The Forever War

From the moment I opened this book and all the way through to the end, I was mesmerized by the story, the characters, and the sheer excellence of this amazing work of Science Fiction.If you are a Sci-Fi fan and haven't read this, you are doing yourself a disservice. This novel, nearly fifty years old, is a classic work. It follows the military life of a physics student turned soldier, William Mandella, through his training and combat experience as a member of the UNEF Army. It is a compelling tale of a man who wants to go home but may not be able to continue to live his life the way he expects. While he serves a total of four years of his life, the travel from assignment moves at relativistic speeds and as we know, when someone travels at those speeds, time passes very quickly for those who are not along for the ride.Physics student William Mandella is conscripted as a member of a task force for the United Nations Exploratory Force to fight in a war against an alien race known as Taurans after presumed attacks by them on human colonist ships. Mandella undergoes intense training and is deployed to numerous places in the galaxy. While the ships that transport soldiers from one battle to another are very fast, traveling at relativistic speeds means that a lot of time passes off the ship than onboard.The first deployment for Mandella's group lasts two years from his point of view, but for the return to Earth, 27 years pass. In those times, there are drastic developments in technology, but there are also societal changes that are shocking.Mandella is part of the war for only four years of his life while centuries pass at home.The principal character, William Mandella, is an intelligent man who is made into a warrior. He isn't obsessed with killing but is merely doing a job he’s been trained for. He is quite resilient in that he understands his situation concerning time dilation, and what it might do to him. However, the time he spans outside his relativistic travel changes so drastically, he sometimes has a hard time keeping up with all the changes. He takes everything in stride as he moves forward, but still maintains his own identity. He wants all the things a professional soldier wants, but most of all, to come home alive to a world and to the woman he loves. We see most of the story through Mandella's eyes and the thoughts he has and so we get a combat veteran's view of life in and out of the military and observations of the social and political situations as they evolve over the period of a thousand years.My favorite point of plot in Forever War is how it illustrates the changes society goes through over a period of time. At one point, Mandella goes home and has a difficult time recognizing nearly everything he encounters. The changes are so extreme and bizarre that he finds he no longer can exist. He finally returns to the military because it is what he has become familiar with.It is no spoiler to say this tale is a metaphor for the Vietnam War. The author himself is a veteran of the Vietnam era, so the story is sad and tragic, but there are also moments of hope.Personally, the theme that stood out the most was how soldiers were regarded when they returned home. In the book, they are not treated well as they return to an Earth that has become a social and political ruin. Many are just trying to survive in an economy that is in shambles. When he feels as if he has been alienated from his home planet, Mandella, along with Marygay, re-enlists. As is typical of the military, after being promised to be assigned as instructors on Luna base, they are switched back to a combat unit and sent off to fight once again.Another thing that stood out to me was how Forever War and Starship Troopers (the book by Robert A. Heinlein, not the film) have some things in common. Both are a soldiers’ story that can give one a better understanding of what it means to fight in a war and then try to survive, not only in combat, but when returning home and having to adapt to all the changes one faces.My takeaway from The Forever War is to show how one can never return home. Nothing stays the same and life is full of change.Forever War is a classic work of sci-fi that holds up well and will speak to readers today. If there is a must-read list, this book should appear at the top. It has everything a fan of military sci-fi would enjoy, and I think many of those who have served would also appreciate what is in these pages.Mandella's tale is great on every level.It is brilliantly written because it is easy to understand and relate to. It is a fairly fast read at 236 pages, but at the same time, there is a lot of amazing story packed into that small space.I found Forever War to be entertaining, engaging, and emotionally charged.'Highest Recommendations!

I’ve picked up “hard” sci-fi after a ten-year hiatus, so it was really strange to read the DNA of what has become staples of modern-science fiction both in movies and television. Besides the usual interstellar war, I am quite honestly bewildered how Haldeman paced this out into such a quick, satisfying read. Forever War is great.

Not much of a reader to be honest, but I heard about this book and how it’s a great science fiction story, and has been inspiration for movies and video games. I read it in a weekend. The writer does a great job of balancing characters, action, technology, and physics in a way that never feels too complicated or drawn out. You can tell the author was in the military, both by the descriptions of tactical movement and brevity when communicating information to the reader. Feels like somewhere between Aliens and Starship Troopers, with a little bit of Interstellar mixed in.

L I read this one when it first came out in paperback as a teenager.I served 35 years in the Army and finally got.to read the whole story as it was intended, awesome Joe!. I will check out your sequels next. Thank you for such an enduring tale.

