The Forever War (1974)

I can't believe that I missed reading this book for so long. I've had the paperback forever and finally just finished the eBook. Interesting fact I just found out, Joe's wife is Mary Gay Potter and they will celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary this week at Worldcon. I wish them as long a life as "Mandella" and "Gay" and hope that it is considerably happier. I really loved this book and plan on picking up the sequels and they won't sit around unread for long. ( )

Read when I was in High School. I still think about even to this day (25 years later) ( )

Good, well written, intelligent science fiction, albeit with paper-thin characters and little actual human emotion. Written by a Vietnam vet in 1974, it is a thinly veiled satire on Vietnam, and war in general. ( )

With the anniversary of D-Day being just a few days ago, this was timely reading. Joe Haldeman’s book, “The Forever War” is engaging, well-written, and meaningful, originally published in 1974. It was a Hugo and Nebula winner. I read an edition published in 2010 which Haldeman identified as the ‘definitive edition’. I read the first edition back in college in the mid-eighties. While I remember greatly enjoying the book in college, this re-read was much more impactful. I don’t know if that is due to my naivety back then, or the changes in editions.

The story is written in first-person from the perspective of Private William Mandella. Haldeman effectively pulls from his personal experiences from Viet Nam. He tells a very readable story and successfully conveys several themes:
- Solders in wartime, often return disconnected from their personal relationships and have challenges in reconnecting with family and friends.
- Solders are also often faced with ‘culture shock’, losing touch with changes in society and face difficulty integrating into everyday life after living through war’s horrors.
- Countries and economies can become dependant on war, limiting incentives to find peaceful solution.
- War can escalate, losing touch with its original objectives. Certainly, for many solders, after being caught up in a life and death struggle and attempting to protect and save their fellow soldiers, are often left with a void, when considering, “what was it all for?”

Haldeman uses science fiction including time dilation to magnify these themes. He also creatively tells of some drastic culture shifts which the MC faces when returning from duty. This book is a masterpiece, both as a straight-up science fiction story, but also as an allegory for the horrors and hopelessness of war. ( )

The last chapter just seals the deal, comes from left field and makes your heart drop. That book was more impacting than I expected it to be even ten pages before the end. Nausea and then this poignant heart stab. There are some reflections on the nature of leadership that are quite good and could be further teased out on a rainy day too, about the weird feeling of empathy and responsibility, the feeling of displacement or not belonging in the role and the need to also embrace it and be the bad guy sometimes. Basically, Forever War as good as everyone says it is.