I just finished reading Starship Troopers back-to-back with Ender's Game. And while I didn't originally choose to read them in this order, it turned out to be a pretty interesting way to juxtapose the two novels. Allow me to elaborate, and recommend.

It's easy to put Starship Troopers and Ender's Game up against to each other. Both are Sci-fi classics with tinges of Cold War Era fiction (both refer to the Warsaw Pact), both are about army life, both attempt to be space operas, both are about fighting swarm-intillegence bugs who attack Earth, and both are coming-of-age stories. Beyond this though, their radically different in execution and style.

Let me first start off by saying that Starship Troopers sucks. The only reason it's worth a mention on anybody's read list is that it MIGHT have invented the idea of using powered armour for common soilders (e.g. Space Marines, Terran Soilders). and that it contains a soft, but interesting, political message which is that retired soilders should govern with militaristic style responsibility for the individual. Whatever. If you think about it, it doesn't work.

THE problem is that the Starship troopers gets caught up with description, and for a universe where there's personal nukes and flamethrowers on each hand, there's barley any action. Infact, almost all chapters are devoted to either
A) flashbackss of a highschool class where you're lectured on politics and society
B) descriptions of life as an Infantryman, or
C) present time lectures on politics and society.

Literally, the author glosses over battles with phrases like "Not worth mentioning", which makes it clear this is a book about army life, and not action. Furthermore, Jonny Rico, the protagonist, is a pretty lifeless boring grunt who undergoes his transformation from high-school pretty boy who doesn't want to go to Harvard, to hardened footslogger in the space of about a page. He runs into about 40 people and 100 ships all of which blend together in a worthless amalgamation of titles and names. Some die, some don't, you don't really care. The only awesome part is when the Sergeant beats up his recruits for fun. His name was Zim, and he lived.

There's not even any fucking swearing in this book, and in some places there certainly should be. There's no future words like "Frack" or "Gorram" to take it's place, the characters just sometimes leave things out of their sentences like a Grandma around her 2-year-old grandchild. At one time the author blanks out a classic quote's use of "fucking" with "blankity-blank".

Starship Troopers the movie is about 1000x better, even though it's not a perfect adaptation. Plus you get titties and NPH. There's neither in the original book.

Ender's game on the other hand, is awesome. It's written simply, as if FOR kids, but includes adult language, mass murder, cold blooded murder, gang violence, name calling, depression, world war and phallic troop formations.

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Stress directed by Romain Gavras

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin. The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known. The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology.

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From our friends at Activision (who, surprisingly, have a sense of humor)