The Forever War Paperback – February 17, 2009

From the moment I opened this book and all the way through to the end, I was mesmerized by the story, the characters, and the sheer excellence of this amazing work of Science Fiction.If you are a Sci-Fi fan and haven't read this, you are doing yourself a disservice. This novel, nearly fifty years old, is a classic work. It follows the military life of a physics student turned soldier, William Mandella, through his training and combat experience as a member of the UNEF Army. It is a compelling tale of a man who wants to go home but may not be able to continue to live his life the way he expects. While he serves a total of four years of his life, the travel from assignment moves at relativistic speeds and as we know, when someone travels at those speeds, time passes very quickly for those who are not along for the ride.Physics student William Mandella is conscripted as a member of a task force for the United Nations Exploratory Force to fight in a war against an alien race known as Taurans after presumed attacks by them on human colonist ships. Mandella undergoes intense training and is deployed to numerous places in the galaxy. While the ships that transport soldiers from one battle to another are very fast, traveling at relativistic speeds means that a lot of time passes off the ship than onboard.The first deployment for Mandella's group lasts two years from his point of view, but for the return to Earth, 27 years pass. In those times, there are drastic developments in technology, but there are also societal changes that are shocking.Mandella is part of the war for only four years of his life while centuries pass at home.The principal character, William Mandella, is an intelligent man who is made into a warrior. He isn't obsessed with killing but is merely doing a job he’s been trained for. He is quite resilient in that he understands his situation concerning time dilation, and what it might do to him. However, the time he spans outside his relativistic travel changes so drastically, he sometimes has a hard time keeping up with all the changes. He takes everything in stride as he moves forward, but still maintains his own identity. He wants all the things a professional soldier wants, but most of all, to come home alive to a world and to the woman he loves. We see most of the story through Mandella's eyes and the thoughts he has and so we get a combat veteran's view of life in and out of the military and observations of the social and political situations as they evolve over the period of a thousand years.My favorite point of plot in Forever War is how it illustrates the changes society goes through over a period of time. At one point, Mandella goes home and has a difficult time recognizing nearly everything he encounters. The changes are so extreme and bizarre that he finds he no longer can exist. He finally returns to the military because it is what he has become familiar with.It is no spoiler to say this tale is a metaphor for the Vietnam War. The author himself is a veteran of the Vietnam era, so the story is sad and tragic, but there are also moments of hope.Personally, the theme that stood out the most was how soldiers were regarded when they returned home. In the book, they are not treated well as they return to an Earth that has become a social and political ruin. Many are just trying to survive in an economy that is in shambles. When he feels as if he has been alienated from his home planet, Mandella, along with Marygay, re-enlists. As is typical of the military, after being promised to be assigned as instructors on Luna base, they are switched back to a combat unit and sent off to fight once again.Another thing that stood out to me was how Forever War and Starship Troopers (the book by Robert A. Heinlein, not the film) have some things in common. Both are a soldiers’ story that can give one a better understanding of what it means to fight in a war and then try to survive, not only in combat, but when returning home and having to adapt to all the changes one faces.My takeaway from The Forever War is to show how one can never return home. Nothing stays the same and life is full of change.Forever War is a classic work of sci-fi that holds up well and will speak to readers today. If there is a must-read list, this book should appear at the top. It has everything a fan of military sci-fi would enjoy, and I think many of those who have served would also appreciate what is in these pages.Mandella's tale is great on every level.It is brilliantly written because it is easy to understand and relate to. It is a fairly fast read at 236 pages, but at the same time, there is a lot of amazing story packed into that small space.I found Forever War to be entertaining, engaging, and emotionally charged.'Highest Recommendations!

I liked the characters, the plot and the ideas of what the future might hold. It felt a bit dated at times; there was some veiled homophobia, but at least it had a happy ending.

