The Forever War

Rating:
Summary: A great read and a fine work of imagination and combat.
Review: The theme of this book might be "You Can't Go Home Again." The protagonist, William Mandella, is caught up in an interstellar war--he's been drafted pursuant to the "Elite Conscription Act" for having a high IQ and military physique.

The book tracks Mandella's battles with Earth's enemy: the Taurans. After each battle he returns to Earth, to find that although only a year or so has passed for him, due to the effects of relativity and interstellar travel, Earth has changed hugely, in imaginative and depressing ways. Soon Mandella has no home other than the Army, which is no bargain either.

No doubt it is Haldeman's experience as a Vietnam veteran that gives this book a hard-to-describe plausibility and realism. Despite being wildly speculative, this novel (which is really a series of interconnected short stories) has a gritty authentic feel that won it the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

This novel constitutes in my opinion the best military science fiction story up to this time. It merits the overused label of "classic."

Unfortunately, nothing Haldeman has written since is remotely as good as this novel.

Rating:
Summary: perverse reversal
Review: I'd put off reading this one because it's got a reputation as a great anti-war novel (sort of the anti-Starship Troopers), particularly anti-Vietnam (where Mr. Haldeman served), and I'm neither. But regardless of Mr. Haldeman's intent, it reads today as one of the most conservative books in the history of science fiction.

The plot is pretty simple, in Earth's near future, an army of super-soldiers is drafted by the U.N. to go and fight the Taurans, a mysterious alien species which has apparently been attacking human space ships that have just made collapsar jumps (at .999 the speed of light) and arrived near Aldebaran. The narrator is William Mandella who will fight the Taurans for a millennium, because of the disparity in how much time passes for him relative to Earth during his travels. This means though that ever time he and his fellow soldiers return home, massive social changes have taken place. So he returns to population explosions, euthanasia, and government controlled economies; then to a future where homosexuality and test tube babies have become the norm (and population stabilized at a billion people); and finally to a world where humankind has become nothing but a population of identical clones sharing a mind. On this final return home, Mandella finds that the Forever War has all been a result of misunderstanding and a plot by militarist:

The 1143-year-long war had begun on false pretenses and only continued because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was "Why did you start this thing?" and the answer was "Me?"

The Taurans hadn't known war for millennia, and toward the beginning of the twenty-first century it looked as though mankind was ready
to outgrow the institution as well. But the old soldiers were still around, and many of them in positions of power. They virtually ran
the United Nations Exploratory and Colonization Group, that was taking advantage of the newly-discovered collapsar jump to explore
interstellar space.

Many of the early ships met with accidents and disappeared. The ex-military men were suspicious. They armed the colonizing vessels,
and the first time they met a Tauran ship, they blasted it.

They dusted off their medals and the rest was going to be history.

You couldn't blame it all on the military, though. The evidence they presented for the Taurans having been responsible for the earlier
casualties was laughably thin. The few people who pointed this out were ignored.

The fact was, Earth's economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It was a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify
humanity rather than dividing it.

This entirely risible concoction of Mr. Haldeman's appears to be about equal parts Dr. Strangelove and Report from Iron Mountain, just as his population worries reflect the most hysterical ravings of Paul Ehrlich and his celebration of drugs is leftover Timothy Leary. In short, he fell prey to nearly every quackery of the 70s. And if the Forever War is really supposed to be an allegory for the Vietnam War, the notion that Vietnam was about nothing surely went out of fashion with the boat people. The judgments of history have been unkind to Mr. Haldeman's overt politics.

Oddly though, there's an unintentional covert politics at work here that succeeds brilliantly and remains trenchant and true. For one thing, the book offers a convincing argument against gays in the military and is downright homophobic. But as an overarching matter, it seems obvious that the world that Mandella and his fellow soldiers once knew is much preferable to the Earth they keep returning to, with its big government, declining morality, cheapening of human life, and finally the disappearance of the individual. The closing pages are as good an argument against bio-engineering/cloning as you'll find anywhere on the Christian Conservative Right today.

