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The Forever War
The latest book I've taken out of my "read pending" queue is The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. Its credits include the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo Award in 1976, and being considered one of the classics of the genre.
This is a fairly short science-fiction novel (250 pages in my mass-market paperback copy), dealing with the main character William Mandela, a young physics student drafted into the UN-controlled space army when war breaks out against the Taurans, an alien species we at first know nothing about (I'll purposefully avoid getting into a detailed discussion of the plot).
The novel is told to us from Mandela's viewpoint; Mandela narrates everything that happens in a very easy to read colloquial style, with an exquisite attention to details; the short chapters the book is divided in makes it a breeze to read -- a weekend in my case (and I'm no fast reader).
The Mandela character is well constructed, and his account reads like a friend telling you the story of his life. There are other characters that barely appear in the novel, yet they also feel properly written. The plot is simple and direct, with just a couple of nasty turns at key points in the story (you'll know them when you see them).
This description may remind some people of Heinlein's Starship Troopers: young guy (Mandela/Rico) enters the army, goes through a training period, goes to war with an unknown species, kicks butt and all that. Actually, that superficial description is where the resemblance stops: the way Mandela and John Rico get into the army is distinct, the training period is quite different, the aliens have nothing in common; both novels focus mainly on different stuff, and the few common themes are treated differently. If you expect this to be a Starship Troopers clone, you'll be surprised.
Surprisingly, the treatment of science isn't -- very detailed. There is enough of it to dismiss claims of this being a war novel simply translated into a SF setting (even if the author's acknowledged that the novel deals with his experiences in the Vietnam war), but hard-SF zealots might be disappointed.
All in all, this was a very enjoyable read, and I highly recommend it. I've voted 9 for this novel in the Top100SF.
You can purchase The Forever War at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the book review guidelines, then submit using Slashdot's web-submission page :)
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I also heartily recommend Haldeman's other "Forever" books: Forever Peace and Forever Free. They're not quite sequels (well, Forever Free is but it's set much later), but they give you the same sort of fantastic experience as The Forever War.
Some of my top sci fi picks of all time. They're on my shelf next to Ender's Game.
My deviantArt site
What made the novel truely disturbing was the alienation that the soldiers experienced upon returning home.
Because they travelled at the speed of light, a tour that lasted a year could mean that hundreds of years had passed back on Earth. The accepted norms and values of society had changed remarkably, and the soldiers had to try to adapt.
I suppose this alienation parallels the experience of Vietnam veterans, as Haldeman openly mentions that the book is really about Vietnam.
The Forever Peace, which has nothing to do with the Forever War, but is none-the-less a great book.
hmmm.. the comparison with starship troopers is fraught with peril... so... i'll launch a pre-emptive strike against possible lameness:
Do NOT judge Starship Troopers the book by Starship Troopers the movie! They are almost completely different from each other! The movie takes about 10 pages from the book and twists them almost to breaking. The result is that a movie that lost all of the really INTERESTING stuff that the book had; from political debate, full-body battle armor, to vicious bipedal aliens..
so yeah.. this goes out to anyone who decides to flame based on what they thought of starship troopers the movie.
(hmm.. i sense an offtopic coming. but i felt it was necessary to say this in order to protect two good books from a movie butchery)
ìì!
Having read the review, I'm rather surprised that no mention was made of the relativistic effects which were the underpinning of the book.
See, the reason that it's the Forever War is that everyone who's sent to the frontlines to fight travel on ships that accelerate to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The narrator of the story thus spends hundreds of "objective" years fighting the war for a few years of his subjective time. The result? The soldiers who are asked to fight in this war find themselves more and more estranged from human culture, which changes at the usual rate of one year per yer. The soldiers are anachronisms, and as the war drags on and society and the rules of engagement change, the soldiers find themselves cut off from society.
This book was new in what? 1973? Man, oh man.../. sux these daze...
It's awful strange to have the central plot device be the theory of relativity - the fighters' biggest problem is running into enemy ships from a non-dilated timeline that are centuries ahead of them in weaponry! The characters are not very well developed in my opinion. The women our hero sleeps with seem utterly interchangeable, and nobody really learns anything or changes much. Par for the course in a sci-fi military novel where people die off through random accidents all the time, I suppose. Remember when all the futuristic books (e.g., this one and Stand on Zanzibar - highly recommended) assumed marijuana would be legalized by the 1990s? Also, the ending is nice & a little bit of a political comment.
