The Long Habit of Living

by Joe Haldeman

In the 21st century, immortality via the complex operation known as the Stileman Process is attainable by a few wealthy and determined individuals, but the motivations that drive humans to live forever remain shrouded in mystery until "immortals" Dallas Barr and Maria Marconi stumble across a dangerous secret and find themselves fleeing for their lives--which have suddenly become very short.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Adventure, Time Travel, Thriller, Science Fiction Fantasy

300 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Brother of Jack C. Haldeman II

Haldeman is the author of 20 novels and five collections. The Forever War won the Nebula, Hugo and Ditmar Awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. Other notable titles include Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound as well as the short works "Graves," "Tricentennial" and "The Hemingway Hoax." Starbound is scheduled for a January release. SFWA president Russell Davis called Haldeman "an extraordinarily talented writer, a respected teacher and mentor in our community, and a good friend."

Haldeman officially received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2010 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May, 2010 in Hollywood, Fla.

Reviews

[Spike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slick, intelligent story that moves at an exciting clip. Joe Haldeman's prose seemed less typical hard SF and more AA in the vein of Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, or Clive Cussler...set in a near-future world. This is the third Joe Haldeman novel, after Mindbridge and Forever Peace, that I found to be under rated by fellow GR reviewers. Or worse, when the author's name comes up, it seems that most know Forever War, but few know little else. This book is proof positive that he has a helluva lot more to offer. Highly recommended.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast paced thriller set in the near future full of all kinds of interesting outgrowths from our current society. There's an island off Florida that's an anarchist haven & he gives credible reasons why it exists. Surveillance is pervasive, trips to NEO, Luna, Mars, & the asteroids are expensive, yet common place. Life extension is at the heart of this & he has some great thoughts on what the world would look like to really old people with young bodies. The conspiracy all revolves around the process & the people that hold the secret. There are a lot of excellent unintended consequences from historical decisions & the best of motives. It was almost too full of great stuff & will be well worth rereading in a few years. Definitely one of his best.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written and fast-paced book that takes an old sf trope, immortality and its many consequences on society, and presents it in a near-future suspense/tech-thriller framing. The chapters alternate between two first-person narrators that are very well drawn characters, and the settings from Florida to Australia and beyond are well described. It's Haldeman at his most captivating and entertaining.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a good second half. Can't go too wrong w/the theme of life extension but there were some underwhelming aspects. Haldeman should've stuck w/one perspective (Dallas Barr). He did not write very well from Maria's perspective, and it basically sounded like a man's thinking in the guise of a woman. The story would've been more seamless and thrilling had it went from moment to moment from the eyes of Dallas. There were also some dumb moves made, like, they're running for their lives but not really hiding well or, like in the beginning, when Dallas did not take seriously at all the implications of things i.e. he didn't really think they'd try to kill him. And then there are Dallas & Maria as people. Neither is very charming or great, and given their ridiculously long lives, there really ain't much 'extra' to get from them. No wisdom, or great humor, or fascinating intellect, just people with the mindsets of 40-50 year olds who hearken to 20th century things.

Fans of Haldeman's popular works might enjoy this but I wouldn't recommend it to newbies. I like Haldeman for his sense of realism, like when he describes how a powerful group or person can basically make lies truths through the news outlets. There might be many an author who writes of such things but few of them take it seriously, whereas with Haldeman, there's a feel that he really means it, that he doesn't trust everything he sees on his television screen and that he doesn't buy everything he's told from a man in a white lab coat and eyeglasses. There is some grit. Overall, I like how this book got started & revved up, but after they went to outer space, and after so many near-death incidents, it just kinda got lost in its own exhaust, and the ending made little sense.

[Kevin Groosalugg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I've read a few Haldeman short stories and really enjoyed them. The story was uninteresting, the characters not well defined or likeable. It improved in the middle and I was just starting to get into it when out of the blue it ended. No real resolution or explanation of anything. Just a poorly written book. It's a near future story where humans can extend their life for 10 years through the Stileman process by giving Stileman all their money. A man can expose the Stileman foundation for their many sins and they want him dead. Plot holes galore.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few books that I have enjoyed reading again. It is so full of interesting ideas and an action paced plot.