Unfortunately for Mr. Haldeman, while the future he predicted as a result of militarism turned out to be a delusion, the world that peace and plenty may bring turns out to resemble his nightmare. When, at the end of the novel, Mandella and his woman reject the new Earth and settle instead on Middle Finger, they turn out to be flipping the bird to precisely the kind of placid but pointless, grotesquely egalitarian, utopia that the Left dreams of today. The folks who were "stuck" in the military, with it's unchanging values, turn out to be the great hope of the species. I must confess, I take great joy in this perverse reversal that events have wrought on Mr. Haldeman's book.

GRADE: A- (though accidentally)

Rating:
Summary: Classic futuristic war novel
Review: Since others have already written very complete reviews of this book, I just a had few miscellanous comments to make.

I waited almost 20 years to read this novel, and it was worth the wait. As a futuristic war story, I enjoyed this book as much as Starship Troopers, although it's a very different book about war. In the thousand-year war chronicled in this story, William Mandella becomes almost immortal as he goes from collapsar jump to collapsar jump. In the process, he leaves behind the earth he once knew and all his friends and family, surviving into a future of genetically identical humans, in which "imperfect" individuals such as himself no longer exist.

Besides the tragedy of the war itself, which ironically turns out to have started because of our misunderstanding the Taureans, earth itself is irrevocably changed. At one point he returns home only to discover there's not much there for him anymore, as when he finds that because of concerns about over-population, the entire population of earth is now gay--including his own mother. Most of the military is now gay too, except for a few old veterans like himself.

Besides the dramatic story about war, the book also counts as one of the great love stories in science-fiction. Mandella and his girlfriend are separated at one point and don't realize they're still the same age--because people age at different rates when they go through different collapsar jumps. They're eventually reuinited and are able to retire comfortably from the military when the war ends--since they've both accumulated a thousand years of duty pay.

Eventually the war with the Taureans ends in a peace, and despite the tragedy of the war, which turns out to have been completely pointless, the story at least ends on a happy note for Mandella and his love.

Overall a dramatic and evocative novel of the future, and which I think well deserved the two awards (both Nebula and Hugo) it received.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Sci-fi and Great Thought-provoking Entertainment!
Review: "The Forever War" is considered a classic in so many diffrent sub-genres of Sci-fi such as miltary sci-fi, psychological sci-fi, and cultural sci-fi because of the author's artful melding of so many themes in his book. It's considered a contemporary of both Heinlein (Starship Troopers) and Asimov (The Foundation series).

The author pulled from his own experience during the Vietnam war to create the psychological experience of actual combat; that is to say the seemingly endless waiting, nagging fear, adrenalin rush of the moment, comradely closeness, and so many other emotions that make many of us both human and soldiers.

At the same time, Haldeman's scientific extrapolations of where combat might go in terms of social indoctrination, training, and organization of soldiers in addition to to technical aspects of combat that reaches into the stars is nothing short of brilliant. His descriptions of starships is both believable, enjoyable, and feasible. The soldier's personal armor makes this one of the great "battlesuit" novels including Steakley's "Armor" and Heinlein's "Starship Troopers."

In much the same spirit that Heinlein meant "Starship Troopers" to be a critic / thought provoker about democracy and totalitarianism, it is clear that Haldeman meant "The Forever War" to be a thought provoker about war and how people relate to each other, all too often violently. Many have called this novel an "anti-war" novel or a "social protest" novel, but I think it's much more than that. Haldeman examines what it is to be a person with a conscience and how much society can change in just a few years. Thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity, the main protagonist of the book gets to take a tour across human societies of the future, some good some bad, and make his own revaltion about how people should live and what is most important in life.

While I recommend reading this book and enjoying it, I recommend even more rereading this book a year or so later and examining what one might learn from it. While I found "The Forever Book" an excellent read the first time through, I found it a much better read the second and third time through.

