After a long hiatus, I am back and ready to catch up on all
the reading I have done. At this moment, the beginning of 2015, I am actually 8
books ahead of the blogs I have written. This month, I would like bring you, my
dear reader, up to the year I am currently on: 1983.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a
great book to start 2015 with. Before I get into the book itself, I want to say
how much I love this title. I am an absolutely sucker for a great title. There
are books I have wanted to read simply because of the title. Once I almost
picked up an audiobook called A Breath of
Snow and Ashes because the title was so evocative. I was hoping for a grim
story in some wintry place; stark landscapes and horrific events. Instead it is
a time traveling romance set during the American Revolutionary War. Romances do
not appeal to me much so I did not pick it up (it also was extremely long at 57
hours). Though I didn’t read it, the title has stayed with me for years.
Particularly, titles that are The
Something of Something appeal to
me. The film The City of Lost Children
is a personal favorite of mine and probably my favorite movie title of all time.
The titles of the two books I am working on are A Season of Bad Roads (about post-Civil War Russia) and A Pocket Full of Shells (a steampunkish crime
story) have those kind of titles. The
Forever War evokes images of a grand struggle; complex and epic filled with
high stakes action and complicated characters. As I read it, however, I found
that it was not most of things but was a great read in a different way.
The Forever War, despite its centuries
spanning conflict and futuristic scenarios and weapons, is commentary and reflection
on the Vietnam War. It is the story of a young soldier, William Mandella, who
has been drafted to serve in the United Nations Exploratory Force being
assembled for a war against the Taurans. The Taurans attacked a human colonial expedition
and seem to be trying to take other planets that humans are trying to colonize.
I say seems because, until the end of the book, there is no way to communicate
with the Taurans. Mandella serves his two years but due to relativity more than
four decades have passed since he left. Earth is a much different place.
Overpopulation has led to food shortages and even the currency has changed to
calories. His father is dead and his mother does not know how to relate to him.
Eventually, Mandella leaves his mother’s home and goes to live with his lover’s
family on a farm. The world they left is so different Mandella and his lover
reenlist. Neither wants military life but there does not seem to be anything
left for them. From there, Mandella goes on to serve a number of tours, each
time advancing in rank (while hundreds of years pass) but becoming farther and
farther removed from human society. For example, he eventually leads a team
that does not speak the same language as he does (they learn 20th
century English for his sake) and they are all homosexual which has become the
norm by that time.
The
novel shows how the experience of war removes a person from “normal life” and
the difficulty of going back to a world that has moved on without the soldier.
As an Iraq War veteran myself, this part of novel strongly spoke to me. The
world is never quite the same when you come back. People you know are there but
they are not the same and neither are you. Relationships that were simple
become strained. The old world seems strange. Granted, when I returned from
Iraq in 2004, the world had not as drastically changed as did for Mandella but
it was still difficult. Even now, a part of me misses my time in Iraq because
the world seemed simpler and I believe that is why Haldeman, who was a Vietnam
veteran himself, kept having Mandella return to the “comfort” of military life.
I think that this phenomenon is unique
to post-World War II wars. World War II consumed the life of the nation. When
the war ended for the soldiers it also ended for the country. The Vietnam and
Iraq Wars were not like this. People may say that “we are at war” but “we” as
in the general population are not. For a majority of the population, the war
exists outside their lives. That’s how the world can go on while the soldiers
are away. The general populous suffers none of the hardships that the military
face. Haldeman captures this strange sensation and the cost it brings to those
that fight.
Haldeman’s
experience in Vietnam also gives a weight and danger to battle scenes. While I enjoyed
the battles in Starship Troopers,
there is a tautness and dread in The
Forever War that was missing in Starship
Troopers. Perhaps it was because people always died for a reason or as part
of the battle in Starship Troopers.
In The Forever War, bad things happen
and soldiers are killed from accidents and stupidity as well as actual combat. War
is nasty business and Haldeman portrays it as such.
There
are a few grips I have about this book; despite how much I liked it. I found it
hard to believe that there were not more attempts to actual talk to the aliens.
This could be because the story is completely from Mandella’s perspective so we
only know what he knows but it still seems hard to believe. Mandella’s team of
recruits are all people with an IQ of above 150 which Haldeman pushes as
important but it never really feels that way. Perhaps it helps them learn the
complex weaponry but it does not seem necessary to have physics and chemistry
students as front line troops. Finally, as a political scientist, I have a hard
time believing that human society and government would hold if it was falling
apart as much as it was when Mandella first returns to Earth. Wars cause
societies to break from the inside and if the Earth society was collapsing, I
don’t see how the military leaders could keep the war going. These are minor
quibbles however of an excellent book.
Go read
The Forever War. It was one of the highlights from the 1970s Hugo award winners
and that is saying something. I only wish I had read it sooner. Next up is Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing by Kate
Wilhelm, the second woman at this point to win a Hugo. It has a great title but
is it a great book? We shall see.
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