The Forever War (The Forever War, #1) in The Alternative Worlds

Feb 12, 2020 mark monday rated it liked it

Shelves: scifi-60s-70s-80s

it is easy to see why this one is a bonafide classic of the genre. Haldeman succeeded in doing everything he set out to do, and he never loses focus: this is a story about the futility of war and the ever-changing yet ever-cyclical nature of humankind. his prose is straightforward, his ideas are clearly thought-out, his pacing is perfect, his protagonist is realistically and empathetically characterized. this is a smart, fast-paced, and very compassionate, humane book.

for me, the most important ...more

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Mar 22, 2015 Kara Babcock rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-read, own, nebula-winner, posthuman, space-opera, time-travel, hugo-winner, science-fiction

So I’m on a relativistic shuttle, waiting for you…. I never found anybody else and I don’t want anybody else. I don’t care whether you’re ninety years old or thirty. If I can’t be your lover, I’ll be your nurse.

Hey kids, you know how people keep using that word allegory, and you’re never really sure what they mean, and they probably aren’t even sure what they mean?

This. This is an allegory.

If there’s a reason we have the phrase “deceptively slim” in our book reviewing vocabulary, it’s for books ...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: pocmaincharacters, sci-fi, queer-characters, grand-masters

William Mandella is drafted to be part of the first strike force against a mysterious alien threat. He has the dubious luck of surviving not only training (which kills half the trainees) but also their first encounter with the enemy. As it turns out, despite being a pacifist who formerly trained to be a physicist, he's actually pretty good at warfare. When his service is up, Mandella returns to Earth, but finds that although only 2 years have passed for him, more than twenty have passed for thos ...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Daniel Roy rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf, wwe-gmrc, sf-masterworks, military

Great SF stories stand the test of time by transcending the period from whence they emerged. The Forever War, oddly enough, is timeless precisely because it is firmly rooted in a key period of world history. It manages to evoke, to this day, the horrors of Vietnam and the pain of returning veterans, and in so doing transcends them into a timeless discussion about the futility of war and how it uses up human lives.

I first read The Forever War in comicbook form, thanks to Marvano's amazing adaptat Great SF stories stand the test of time by transcending the period from whence they emerged. The Forever War, oddly enough, is timeless precisely because it is firmly rooted in a key period of world history. It manages to evoke, to this day, the horrors of Vietnam and the pain of returning veterans, and in so doing transcends them into a timeless discussion about the futility of war and how it uses up human lives.

I first read The Forever War in comicbook form, thanks to Marvano's amazing adaptation. Being a Belgian work, and thanks to its ligne claire style, the adaptation felt more universal, less rooted in the American war experience. The novel itself, though, is firmly American. You can glimpse the mind of a male Vietnam war vet as the story unfolds. This may not make the novel as universal as the comicbook adaptation, but it makes for a more powerful reading because of its roots in the American experience.

That's not to say it's a bad thing. It's another great example how even SF writers should write what they know. A lot of the SF concepts work perfectly as allegory for the soldier experience, including the painful culture shock of returning home. The second part, during which Mandella returns home to a world he no longer knows, is gripping and powerful. I bet it must resonate a great deal with veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The protagonist's voice is dry and not given to literary flourish, which grounds the story in gritty realism. The writing of violence and blood during the first contact between Humanity and aliens is told in a dispassionate tone, and we can feel the echoes of pain and trauma extinguishing apparent emotion. Not once do we feel William Mandella is at home in his environment. He's forever the alien, displaced by war and time.

Then there are parts where the novel shows its age. For one thing, the story is awfully obsessed with sexual orientation. The idea of a future society where homosexual relationships are the norm is interesting, but it feels somewhat dated and close-minded that this is mostly used to illustrate how our very heterosexual hero is different from "those people". It's not cliché and there's no hatred, but it definitely feels as if gender orientation was used specifically to otherize future society and provide future shock for the red-blooded American hero.

I remembered this story in vivid detail from reading it as a comicbook in my adolescence, and rereading today I can understand why. It's nearly timeless, it's filled with great SF ideas, it's pretty strong on the science parts, and there's a great amount of pain and healing taking place over the course of the story. It deserves its spot as a SF classic, but also among the great discussions in fiction on the pain and trauma of war. ...more

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