 Heinlein made a similar claim, over two decades after "Starship Troopers"'s publication, in his "Expanded Universe" and further claimed that 95 percent of "veterans" were not military personnel but members of the civil service.Heinlein's own description has been disputed, even among the book's defenders.Heinlein scholar James Gifford has argued that a number of quotes within the novel suggest that the characters within the book assume that the Federal Service is largely military.