Shifting Understandings of Imperialism: A Collision of Cultures in Starship Troopers and Ender's Game
type: CreativeWork
description: In this paper, I consider how Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1985) allegorically treat U.S. Cold War fears of invasion by the Soviet Union. Given the texts' historical relationship to the Vietnam War and their use of very similar science fiction tropes (namely, invasion by communistic, insect-like aliens), I argue that Orson Scott Card reimagines the binary Cold War conflict, softening the rhetoric of Starship Troopers and allowing for a more qualified understanding of the relationship between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Through this analysis, I also consider how science fiction is a useful tool of cultural criticism in that it posits future worlds so as to reflect contemporary social concerns.
abstract: In this paper, I consider how Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1985) allegorically treat U.S. Cold War fears of invasion by the Soviet Union. Given the texts' historical relationship to the Vietnam War and their use of very similar science fiction tropes (namely, invasion by communistic, insect-like aliens), I argue that Orson Scott Card reimagines the binary Cold War conflict, softening the rhetoric of Starship Troopers and allowing for a more qualified understanding of the relationship between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Through this analysis, I also consider how science fiction is a useful tool of cultural criticism in that it posits future worlds so as to reflect contemporary social concerns.
author: Perniciaro, Leon
keywords: Militarism in science fiction, the Vietnam War, cultural studies, Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, representations of the Cold War in science fiction
date published: 2011-05-20T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:29:24Z
provider: University of New Orleans
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Orleans