The Forever War
Ratings476
Average rating4
Great book if you keep in mind the context it was written in. I'm not usually into rambly military space operas but this one was just the right pace for me. I would recommend it.
Contains spoilers
4 ⭐️s
I really enjoyed this one. The descriptions of the tech and time dilation were fun. I honestly liked Will for the most part despite his personal hang ups on a few things. I appreciate the fact that the violence/war wasn’t glorified. The changes Earth went through over the course of the story were fascinating. There were a few things I rolled my eyes at, but they’re mostly products of the time the book and author come from.
*SPOILERS*
I saw the ending coming about halfway through. The Taurans seemed too inept to be an actual threat. But the clones were a surprise. I was extremely pleased with the happy ending for Will but the implication that people could just switch between hetero and homosexual when it suited society’s needs definitely got on my nerves.
This was one of the best love stories I have read in some time. I know it is categorized as Military Sci-Fi, but at its core, it is a love story.
I loved it, it was unputdownable! Love that the protagonist is a common man who gets drafted into the Military, not Hero material but survives tens of thousands of years fighting the forever war.
It is not a technically detailed space opera but what Halderman has done wonderfully is addressing so many different larger issues of the society. Its got fascinating theories regarding eugenics, culture, population control, time dilation, and human behavior, politics, propaganda, and It gives the reader a unique experience of what it would be like to return to a home and society you don't recognize.
The ending of this book is a treat! It's so good that I do not want a sequel, was it even needed? I am not too keen on picking up.
The Forever War is a unique and imaginative look into one man's life as he travels into the future.
Highly recommended!
I really don't like this book. I'm over half through and still considering DNF. It is really dated, which usually I'm okay with. It was a struggle to get through the first quarter simply because for some reason there has to be space boning and orgies every night. Women, even in command, are basically cannon fodder and I KNOW it was written in 1975 but dude, you could have done better. Poor little Marygay can barely manage to get a suit on ffs.
I feel conflicted. The writer part of me likes this book: solid plot, excellent world, and great pacing. But the reader part of me isn't a fan: no characters to grasp onto, multiple info-dumps, and plainly unenjoyable. Though, I did like the subtle romance in the book.
Even though I enjoy science fiction and fantasy books, I can tell this book isn't for me. The world was always changing and reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's “Galápagos”. Even with “Galápagos” I enjoyed it. So why not this book? I have no idea.
Maybe it's just one of those books that I just don't like. To be honest, I skimmed through a lot of the ending. But it's not a bad book, just not a favorite.
What a title!. I mean once you have read it it just felt so apt. You have to love the ending and simple way its narrated. No heart racing scenes, no goosebump moments, no major ups and downs but it still keeps you going through just the narrative of space travel. One for every space travel enthusiasts and maybe for some non enthusiasts as well.
One sentence synopsis... Set during an interstellar war in the future but inspired by the author's experience of the Vietnam War, the ideas are worth exploring but the writing becomes tedious after the millionth chapter of detailed military industrial complex criticism. .
Read it if you like... stories about alienation, PTSD, super technical military sci-fi. .
Dream casting... This story would 100% make a better movie than book. The story is great, the prose was a headache. Apparently Channing Tatum was at one point attached to lead... but after ‘Jupiter Ascending' he should probably stay away from space opera epics. I could see Taron Egerton as William Mandella.
Spannender SciFi Klassiker. Mit Ansätzen von Hard SciFi. Dazu Wurmlöcher und die Menschheitsgeschichte der nächsten 1000 Jahre.
Kurz: “Vietnam im Weltraum - with a twist”
4/5 Sterne
Punktabzug für antiquierte Ansichten des Protagonisten zu einigen Themen (Frauenrechte, Homosexualität, man könnte aber argumentieren dass es zum Charakter gehört und auch thematisiert wird...)
Read this when I was around 15 and loved it. It became one of my all-time favorites. Just read it again, some 36 years later. I was worried it might not have aged well, but damn it, it's still a great book!
Para la formación académica del autor, la verdad es que el libro deja mucho que desear. El personaje principal es físico de profesión y en toda la historia el único tema sobre física que trata es un ejemplo ridículo del principio de Arquimedes (otro personaje cuya profesión no es la física le hace ver el error de lo que plantea). Las explicaciones relativistas son flojas y muy escasas.
En cuanto a acción: Flojo. Aunque el lenguaje militar es entendible, le quita todo el dinamismo a la historia, haciendo que las batallas sean aburridas.
La crítica que hace a la vida militar está bien, pero es el tema que ocupa la mayor parte de la historia.
En general, aunque es una novela algo entretenida, no es la gran cosa.
I think the most interesting thing about this book was the time period in which it was written. How much emphasis was placed on food shortages and homosexuality. The scifi backdrop of time dilation was very fascinating.
