[Book Reviews] ‘The Forever War’ by Joe Haldeman

"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman

What would happen if we really waged interstellar war? One thing Star Wars and Star Trek don’t take into account are the effects of relativity when people travel fast enough that they’re approaching the speed of light. What might seem like weeks to the travellers could seem like years to the people back on Earth. And that’s exactly what happens in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, a book where the main character, William Mandella, is enlisted to fight in a war against an alien menace known as the Taurans (named after the constellation they’re believed to be from). As Mandella goes off on campaigns, he returns to find Earth increasingly more alien as the years go by, until finally, it is a place so different that he can no longer even call it home.

Haldeman says in the prologue that he intended this book to be an analogy of the Vietnam War, but that he was surprised that readers who weren’t familiar with Vietnam could still read it and understand it. That’s a very interesting point, because had Haldeman not brough up Vietnam, I would have never made the connection. For one thing, he does such a good job of distancing himself from the politics of the 1970s (when this book was written) and describing a military that is evolved from what we have today. Only the best and the brightest are conscripted into the military, and training conditions are harsh — many die before it’s even over. There is a rule that every solider must be given a mate of the opposite gender if he or she wishes, resulting in a 50/50 split of males and females and forced couplings among non-romantically-involved soldiers. The military operates so much like a machine that the human element is often forgotten. This is very evidence when the soldiers return home and experience “future shock” — something the military never accounted for and does not seem concerned about. In fact, the military becomes the one constant in their lives they can count on.

One of the interesting ideas of the book is that the soldiers are only briefly effective due to the effects of time dilation. The Taurans are unprepared, at first, but quickly up the ante with more deadly weapons. Soldiers who are sent out to fight with the latest and greatest weaponry return home with the equivalent of peashooters since things have changed so much by the time they get back. It makes for a frustrating battle — the soldiers are far less effective than the technology they wield.

Another interesting idea is the way the Earth changes. Haldeman’s vision of the Earth is that it grows so crowded that the government begins to encourage homosexuality as the norm. Mandella eventually finds himself commanding a regiment of people who find him the deviant, and even has to rebuff the advances of one of his officers. Humanity continues to change until it is something so different, so alien, that Mandella is forced to join a team of people from his era who set out to colonize a new world.

There is, of course, a surprise in the nature of the war that’s being fought as well. The Taurans are not what they seem, and the premises of the war are not exactly what the military originally claimed. There is a real sense of betrayal at the hands of the military, something that echoes Haldeman’s own experiences in Vietnam, but also the broader theme of any military, from any time, having a secret agenda. Wars are not fought over big ideas, like freedom and safety; they are fought over little things, like wealth and land.

Some see this book as a response to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and there are certainly some parallels. Haldeman has always played this connection down. I suspect it was an influence, but not his sole motivation for writing the book. For what it’s worth, The Forever War is a much better book than Starship Troopers. I’m not sure that I feel the same way about the sequels (direct sequel Forever Free and thematic sequel Forever Peace), though. While they’re similar in some ways, they just don’t have the same feel to them that The Forever War does.

There’s a 1988 graphic novel adaptation of this book that’s faithful, but condensed, and Ridley Scott’s working on a 3D film that probably won’t be any good at all. There’s also a parallel short story (“A Seperate War”) and a connecting comic (A New Beginning). But the original is the best, and well worth reading.

GENRE: Hard Science Fiction
STORY: ****
CHARACTERS: ****
CONCEPT: ****
RE-READABILITY: ****

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan