More Starship Troopers Fanfic Ideas

I’ve got even more ideas for Starship Troopers fanfic. If you think you can write one of these, do it! Let me know so I can read it.

Armored Suits

Development of Mobile Infantry armored suits might make a good story. Our hero is an engineer with an inspiration, and lots of obstacles in the way because of the chaos of nascent Terran Federation society. The chaos would serve to mark the story as taking place in “the future”, but it would need something like a “dieslpunk” aesthetic, to give a retro-futuristic vibe. There’s room for a lot of technology, gyroscopes, negative feedback, PID control algorithms or circuitry, user interfaces crammed into a helmet to make it sci-fi.

Creating the Mobile Infantry.

Heinlein’s Mobile Infantry is mostly modeled after the US Marines, but has Army infantry elements. The M.I. are “troopers” not “marines”, for example. In the latter third of the Starship Troopers book, Heinlein depicts the Mobile Infantry as a very rational brand of military, not something traditional that’s force fit into its current role.

Set in the early days of the Terran Federation, my proposed fanfic examines how a military visionary combines tradition bound marine corps and army infantries from various newly-defunct national armed forces into a cohesive organization. It’s possible that only the development of armored suits (see above) allows this melding.

I bet it takes a military history expert to do this correctly.

General Diennes

Life and times of the General who died during the first invasion of Klendathu. The tragic story here is of a Dedicated Officer, under pressure after The Bugs bomb Buenos Aires. Rico waffles about whether or not Diennes had planned it adequately, or if politics kept him from doing the right thing. Gotta be a tragedy with plenty of foreshadowing.

Mr Dubois

Lt-Col Jean V. Dubois, M.I. (ret). Johnny Rico’s high school History and Moral Philosophy teacher. There’s a few hints about him, the missing arm, the letter he sends to Rico at Camp Sgt Spooky Smith. the Third Lieutenant pips that didn’t come back, Sergeant Zim hints at having served with Dubois. This is more than enough to merit some fanfic.

What about Sergeant Zim?

He hints that he served with Dubois. We know other troopers got promoted over him. We know he got flogged - at Rico’s flogging, he gives Rico something to bite down on and says he knows it helps. The commanding officer of the training regiment had Zim as his own boot camp sergeant. But Zim ends up on Planet P when Rico was a 3rd Lieutenant, and later he’s mentioned as having the rank of Brevet Captain.

Carmen Ibanez

Carmen’s experiences in the Space Navy, done better than the 1997 movie. The repressed society of the future and its 1950s casual sexism, could make this an interesting story.

What happens on Klendathu just after the end of the book?

Rico’s Roughnecks are about to drop on Klendathu, this time to find and retrieve human prisoners of war. Rico’s Father is his NCO. Rico has a Third Lieutenant of his own by now. Time to find out exactly how The Bugs organize themselves, and defend their home world.

Courier Ships

The non-relativistic faster than light travel means that courier ships would be criss-crossing human space. There’s a hint of this in the book, Rico gets word of his mother’s death in Buenos Aires months after it happened. There’s got to be a story here.

Look, I’m not a science fiction writer, but even I can see the merit in some of these stories. The merch sells itself.