The Forever War (The Forever War Series) Kindle Edition

"`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

Very nice sci-if story with realistically portrayed subjects and probable future life styles . Liked the tie in to our past involvement with Vietnam. Will seek out more from this author!

Starship Troopers is one of my all time favorite sci-fi books. I love it for many reasons, not least of which being that, as a veteran himself, Heinlein had a keen grasp on military life. I'm a veteran, as well, and it's always nice to read work by authors who have a good grasp on military culture.However, over the years, Starship Troopers has been accused of being overly martial and militaristic, painting only a positively-tinged picture of war, military service, and the military-industrial complex. Enter Haldeman's The Forever War. Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran, admits that The Forever War was based on and written in direct response to Starship Troopers. The Forever War serves as a far-future allegory illustrating the follies of the Vietnam War from a grunt's eye view.Like many other works both fiction and non-fiction by Vietnam veterans, The Forever War contains strong underlying subtexts of hopelessness, helplessness, fatalism, and military incompetence and impotence. The protagonist's platoon mates are killed off quite ruthlessly and in gruesome detail in missions that ultimately mean nothing as the platoon later abandons the position.The addition of time dilation due to near-light travel is an integral plot device that serves as an exaggerated parallel for the fog of war and the speed in which the major variables of war can change. Ultimately, this plot device very effectively illustrates one of the hardest things that homecoming veterans have to face: Coming home to a world that feels altogether different and alien not just from war, but from the world that we left in the first place.As a former grunt and combat veteran of Iraq, I can identify very strongly with much of the above that Haldeman tries to get across to the reader, and in fact that is a large part of why I wanted to read the book. Iraq is, in many ways, the modern day Vietnam, and I can see myself and my buddies in many of the same idiotic, chaotic, terrifying, boring, and ultimately useless scenarios that Haldeman shows us.The book isn't perfect. Haldeman does not flesh out very many of the protagonist's platoon mates, so when they're KIA, as a reader you don't particularly care. Of course, such may have been Haldeman's point. I suspect that he was trying to relate the idea of random almost nameless young people being thrown to the grinder and the numbness that one develops because of it. However, I don't think it translates very well, and by the end of the book so many have died that as a reader you just kind of shrug your shoulders.And because I was a grunt, I have to be nitpicky about the lack of any kind of infantry tactics used in the book. As I understand it, Haldeman was not himself a grunt, so it's somewhat understandable, but I really liked how in Starship Troopers Heinlein included a few infantry tactics that are in use even today. It helps with world building and really lets me get lost in a military book.In summary, The Forever War works very well exactly as Haldeman intended it. By using a far-future setting, Haldeman was able to write a story about Vietnam without all of the political attachments that people have toward that war. As such, it's a much more visceral and vivid experience.

The Forever War (1974) by American author Joe Haldeman is a rather deceptive book. For the first few chapters the novel reads like a standard Starship Troopers military science fiction novel detailing an interstellar war between humans and aliens (the Taurans), recruits getting trained to turn them into bad-asses and hi-tech weapons being used. But it won the Nebula Award in 1975, and the Hugo and the Locus awards in 1976 for best novel so there must be something different about the book?And there is …. The story soon changes, the effects of time dilation as a result of near light speed travel are explored, as is the tragedy of one soldiers of loss of friends and family, alienation with humanity, not being able to fit into society plus having to deal with a seemingly endless pointless conflict.The heart of the novel is about one reluctant soldier, Private William Mandella who is fairly ambivalent about the wars he finds himself in. He fights more from of a sense of duty and loyalty. The reader is subjected to a mixture of hard sci-fi: the aforementioned time travel and its effects, black holes and hi-tech arsenals along with descriptions of the social and political changes needed following on from a Malthusian-like catastrophe (population growth had outpaced agricultural production): homosexuality becomes the law (sex is treated by Haldeman in a non-judgemental and non-moralistic manner) and payment for work is in calories as opposed to actual money. The story also deals with love too. Mandella bonds with one woman in his company in particular and she provides his only connection to their known world of the past; as the book closes Mandella has travelled over twelve centuries.It is clear that the book is an allegory to the Vietnam War, Joe Haldeman having served in this conflict. Other hints of the autobiographical nature of the work are the protagonist’s surname, Mandella, which is a near-anagram of the author’s surname, as well as the name of the lead female character, Marygay Potter, which is nearly identical to Haldeman’s wife’s maiden name. Importantly, if one accepts this reading of the book, the alienation experienced by the soldiers on returning to Earth becomes a clear metaphor for the reception given to US troops returning to America from Vietnam, including the way in which the war ultimately proved useless and its result meaningless. This meaningless is discovered in the book by a cloned, collective species calling itself Man who can communicate with the Taurans and discovers the aliens were not responsible for an act that triggered the futile conflict that lasted for more than a thousand years.Haldeman also subverts typical space opera clichés (such as the heroic soldier influencing battles through individual acts) and demonstrates how absurd many of the old clichés look to someone who had seen real combat duty. In fact the quantity of battles described is relatively small, as the other aspects of the story are explored more extensively.The other thing I’m noticing as I read and review the so-called classics of different genres is that the best characters are never really truly evil, nor good. Each person is a mixture of both. This is certainly the case in The Forever War as the individuals are well rounded and fully fleshed-out.So in summary, this is science fiction of the highest quality and is worthy of the Masterworks title. The pace of the plot never slackens and this help to draw the reader in while retaining a compensate and emotional core (despite the battle sequences and death and destruction); a difficult balance to achieve. Despite it being over 40 years old a lot of the ideas Haldeman presciently foretells in the book are still relevant today and the years haven’t dated the story. A highly recommended book.

