 The book is sprinkled with racist slurs against Asian people, and black and Hispanic people are not mentioned at all.The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success".However, the novel prompted a heated debate in the scientific community regarding the plausibility of developing ethnic bioweapons.