The Novum presented in Starship Troopers is the government of the Veterans and the resulting primacy of the military. This Novum configures the novel as a utopian pandering towards a demographic group of readers of which the author himself is a part. This is a normative science fiction construction. Starship Troopers deviates in that the real target audience is the young man who hasn't yet been given the chance to enlist. He should gain a favorable understanding of the military by sharing his dream. The dream therefore – the created world – is the persuasive tool. Heinlein begins by claiming the historical inevitability of his Novum. Once our decadent civilization falls, the veterans; as the faction best equipped to counter anarchy, it will simply assume control of police and then government functions. Furthermore, “those [early] veterans, since they found it necessary to hang some veterans, decided that if they had to do so, they would not let any “bleeding…unprintable” civilians have any say in the matter. .” (198). That is to say, the distinction between soldier and civilian was built on the soldier's resentment of his task. This implies that soldiers attribute social collapse to civilian decay. This is partially countered when it is stated that veterans are as likely to commit a crime as non-veterans (199), but is reaffirmed more fully when it is stated that "[democracy] failed because people were tricked into to believe that they could simply vote whatever they wanted” (76). In any case, this is where Heinlein introduces its franchising system, which is also conceptualized as an organic and obvious development. These two classes are essential since the book is a bildungsroman and its action is of comparison between the...... middle of paper ......the charm of the soldier's life and also of the validity of his Novum as a form of government (makes explicit reference to Technocracy, the closest equivalent (199)). I find the argument convincing, but perhaps not so much for the younger reader. The best advantages of military service presented are acquiescence and contentment, in short, the death drive - the desire to live less - a desire which I hope is not well formed in the young reader. The arguments for the superiority of the military are less convincing since they are based on a rather problematic altruism based on the survival of the species over the individual, but they are useful and no one argues with someone who wants to sacrifice himself anyway. Overall, if the capitalist game of meritocracy appears a little too rigged and the death drive manifests itself a little early, military service turns out to be a good option..