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Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home.… (more)
JulesJones: Two books which examine in different ways what happens to the recruits in an interstellar war who by the very nature of their service can never go back to their home culture.
I really wanted to enjoy The Forever War more, I really did. Joe Haldeman explores brilliant concepts, from the meaning of war and being soldier, the impact of time dilation on the development of human colonization and society, to being, in essence, a foreigner among your own people. I really love these concepts and Haldeman does a good job in putting forth hypothetical outcomes, but in actually making them narratively interesting, he falls flat. The man character and narrator, William Mandella, comes across as incredibly bland and one dimensional. Despite the whole book being written from his perspective, very little of his personality ever comes forth. Perhaps that's the side effect of constantly jumping forward in time and having to constantly adjust your concepts of society-appropriate behavior, or perhaps its just because the narrator serves more as vehicle to tell the story of a millennia spanning war. Either way, I was frustrated by being unable to care about his thoughts or well being, and inability to better explore the new cultures he was thrust into.
What the book does do well is demonstrating just how confusing, destructive, and pointless war can be. The war is very plainly an allegory for the Vietnam War, with Haldeman being a Purple Heart veteran of that war himself. The war is begun after a mysterious and hazy incident involving an enemy we don't understand, and the war seems to have very little purpose, with the goal posts shifting constantly. The soldiers who sacrifice their bodies and spirits to fight the war often return to a country/planet that is very different from what they left behind, and find that the glory/honor/respect/status promised to them is no longer true.
The Forever War is a book whose premise is brilliant and the concepts explored deserve so, but is let down by an unoriginal narrator. It still holds up as a foundation work for much of the military space opera sub-genre of sci-fi that has produced so much solid work. ( )
"Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man."
Quotations
Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there...the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.
I feel asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and storing up hurts for the day--
"One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy's information, political postures--dozens, literally dozens of factors."
The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth's economy would collapse.
Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.
Desperate fun, as I said. Unless the war changed radically, our chances of surviving the next three years were microscopic. We were remarkably healthy victims of a terminal disease, trying to cram a lifetime of sensation into a half of a year.
War is the province of danger and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior, von Clausewitz maintained.
Last words
I handed the bartender my empty glass. "I just found out where we're going."
Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home.
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The Forever War? Ugh.
Wikipedia in English (3)
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What the book does do well is demonstrating just how confusing, destructive, and pointless war can be. The war is very plainly an allegory for the Vietnam War, with Haldeman being a Purple Heart veteran of that war himself. The war is begun after a mysterious and hazy incident involving an enemy we don't understand, and the war seems to have very little purpose, with the goal posts shifting constantly. The soldiers who sacrifice their bodies and spirits to fight the war often return to a country/planet that is very different from what they left behind, and find that the glory/honor/respect/status promised to them is no longer true.
The Forever War is a book whose premise is brilliant and the concepts explored deserve so, but is let down by an unoriginal narrator. It still holds up as a foundation work for much of the military space opera sub-genre of sci-fi that has produced so much solid work. (