Robert Heinlein, born 1907, died 1988, was one of the foremost early science-fiction writers, and one of the first to break into the mainstream with his work. Alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein was one of the “The Big 3” of science fiction during the 1940s and 1950s. He won four Hugo Awards, as well as three Retro Hugo Awards (for years in which the prize was not given). While science fiction, especially in that era, had a reputation for fostering a very left-wing mindset, Heinlein was one of the few major figures with unabashedly conservative viewpoints.
Politically, he was an odd combination of free love, (with numerous books riddled with incest and polygamy), libertarianism, and, for lack of a better way to describe it, pseudo-fascist authoritarianism. In Starship Troopers he deals with only the last one mainly—the book is primarily a political tractate, formed by a series of scenes and events, (all witnessed by his blank-shell of a main character, Juan Rico, whose main reason for existence seems to be to absorb military ideology and authoritarianism from mostly ill-defined characters and an even more ill-defined backdrop).