Rating:
Summary: ONLY THE PERFECT NEED APPLY TO DIE
Review: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a masterpiece as good or better as any work by masters such as Asimov, Heinlein, or Roger Zelazny. I was bowled over by the quality of this book. It has wit, pathos, satire, intelligence, statements about the horrors of war, and everything else you need to make the equivalent of a Shakespearean science fiction novel.

The book was first published in 1974 so that explains the not quite so futuristic setting of 1997 America. I think at the time Haldeman wanted to set his story in the future but not quite so far as to be removed from the society he wanted to critique or the experiences he wanted to communicate.

Space travel is common and flight between planets has become possible by using "collapsars", or what we would call black holes. As some scientists have speculated, these collapsars are not only tunnels to different points in space but also in time. An early exploratory mission is attacked by an alien ship with no provocation and so begins what becomes known as the "Forever War".

The military leaders of Earth decide that it would be a good idea to guard these access points, called "stargates" (possibly the source of the movie and tv show concepts?). So an elite force of the best Earth has to offer, in terms of combination of physical and mental abilities is drafted into the armed forces. One of these involuntary soldiers is William Mandella, a well drawn and completely realized character who serves as the narrator of the book. It follows his rise from a private in training to the rank of major and his role in the war.

The problem with passing through the stargates on military missions is that while the journey is instant to you, the passage of time could actually be thousands of years, which brings up some really poignant and emotional scenes in the novel.

The book is just bristling as a barely disguised allegory of the vietnam war at a time when it was still the biggest thing on most peoples minds. Don't get me wrong, you would only notice if you're looking for it. Some cultural leftovers from the time in which it was written is the prevalent use of marijuana by the soldiers and the rampant free love they engage in on downtime. The leaders of the military in this book are not portrayed in a very admiring light, mostly being of the shoot first, ask questions brand. You get the feeling that the rank and file soldiers would like to make some sort of overture of communication to the aliens but it never materialized.

As satire, this book is genius. Talk about anti-utopia. Some parts make the Matrix look like a nice place to live in. Earth begins to become a government brain wash center where at one point all humans are conditioned to be homosexual in order to control the population, for example. This book is almost Swiftian in its showing of human reason gone haywire.

This is a great work of fiction that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of what genres they like. I know I would probably get beat up for saying it, but this book is as good a representation of war as any "literary classic" such as Red Badge of Courage in showing the total dehumanization of killing. The character of William Mandella is a great character as good as anything Hemingway could come up with in his stories. I'm glad I found this work because there is so much drek in science fiction novels today. Read this book!

Oh yeah, one other thing I liked about the book is that the aliens are kept enigmatic and mysterious. I've read so many novels where the aliens are just like humans except that they happen to be from a different planet. It really cuts down on the fear of the unknown when authors do that. Also, I forgot to mention that there's plenty of action in the book that you will get swept up in, along with a love story. So if you were disappointed by Attack of the Clones, try this out.

Rating:
Summary: One of the classics of both science fiction the Vietnam War
Review: Though the prose is now somewhat dated, the plot and characters of Haldeman's early novel are as fresh as they ever were. The story of a troop of space-combat veterans who find themselves displaced in time, with no home but their unit and the war, is a striking commentary on the homecoming experiences of American combat veterans of the war in Viet Nam. Haldeman is a veteran, and wrote a slender mainstream novel about the war in Viet Nam (WAR YEAR). As war fiction and memoir go, that's a solid little book, but in THE FOREVER WAR, Haldeman taps into the realm of the mythic, and poses many of the same questions that Homer did in THE ODYSSEY. Furthermore, by avoiding the trap of "realism," Haldeman avoids repetition of war story clichés and forces readers to look in a whole new way at the fate of men and women who serve in combat. For sci-fi buffs, THE FOREVER WAR is also a revision of Robert Heinlein's guts-and-glory STARSHIP TROOPERS, a text that relied heavily on World War II history and myth. THE FOREVER WAR is far more cynical and savvy than Heinlein's naive epic. Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: fast paced, thought provoking, and still relevant
Review: For some reason, what stood out the most for me in this book was the writing style. The main character in this book is never discribed, except that he is an American male in his early 20s with a physics degree. All the conscripts have an IQ over 150 and an above average physique, so you can assume he does too. Beyond this any personality or appearance is left to you to imagine and even so, or because so, I found myself identifying completely with the character.