This book followed on the heels of Robert A. Heinlein's <i>Starship Troopers</i>. I believe that Joe Haldeman wrote his military SF book in response to Heinlein's. After reading the latter, at some point, I felt that I should read the former. I am glad I did.While this book has much in common with <i>Starship Troopers</i> there is much that differentiates it. The one thing that stands it apart from Heinlein's book is that <i>The Forever War</i> is unequivocally an anti-war book. Joe Haldeman draws on his experiences in Vietnam as the basis for this novel. This is also a science fiction novel and he adds a good dose of hard-SF to make it work.Our hero, the narrator, is William Mandella. He finds himself thrust into a war he does not understand against the alien Taurans, which he understands even less. The enemy was first encountered in the Aldebaran system in the constellation of Taurus but the location of their native planet is unknown.Superluminal travel exists in Haldeman's Universe. It is achieved by diving into an object called a collapsar. The trouble is travelling between these objects is done according to Einstein's physics. This can take a long time but time dilation can shorten the length of the trip for the soldiers, subjectively. This makes collapsars strategically important as are the frozen worlds that orbit them.Private Mandella begins his training on the fictional planet of Charon deep in the outer Solar System. The training is brutal, unforgiving and dehumanising. The female soldiers are expected to put out for the male ones. I suspect this was shocking even in the nineteen seventies. Human beings are de-humanised and become assets to be used and expended in the protracted war.More through luck than judgement, our hero survives his duty and he retires to civilian life on a now unfamiliar planet Earth. Unable to fit in, he re-enlists as a junior officer and is promoted again. Alas, the military separates him from his lady love. Relativistic time dilation means it is unlikely they will ever see each other again. Another layer of humanity is denied our protagonistI found the battle scenes somewhat lacking. I felt like Haldeman was telling us about them rather than immersing us into the action and the danger. As an anti-war novel, I felt it failed to present to the Hell of war effectively. Having said that, Mandella has to cope with losing and nearly losing his colleagues, and indeed his own grievous injuries. We get a glimpse of the human cost of the forever war.

It is very well written (which for me is very important, though a good story can overcome most of these deficiencies.( the first Harry Potter book for example). This book has both, and has such, I highly recommend it. It is one of the best sci-fi books I have ever read.Hopefully you will appreciate it too, and enjoy.

First read this when it came out in the early 1970s, first novel by a new writer, mixed reception from critics but it scooped awards. Simply written, with flavours of the Vietnam War, but a fine idea, which is what carried it through, and still makes it a must-read almost 50 years later. The futility of war...is war itself, not some profound philosophy. You should grab the Kindle edition when it's on offer, worthy of any collection. The science will never become obsolete, which is what makes it stand the test of time.

Not going to give any kind of in-depth review other than this follows the story of a soldier who fights on other planets for Earth - the only problem being that when he has been away say 7 years, 50 years have elapsed on earth and he begins to feel disconnected for what he is supposedly fighting for. A fascinating idea and story that explores the disillusion and needlessness of war. After reading this, it easily jumped to my favourite novel of all time.