[Linus]

DNF. A fast-paced book in which the so-called Stileman process allows the upper class to prolong their lives. They only have to pay 1 million to the organisation that carries out this medical operation, but this process only lasts 10 years. Then they have to start again and somehow raise another 1 million to undergo the operation again. The story follows one of the oldest people in the world, Dallas Barr, but in the last time some stileman people died for unknown reasons and this goes pretty quickly into a tour de force where different groups have different interests and strive for Dallas' death. Imo there was too much going on at the same time, without enough structure in the story, so I gave up at some point…

[Alexander Theofanidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Βρισκόμαστε στο μέλλον… η αθανασία είναι διαθέσιμη, αλλά θα χρειαστείς κάτι παραπάνω από νεφρό για μα την αποκτήσεις και έτσι οι σούπερ πλούσιοι ζαπλουτοχλιδάμπουρες παίρνουν παράταση ζωής χάρη σε μια «πανακρίβου» ιατρική.

Ο κολλητός σας για τις ανάγκες του έργου, ο κυνικός αλλά και όλο γοητεία Ντάλας Μπαρ (ναι, το ξέρω ότι ακούγεται σαν κωλόμπαρο στην Αχαρνών κακόφημο στέκι, αλλά είναι «Barr» στα ινγλέζ’κα), έχει το σπάνιο προνόμιο να έχει σιδερωθεί ο ίδιος αρκετές φορές για να παραμείνει βιολογικά ατσαλάκωτος, ωστόσο η ύπαρξή του με τα άπειρα ρεκτιφιέ και η σταθερότητα του κόσμου είναι σε κίνδυνο.

Ο δημιουργός αριστουργημάτων Haldeman, βάζει στο στόχαστρο τις κοινωνικές ανισότητες και το εύρος που μπορούν να αποκτήσουν και επειδή έχει χώρο το ζεμπίλι, η φορτωτική περιλαμβάνει πέρα από την προφανή ΟΓΚΩΔΗ ανισότητα της χρήσης των τεχνολογικών εξελίξεων μόνο προς όφελος της ελίτ (και μάλιστα της… αθανασίας) το ερώτημα αν η αθανασία είναι πραγματικά ευλογία ή μήπως γίνεται μια παγίδα που καταστρέφει όσους την επιδιώκουν (Simak, ήσουν πολύ μπροστά). Η ύπαρξη μιας κάστας αθάνατων μεγιστάνων υπογραμμίζει τη διαρκή συζήτηση γύρω από την ανισότητα πλούτου και τη διαφορά μεταξύ εκείνων που ελέγχουν την τεχνολογία και εκείνων που δεν έχουν πρόσβαση σε αυτή και το κατά πόσο αξίζει κανείς να ζει για πάντα αν πρέπει να πουλάει την ψυχή του στο διάβολο κάθε φορά (εκτός από το ένα κοντέινερ χρήμα που δίνει).

Το βιβλίο είναι γεμάτο ενέργεια και δεν αναφέρομαι σε αυτή που έχουν οι ξανανιωμένοι πλούσιοι, σε μια αρένα που κυβερνοπάνκ και hard sci-fi παίζουν ξύλο μεταξύ τους με τελικό νικητή τον αναγνώστη. Μυστήριο, ένταση, δράμα, ένα αρκετά πειστικό «Stileman Process» (η διαδικασία του «σιδερώματος» για να γίνετε σαν καινούργιοι), συνομωσίες, κατασκοπευτική ίντριγκα, χιούμορ, ηθικοκοινωνικά λακτίσματα στο μαλακό υπογάστριο των επαναπαυμένων αναγνωστών και πάνω απ’ όλα υπαρξιακές ανησυχίες στις οποίες αν μη τι άλλο μας έχει συνηθίσει ο αγαπημένος Joe.

