The Forever War

by Joe Haldeman

there are two things that make a novel a “classic”—a genuine classic, as opposed to merely “old and continuing to sell.” The first is that it speaks to the time in which the novel first appeared.

The second thing is tougher, and that is that it keeps speaking to readers outside its time, because what’s in the book touches on something that never goes away, or at the very least keeps coming around.

It’s about Vietnam because that’s the war the author was in. But it’s mainly about war, about soldiers, and about the reasons we think we need them.

one day a drone limped back alone. Its data were analyzed, and it turned out that the colonists’ ship had been pursued by another vessel and destroyed. This happened near Aldebaran, in the constellation Taurus, but since ‘Aldebaraniam’ is a little hard to handle, they named the enemy ‘Tauran.’

Then some bright lad in the General Assembly decided that we ought to field an army of footsoldiers to guard the portal planets of the nearer collapsars. This led to the Elite Conscription Act of 1996 and the most elitely conscripted army in the history of warfare.

The fighting suit is the deadliest personal weapon ever built,

Remember, semi-logarithmic response: two pounds’ pressure exerts five pounds’ force; three pounds’ gives ten; four pounds’, twenty-three; five pounds’, forty-seven. Most of you can muster up a grip of well over a hundred pounds. Theoretically, you could rip a steel girder in two with that, amplified.

I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn’t prepared me for this sudden reality … that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn’t a soldier nor ever wanted to be one

In the few moments I lay awake after finally lying down, the thought came to me that the next time I closed my eyes could well be the last. And partly because of the drug hangover, mostly because of the past day’s horrors, I found that I really didn’t give a shit.

And take one prisoner.’ ‘Potter here. You mean, at least one prisoner.’ ‘I mean what I say. One only. Potter … you’re relieved of your platoon. Send Chavez up.’ ‘All right, Sergeant.’ The relief in her voice was unmistakable.

You’ve lost about nine years, though, to time dilation, while we maneuvered between collapsar jumps. In an engineering sense, as we haven’t done any important research and development aboard ship … that enemy vessel comes from our future!’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘As the war progresses, this can only become more and more pronounced. The Taurans don’t have any cure for relativity, of course, so it will be to our benefit as often as to theirs.

it doesn’t matter what name you give to a computer, it’s a pile of memory crystals, logic banks, nuts and bolts … If you program it to be Genghis Khan, it is a tactical computer, even if its usual function is to monitor the stock market or control sewage conversion.

a man is only a hank of hair and a piece of bone and some stringy meat; and no matter what kind of a man he is, if you teach him well, you can take a Zen monk and turn him into a slavering bloodthirsty warrior.

‘She’s very pretty.’ A remarkable observation, her body torn and caked with crusting blood, her face smeared where I had tried to wipe away the tears. I suppose a doctor or a woman or a lover can look beneath that and see beauty.

Relativity traps us in the enemy’s past; relativity brings them from our future. We can only hope that next time, the situation will be reversed.

And the main thing that was wrong was that everything seemed to have gotten just a little worse, or at best remained the same. You would have predicted that at least a few facets of everyday life would improve markedly in twenty-two years.

The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth’s economy would collapse.

The few dozen cities there either blended perfectly with the environment (one was totally underground) or were brazen statements of human ingenuity; Oceanus, in a coral reef with six fathoms of water over its transparent roof, Boreas, perched on a sheared-off mountaintop in the polar wasteland; and the fabulous Skye, a huge resort city that floated from continent to continent on the trade winds.

We had a day and a night together. The less said about that, the better. It wasn’t just losing a lover. Marygay and I were each other’s only link to real life, the Earth of the 1980s and 90s.

One kind of gentleman would have helped her get undressed and then made a quiet exit. Another kind of gentleman might have bolted for the door. Being neither kind, I closed in for the kill.

I was sure I could have handled the pressures and frustrations of command; of being cooped up in a cave with these people who at times seemed scarcely less alien than the enemy; even the near-certainty that it could lead only to painful death in a worthless cause — if only I could have had Marygay with me. And the feeling got more intense as the months crept by.

thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond and if he had been born instead of hatched he would know that without being told!

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was ‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?’

The fact was, Earth’s economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it.

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. — Marygay.