The Forever War

Rating:
Summary: TERRIFIC
Review: I was somewhat taken aback by the style of this novel at first. After reading a few dozen pages, however, I could clearly see why this book is considered classic military science fiction. This is a fascinating contrast to Starship Troopers.

Haldeman's style is terse and effective, seasoned with a sly sense of humor throughout. The protagonist, William Mandella, is a likeable military everyman with whom a reader readily identifies. The battle scenes are particularly well done, allowing a reader to easily follow the action without the confusion that would plague a less skillful account.

The Forever War is notable for its exploration of the temporal effects of faster than light travel, i.e., Mandella's tours of duty last hundreds of years on earth, while for him, only a few years pass. Mandella goes forth to battle, having no idea what type of home will await him in the unlikely event that he survives. Eventually, Mandella is rendered a human anachronism, a veteran in command of troops he can barely understand.

The parallels with Vietnam were mostly lost on me, as I'm too young to relate, but the theme of coming home to a world one no longer recognizes is more than ably developed. Another theme that gets a lot of play is that of the unintended consequences of social engineering as Earth's society "evolves." Some of the changes to Earth that Mandella witnesses are disturbing, many are humorous, and the final chapter is extremely unusual and thought-provoking.

More than just a cold military fantasy, The Forever War has a surprising emotional impact as well. Best of all, Haldeman makes his points with subtlety and humor, not by nailing them into your skull. A terrific read that I would recommend to anyone without hesitation.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic for a Reason
Review: While not a perfect novel, Forever War is an interesting and thoughtful book that interweaves two primary ideas. The first is the question of how relativistic time-dilation would affect our ability to fight war on an interstellar scale. Haldeman deals with this by envisioning a war that takes place over an equally long span of time, with central command structures designed to plan over centuries and future technologies that retrain soldiers who find themselves living long past their contemporaries.

The second primary idea in Forever War is very simple: war is hell. He writes detailed accounts of battle with unknown aliens from the soldier's perspective, and in doing so portrays war as the ugly business that it is. As an aside to this, he also asks the question, When we don't understand our enemy, how confident can we be that the war we're fighting is a just one?

In addition to treating these themes well, Haldeman's writing kept me engaged from beginning to end, and regardless of subject matter this is the ultimate litmus test that any book must pass. I would definitely recommend Forever War.

Rating:
Summary: Praise from the adoring masses.
Review: What can I say that other people haven't? This is a fantastic book full of interesting characters, an intriguing story, and a good dose of hard science. Stop reading amazon reviews and start reading Forever War right now!

Rating:
Summary: Space opera with a humanistic heart. Superb!
Review: Haldeman originally wrote this novel as an allegory of the Vietnam war, told through the eyes of a reluctant soldier caught up in a battle that never seemed to end, while the world he left behind changed drastically. However, it applies to all wars, in any time, and the book has never lost its timeliness.

Main character William Mandella serves in the war against the mysterious Taurans, which, because of time dilation udring his spaceship travels, lasts for seven hundred years while Mandella ages only ten. Earth alters, lifestyles completely change, and Mandella wonders the purpose of the senseless warfare.

Although specifically allegorical, Haldeman's novel is powerful enough to apply to all combat. In a way, this could be seen as the opposite to Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_, with reluctant soldiers caught in purposeless combat, and a hero who is neither more skilled or heroic than any other solider around him-he has merely lasted longer than the others. The book has many great touching moments in between the furious combat scenes (a few of which are confusing), such a Mandella's separation from his love Marygay Potter, and a sad return to an Earth that has aged beyond their understanding.

A deserving classic of many awards, and I'm sure it will never age as long as warfare is still with us.

Rating:
Summary: TIME IS ON MY SIDE
Review: With his background as a physicist, Joe Haldeman has an unvaluable advantage over his fellow contemporary science-fiction writers : his scientific explanations about relativity, time gaps and other sci-fi goodies sound true. Since I'm not particularly good at physics and astral mathematics, I'm ready to believe anything Joe Haldeman wants me to take for granted.

So let's admit that extraterrestrials exist and look ugly, let's admit that our military authorities won't become smarter in the centuries to come and that war will become the main interest of our posterity. In short, THE FOREVER WAR is the story of a soldier of the future. Thanks to the laws of relativity, William Mandella loses - or gains, I'm not totally sure of this - decades of objective time every time he has to fly.

THE FOREVER WAR is the kind of book you cannot leave until it is finished. It has suspense, excellent descriptions of the psychology of soldiers - after all, Joe Haldeman was also a member of the U.S. army - and a realistic love story. It's an example of above average science-fiction deserving to stay in your library if you're a fan of this literary genre.

A book that could have been a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: A Solid Product of its Time
Review: This slim military sci-fi novel won both a Hugo and Nebula awards following its publication in 1975, but readers today probably need a little context to understand why it was so well-received at the time. First and foremost, it was written as a direct response to the Vietnam War by Haldeman, who served a tour of duty there as a combat engineer and was severely wounded (he's also written several Vietnam-specific novels, including War Year and 1968). In the book, a young physics student named Mandella is drafted for a war against a mysterious alien race. We follow him through complicated and dangerous training, several violent battles, and his return home. Not surprisingly, Haldeman's portrayal of war is a brutal and messy picture, where long periods of boredom are followed by intense battles, death is arbitrary, and heroism nonexistent. Also not surprisingly, the war is revealed to be a misguided endeavor brought on by hawkish political leaders who lie to the public about the war. Needless to say, the public climate of the time was very receptive to such sentiments.