Κάποιοι το συγκρίνουν με το (επίσης πολύ καλό) Altered Carbon του Richard K. Morgan (για κακή σας τύχη έγινε τηλεοπτική σειρά, να διαβάζετε πριν ανακαλύψει το NETFLIX τα βιβλία σας), αλλά η αλήθεια είναι ότι οι προσεγγίσεις είναι αρκετά διακριτές και σίγουρα γενεσιουργός αιτία, βαθιά ρίζα της ύπαρξης του βιβλίου είναι τα βιώματα του Haldeman στο Βιετνάμ (κάτι που γίνεται εμφανές και σε άλλα έργα του -λέγε με π.χ. Forever War).

Τα ζητήματά του είναι διαχρονικά, η πένα του εξαιρετική, η διαχείριση του θέματος από τις καλύτερες δυνατές. Κλείστε το θερμοσίφωνα (για να μην έχετε καν άλλοθι να σταματήσετε την ανάγνωση) και διαβάστε το.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even allowing for its age (28 years), this is a not-bad adventure perched atop a decent SF "what if" - except for the ending.

The "what if" is thoughtful: how would a near-immortality process have to work so that the Earth didn't fill up in a couple of generations?

The adventure is that there's a Bad Guy who doesn't like the setup the way it is, and will kill to change it.

OK ... but Haldeman, a solid and experienced writer even then, wraps it up with a highly implausible ending. Maria's long surgeries trained her to control her perception of time, OK I'll buy that, and when things got tough she somehow used that to actually move faster than the enemy.
Imagine you're outside the Star Trek holodeck, Data's in there watching something, he thinks he's firing a gun, and you see bullet holes appearing in the shell of the holodeck. Maybe I misread it.

Still, it was a good book for a plane trip.

[Barbara Sheppard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like science fiction but am definitely not at expert.

To me this is almost science fiction. Why almost? Although there are science fiction elements like time travel and immortality The plot seems to point more to a standard conspiracy thriller.

I enjoyed some of the premise of reducing income inequality via immortality but this featured very little in the plot. It was fast paced and exciting but not terribly deep. I did not totally understand the ending but I still enjoyed reading the book. I actually listened to it which made the story a bit more interesting.

[Prospero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Haldeman - when he's good, as with The Forever War, Camouflage and The Accidental Time Machine, he's pretty good; when he's bad, as with Mindbridge, Worlds, and this novel, he's really bad. Poorly structured and paced, with an out-of-left field biological deux ex machina at the end. A real disappointment.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written 30 years ago, does not hold up well.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://geekpronblog.blogspot.com/201...

[Graeme Dunlop · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite "older" science fiction books. Immortality, conspiracies, space habitats -- there's a lot to like here. Physical immortality is available to the super-rich. The price: all that you have and own, at a minimum price of one million pounds signed over to the Stileman Foundation.

Dallas Barr, one of the oldest "immortals", is invited to some shadowy meetings of an "inner circle" of immortals and begins to discover that all is not as it seems. Pretty soon he's on the run with a price on his head. Can he stay alive long enough to uncover and expose the conspirators?

The book has an interesting structure. Each chapter begins in first person, alternating between the two main characters, Dallas and Maria. Then there's some kind of article or hand-written note or info readout, then the chapter closes in third person. That may seem jarring but it works pretty well.

I first read this when I was a lot younger and a lot of the ideas were new to me then. But it's funny, reading it back now it still feels fairly contemporary. If you ignore the dates (e.g. such and such happened in 2090) the technology and world don't feel anachronistic; the references to datanets and such could easily be the Internet and Wikipedia and so on.

Parts of the book are set in Sydney, Australia and the descriptions and language feel authentic (I grew up in Sydney). I'm sure Joe Haldeman spent some time there himself or has a very close friend who did/does.

This is one of those books I read again every few years. It's been quite a while since I last read this and I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Daniel Gonçalves · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it comes to science fiction, it's becoming ever harder to build visionary story concepts. This is evident in Joe Haldeman's Buying Time.

It's not to say the book has no space for advanced ideas. It has a lot of them, albeit not truly original. In essence, the concept of immortality has been tackled before and this time wasn't a space for unpredictable "twists". Despite the flaws, Joe Haldeman remains a talented and engaging writer largely because of the inborn talent for vivid descriptions and realistic dialogues.

