1968

Fans of Haldeman's science fiction might be expecting an autobiographical novel when they find out that this is the story of a nineteen year old draftee who serves as a combat engineer in the Vietnam of 1968. That was the year Haldeman was a combat engineer there, and, like protagonist Spider, he was wounded then. But much of the novel doesn't seem specifically autobiographical though Haldeman's lean prose certainly uses his own experiences to recreate everything from the details of Vietnam's red soil, the contents of an engineer's demolition pack while on patrol, boobytraps, and the workings and non-workings of various weapons. Haldeman's dry, ironic prose has the right air of understatement for horrors that need no exaggeration. show more Science fiction fans will also be interested to see how the horrors that drove Spider psychotic are worked into the genre fiction he writes at his therapist's request.

Haldeman's most famous work, THE FOREVER WAR, was a metaphoric look at Vietnam. Here he shuns obliqueness to recreate an America at war. Using the novelistic techniques of Dos Passos, we learn about the persons and events of the time in documentary sections interspersed between accounts of Spider and his one time girlfriend, Beverly, whose journey skims the oceans of political dissent and counterculture existing on the homefront. Spider's troubles are only beginning when he's evacuated back home after being wounded in an ambush that wipes out most of his patrol. The entropic workings of bureaucracy and malfunctioning machinery coincide to strip him of home, family, friends, and gainful employment. Only rarely does coincidence -- and Haldeman's coincidences are always plausible -- work in his favor. One instance leads to the book's powerful ending.

Anyone seeking a compelling account of the year or any fan of Haldeman will want to read this novel.

My only complaint is that I would have liked to continue some of the characters' lives past 1968, but Haldeman is faithful to the title and ends his novel on Dec. 31, 1968. show less

P. 248
"The double Standard was absolute and unquestioned. Boys cajoled and pleaded and promised, but if a girl finally did give in, they would in all probability have sex with her for a month or two and then wander off looking for fresh blood, or meat, meanwhile telling all the other guys about how easy she was. She was a slit but he was normal, he was a man."

Thanks, Joe Haldeman, for reminding me how much and why I hate men.

But the book: In 1968 I was a sophomore at Coronado High School in Scottsdale, AZ. We had a demonstration in the park across from the school, wearing black armbands and having a day off school if our parents signed a note for us. We were protesting the Vietnam war, but we didn't have any idea at all about it.

My own show more brother got a 4F deflection from the draft lottery, taking LSD to be deemed mentally incompetent, to get out of his evaluation in New Mexico. I don't know why the draftees were not accorded the recognition and respect that servicemen get now, but they didn't. People actually spit on them!

This story is about just one of those GIs, Who suffered brutally in the short time that he served in that cruel and senseless war, and is based on the time that Haldeman spent in Vietnam--1968. show less

If you want to know what it was like, ask someone who was there. Haldeman's first novel, 'The forever war', was generally assumed to be a science-fictional allegory of Vietnam. That it took him nearly 25 years to write about the event itself says a lot about the impact it had on him (and by extension, others).