| Product: |
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman |
| Date: |
31.08.00 (238 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: covers serious themes AND is an engrossing page-turner.
Disadvantages: feels slightly disjointed in places (but this may be a deliberate and valid reflection of the life of a soldier!).
For a science fiction novel originally written as a reaction to the Vietnam war, by an author who was himself a war veteran, this novel has in fact lost almost none of its relevance today.
William Mandella is a Private recruited into the human forces who are currently locked into battle with the mysterious alien Taurans. After undergoing dangerous training, he eventually graduates to active service. Unfortunately, however, the effects of relativity mean that whenever a journey is taken at high speed onboard a space ship centuries pass back on Earth for every few months ship-time. The vessels and bases encountered, whether human or Tauran, may have vastly different levels of technology depending upon how long ago they were launched, and receiving reports from central command is an almost impossible situation.
Eventually Mandella falls in love with Marygay, a fellow member of the crew, and the two spend some time out of the war zone on a planet they can hardly recognise, but are eventually forced to re-enlist, only to discover that they will be serving on different ships, the effects of relativity meaning that they will almost certainly never see each other again, very probably coming back from their respective missions to completely different eras on Earth.
This is a novel which effectively reflects the feelings of being ‘cut-off’ from society back home and the loneliness which many veterans, of the Vietnam war in particular, and of other wars in general, must be familiar with, the science fiction setting being used to good effect in making these feelings into genuine reality, in the process becoming one of the few novels in my experience which not only takes relativity seriously but which has it effects ingrained in the very fibre of its plot.
Already a much-praised work, and the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards (amongst others), The Forever War was recently reissued in Britain by Millennium as the first in th
eir series of SF Masterworks, also marking the first time that the original version of the novel has been available in this country.
An excellent science fiction war novel, easily the superior of Heinlein’s right-wing militaristic escapades, this is a novel which takes the realities of war seriously, whilst avoiding the temptation to preach and telling a thoroughly engrossing yarn in the process.
Deserves to be read by everyone who likes science fiction, and by those with an interest in the effects of war.
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