However, the characters lack that same realism making it difficult to connect with them. The same can be said about the villains: there's just not enough backstory for the reader to care about their impeding menace.

In this book, we experience a world where only millionaires are able to afford their juvenescence making the imbalance between poor and rich evident. This is a great critique of capitalism and its pernicious side. Yet the narrative seems to lose its consistency throughout. Midway you really find it difficult to understand time and place for the characters and that takes away from the experience.

In full, it's an enjoyable book, but your level of enjoyment will largely depend on your pre-established love for the genre or the author. I'm sure there are better titles to start from.

[Alien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to the Stileman - Process it is possible to prolong one's life for some decades. But it has a price. Namely all of your assets, with a minimum of 1 Mio. So after each rejuvenation you have some decades to become a millionaire again before you need the next treatment.

I am a bit a fan of Haldeman. This novel however, was not that great. After about half, when the main protagonists fled to Ceres, I lost interest and put the book aside for several months. Then I continued but still without much reading pleasure.



The end did not convince me. There were far too many unlikely flukes. After Maria decides that she wants to continue living, she starts dying prematurely, and, oh how lucky, by chance they are at the one place of the solar system where she can be "healed". They entered the lions' den, get caught. But oh, they have developed those super-human abilities so that they are victorious.

[Ren Bedasbad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun SF story about a well-thought out immortality and it's effect on personality, society, and financials. The book has plenty of story, action, and plot twists that keep it very interesting as the science is broken down. The characters are great, but don't hold too much personality. While it is a very good book, it is not as good as Forever War. SF fans should still check out this book though.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haldeman always amazes me in the way he takes an old tried and true SiFi plot, in this case immortality, and the twists it till it is something else entirely. I am almost always surprised but never disappointed in a Haldeman Novel. If you haven't discovered this guy, grab a book. Very recommended

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.” Sir Thomas Browne

Better than some of Haldeman’s more famous works. Less preaching; more story. As cynical as ever, Haldeman develops a more complex plot and characters. Lots of violence, as usual. Lost a star due to gratuitous profanity.
<
i>“Even if we could guarantee your life, we can’t guarantee your sanity.”
“All right. “You’ve done your job. I’m terrified. But I still want to go ahead with it.”

Published in 1989, but ages well. Compatible with what we didn’t yet know about Ceres, for example. Technology miscues, of course, but none which impair enjoying the story. Microprocessors and distributed communications caught most SF writers flatfooted.

“You were born in the wrong century, you bastard.” “No, you were. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Reflections: Published one year before the Soviet Union collapsed, Haldeman thought it would last another hundred years. He wasn’t alone, blinded by his preconceived notions. Many failed to see how hollow and brittle the Soviet Union was. Similarly, Apple, Boeing, Tesla, etc., have sold their corporate birthrights for a bowl of porridge. What happened to Hong Kong tells Taiwan its future under the CCP.

“All we really know is that we aren’t children any more. That we blinked and found the playground has suddenly become infinite.”

[Eric Mesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earlier this year I read The Forever War for the first time after having read Starship Troopers. So when there was a Humble Bundle with a bunch of books I didn't care about, but which had a book by Joe Haldeman, I jumped on the bundle.

Having read these two books, the biggest thing I've noticed abut Joe is that he is GREAT at world-building. It doesn't mean the story suffers, but I almost want to read more to wander around his worlds than I do for the story to continue. What's the world here? Some scientists invent The Styleman procedure - undergoing this procedure reverses the aging process. As long as you go through it every 10 years, you can remain a perpetual 20-year-old (body-wise). That, by itself, would be a near world. But in order to get the initial financing to setup The Styleman Institute, they wanted to use it to redistribute wealth in the world. The process would cost $1 million dollars and the person who did it would have to give away all their money and posessions to the institute, which would then spread it around various charities. This is also a world where people take pleasure trips out into space and where there are lawless colonies among the asteroids. (And also on Florida)

Of course, for most rich people you can take away their money and they'll earn it back again because that's how they became rich in the first place. But the ability to live forever also creates incentives to find ways to cheat. So we meet characters who have various levels of morality about following the letter of the Styleman agreement.