I think the comparison to Starship Troopers is reasonable and appropriate. Starship Troopers was written during the Cold War after World War II and the Korean War, and it reflects the sensibilities of the time (plus Heinlein's own philosophy, of course). I think the Forever War is a conscious updating of Starship Troopers after the country's and the author's experiences in the Vietnam War.
BTW, Haldeman used to teach a science fiction class at M.I.T., and for all I know he still does.
Oh, wait... nevermind.
Anyway, this could be turned into an interesting question -- we're (sort of) at war, so is it really appropriate to be giving praise to a book about a war that goes on for hundreds of years? Well, you bet your ass it is. To be trite, remember that the unexamined life is not worth living. A book such as this represents a fantastic reflection on what war really means. That doesn't make it inappropriate in these troubled times -- it makes it extremely relevant.
Which goes to show that it's a great piece of science fiction. Some of us may have forgotten, but good sci fi is not about the future, it's about the present. The standard approach for a really good sci fi story is to take some observation about humanity, for example some cultural trend, and see what happens if it's extrapolated into a hyperbolic example. By looking at a potential future, we gain insight about the present.
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I've read forever war 2 maybe 3 times and
like many aspects of it. I believe there
is only one sequel "forever free?" which
sucks, SUCKS, so bad that I have partitioned
the memory an jetisoned it. For me there
is only the forever war book, no sequel.
The book "forever peace" is not really a
sequel or directly related to "forever war".
The only similarity is disallusionment of
the characters and cool mech suits although
these are teleoperated. I like most of
this authors work except for the sequel
and Hemingway hoax.
Less about you, more about the book.
_______
2B1ASK1
Heinlein's Troopers was more political and social philosophy, from his point of view, than sci-fi. The actual slugging it out with the bugs was just the vehicle. Heinlein was like that a lot, and if you only saw the movie you know diddly about the book.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
that I remember liking was "All my sins remembered". It was short an fast reading. Sort of potato chips for the brain.
-sk
I purchased both of these books at the same time from Amazon a couple of years ago and enjoyed both. These were both recommended to me by a fellow fan of Starship Troopers (the book) who also hated the movie. I'm far enough off topic as it is so I would just say read the reviews on Amazon if you are at all curious.
I actually prefer his trilogy of Worlds, Worlds Apart, and Worlds Enough in Time, but Forever War has a couple of concepts that I come back to years afterwards. I disagree with the assessment that Forever Free and Forever Peace suck. These are different books, with different themes, in different styles. (That said, I didn't enjoy them nearly as much. If I had to recommend one book above all others as an introduction to Haldeman, it would be the short story collection Dealing in Futures
One thing that I enjoy about Haldeman's work that also maddens me is that he adores experimentimg. Although he is a consistently good writer, he really does try to fit the style to the story. Hemingway Hoax reads very differently from some of his other books, and The Coming is a study in rapid-cutting movie techniques applied to novels.
I'm glad to see this book reviewed, as Haldeman has consistently come up with some of the most interesting ideas in SF. Oh, and the tired thing about Forever War as a retread of Starship Troopers? Heinlein didn't think so. He congratulated Haldeman on "writing one of the most original stories I've ever seen."
The Forever War first appeared as a series of short stories and novellas in Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact magazine. When the first story, "Hero," was published in 1972, critics complained it was a rip-off of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers with sex (and slightly fancier powered armor).
The difference? Heinlein was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who contracted tuberculosis and was forced out of the service with a medical discarge; I believe he was never given the chance to see combat. Haldeman was a Vietnam draftee. (His online biography says, "Purple Heart and other standard medals.") They had very different views of war. Haldeman's was new and unusual for the SF community.
Both are very good stories by very good writers.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
It was adapted by Hadelman himself and inked by Marvano. It was published in French as a trilogy in 1988. Unfortunately there doensn't seem to be an english translation.
Amazon.fr
Unfortunately, the graphic art is very ordinary -- it would've been a masterpiece had it been drawn by, say, Moebius or Bilal.
This shouldn't be too surprising, as Haldeman was a physics major. More information about the author can be found at his website.
The Forever War has been called an "answer" to Starship Troopers. The main contrast between the two is that Rico volunteers, as does everyone else, for federal service, whereas Mandela is drafted. Rico knows his war to be just, whereas Mandela is never sure. Rico also revels in the destruction of the enemy of his own accord, while Mandela is forced to a bloodlust via post-hypnotic suggestion. Basically, Starship Troopers justifies its war by portraying an underestimated enemy that is ruthless, while the plot of The Forever War hints at the notion that it is mostly xenophobia and economics that drives the conflict. Rico grows to be eager to fight, of his own volition, while Mandela is coerced at every turn.
I suppose the over-riding thematic difference between the two would be that Heinlein's work portrays a protagonist that through the process of becoming more mature learns that societal duty is the highest, while Mandela has his cynicism and distrust of the powers that be confirmed.
But unfortunately, despite winning the Hugo and Nebula, Forever Peace (a thematic rather than literal sequel) is a remarkably bad novel. Again the first parts of the book, depicting telepresence-operated military robots fighting a war in Central America, are the best, even if the "Central America as Vietnam War" analog was done much better by Lucuis Shepard back in the 1980s. But after that it gets just plain awful, with paper-depth, sadistic idiot villians intent on literally destroying the world taking over the plot. In fact, the villians are such cliches that they accomplish the rare feat of making Ayn Rand's villians look subtle in comparison. Also, some would say that the ultimate message of the novel is rather revealing of late-20th century liberal thought. "Oh, if we could only cut open everyone's brain, force them to become a hive mind and make them think good thoughts, we could make the world a paradise!" Avoid.
Finally, Haldeman has stated that Heinlein's Starship Troopers was the primary influence on The Forever War, so you can stop debating that question already.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Actually, Joe snagged the title from old Will S. - it's the last line of the Hamlet "to be or not to be" soliloqy:
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Which pretty much sums up Joe's book.
Cheers
-bc
The link is dead, here is another one (same one?) - But I don't take it seriously since Peter F. Hamilton isn't even on the list - His Nights Dawn Trilogy is simply amazing! It's among the best SF I've ever read!
Read them, they're The Reality Dysfunction (I want a hard cover of this one!) - The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God - They are AWESOME!
I'm currently reading his new book Fallen Dragon - and although it doesn't compare with the epic Night's Dawn trilogy, it's actually a very good book!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
... for introducing you to Asimov at such a young age. I was about the same age when I started reading him. Obsolutely fell in love with hard sci-fi after that.
Alive Contains A Lie
i found a good book review here. it inspired me to purchase it, and helped with my comprehension of the plot.
Makes ya wonder if someone could write a book about a (forver?) Flame War. Now that would be an interesting read. I guess the way someone would 'Kill' someone else in this war would be to make the other guy never come to the discussion again. If you made the other guy see your point... well that would just be truely fiction...
Man-Kzin Wars (At least 9 Books in this series based upon Larry Nivens Known-Space)
Star-Fire Series by David Weber and Steve White):
Crusade (Very good) Read this one first
Death Ground (Even Better)
Shiva Option (Sequel to Death Ground, not released yet)
Insurrection
Honor Harrington by David Weber. There are about 8 or 9 books in the series
That will keep you busy for a while
If you liked Starship Troopers (the book) you should check out Armor by John Steakley. It borrows heavily from Starship Troopers, but updates it interestingly and is a great read. It's kind of a cult classic (at least among my friends).
-Steve
(Spoiler: the unexpected source is BSD)
This review does no justice to the book, and is distressingly superficial. If it was written by a sixth-grader, I would give this "book report" a barely passing grade.
To review the Forever War as simply Starship Troopers with different training and aliens is to miss the point. This is not a book "about" aliens or technology or hyperspace travel or combat suits.
This is a book about the nature of war -- the people we send to fight, society's relationship to those people, and the permanent affect such an undertaking has on the lives of those it touches.
The Forever War is an excellent novel, not because it is a sci-fi tale, but because it is a human tale -- an admonition to society that conflicts are not to be entered lightly, and that we have a responsibility to those who fight, well beyond merely supplying them with bullets.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
"What made the novel truely disturbing was the alienation that the soldiers experienced upon returning home."
And that was the essence of what the book was about.....
I read the book the week it was published (still have that copy), I was very impressed with Haldeman's treatment of the cultural and psychological aspects of isolation and alientation on soldiers as time passed in their societies "back home".
And from a craft point of view, I still think that it is Haldeman's best book.
However, "Forever War", for me, fairly light on the "s" portion of s/f.
Also, any comparison to Starship Troopers (the book), is merely superficial resemblance.
Johnny Rico, in ST, is the device Heinlein uses to show us the effects of a "limitless war" upon both people and societies, when confronted with an enemy so inhuman that they are merely "Bugs" (a device Scott Card has also used and improved upon in his "Enders" series).....
However, in FW, William Mandela IS the story. His POV dominates the entire book (as was Haldeman's intention).
We never see a maturation curve on Johnny Rico. Sure, he gets older and wiser and tougher as his combat time accumulates, but we don't get to see into his mind the way we do with William Mandela.
Haldeman does a great job with the soldier's POV and his own personal experiences in "Nam ring out nicely in the book, BUT...
