The Forever War

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (St. Martin's, 2009).

I have read this book a number of times, starting with while it was still being serialized in the pages of Analog. From there, the first edition hardcover (missing text), the first edition paperback (still missing text), and finally a restored edition.

It's odd to read this now on a number of fronts, First, the "future" of the first several sections of the book is now our past. Second, we've had our own Forever War going on, for more than a decade. Perhaps we should give copies of this book to returning troops? Haldeman served in Vietnam, and like other SF authors (David Drake springs to mind) found the re-entry into "the World" jarring, as do troops serving today. The major difference between then and now is that we allegedly support the troops today where we did not support them back then.

In either case, people return to "normal" as if they are aliens, as if they are time travelers, visiting a place that is both familiar and strange, peopled by those that resemble who they used to know, but who do not understand what they did.

The result is sometimes people that can adjust. But also people who return to service because that is what they know best, people who abuse drugs or alcohol to cope, or people who end their lives because of the trauma they suffered.

The Forever War is a book about war, future war, the Vietnam War, and it is also about the differences between civilians and the military, the support of troops, using people as tools, and not being able to fix what we use.

William Mandella is conscripted along with others in good physical condition and excellent academic or other ratings in order to fight a war in space. The enemy, the Taurans, are enigmatic and uncommunicative, fighting us for control of the travel routes that both races use to jump from star to star. Difficulty arises thanks to relativity, as troops travel from engagement o engagement, time piles up at home and those that signed up in the 1970's are now living in the 2000's, the 2200's, and so on.

This means that you never know what you're coming up against at the next engagement. Will the opposing force have better tactics? Better equipment? Will you? And given travel times and lack of FTL communications, will you still have a home to return to?

Mandella musters out of the service only to find that he can't live on Earth. He is wounded in another engagement and is rebuilt, only to lose the love of his life, Marygay Potter, his only connection to the time and society that he knew. His troops become increasingly different than his baseline, until they are almost as alien as the Taurans. Eventually humanity is as alien as the Taurans as the war ends in the 3100's.

There's plenty of action and technology and such here, but it's the humanity that keeps me going back to the book. Especially several comments by Haldeman that makes me realize how little things have changed since he returned from his Forever War.