Eventually the story evolves into a thriller in which our protagonists have upset some very important people and are chased around the world and through space while trying to figure out who exactly is after them and why.

The story-telling is really neat, including using a technique I've seen a lot in comics (particularly by Alan Moore), but rarely in books: a variety of media are used to tell the story. So in addition to jumping back and forth between our main characters POV chapters and an omniscient third party POV, there are chapters that tell the story via ads, TV commercials, TV interviews, news stories, etc. It makes for a very rich and varied experience while expanding the scope of the world. There's even one chapter that was a bit rough in audiobook, but probably really awesome in text - where they show what a conversation between an AI and a human would be like since AIs would be able to think as fast as computers can.

Overall, it's a well-told story that makes you think a lot about the main premise (being able to live forever for a price) and works well as a thriller.

[Martti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immortality means signing off your fortune to the Stileman clinics, and you need to rejuvenate every 10 years. What is immortality and how does it affect the individuals and the human civilization? Discuss. Perhaps also read a bit from this single novel by Joe Haldeman, that should have been a series. But sadly is not. It feels just as a beginning of a journey.

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a not so distant future, “immortals” can buy ten to twelve years of extra life at a time through a medical procedure known as the Stileman Proces. The catch? They must give all their assets to the Stileman Foundation each time, and the minimum cost is one million pounds. Dallas Barr, an immortal, becomes aware of a conspiracy to subvert the Stileman Foundation. But the secrets go deeper than that, and he is soon on the run.

A well-paced and interesting science fiction thriller with an interesting premise. Dallas Barr’s journey to stay ahead of the antagonists takes him to various places on Earth, and the asteroid belt, with some very interesting societal models. As is common with Mr. Haldeman, the story veers in unexpected directions, with this one digging deeply into a global conspiracy theme that is just as topical as when the book was written.

https://www.books.rosboch.net/2026/01...

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a macho thriller dressed in science fiction clothes. Half the story is narrated by a woman, but she feels like she was written by a man. The plot is good. The pacing is excellent. The characters are OK, but not very original so I wasn't drawn to any of them, and the vision of future society is mildly interesting but not thought out deeply enough to really get me thinking about its implications.

I used to read books like this all the time and loved them, as I got a bit older I decided that I should be reading more serious literature, and reading good books spoiled me. Now I turn back to stuff like this from time to time, but I usually find it to be unsatisfying.

[Jonathan Harbour · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've gotten to the point as a reader where I will not soldier through a bad book. I don't care WHO recommended it or how many awards it received! If I am bored, then I'm not going to waste my time with it any more. Such was this book, my 2nd Haldeman after his good but overrated Forever War (which was far less interesting the 2nd time I read it).

[Steven Gravatte · Rating 2 out of 5]

The build-up and world building were great, the ending was incredibly lackluster.

[TK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forever Peace was my introduction to Haldenan, followed by Forever War. Given my enjoyment of those books, when I saw this pop up in my Bookbub feed I bought it. Unfortunately this book doesn't live up to the expectations set by those titles.

The story itself is a decent enough "Lazarus" tale with an overall "on the run" action plot, but in execution it fails to stick the landing. The world building is vague and minimal, many characters are poorly defined, several plot points are resolved by what amounts to deus ex machina, and we get little info on the antagonist's motivation at the end beyond "yeah he crazy, wow."

On top of this, I liked Maria and Dallas as characters, but the idea that they were well over a hundred years old just didn't come across as believable. Dallas in particular. They behaved and thought more like their physical age than their mental one. Maria was much more introspective at least and her perspective was interesting.

Speaking of the perspective, it was jarring how it constantly seemed to shift between 1st and 3rd person. Chapters were named after their viewpoint character, yet still intermittently shifted between them and other perspectives mid-chapter. The book's narrative voice as a whole was clumsy.

Also, the way the plot resolved and the "interesting changes" involving Zombi near the end felt awkward, like Haldeman needed to write himself out of a corner and just made something up.