"Forever War" is a book that looks within and Starship Troopers is a book that looks without....
s/f has ALWAYS had a wide range of treatment of science and technology, from the wild-but-nonscientific "raygun and mind control" pennings of Doc Smith and his "Lensmen" series to the scientifically carefully crafted work of Charles Sheffield.
Forever War is stong on the story and characters and the resulting insights, but if you are expecting some "kick ass" or unique treatment of relativistic effects, you'll be somewhat disappointed, not much science is being committed.
YMMV
....
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
The reviewer left this out, but there are actually three different versions of this book that are available.
The first version was the original publication, and is the shortest. I think it was cut to make the book shorter, and thus cheaper, and it left out most of the chapters of civilian life.
The second version added some cut chapters, but not all.
The third version is the latest published, and it contained the entire book as originally written. I recently read this version, and I think it is by far the best of the three.
This mythic, almost Odysseus-like epic journey through unthinkable death and destruction of all that we hold dear, and a believable redemption motif for humanity itself, puts this novel way above Ender's Game and Starship Trooper.
The best writers always read about myths and C. G. Jung's work first...
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
I'd argue Heinlein was exploring some ideas, as opposed to "prescribing how things ought to be," so it's perfectly fair for Haldeman to have explored a different direction, and he did it well, generating an interesting read.
I'm afraid I don't heartily recommend the later books; if "Forever War" derived some greatness from deriving from some neat ideas, well, the later ones didn't.
Forever Peace started well enough, but it was really irritating when it headed into the same sort of giant military conspiracy theory "MacGuffin" that turned the movie Outbreak from good to very bad.
Lord of the Rings did "conspiracy" much better by almost not showing us the malevolence of Sauron...
I'd put Forever War on the "good shelf," but dunno about the others...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
> Also, any comparison to Starship Troopers (the book), is merely superficial resemblance.
>
> Johnny Rico, in ST, is the device Heinlein uses to show us the effects of a "limitless war" upon both people and societies, when
> confronted with an enemy so inhuman that they are merely "Bugs" (a device Scott Card has also used and improved upon in
> his "Enders" series).....
> However, in FW, William Mandela IS the story. His POV dominates the entire book (as was Haldeman's intention).
I think you miss an important point here that makes the contrast between the two books both deep & insightful: Heinlein was an officer, & Haldeman was a grunt.
My grandfather served in the First World War in the American Expeditionary Force, where he was injured by mustard gas. According to my mother, afterwards he read a book or two, & complained that these books DIDN'T describe the war he was in. I'm sure at some point Haldeman read Heinlein's book, & not only came to the same conclusion, but found the inspiration to write his own book.
Geoff
P.S. Does anyone else remember the board game ``Warp Wars" from the late 1970's? The creator admitted he was inspired in his time-dilation mechanics by Haldeman's novel.
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
It's interesting that the reviewer brings up Starship Troopers. I read both of these books back to back so that I could compare the two, since they deal with such similar subject matter.
Starship Troopers is certainly written from a more conservative perspective. I remember an uncle of mine letting me borrow a copy when I was 10... he had hoped that I would read it and develop a degree of patriotism that would eventually lead me into the Marines or the Army. I didn't read the book back then because I could see right through him. I waited till my late 20s to read it, after having served 9 years in the Navy.
The Forever War is certainly more liberal, and the message of that book was that "War is Hell." and that blind obedience to the government resulted in centuries of unneeded bloodshed.
I like both books equally well. Both are well written, have powerful messages and are totally enjoyable.
The Starship Troopers movie, however, totally sucked and didn't really touch on the real subject of the book. The book was a political masterpiece expressing Heinlein's point of view. The movie was just about killing a lot of bugs.
Paul Verhoeven (the director of Starship Troopers) is really an expert in poking fun at the action genre while creating classic action flicks at the same time. Robocop and Total Recall were similar in that they had many elements that told you the director was having a good laugh. At the same time the action and violence are so over the top that they practically define the action film.
Heinlein's book was only superficially about war. Starship troopers was about political and personal responsibility at the core, the war was simply the best settng to show the evolution of Juan Rico from spoiled rich kid rebelling against his parents to a man. One of the telling points is which of the two books is more popular in the military, it's ST by far, as Heinlein captured the military mind almost as well as Kipling did, while Haldeman appeals more to the left. Haldeman is deal with not the inherent problems with the military, but the reaction of someone taken out of the world and put back in later, when the world had changed, fighting the Vietnam war was time travel of a sort, simply for being out of the country as society changed massively.
For a more modern version of this, see John Ringo's A Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front. John Ringo was a Sargeant in the 82nd Airborne, so he knows his stuff, and it's a damned good read.
The Crazy Finn
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
I've read just about everything from Joe Haldeman- Forever War is one of his best. Others have mentioned things about the Forever Peace and Forever Free. They are all different novels, but Forever Free was neat and fun, until the very end, which was very disappointing. I'm not going to give it away, but it seems that when he was writing Forever Free, he was going strong and then had to finish it quickly to fulfill some contractual obligation. I didn't go into this book thinking that it would be more of the same, but I do want a good story, not one that makes me wonder why I even bothered reading the book.
When did paperbacks become "mass-market" paperbacks? What other kind of paperback is there? Why aren't people happy just saying a book is a paperback any more?
I provided a friend of mine "Forever War" and "Armor" (John Steakly) and recommendation to read "Starship Troopers" as well. The three books are similarly themed (future infantry troopers, using a variety of sci-fi powered armor/weapons).
"Armor" was the book he read twice.
FYI, "Armor" is more of a psyc profile of an indiviual experiencing severe stress and mentally/emotionally breaking down under that stress. Not weepy-teary breakdown, but the inabilty-to-care-anymore kind of breakdown. It is a very intense book.
It's beautifully drawn, similar to Druuna or other high-end euro-comics. As an avid fan of the the novel, I found the graphic novelization to be faithful in tone and characterization, but missing quite a few of the details that made the book one of my favorites. I have it on my "best of comics" shelf with Zot, Watchmen and Maus.
I'm very glad I spent the $27 on the books, and no you can't have them! =)
Heinlein wasn't even an officer.
He was accepted to the Naval Academy, but was discharged (in his sophmore year iirc)for medical reasons (a blown out knee), while Haldeman was an infantryman in Viet Nam.
Heinlein tried to sign up during WWII, but was refused, again, on medical grounds.
Heinlein saw military service as a glorious thing to aspire to, a dream he couldn't realize, whereas, Haldeman had the perspective of someone who actually saw combat from the grunt's eye view.
ST the movie was driven by Verhoeven's deliberate misstatement of what Heinlein wrote...
I have read the "Forever War" and like the contents, I don't think I have to add to the reviews.
I just want to point out there is a cartoon version of Marvano and Haldeman. It has reached quite a status in it's genre of realistic (?) cartoon books (note: these kinds of cartoons are quite different as the ones I've seen from the states). It's a series of 3 hard-covers.
In the series "Vrije Vlucht" from Dupuis. I have it in Dutch, it exists in French, but I'm not quite sure if it's available in English.
Marvano has gained the "Gouden Adhemar" just recently for his work on realistic scifi cartoons, especially "The Forever War" and "Dallas Barr"
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
That's more or less what Forever War is, as well. Both books, are colored by the 2 very different authors perceptions of the government, and by their different time periods in which they grew up, and formed most of their philosophical underpinnings.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
No, Haldeman was a sapper.
And yes, there's a big difference.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
The difference between this and Starship Troopers (once again, the book, not the movie) seems to lie mostly in the philosophy of the writers; that is, Heinlein believed in a utopian future, where the human race, if not perfect, had everything sorted out and running more-or-less smoothly, which was how sci-fi was written until the late 60's, early 70's. Asimov, Heinlein, Roddenberry, were all products of the utopian future era. Haldeman, while undeniably prejudiced by Viet-Nam, helped to introduce the era of "dirty future", where everything is just like it is now, just more advanced technologically. Gibson, Sterling, Haldeman, Vinge, Niven, Pournelle, etc, have taken the "dirty future" idea, fleshed it out, and done for it what Heinlein et al. did for the utopian subgenre, i.e. taken as many possible variants of other genres, rewritten them with advanced technology, spaceflight, etc, and cashed in. (before the flames start, let me say that i don't find anything wrong with this, i'm just misanthropic by nature, if that isn't contradictory) to rehash; great book, sucky sequels, dousing myself in gasoline and handing out matches. BRING IT ON!!!
Human society before the last battle turns queer. Society figured out how to procreate without wombs, so heterosex was no longer enforced.
This was one of the first books I read that showed a gay society was not evil, and could be a future possibility.
Each trip back finds another mode of sexuality in society, with the final one really way out.
I'm not implying anything about this book, but does anyone else tire of the kind of books that are built around, and exist only for, a gimmick?
Ringworld... I read that a few months ago and when I finished, it really seemed that Niven had thought of the idea and wrote a half-ass story to surround it. Couldn't believe it won an SF award. Same thing with RAMA, another gimmicky idea. This thing comes thru the solar system and a team of explorers goes in and is awed.
The ideas aren't all that bad, but there seemed to be nothing more to the books than what was needed to fluff the gimmick into a novel.
By all means, correct me if I'm wrong.
It's not clear to me what the point of reviewing well-thought-of science fiction classics is. Couldn't they all be accurately summed up with, "This is a really good book. Read it"?
max
From The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide:
<http://magicdragon.com>, click on "Science Fiction"
Joe Haldeman, full name Joe William Haldeman:
Hugo Awards 1976, 77, 91, 95
Locus Poll Award 1976
Nebula Awards 1975, 90, 93
World Fantasy Award 1993
HOMer Award 1994
SF Chronicle Award 1995
Joe Haldeman@sff.net
Joe [William] Haldeman, born Oklahoma City 9 Jun 1943, son of Jack Carroll Haldeman and Lorena Spivey, married Mary Gay Potter 21 Aug 1965, author:
* War Year [Holt, 1972]
* Cosmic Laughter, 1974
* The Forever War [St.Martins, 1975; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Mindbridge [St.Martins, 1976; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Planet of Judgment, 1977
* All My Sins Remembered, 1977
* Study War No More, 1977
* Infinite Dreams, 1978
* Worlds Without End, 1979
* Worlds, 1981 (with brother Jack C. Haldeman II)
* There Is No Darkness, 1983
* Worlds Apart, 1983
* Tool of the Trade, 1987
* Buying Time [William Morrow, June 1989] IMMORTALITY ISBN 0-688-07244-5, a.k.a. "The Long Habit of Living"
* The Hemingway Hoax [Morrow, Jun 1990] TIME TRAVEL 0-688-09024-9
* More Than the Sum of His Parts [Pulphouse (Short Story Paperback), May 1991]
ISBN 1-56146-514-3
* 1968 [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994; Morrow, 1995] SF/Vietnam Autobiographical, highly recommended
* Forever Peace [Ace , Oct 1997] ISBN 0-441-00406-7, sequel to The Forever War
* also the "Attar the Merman" series
* some "Star Trek" novels:
* Planet of Judgement [Bantam, 1977]
* Star Trek: World Without End [Bantam, 1979; June 1993]
Anthologies and Collections Edited:
* Nebula Awards 17 [Holt, 1983]
* Dealing in Futures [Viking, 1985] 11 stories + 3 poems
* Body Armor: 2000 (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1986] 11 Military/SF stories, ISBN 0-441-06976-2
* Space-Fighters (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1988] 15 stories, ISBN 0-441-77786-4
* Supertanks (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1987] 10 stories, ISBN 0-441-79106-9
* Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds [NESFA Press, Feb 1993] ISBN 0-915368-52-8
4 stories + 5 essays + 4 poems + long intro
* None So Blind [Morrow AvoNova, May 1996] ISBN 0-688-14779-8
Collection of 11 stories + poems
* Saul's Death & Other Poems [Anamnesis Press, June 1997] ISBN 0-9631203-4-4
$10.95, 77pp, trade paperback, cover artists: Toni Luna Montealegre,
SF/Fantasy Poetry collection (32 poems)
B.S. 1967 in Physics and Astronomy, University of Maryland;
MFA in English 1975 University of Iowa;
Associate Professor of Writing Program 1983-87, M.I.T.; served with U.S. Army 1967-69, decorated Purple Heart; recipient Hugo Award 1976, 1977; Nebula Award 1975; Lifetime Active Member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Authors Guild, Poets & Writers Inc.
thx1138 Actually I never had the chance to read it since it is impossible to find. But in my opinion it was G. Lucas' masterpiece.
I (try to) read a lot of Sci-Fi. I find it hard to find good books. Mainly because most of my friends don't really like reading Sci-Fi, they are more into Fantasy Sci-Fi. I just ordered The Forever War from Amazon.com. I recently read Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide Series, and loved it; I couldn't put the first book down (took me about 6 hours). I read Arthur C. Clarks Rama Series. I have also read most of Michael Crichton's books mainly because they were around. :)
Anyone got any recommendations? I am about to start reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and have given up on Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Dirk is just annoying.
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Back in my D&D days (15 years ago?), my parents got me The Forever War RPG for xmas. It was pretty cool actually, no character development but you basically had a board where you setup human and alien troops. It was pretty cool, it even had the stasis field and archaic weapons too.