The story is fast paced with no extra speculation or discription. It is mostly just one event after another that happens to the character, and this drew me in because you find yourself bonding with the character and feeling a connection for what any perosn would feel in that situation. It is probably much like the bonding people really go through when they are in a war together; you form a connection just on the basis of what you have been through together and the history you have.

The story is dated in the sence that the interstellar war begins in 1997 (I think). But that is easy to ignore. I am an intelligent and avid sci-fi reader, and there was nothing I noticed in the story that was obsolete in a scientific sence.

The situations the protagonist goes through continue to be thought provoking. As he comes back from each tour of duty, the effects of his travel through space brings him into Earth's society 100s of years later on each trip. This gives a look at society from the outside in.

In short, this is an excellient book that has not become dated. Maybe not as good as "Ender's Game," as I don't want to read it again right away, but better than "Starship Troopers." After reading as much as I have, its a pleasure to find a book you don't want to pout down.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece about war and society in the future
Review: While I have long been a science fiction fan, it was a friend of mine who introduced me to Joe Haldeman's seminal work about the war and society in the future. From the very opening chapter, I was captivated vivid characterizations of the soldiers and locales of this time period. The first few chapters focus on the training of the elite soldiers of UNEF (United Nations Elite Force) to do battle with some far away alien race that Earth is at war with for some reason. The training takes place in the absolute zero temperature environment of the moon, Charon, of the planet Pluto. The description of the training environment and training exercises are well thought out. The reader can truly believe the activities that take place upon that moon from the results of exposure to the environment to the explosive reactions certain elements will have in those conditions.

Haldeman's writing in "Forever War" is effected by his experiences in Vietnam. The pointlessness and sacrifices of that war are closely paralleled in this book. No one who is fighting this war is sure why Earth is at war with the Taurans. In fact, few have even every seen the Taurans, as the alien planet is light years away from Earth. Reaching it requires the use of temporal anonmalies called 'collapsers' which allow the spaceship to travel vast distances in short periods of time while years, decades, even centuries pass in real time. The focus of the story isn't really even on the war itself. There is one brief confrontation with the Taurans at one point, but not much of any consequence happens, and when the soldiers return to Earth, they realize that there has actually been peace with the Taurans for 200 years. All manner of personal connections and societal development disappear under the circumstances these soldiers are forced to live in. Behaviors such as homosexuality and promiscuity, which are still considered morally wrong by many in this day an age, are generally accepted and even encouraged during this time period. The reason is not because of looser morals, but because outright necessity. Sexual release becomes a recreation activity for the soldiers and with health closely monitored, pregnancy and sexual transmitted diseases are non-existant. Without giving away too much, it's reassuring see the story end on a note that recalls our more familiar life in midst of a seemingly alien and uncomfortable future.

The futility of the war and the huge sacrifices made by those who fought it are difficult ideas to read about, but Haldeman helps the reader picture it in a fully-developed and realized manner that enables to understand and empathize with the characters and take solace in the destiny they achieve.

Rating:
Summary: Military SF: Social change, good use of time dililiation
Review: I first heard about this novel as a reaction to Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (see my review). This novel, along with Heinlein's, compromise definitive military SF. Haldeman was inspired by his experience in the Vietnam War which is reflected in the novel (e.g. large number of casaulies, the meaningless of combat etc). The enemy is ambiguous and no one is really sure why they're fighting the war. Like Heinlein's novel, the main "weapon" is a special space suit that provides the soldiers with air and heat and provides them with a mechanical strength.