Starship Troopers is one of my all time favorite sci-fi books. I love it for many reasons, not least of which being that, as a veteran himself, Heinlein had a keen grasp on military life. I'm a veteran, as well, and it's always nice to read work by authors who have a good grasp on military culture.However, over the years, Starship Troopers has been accused of being overly martial and militaristic, painting only a positively-tinged picture of war, military service, and the military-industrial complex. Enter Haldeman's The Forever War. Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran, admits that The Forever War was based on and written in direct response to Starship Troopers. The Forever War serves as a far-future allegory illustrating the follies of the Vietnam War from a grunt's eye view.Like many other works both fiction and non-fiction by Vietnam veterans, The Forever War contains strong underlying subtexts of hopelessness, helplessness, fatalism, and military incompetence and impotence. The protagonist's platoon mates are killed off quite ruthlessly and in gruesome detail in missions that ultimately mean nothing as the platoon later abandons the position.The addition of time dilation due to near-light travel is an integral plot device that serves as an exaggerated parallel for the fog of war and the speed in which the major variables of war can change. Ultimately, this plot device very effectively illustrates one of the hardest things that homecoming veterans have to face: Coming home to a world that feels altogether different and alien not just from war, but from the world that we left in the first place.As a former grunt and combat veteran of Iraq, I can identify very strongly with much of the above that Haldeman tries to get across to the reader, and in fact that is a large part of why I wanted to read the book. Iraq is, in many ways, the modern day Vietnam, and I can see myself and my buddies in many of the same idiotic, chaotic, terrifying, boring, and ultimately useless scenarios that Haldeman shows us.The book isn't perfect. Haldeman does not flesh out very many of the protagonist's platoon mates, so when they're KIA, as a reader you don't particularly care. Of course, such may have been Haldeman's point. I suspect that he was trying to relate the idea of random almost nameless young people being thrown to the grinder and the numbness that one develops because of it. However, I don't think it translates very well, and by the end of the book so many have died that as a reader you just kind of shrug your shoulders.And because I was a grunt, I have to be nitpicky about the lack of any kind of infantry tactics used in the book. As I understand it, Haldeman was not himself a grunt, so it's somewhat understandable, but I really liked how in Starship Troopers Heinlein included a few infantry tactics that are in use even today. It helps with world building and really lets me get lost in a military book.In summary, The Forever War works very well exactly as Haldeman intended it. By using a far-future setting, Haldeman was able to write a story about Vietnam without all of the political attachments that people have toward that war. As such, it's a much more visceral and vivid experience.

‘Forever War’ always gets the accusation that it’s just a Vietnam-in-space novel. It’s much more than that.Human-kind’s thousand year war with the Taurans described in the book is a real attempt to describe the social, technological and even evolutionary effects of time dilation on the human experience, during the worst kind of experience, an interstellar war. The war changes Earth’s society and culture completely, and Haldeman shows this clearly. The story’s main protagonist, Mandela, becomes the longest serving soldier in Earth’s history, surviving hundreds of years (Earth time). Yet, because of time dilation as ships move by ‘collapsars’ across vast expanses that include to other galaxies, he ages only decades, and fights in relatively few campaigns after being wounded and recovering. The changes he sees in humans every time he returns from combat - caused by hundreds of years passing in his absence - render him, and Maryjane, the one other person of his generation still fighting with him, completely alone socially. When Maryjane is assigned to another strike group on their next tour, both know that time dilation means they will never see each other again. Sent on command of a task force, Mandela finds himself the ultimate outcast: his troops are uniformly homosexual by mandate, birthed from artificial wombs, and forced to learn his antiquated form of English. I found this the perfect expression of generation gapping, curiously a societal issue that only became really prevalent in the 1970’s when this novel was written.The story is tight, well written and honestly portrays the ambivalent experience of any soldier caught in a larger conflict. The combat sequences are awesome, sufficiently technical without bogging down in futuristic technicalities. .Really, one of my favourite books of all time.

The actual story is OK, but not really special. But it is a carrier for all kinds of aspects I actually never thought about. What happens when you travel at light speed, slow down and move back? Time dilation. Ah.Need to think a little longer. And gerichte second book of the series.Good oh.