The Forever War is an excellent novel, but back in the day the one that I compared and contrasted to Starship Troopers for my SF Lit class was Glen Cook's A Passage At Arms, which is an absolutely incredible book. I re-read it yearly, and it never fails to stoke the fires of my secret desire to write SF. If you even remotely liked Forever, then buy Passage RIGHT NOW.
Insert humorous sig here.
There is a triumvarate of good Power Armor books.
Starship Troopers,
The Forever War and
Armor
Starship Troopers is the facist, macho view point. The enemy consists of skinnies and nasty bugs. The army way is the right way and cowards are not well recieved.
The Forever War is the idealistic, peacnik view. The situation is always fubar, authority figures suck and the book explores many interesting socialogical situations such as men and women in the army together, gay life, and a world where only nice people are cloned.
Armor - this book avoids the whole good and bad issue because the main character is essencially insane. The situation is always FUBAR. Authority figures run the range of good to incompetent but it doesn't matter because the "Ants" manage to screw up every plan Earth has for them. There is a very cool and interesting and totally out of place middle story that doesn't involve the main character.
I don't just recommend all three books. I think anyone who reads one has to read the other two. I liked them all for their merits but opinions vary and you are bound to hate at least one of these books.
--Peter
Forever Peace was a good read, light but engrossing, with ideas good enough to challenge me even if I disagreed with some of them (or disagreed with the 'light' treatment they recieved).
Odd that this shows up on /. - I'm gonna have to hunt down the book and read it now.
Bleh!
I think you miss an important point here that makes the contrast between the two books both deep & insightful: Heinlein was an officer, & Haldeman was a grunt.
It makes less difference that you suspect... RAH was a very junior officer, in the Navy of then-and-there, he was not much better off than a grunt.
The Forever War as a graphic novel, is easy to get by in Dutch. Marvano is Belgian(Mark Van Oppem). I read they were long time friends. For what it's worth, across the ocean.
After that he started the Dallas Barr series, based on Haldeman's The Long Habit of Living. Dutch and french , don't know about English. 5 graphic novels. xlnt. I read that Marvano has stopped the series after a disagreement on contracts. With the publisher.
Distribution of the work: In the beginning they would discuss, after a while Marvano was on his own.
> Heinlein wasn't even an officer.
>
> He was accepted to the Naval Academy, but was discharged (in his sophmore year iirc)for medical reasons (a blown out
> knee), while Haldeman was an infantryman in Viet Nam.
>
> Heinlein tried to sign up during WWII, but was refused, again, on medical grounds.
In response to my earlier statement, I've read one person who stated he was not an officer, one who stated he was, & one who stated he was a ``sapper", a rank not usually found in the US military. To settle this difference in opion, I pulled out my copy of L. Sprague de Camp's _Science Fiction Handbook_, which I have found to be an invaluable reference for this genre in the late 1930's & 1940's period, when he was a participant & knew almost all fo the major figures.
de Camp wrote:
``Robert Anston Heinlein was born in Missouri in 1907, was reared in Kansas City, Mo., and graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1929. He served with the fleet but was retired for physical disability in 1934. He tried silver-mining in Colorado, professional politics in California, and finally writing. When he sold ``Life Line" to _Astounding_ in 1939 his thought (like that of many other beginning writers misled by initial success) was, why hasn't somebody told me about this? It beats working! During the war he worked as a civilian engineer in the U. S. Navy, along with Asimov and me [de Camp], but returned to writing afterwards."
So my comments about his being an officer were correct. (Amazing, considering my memory.) And this provided him a different viewpoint from Haldeman, whose attitudes about war are very clear in his numerous novels.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
"The Forever War" implies that war is caused by misunderstandings (it turns out that the war in the book was due to a lack of communication between humans and aliens). Rather more concrete economic factors were responsible for the Vietnam War, and most wars in fact, as the relative failure of both the League of Nations (and its successor the United Nations) to stop wars demonstrates
Peacetime service on a ship with a stateroom and a wardroom compareth not to that of an enlisted infantryman in vietnam. Dont think that a JO's job isnt hard, but there are fewer ambushes and pungee sticks.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I found out about this book after reading a review of the Japanese animation, "Gunbuster". Apparently Gunbuster, a three-tape VHS available at many video sale and rental places, took some ideas (among other places :) from this novel.
The common factor I liked about Gunbuster and The Forever War is their dealing with time and relativity -- Once you go out into space, you know you'll never come back to the same place again because of the effects of traveling at relativistic speeds. But you go anyway, to protect what you know and value.
If you like how The Forever War deals with relativity, and like animation, I suggest Gunbuster. Gunbuster also develops the characters a little better (but that's just my opinion), which is what I liked best about Gunbuster, not that The Forever War does a bad job.
