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Science fiction movies serve as directional indicators for the winds of the zeitgeist. In the 1950s we were served up cautionary tales about the misuse of science. We fooled with atomic energy and got gigantic spiders, a 50-foot woman, an Incredible Shrinking Man—and, of course, Godzilla. We were meant to take away from these films a sense that we shouldn't muck about with the natural order or play God.
Fast-forward to the sci-fi films of the 1990s, and the picture is much different. Now we are co-gods with evolution. Evolution is destiny, but destiny can be shaped by human science. Sure, we'll make a few mistakes, but we'll press on because it's in our nature to do so, and eventually we'll control not only our destiny, but the destiny of the universe—through science and brute force. With no creator there are no creatures, only organisms.
In Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 sci-fi novel Starship Troopers, an officer delivers a lengthy apologetic for the application of swift, merciless force in intergalactic conquest:
But does Man have any "right" to spread through the universe?
Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.
The universe will let us know—later—whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it.
In the meantime the [Mobile Infantry] will be in there, on the bounce and swinging, on the side of our own race.
In the recently released film version of Starship Troopers, giant insect warriors, the Arachnids, having battled Earth's armies in space, take the war to their enemy. As the film begins, they have just wiped out Buenos Aires in a surprise attack. Whereas in the novel, the Arachnids use advanced weapons and space ships, director Paul Verhoeven has de-evolved them into a horde of instinct-driven vermin inhabiting barren asteroids. In his vision, they wage war like the red and black ant battalions on Thoreau's woodpile—with their claws.
Their ability to attack other planets hinges on the queen's capacity to blast magma—a death-dealing liquid brimming with fertilized eggs—from her exoskeleton. A more insidious theme arises when it turns out that the Arachnids seem to be evolving rather quickly, learning to anticipate Earth's battle tactics and developing effective countermeasures with each engagement.
The young protagonists of Starship Troopers are four humans who enter federal service directly out of high school. Federal service ensures citizenship, which, like party membership in any totalitarian state, carries privileges. Two of the schoolmates enter the elite Mobile Infantry (MI), whose boot camp makes the marines look like a bunch of pansies. Another trains as a pilot. The fourth (in the book) becomes an electronics expert. In the film, however, he is a sort of parapsychologist who studies various forms of ESP. His small role gives Starship Troopers its amoral center.
After a disastrous engagement with the Arachnids, the mi troopers retreat. They suspect that their lack of air cover was no accident, and they are right. They were being used to draw out intelligence on the Arachnids, who, it seems, are being directed by a shared mind—a brain bug. The brain bug's cognitive powers are evolving as it literally sucks the gray matter out of captured mi troopers' skulls and metabolizes their capacity for logic.
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