All that said I still enjoyed the book. If you can keep your expectations low there's a good book here, just not a great one.

[Peter Brichs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeg har købt Buying Time i en bunke af lydbøger på www.humblebundle.com, og jeg gik derfor rimeligt blind ind til bogen. Det viser sig at være en science-fiction (måske endda lowtech cyberpunk) fortælling, hvor menneskeheden har fundet en medicinsk procedure, som kan gøre folk udødelige...næsten da.

Hvert 10-12 år, skal man ind og have proceduren fornyet. Det koster bare - alle dine ejendele. Og de kan slet ikke blive anbefalet, hvis du ikke har mindst en million pund, du kan give for proceduren.

Det er et meget fint koncept, som holder en god historie. Uden at afsløre for meget, kan jeg dog godt afsløre, at under overfladen er ikke alt fryd og gammen; der er konspirationer, og vores hovedpersoner, Dallas Barr og Maria Marconi falder over en hemmelighed, og rejser hele vores solsystem rundt for at undgå at blive slået ihjel på grund af den.

Joe Halderman, forfatteren, har lavet en spændende fortælling, som bruger en masse gode værktøjer; der er skiftende fortæller - vi har både førstepersons-afsnit, hvor vi følger Maria & Dallas, men også avisartikler, tredjepersons-fortæller, tekniske idsskrifter og meget, meget andet.

Jeg kan klart anbefale Buying Time, som er noget så forfriskende som en afsluttet historie, og ikke en del af en større fortælling.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haldeman, Joe. Buying Time. Morrow, 1989.
The human genome project and the possibilities of genetic engineering were topics of discussion in the late 1980s. Science fiction writers of the period were fascinated. Larry Niven was writing his organlegging stories. Anne McGaffrey had a 1990 story in which street kids were stockpiled for body parts, and Octavia Butler was writing her Bloodchild and Xenogenesis stories, which used the biotechnology as a wat to explore human sexuality and power structures. In Buying Time takes a more straightforward capitalistic approach. He posits a world in which one corporation has developed a set of treatments that restore your body to a youthful condition. The catch is that the company wants a million-dollar payment for the treatment that must be repeated every decade. If you can’t raise your million, you are out of luck. How will the company react when it becomes possible to offer longer-term treatments for a lower price? Not well. The plot starts when a couple tries to upset the corporate applecart. Space opera ensues. I liked it—but it does not rise to the level of Butler’s work. One tidbit: the Florida Keys have become an independent state called the Conch Republic that is essentially an anarchy.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an older book, but I know I read a recommendation for it somewhere, recently. It reminded me a bit of the movie "In Time" with Justin Timberlake. In this novel, those with the most money can "buy" an extra decade of life at a time, paying a million dollars to undergo a rejuvenation surgery. But the corporation that takes their money in exchange for longer life has some secrets.

It's an interesting adventure story, including space travel, as a couple who knows too much flees the company as they search for the truth behind the lies. Still, there were times I debated giving up on it and moving on to the next book in my TBR pile. I also was disappointed by the ending -- the author seemed to try to wrap up the whole thing in just a few pages, and even threw in some soapbox-style thoughts on population control, the distribution of wealth across society, and so on.

I'm glad I stuck it out and finished it, but am not going to go off and read other titles by the same author.

[Brendan Hough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ear read 2024 (9.33hrs)
8.7/10 i didnt like the ending, it was ok but took it down for me as was thinking of giving this maybe 9 or 9.5 or 10. Eric vale did a wonderful narration. Story is about medical procedure that can give you 10-12 extra years of life but once you are on the program that is it (rapid death after unless you manage to pay for another 10-12yr procedure). The drug that distorts time in the later half of the story was interesting. Makes you think about if you are trapped in your mind that races way faster than reality could we cope, kinda like coma patients i suppose. The traveling around up high and from country to country was interesting too. The prose at times was marvelously vivid, and i am looking forward to reading another book by joe haldeman in the future :)
Not sure if this has been made into a movie, but it should (enough meat in it to make 2 films actually).