The most interesting part of the novel is time dilation. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, the closer one gets to moving at the speed of light, the slower time progresses. Haldeman makes excellent use of this device. The protagonist, William Mandella, is originally drafted into UNEF (United Nations Elite Force) in 1997 and he doesn't finally leave military life until 3143 AD. His first campaign lasts a little under a year "subjective time" (the slowed down time experienced while traveling near the speed of light), whereas it is 2023 real time. During that time, Earth's economy had been almost completely converted to the war effort and overpopulation was a major problem.

He then goes back on active duty; there is nothing on Earth of interest to him. He is slowly promoted up the ranks and starts to face the problems of command. After this campaign, he returns to find that Earth's currencies have been abolished. The only remaining "currency" is ration cards that limit how many calories worth of food that a person can consume. There is widespread gang violence and almost everybody carries hand guns for self-defence. Fortunately, the UNEF soldiers' pay accumulates compound interest, while on R&R during the war, Mandella discovers that his back pay is about $900 million. Unfortunately, he recovers on "Heaven" a paradise world for UNEF personnel, all of whom have centuries of pay to spend; this leads to predictably high inflation.

The most interesting development is that homosexuality is encouraged in the late 21st century as a measure to control population growth (too bad Haldeman doesn't mention what Christians, Muslims, or Jews of the future era think about it. On his last campaign (which involves a 600 year "real time" round trip), Mandella's heterosexuality becomes a problem. His Temporal Orientation Officer told him that, "[o]nly emotionally stable people are drafted into UNEF. I know this is hard for you to accept but heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure." (page 180) It is ironic that up until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a disorder and only intense homosexual activism removed it from their list of disorders.

Finally, after his last battle with the Taurans (an insect like alien race), he returns to Earth. Arriving home in the 32nd century, he is told that peace was made with the Taurans about 200 years ago. The war is over. Earth and several colonies are populated by clones that are controlled by one single consciousness; it turns out that the aliens were like this and that they couldn't understand a race of individuals. The whole war had been a misunderstanding that was made worse by military leaders who were itching for a war.

While I disagree with the ideas here, I think Haldeman has shown what can be done in SF. Speculation about society (e.g. how far will we go to control population?) is one of the things that makes science fiction uniquely valuable as literature and allows us to creatively look at our selves.

P.S. The Science Fiction channel is supposed to be doing a 4-hour miniseries based on it sometime in 2002-2003; I wonder how it will turn it.

Rating:
Summary: Forever A Classic
Review: I haven't read too much SF over the years, but I like a good story no matter what category of fiction it's in, and The Forever War is one of the best I've ever read. The only science fiction novel I've read that was as enjoyable--but like I said, I haven't read that many--is The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Other than that, I can't think of any that I've enjoyed as much, even Starship Troopers.

I read The Forever War for the first time a little over a year go, and it's really stuck with me. Every now and then I'd find myself thinking about the book, so I reread it this week (reading a book more than once is rare for me). The story as a whole is great, but it's the little details that intrigued me the most. Being a veteran myself--I was in the Marines right out of high school--I really enjoyed the military training techniques early in the novel. Near the beginning when the class of elite troops is viewing a "tape" with footage of killing techniques, Haldeman talks about how actual prisoners were killed to make the training tape. It's little details like that that really brought the book to life for me. Another example is when he talks about military personnel smoking joints in the barracks rec room. These small details--government sanctioned killing of prisoners for the benefit of the military, and legalized dope--really set the tone for the rest of the book. It just gets more and more strange from there, but Haldeman never lets it get out of control by making any of it so outlandish as to be unbelievable. It's just one hell of a ride.

This is a novel that will probably appeal to people who don't normally read science fiction. I'm a complete moron when it comes to understanding physics and astronomy, but that presented no problem whatsoever, unlike when I've read some of William Gibson's (I did like Neuromancer though) and John Shirley's novels. I definitely plan on reading more Joe Haldeman novels in the near future.