I have loved it, hated it, been sickened by it it more than one way, and think that only a fool would be unmoved by such a tale. Such a strange tale. Earth, united and fighting the Taurans. If we want to win we have to fight. The whole story is rapped with a sense of dishonesty. The indifferent soldiers have to be brainwashed to fight, if they refuse they will be brainwashed to fight. Oh and in order to fight you have to accept that time will wipe out nearly everything you care about. Most of the fighting will be for cold lifeless rocks. I still love it. The sexual politics of the book has divided people for years. Haldeman deserves some respect for incorporating it in a straightforward manner. I took my first read of this at 14. Everything was beyond me at 14. While the issue of homosexuality was one of the pillars of the story. Our hero goes from heterosexual world to one that becomes largely homosexual, and eventually a sort of asexual cloned Empire that has heterosexual planets as a backup. The sexual dynamics drove the point home, that these soldiers were caught up in something profoundly alienating. Could it have been handled more deftly to manage a more universally understood sexual norm? That would miss the point substantially. I would say to read the Forever War and criticize the sexual politics is to miss the point of the story. The story deserves a few more reads.

I've heard a lot about this book, how seminal it was in translating the journey of our Vietnam vets from peace to war torn jungles and back stateside in relative peace again. I was not disappointed, and the ending was perfect, just perfect.

"`Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.' The guy who said that was a sergeant who didn't look five years older than me. So if he'd ever killed a man in combat, silently or otherwise, he'd done it as an infant."The opening paragraph provides a glimpse into the most intriguing aspect of "The Forever War," that of the affect of time dilation, officially defined as: the principle predicted by relativity that time intervals between events in a system have larger values measured by an observer moving with respect to the system than those measured by an observer at rest with respect to it. This concept is explored in the 1953 novel, "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke as protagonist Jan Rodricks travels to the Overlords homeland in a faraway galaxy; upon his return to Earth he has barely aged, while 80 years have passed for those who remain on Earth. In "The Forever War," the concept is turbo-charged as we follow the travels of William Mandella between Stargate and phenomena called Collapsars (what we today would refer to as a black hole) and distant planets where a war with the Taurans rages for thousands of Earth years.The novel is broken down into the parts of Mandella's life as he ascends from a foot soldier to a leader in the United Nations Exploratory Force (UNEF), which was assembled for war against the Taurans. As someone who studied the history of Vietnam, including the French occupation of Indochina and the American involvement (which began well before LBJ escalated the war), the metaphors and irony vis a vis the Indochina Wars (fought between 1946-1979) were striking; that the smartest and strongest are sent against the Taurans (vs. the US draft where often those who were the poorest and less privileged were sent against Vietnamese); that the Earth to which Mandella returns, many decades or hundreds of years later is very different from the one he left, unwelcoming and undone (vs. the US soldier who returned from Vietnam to an often hostile and volatile America very different from the one he left); that the war is a supportive crutch to a failing Earthen economy (vs. the US contractors who during the age of Vietnam had much production in the US, especially the East and West Coasts where employees for the defense contractors supported the local and national economy); that the theory was that Earth's economy would collapse without the war (vs. a US economy that did collapse after its involvement in the war ended - though admittedly more from an oil shock owing to the Yom Kippur war than Vietnam, doubtless the end of lush government spending and contracts had an impact overall).Where the novel may disappoint readers is in the characterization of Mandella and his love interest, Marygay Potter. In the beginning, Mr. Haldeman ushers images that would make Ron Jeremy jealous, of orgies and fantasies; gratuitous love-making. "Actually, she was the one with the new trick. The French corkscrew, she called it. She wouldn't tell me who taught it to her, though. I'd like to shake his hand. Once I got my strength back." Unfortunately, we don't get beyond this first layer and it takes away from the denouement.The bottom line: "The Forever War" is an epic story of the pointlessness of war, the impact it has on the troops and their families, and the tendency for mankind to descend to chaos rather than order. Fans of speculative fiction will find the technology and its descriptions riveting, the social changes thought-provoking (forced homosexuality and the "cure" for heterosexuality) though I wonder if they will care enough about Mandella to witness his conclusion.-Raeden Zen