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The Forever War - Joe Halderman
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When undertaking a literature project as daunting as Letters to Logos, which by my estimation should cover north of 100,000 pages of text across 270 books, it's important to take palette-cleanser breaks from some of the older "drier" tomes.  My goal of course, is to read the books under the "philosophy" and "history" sections in order, by date of publication.  The same is true for the classics under the "fiction" section.  With that out of the way, I'm afraid I can't wait the months or years to get to the fantasy and sci-fi books, if I were to read them all in order.  In other words, even though many of the sci-fi books have been written more recently compared to the other offerings, I don't see the point in waiting to read them.  They are fiction, after all, and deal with time frames that don't necessarily align with anything within our own historic timeline, even if they may extrapolate the possibilities (as in the case with some sci-fi).  Sci-fi and fantasy can provide an amazing escape and entertain us in new ways.  Beyond this, I'm interested in writing my own sci-fi and fantasy and for me, personally, there is no reason to wait to learn the craft from some of the best.  

Joe Halderman's The Forever War is widely regarded as one of the top sci-fi books of the last century.  It landed high on many lists when I researched top sci-fi and fantasy during the R&D phase of this project.  It was hard not to include it, despite many other omissions that some genre fanatics probably want to burn me at the stake for, e.g., anything by H.G. Wells, The Three Body Problem, Gardens of the Moon, Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Starship Troopers etc., (hey, I did include another Heinlein title, so back up off me ;).  And, of course, there are many other authors and titles that line the pantheon of top sci-fi and fantasy that I chose not to include.  To be clear, it's not a knock on any other author or title, it's simply that I wanted this project to be manageable to a degree and I wanted to pick titles that I thought would speak to me and my personality.  Plus, I didn't want to pick up epic fantasy series with too many titles (like Jordan, Brooks, Erikson or Goodkind).  The exception may be Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives which will surely keep growing beyond four books, but all other series are three or less.  I am personally interested in the Gardens of the Moon series by Erikson and may return to it at some point, but for now my list is set.  The other notable exception are the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov which I felt pretty much had to be included considering their impact on sci-fi and fiction writing in general.  I'll also add that the Foundation novels aren't particularly dense like some of the long fantasy epic series, so I imagine I'll burn through them with haste, especially since I'm only going to read the original Foundation trilogy, for now.  Haste is important with this project - haste and focus.

Haste also happens to be a theme in The Forever War, where the main character William Mandella experiences the passing of time differently than people on Earth or other planets because of the multiple war campaigns that sees him and other soldiers in spaceships pass near-light speed to worm-holes called "collapsars".  After passing through these "collapsars" they travel great distances across space, instantaneously.  Because of time dilation, traveling at near-lights speeds causing time to pass much more slowly for him compared to time passing on Earth.  Every campaign he endures traveling to and through "collapsars" causes major time jumps so when he returns to earth, an earth-like planet, or a stargate, culture, technology and social norms have changed dramatically.  In other words, after every return, it's as if he's jumped forward into the future.

In the beginning of the story, Mandella and his fellow soldiers are stationed on a distant planetoid called "Charon" where they contend with extreme low temperatures where gases freeze and the sun is but a bright star in a black sky without atmosphere.  Their suits keep them alive, but they are fragile - a simple fall backwards can cause their suits to explode if they land on their heat dissipation fins.  Training on this planetoid and building structures on it are full of extreme risks as many of the soldiers die from exercises gone wrong or falling backwards on the dissipation fins.  After training they travel through a "collapsar" and engage the enemy "Taurans" on an alien planet with strange creatures.  Their first encounter is both bizarre and confusing, but overall, a success as they slaughter the alien forces they encounter and leave with valuable information on their technology and tactics.  However, time and technology advancement doesn't follow linear paths in this story.  

With each "jump", Mandella returns to "present" time where social customs, technology, speech, and other aspects of life have taken strange turns.  On one return, everyone is vaguely "Polynesian" and homosexual after periods of genetic engineering were employed on human populations to craft better soldiers and curb overpopulation.  He is considered an outsider and strange for being into women and how he talks.  After returning from his final campaign, from far distances across the galaxy, culture and technology has advanced so far it almost doesn't make sense to him.  Every person, both man and woman, are exact clones and all communicate with each other as one mind telepathically.  They have been copied from one person and new people are added to the pool of consciousness through technology, not biological gestation.  There are other planets besides earth set aside for "old-school" breeding where people are free to have sex with who they want and keep genetics diverse in case there's any future issue with the collective mind of the clones, which are based on one person's genetics.  

The author infuses this first-person perspective with his own impressions and experiences from the Vietnam War.  Upon finishing the book, it was clear that William Mandella was the author expressing his thoughts and feelings about social norms, technology, culture, and war through the campaign of Mandella.  The alienation experienced is palpable when Mandella returns home and sees how much society has changed in so many ways.  Halderman parallels his own alienation after his involvement in war and returns home.  The war life and time dilation are juxtaposed against society that keeps moving forward at its own pace, leaping forward in time, in a sense, while the soldiers are "lost in space and time" fighting a war that no one seems to fully understand why or how it started.  For Halderman, this was during a time of great societal transformation.  During the Vietnam War, the hippy movement, psychedelics, and eastern religion influences came into American culture like wildfire.  The younger generation, whose parents experienced World War II, lost trust in the federal government and their handling of the Vietnam War.  Where World War II was a just cause, and everyone could rally behind the moral stakes, the Vietnam War was nebulous and began with government policies that crumbled to serious inquiry over time.  Perhaps the Vietnam War was the first postmodern war, where truth and goals were nebulous just like Mandellas understanding of the war against the Taurans - an alien species they couldn't figure out how to communicate with.  Every time Mandella returned home, where far more years have passed than what he experienced himself, the world had rapidly changed - new movements and cultures changing the social and tech landscape in dramatic ways.  By the time the war was over and so much had changed, Mandella, (and the author) simply wanted to return to something comfortable, something or someone from the past to rekindle a nostalgic feeling of love and familiarity.  



Summary:  The brevity and lack of secondary character development are outshined by the impressive personal story and rewarding science fiction concepts.  
 


Rating:  8.0

-E.B.  2023-03-07     

   
 

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