Haldeman also wrote The Forever Peace, which is semi-sequel of The Forever War, but apparently Haldeman says it's not a sequel. One of these days I'll get around to reading *that* book...
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Umm, how about the comparison was not made on the terms you suggest, but rather on the far more simple basis... Please READ the message I replied to.
Good point. Almost everything in the sci-fi section today is military, fantasy, or both.
(Amusing alternative: "First Contract", by Greg Costikyan. The aliens land and the hero's startup company goes bankrupt due to alien competition. The hero retaliates by selling cheap plastic stuff to the aliens, exploiting a miserable exchange rate to become the richest person on Earth.)
I did, and felt compelled to flick you on the head for your comment. Being both stupid and wrong in the same breath takes talent. An officer in the "then and there" Navy was much better off than an enlisted infantry man in vietnam. prove me wrong.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
The novel was transcribed to an excellent comic mini series back in the beginning of th 90s. Some pages can be seen on this page. The scenario is pretty well respected as it was written by Haldeman himself. I readthe comic before the book, and was disappointed by neither.
One theme I found interesting was the gay theme, which was very open minded for its time. To combat overpopulation on earth, the human race is genetically manipulated so that all people born are gay. The allegory is a bit heavy handed when Mandela is discriminated against for being the only straight person aboard a battleship... He suspects a female officer might be a closet straight after she makes a pass at him when she is very drunk.
SPOILER -
The author chickens out toward then end of the book though. They have essentially reached "the end of history". Genetic manipulation has become so advanced that they can retailor living humans. Mandela's gay friends all choose to be reenginered straight and all live happily ever after in utopia as straight couples. Why would they choose to turn straight if all they had known in their life was to be gay and presumably suffered no discrimination for it? It would imply that being straight is the only natural choice. But I know I wouldn't want to change if I was offered a magic pill today.
Would you change the core of who you are to fit in?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Around the early '80s Mediasceen magazine printed a series of production drawings from a proposed Forver War movie. The pictures were by comic-book fave Neal Adams. Adams' take on the power-armor was streamlined with a way cool series of concealed bays holding the weapons. Think Batman Beyond crossed with Heinlein.
Another good Haldeman book is Mindbridge. Similar to Pohl's Gateway in structure and with The Forever War's style, it's also a good read.
This is one of my favorite books! I read it when it first came out as a young teenager. The Viet Nam war had or was just about to end, and was very much on my mind, and everyone else's. However, I was just 15, so I didn't quite get it. But I've re-read this book about 6 times.
Haldeman is a very good author and I enjoy his work whenever I read it.
I'm so surprised to see this reviewed here, and in the next century and all. Good choice Timothy.
Another example of relativity in Science Fiction would be the anime "Gunbuster", created by Gainax in 1988. It's also about humanity battling an alien race.
Unlike the sociological focus of the Forever War, it seems (to me at least), the consequences of time dilation are focused more on the technological advancements the human race accomplishments, as we advance from the first crude spacecraft, to mammoth battleships, to finally a vessel engineered from the planet Jupiter.
During the course of the series, there is one particular combat sequence that shows a pair of time displays in a cockpit, one showing a slowly advancing shipboard clock, while the other shows an earth time display, blurred by the speed of the digits whipping by.
Another amusing feature is a set of "Physics Lessons", as the show pauses for brief explanations hosted by the main characters.
He supported a lot of weird stuff (try reading his 1960 WorldCon guest of honor speech - "in 10 years, one third of us here will die because of nuclear war, and one third will die of hunger"), but still, the original poster's point is correct - ST is not a "hip hip hurrah for us war book". It's a study of a society where the deciding members must first prove themselves worthy.
... from World War II is the best way to describe it. I have seen at some time those old nazi movies in a documentary and even if I couldn't understand the words the mood was obvious. Starship Troopers was exactly the same. Once you realise the all the symbols ... the fact that the Military Intelligence guy is wearing a version of an SS uniform, the flag is angular like a swastika, and the grey uniforms so like German army. ... and then think of all your friends thinking its "entertaining" and "rousing" etc ... it is just soooooo creepy.
... gees where've I heard that before.
A much better movie than people think. Not much relation to the book but pretty good just the same. And didn't you like the end where the recruiter's voice says "and you just know they will win"
Peter
Bitter and proud of it.
...and so is his other "unknown classic SF Novel, "The Dragon Never Sleeps". I hate Fantasy, which is what Cook mostly writes, but both of these books are astonishingly good, underrated and apparently out of print. Read them at the cost of missing out on one of the few things right in the universe.