With so many great, fun novels coming out these days, it can be very easy to ignore past greats. I’m not talking like… the “classics” like the books of Dickens, Dumas, Wells, and so on.
I’m mostly going to be talking about science fiction in this review, since the book I’m reviewing is sci-fi, so let’s go ahead and steer in that direction.
Technology right now is insane. Sci-fi books written even 10 years ago likely have some incorrect science in them. So how the hell can we read something science-fictiony that was written 50 years ago and take it seriously, especially in situations where the future year they were writing about was the early 2000s, where we’re currently living?
It’s that sort of thoughts that make science fiction from the 30s-70s and even into the 80s a little hard to take seriously or digest.
So when I finally picked up The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I love science fiction. I love classic sci-fi. H.G. Wells was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. Him and Jules Verne kind of set my tone for what science fiction was. Even so, it has been a while since I’ve sunk into any “old” sci-fi, and I almost gave up on The Forever War pretty early on.
Boy, that would have been a mistake.
This book is known for a reason. It’s like… at least in my experience, one of those hidden gems that you uncover randomly and that really makes a mark despite its existence on the edge of the shadows.
Quick synopsis: Earth is mired in a war with a largely-unknown alien race we call the Taurans. Our POV character and protagonist, William Mandela, is an elite recruit set to be a ground trooper in a sort of mech suit. His training and combat is intense, demanding, cruel, and just straight up deadly. His fellow troopers die in training, not just in combat.
That takes place in 1997. Thanks to space travel, time dilation, and relativity, he doesn’t get back to Earth from his 2-year war expedition until 2024. By then, the world is very different. His mother is old. The economy had to change to cover the needs of the still-ongoing interstellar war. Earth is dangerous in populated areas and even more dangerous in the less controlled areas. Freedom has a different face.
So different that Mandela and many of his fellows can’t cope and simply… rejoin the military. Which means a promotion to trainer, but also much more time away. Over the course of many assignments, campaigns, and centuries, we follow Mandela through the war.
What this book really does is gives the reader snapshots of human evolution in culture and adaptation. Mandela, being a “relic” of the 1900s, quickly grows more and more out of touch with his fellow soldiers. At one point, the man is in transit to take charge of a group of cadets… who haven’t even been born yet. During his transit, they’ll be born, raised, and prepared for him.
Mandela loses everything he knew for this war. His own habits, preferences, and mannerisms become the drastic minority over the course of his life, where once he was a sort of “everyman.” The people and ideals he’s fighting for warp and evolve until they’re all but unrecognizable.
There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a little bit of a Ship of Theseus situation for Mandela. He’s fighting for humanity, but humanity becomes less and less recognizable to him as things go on, and the war is all he really has.
Well, that and his attachment to one of his fellow relic soldiers, Marygay. Their careers meet up and separate for longer and longer stretches, but Marygay remains one of Mandela’s driving factors. Seeing her again, connecting on a personal level with someone who understands him, becomes the main thing he clings to.
What I think Haldeman did well with this book, which still holds up in the mid 2020s, was not make it about the science. Sure, we get some information about the technological advances of the military and the culture when Mandela’s on Earth in 2024, but… that’s not the meat of the story. The real story is about man’s relationship with itself. What humanity does to adapt, and how we can alienate ourselves from one another through necessity. We see the gradual changes in how humanity examines itself. Most notably, at least to me, is the change in sexuality over the ages in this book. Due to the war and the nature of military needs, Mandela’s heterosexuality goes from something to feed during his first expedition— the soldiers pretty literally all pair up every night to vent sexual needs— to an oddity, to a straight up minority, to almost unique. It gets to a point the man is almost like a freak show exhibit because he’s heterosexual.
I won’t spoil the ending of this book, even though it’s nearly 50 years old. It would be best if you experienced it for yourself if you haven’t read it.
But I cried. I cried joyfully and with hope. Not for humanity.
I cried for William at the end.
I’m mostly going to be talking about science fiction in this review, since the book I’m reviewing is sci-fi, so let’s go ahead and steer in that direction.
Technology right now is insane. Sci-fi books written even 10 years ago likely have some incorrect science in them. So how the hell can we read something science-fictiony that was written 50 years ago and take it seriously, especially in situations where the future year they were writing about was the early 2000s, where we’re currently living?
It’s that sort of thoughts that make science fiction from the 30s-70s and even into the 80s a little hard to take seriously or digest.
So when I finally picked up The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I love science fiction. I love classic sci-fi. H.G. Wells was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. Him and Jules Verne kind of set my tone for what science fiction was. Even so, it has been a while since I’ve sunk into any “old” sci-fi, and I almost gave up on The Forever War pretty early on.
Boy, that would have been a mistake.
This book is known for a reason. It’s like… at least in my experience, one of those hidden gems that you uncover randomly and that really makes a mark despite its existence on the edge of the shadows.
Quick synopsis: Earth is mired in a war with a largely-unknown alien race we call the Taurans. Our POV character and protagonist, William Mandela, is an elite recruit set to be a ground trooper in a sort of mech suit. His training and combat is intense, demanding, cruel, and just straight up deadly. His fellow troopers die in training, not just in combat.
That takes place in 1997. Thanks to space travel, time dilation, and relativity, he doesn’t get back to Earth from his 2-year war expedition until 2024. By then, the world is very different. His mother is old. The economy had to change to cover the needs of the still-ongoing interstellar war. Earth is dangerous in populated areas and even more dangerous in the less controlled areas. Freedom has a different face.
So different that Mandela and many of his fellows can’t cope and simply… rejoin the military. Which means a promotion to trainer, but also much more time away. Over the course of many assignments, campaigns, and centuries, we follow Mandela through the war.
What this book really does is gives the reader snapshots of human evolution in culture and adaptation. Mandela, being a “relic” of the 1900s, quickly grows more and more out of touch with his fellow soldiers. At one point, the man is in transit to take charge of a group of cadets… who haven’t even been born yet. During his transit, they’ll be born, raised, and prepared for him.
Mandela loses everything he knew for this war. His own habits, preferences, and mannerisms become the drastic minority over the course of his life, where once he was a sort of “everyman.” The people and ideals he’s fighting for warp and evolve until they’re all but unrecognizable.
There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a little bit of a Ship of Theseus situation for Mandela. He’s fighting for humanity, but humanity becomes less and less recognizable to him as things go on, and the war is all he really has.
Well, that and his attachment to one of his fellow relic soldiers, Marygay. Their careers meet up and separate for longer and longer stretches, but Marygay remains one of Mandela’s driving factors. Seeing her again, connecting on a personal level with someone who understands him, becomes the main thing he clings to.
What I think Haldeman did well with this book, which still holds up in the mid 2020s, was not make it about the science. Sure, we get some information about the technological advances of the military and the culture when Mandela’s on Earth in 2024, but… that’s not the meat of the story. The real story is about man’s relationship with itself. What humanity does to adapt, and how we can alienate ourselves from one another through necessity. We see the gradual changes in how humanity examines itself. Most notably, at least to me, is the change in sexuality over the ages in this book. Due to the war and the nature of military needs, Mandela’s heterosexuality goes from something to feed during his first expedition— the soldiers pretty literally all pair up every night to vent sexual needs— to an oddity, to a straight up minority, to almost unique. It gets to a point the man is almost like a freak show exhibit because he’s heterosexual.
I won’t spoil the ending of this book, even though it’s nearly 50 years old. It would be best if you experienced it for yourself if you haven’t read it.
But I cried. I cried joyfully and with hope. Not for humanity.
I cried for William at the end.
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