** spoiler alert ** Zu allererst: ich bin nicht mehr wirklich ein großer Science-Fiction Fan wie früher. Zumindest dachte ich das. Bis ich dieses Buch gelesen habe. Ich bin durch Zufall darauf gestoßen, aber es war ein wirklich schöner Zufall.Nunja, zur Geschichte muss eigentlich nicht viel gesagt werden, wie Peter F. Hamilton schon in seinem Schlusswort treffend sagt ist der Plot an sich recht simpel.Aber was macht dann dieses Buch so gut?Eindeutig die Art wie Haldeman dieses futuristische Universum zum Leben erweckt. Es gibt doch recht viele technische Begriffe, allerdings verliert sich das Buch nicht zu sehr in Einzelheiten, sondern nimmt die ganze Technik nur als erklärenden Rahmen. In diesem findet dann die Geschichte statt. Hauptsächlich geht es um die Beziehung zwischen William Mandella und Marigay Potter. Obwohl die beiden nicht sehr viele Seiten explizit zusammen als Paar sind, fängt man sehr schnell an die zwei zu mögen, und für sie mitzufiebern.Haldeman schafft es unglaublich sympathische und authentische Charaktere zum Leben zu erwecken. Und genau das ist es: alle Charaktere fühlen sich lebendig an, man hat Interesse an ihnen. Nicht viele Autor*innen schaffen das so gut!Ich bin wirklich kein Fan von Happy-Endings, aber bei "the Forever War" wollte ich die ganze Zeit über, dass es Potter und Mandella gelingt wieder vereint zu werden. Als die beiden durch die Zuteilung zu unterschiedlichen Einheiten getrennt wurden war ich wirklich trautig. Ich musste sogar kurz aufhören zu lesen. Es war ja eigentlich klar, dass die beiden sich, bedingt durch die andere Zeitwahrnehmung (Ich habe das noch nicht 100% verstanden, aber auf jeden Fall sind zwei Monate auf interstellaren Reisen mehrere Jahre auf stationären Planeten/der Erde) besteht ja eigentlich auch keine Möglichkeit, dass eine Wiedervereinigung stattfinden kann. Und dann ist da noch dieser mörderische Krieg, den kaum jemand überlebt. Umso zufriedenstellender war es dann, dass die beiden wieder zusammen kommen, trotz der Umstände.Der Krieg mit den Taurans (Ich habe das Buch auf Englisch gelesen, deshalb auch die englische Bezeichnung) ist ein wirklich interessantes Bild, das Haldeman hier zeichnet. Eine Spezies die anscheinend nicht weiß wie Krieg geführt wird. Das wissen die Menschen allerdings nicht. Jedoch kommt es ab und zu im Buch gut raus. Zum Beispiel beim ersten Boden Gefecht mit den Außerirdischen: Sie wehren sich nicht und lassen sich im Grunde genommen abschlachten. Oder als Mandella mit seiner Einheit am Ende des Buches auf Sade 138 gegen diese kämpft wird gesagt, dass die Taurans sehr unkreativ sind was ihre Taktik angeht, sie kopieren menschliches Verhalten.Das alles erklärt sich am Ende des Buches, dort wird klar, dass der Krieg einfach nur durch die Unfähigkeit zu kommunizieren ausgelöst wurde. Die Außerirdischen kannten gar keinen Krieg, aber da Menschen und Taurans nicht miteinander kommunizieren konnten, dachten die Menschen die Außerirdischen wären feindlich. Und so beginnt die Geschichte des Jahrhunderte dauernden Krieges.Ein Punkt der mir hier noch sehr wichtig ist, ist die Symbolik des Krieges für den Vietnam Krieg in dem der Autor auch eingesetzt war. Ich bin kein Literaturwissenschaftler, deshalb bleibt der Teil auch etwas kürzer. Aber: die Parallelen sind doch sehr deutlich und gut herausgearbeitet. Wenn man es weiß und darauf achtet wird dieses Buch einerseits zu einem genialen Science-Fiction Roman, andererseits zu einer sehr guten Kritik am Vietnamkrieg. Aber das sollte jede*r für sich selber lesen und herausfinden.Fazit: wieder einmal ein Buch, das man gelesen haben muss. Eines das im Kopf bleibt und an das man sich noch ewig erinnern wird. Und eines mit wiederlese-Faktor.(Diese Rezension habe ich schon auf Goodreads veröffentlicht)

Caposaldo della fantascienza.Ostico in diverse occasioni a livello terminologico (soprattutto considerando che questa versione é in Inglese), ma davvero struggente e inquietante nel suo svilupparsi.Il punto di vista del protagonista ci accompagna in tutta la narrazione, mostrando il suo percorso di formazione e di cambiamento dell'umanità nel corso dei secoli.

It's a great book about the futility of war. Set in a distant future with the same outcome about war. Must read.