Publisher:New York : St. Martin's Griffin, [2009]
Copyright Date:©1997
ISBN:9780312536633
Characteristics:xviii, 264 pages ;,21 cm
The Forever War was a very well written book based on the authors experiences in Vietnam. It was written in 1974, and as the author explains in his introduction as long as you can get past the part where the beginning of the novel is set in the late 1990s then you're good to go.
The premise of the book is that a new recruit William Mandella is one of the first troopers to be dispatched to fight what turn out to be a clone warrior species named the Taurans. What I found to be one of more interesting aspects of this story is the fact that Mr. Haldeman actually did research on relativity and took this into account. The vast majority of Science Fiction stories don't do this and assume Einstein's theory is somehow gotten around. Not so in "The Forever War" as while Mandella's first deployment takes 2 years his time, 10 years have passed on Earth.
Other things on good ol' Earth are different as well, the population is growing at an alarming rate, and this has led many people to develop same-sex relationships in an attempt curb the population. Later on we find that this is encouraged by Earth's authorities, but that nobody bothered to tell the troopers who are still heterosexual. Needless to say this causes a number of problems for Mandella, and he therefore re-enlists spending more years in the service, in ever longer voyages which results in even more time dilation.
In many instances there isa great deal of humour in the story, though possibly not intentionally as at one point Mandella comes back to Earth to find that virtually the entire population in homosexual, and in a total reverse heterosexuality is now considered to be aberrant behaviour and he's labelled the "old queer".
A very good read - not sure why it took me so long to read it!
The Forever War was a very well written book based on the authors experiences in Vietnam. It was written in 1974, and as the author explains in his introduction as long as you can get past the part where the beginning of the novel is set in the late 1990s then you're good to go.
The premise of the book is that a new recruit William Mandella is one of the first troopers to be dispatched to fight what turn out to be a clone warrior species named the Taurans. What I found to be one of more interesting aspects of this story is the fact that Mr. Haldeman actually did research on relativity and took this into account. The vast majority of Science Fiction stories don't do this and assume Einstein's theory is somehow gotten around. Not so in "The Forever War" as while Mandella's first deployment takes 2 years his time, 10 years have passed on Earth.
Other things on good ol' Earth are different as well, the population is growing at an alarming rate, and this has led many people to develop same-sex relationships in an attempt curb the population. Later on we find that this is encouraged by Earth's authorities, but that nobody bothered to tell the troopers who are still heterosexual. Needless to say this causes a number of problems for Mandella, and he therefore re-enlists spending more years in the service, in ever longer voyages which results in even more time dilation.
In many instances there isa great deal of humour in the story, though possibly not intentionally as at one point Mandella comes back to Earth to find that virtually the entire population in homosexual, and in a total reverse heterosexuality is now considered to be aberrant behaviour and he's labelled the "old queer".
A very good read - not sure why it took me so long to read it!
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