The other main noteworthy element of the book is the treatment of interstellar travel, and the distortion of time that results. After his first battle, Mandella returns to Earth to find his loved ones aged 27 years and society largely antiseptic. Just as many Vietnam vets had a difficult time returning home, he and many of his cohort can't handle life of Earth, and re-enlist. The book continues with Mandella shuttling from battle to battle, rising rapidly in seniority as hundreds of subjective years pass to his own few. Haldeman is a physicist, and there's a lot of scientific jargon about relativity theory to explain everything, and for the time, it was pretty exciting stuff for sci-fi readers. However, I found those passages nearly incomprehensible and the need to explain things definitely bogs down the narrative at times. These leaps through time allow Haldeman to do some interesting speculation about the evolution of humanity, as he touches upon cloning, sexuality, and genetics. The emphasis, though, is on Mandella and his personal quest to just survive. This is solid work, with generally good pacing, and a very overt antiwar message that is the product of its times.

Rating:
Summary: one of those scifi classics
Review: The Forever War is one of those science fiction classics that we all know and love. It is similar to Heinlein's Starship Troopers (and as good as FW is, it doesn't hit that divine exquisiteness that ST does) in that it is an anti-war novel that is written in a very socio-philosophical/political way. This book takes on every way war can possibly affect life, and a few ways we haven't thought of yet. It is a wonderful book. Enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Back to the World... literally
Review: Wow. What an excellent collection of reviews. Proof, if it were needed, that Sci Fi fans are a cut above your average Joe and Josephine.

Yes, The Forever War is a Vietnam allegory, and one of the ways in which it succeeds mightily is in the way our hero becomes increasingly alienated from his HomeWorld, and re-enlists.

Of the two-tour Vietnam Vets I know, including two Army Nurses, they all said the same thing - that they could no longer identify with the World they had returned to and felt that the familiar madness of Vietnam beckoned them infinitely more.

TFW is a fascinating book in the way it portrays the Einsteinian temporal paradoxes and their effects on Earth and Earth Forces in the field, fighting many light years away. The impossibility of having effective real-time command and control from Earth is just one of the factors that makes the war seem pointless.

Many Vietnam Vets found that Time seemed to pass at a different rate In Country compared to the States (which they called The World). Only when you entered your Short period, when you got down to your last 99 days, when you became a two-digit midget, or your last 9 days, when you became a one-digit midget, did Time begin to resume any kind of linear perspective.

While it's true to say that the only good thing about war is its ending, war is not always futile. When it is undertaken without a very clear attainable objective, i.e. something which makes it 'winnable', such as the Forever War and the Vietnam War, there is a crushing sense of futility, which comes across well in this book.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked this, try these instead - far better
Review: The Forever War is a middling attempt at mixing time travel with martial science fiction. I've seen this theme before in books that predate this one - most of it in Heinlein, some of it in Asimov. The Forever War has a very Foundation (which I despise) feel - instead of opening vaults every century, the protagonist pops out of his latest battle into the most recent permutation of developing society. It's roots in Starship Troopers are plain - the plot is almost identical: kid goes through boot camp, spends time on spacecraft, fights battles against mysterious aliens while wearing powersuits, becomes an officer, fights heroically. All that said, there are many better martial sci-fi novels out there (Starship Troopers, War Games, Hammer's Slammers, Dune), and many better time travel / future shock books (The Time Machine, A World Out of Time, Number of the Beast (barely)).

The book also struck me as incredibly unimaginative - the author is a college grad (astronomy degree) who fought in Vietnam and now teaches writing. The protagonist is a physics degree graduate who wants to be a teacher but gets drafted. Give me a break. This is certainly "write what you know" taken to the 3rd degree. Oh, right, and it is certainly dated - it has a very 70s feel - kind of "Deerhunter" (the movie) crossed with "Stranger in a Strange Land" (which was at least innovative and daring, having been written and published before "hippie free love" really kicked in.

As a combat vet myself (though nothing as harrowing as a full year in Vietnam), I would say that the combat scenes are described reasonably well, although you'd be better off reading John Keegan's non-fictional "The Face of Battle", one of the best depictions of life on the battlefield. I'd also recommended the autobiographical-but-fictional "Fields of Fire", by James Webb (a Vietnam double amputee who was awarded the Navy Cross) - Haldeman's "Mandella" would probably have his *** handed to him by "Snake".

Some will Grok it, some won't. Read at your own risk.

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Piece of Military Science Fiction
Review: This book is one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time. While it certainly takes a dismal view towards war, it isn't one of those "horrors of war" books where you can't enjoy the story in and of itself. The story is very compelling and exciting, while the message is subtle but omnipresent.