Martian
Andy Weir
Nothing military about it, but it shares Heinlein's faith in competence and procedure — the pleasure of a trained person doing the job right, step by step.
- Boot camp in detail
- Powered armour drops
- An argument you may not like
- One man, no war
Great matchDune
Frank Herbert
Also a young man trained hard by his elders and dropped into a war, though Herbert cares about what happens after you win rather than how you enlist.
- A teenager becoming an officer
- Lectures inside the novel
- An argument you may not like
- Long and dense going
Great matchRed Rising
Pierce Brown
Brutal academy, rigid caste, a boy climbing a military hierarchy never built for him. Heinlein's structure with the volume and the body count raised.
- Boot camp in detail
- Citizenship you have to earn
- A teenager becoming an officer
- Far more graphic
Worth a look — with a warningNeuromancer
William Gibson
A different century of science fiction entirely: Gibson's soldiers are freelancers and the state has left the building. Read it for the contrast, not the continuity.
- An argument you may not like
- Powered armour drops
- Style is deliberately disorienting
Great matchFahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
The same mid-century habit of stopping the plot so a character can explain the society. Bradbury's conclusions run opposite to Heinlein's, which is most of the fun.
- Lectures inside the novel
- An argument you may not like
- Citizenship you have to earn
- No war, no soldiers
Great matchSnow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson does the explanatory digression better than anyone alive, and his citizenship is bought from franchise nation-states — a joke Heinlein would not have enjoyed.
- Lectures inside the novel
- Citizenship you have to earn
- An argument you may not like
- Comic, chaotic register
Worth a look — with a warningAltered Carbon
Richard K. Morgan
Kovacs is elite military trained to a fine point and then let loose in a noir; the soldier's-eye competence survives the transfer, the civics lesson does not.
- Boot camp in detail
- Powered armour drops
- An argument you may not like
- Graphic sex and torture
What should you read after Starship Troopers?
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Armor by John Steakley — steakley took the powered suit and the bug war and asked what they do to a man's head rather than his career. The obvious next book.
If what stayed with you was a teenager becoming an officer, read Old Man's War by John Scalzi instead: scalzi cheerfully admits the debt: enlistment, training, first contact, promotion, all of it, with the lectures swapped out for jokes and a much lighter touch. Foundation by Isaac Asimov is the other strong option — the other pillar of the same era: Asimov arguing about how civilisations are governed while Heinlein argues about who gets to vote. Ideas first, people a distant second.
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