The Forever War

The Forever War (2009) – Joe Haldeman
Thomas Dunne Books | ISBN: 9780312536633
Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

War. Humanity’s oldest and most spectacularly inefficient method of resolving disagreements, now conveniently extended across the galaxy. Having spent thousands of years perfecting the art of killing one another on Earth, mankind eventually acquires faster-than-light travel and immediately discovers an exciting new opportunity: fighting an enemy so far away that nobody is entirely sure what the argument was about in the first place.

Welcome to The Forever War, Joe Haldeman’s magnificent, award-winning science-fiction novel about interstellar conflict, military bureaucracy and the unfortunate consequences of discovering that Einstein was right.

William Mandella is a young soldier conscripted into humanity’s war against the Taurans, an alien species whose intentions remain mysterious and whose existence has apparently provided the authorities with sufficient justification to begin an enormously expensive military campaign.

Mandella undergoes brutal training before being dispatched across interstellar distances to fight battles on strange worlds under conditions that make ordinary military service seem positively comfortable.

Unfortunately, the greatest enemy is not necessarily the Taurans.

It is time itself.

Because interstellar travel involves relativistic effects, Mandella experiences the passage of time very differently from those remaining on Earth. While he ages comparatively little during his journeys, decades and eventually centuries pass back home.

Every return reveals a society increasingly unfamiliar to him, transformed by technological progress, changing customs and political developments that render his previous understanding of civilisation almost entirely obsolete.

Imagine returning from military deployment to discover that your home country has changed its language, rewritten its social conventions and replaced practically everything you remember.

And then being informed that your next deployment begins shortly.

Haldeman brilliantly combines hard science fiction with an intensely human examination of warfare, alienation and the psychological consequences of military service.

The novel’s futuristic weapons, powered armour and extraordinary journeys provide plenty of spectacular science-fiction adventure, but its real power lies in its portrait of a soldier gradually becoming a stranger to the civilisation he is supposedly defending.

Originally published in 1974, The Forever War was profoundly influenced by Haldeman’s experiences serving in Vietnam. Its treatment of military authority, the absurdities of conflict and the difficulties of returning home resonated strongly with a generation familiar with the disillusionment of that war.

The novel won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards, establishing itself as one of the defining works of military science fiction.

Unlike conventional heroic space adventures, however, Haldeman is less interested in glorious conquest than in the enormous human cost of fighting a war whose purpose becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend.

There is something magnificently ironic about humanity developing the technology to travel between stars while remaining incapable of overcoming its ancient enthusiasm for organised violence.

This 2009 Thomas Dunne Books edition, offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, is an excellent acquisition for admirers of classic science fiction, military fiction and intelligent speculative literature.

A powerful, inventive and frequently darkly humorous novel about warfare, time, love and the extraordinary difficulty of finding one’s place in a universe that refuses to stop changing.

Because the military has always insisted that a soldier’s duty is to serve his country.

But when you return from battle several centuries later, discovering precisely which country you are now serving can become rather complicated.

Particularly when nobody remembers why the war started.

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