Fantastic piece of sci-fi classic. I've never seen any other book built around the time travel/time dilation concept. The ending is a bit cheesy, but great nonetheless.
Wonderful book. Loved it.
This turned out even better than I expected. Definitely worth reading. I really enjoyed reading it. It was an interesting examination of a thought experiment.
Humans fighting for centuries against an alien race in different theaters of war (mostly on far distant planets) are one of the main attractions of this book for me
Those soldiers on the front line travel at the speed of light to fight the enemy, they get older by a few days, while their relatives on earth do it by the years. And old but still cool idea.
The book reflects the very idea of going to war (in the real world) and coming home where everything is so unrecognizable (your family and friends are mostly gone) that you feel like an alien.
This is to me an interesting take on the scars of war. While I enjoyed Starship Troopers premise a bit more, this is a far more honest book.
This had a bit of something for everyone I thought. Psychology of a soldier examined, thoughts on society and how you can slip out of sync with it, culture shock. I just tore right through it, and had a great time doing so.
¡Excelente!
Esta novela ha sido ganadora del premio Nebula en 1975 y de los premios Hugo y Locus en 1976.
La historia cuenta los hechos de William Mandella como militar durante la guerra contra una civilización alienígena: los taurinos. Los viajes espaciales se producen a velocidades menores a la de la luz y pueden durar décadas o siglos debido a la dilatación del tiempo. Con cada regreso, la tecnología, la sociedad e incluso la Tierra han cambiado.
Debo decir que me gustó mucho el final, el encuentro con Marygay y la relación entre Diana y Charlie.
Battle suits, space travel, intergalactic war between humans and the Tauran race. Very space opera with a quite liberal view on sexuality mixed into it (plus a not-so-healthy dose of homophobia). What does it mean to return to earth after 20, after 100, after 300 years when speed-of-light travel kept you young while everyone else aged and culture underwent radical changes. The story has our protagonist rising through the ranks, we observe him in several battles, detailing battle and survival strategies, dealing with dissent among troops, having to make decisions that likely cause casualties. Decent. Not mind-bending.
The Forever War (1974) by American author Joe Haldeman is a rather deceptive book. For the first few chapters the novel reads like a standard Starship Troopers military science fiction novel detailing an interstellar war between humans and aliens (the Taurans), recruits getting trained to turn them into bad-asses and hi-tech weapons being used. But it won the Nebula Award in 1975, and the Hugo and the Locus awards in 1976 for best novel so there must be something different about the book?
And there is .... The story soon changes, the effects of time dilation as a result of near light speed travel are explored, as is the tragedy of one soldiers of loss of friends and family, alienation with humanity, not being able to fit into society plus having to deal with a seemingly endless pointless conflict.
The heart of the novel is about one reluctant soldier, Private William Mandella who is fairly ambivalent about the wars he finds himself in. He fights more from of a sense of duty and loyalty. The reader is subjected to a mixture of hard sci-fi: the aforementioned time travel and its effects, black holes and hi-tech arsenals along with descriptions of the social and political changes needed following on from a Malthusian-like catastrophe (population growth had outpaced agricultural production): homosexuality becomes the law (sex is treated by Haldeman in a non-judgemental and non-moralistic manner) and payment for work is in calories as opposed to actual money. The story also deals with love too. Mandella bonds with one woman in his company in particular and she provides his only connection to their known world of the past; as the book closes Mandella has travelled over twelve centuries.
It is clear that the book is an allegory to the Vietnam War, Joe Haldeman having served in this conflict. Other hints of the autobiographical nature of the work are the protagonist's surname, Mandella, which is a near-anagram of the author's surname, as well as the name of the lead female character, Marygay Potter, which is nearly identical to Haldeman's wife's maiden name. Importantly, if one accepts this reading of the book, the alienation experienced by the soldiers on returning to Earth becomes a clear metaphor for the reception given to US troops returning to America from Vietnam, including the way in which the war ultimately proved useless and its result meaningless. This meaningless is discovered in the book by a cloned, collective species calling itself Man who can communicate with the Taurans and discovers the aliens were not responsible for an act that triggered the futile conflict that lasted for more than a thousand years.
Haldeman also subverts typical space opera clichés (such as the heroic soldier influencing battles through individual acts) and demonstrates how absurd many of the old clichés look to someone who had seen real combat duty. In fact the quantity of battles described is relatively small, as the other aspects of the story are explored more extensively.
The other thing I'm noticing as I read and review the so-called classics of different genres is that the best characters are never really truly evil, nor good. Each person is a mixture of both. This is certainly the case in The Forever War as the individuals are well rounded and fully fleshed-out.
So in summary, this is science fiction of the highest quality and is worthy of the Masterworks title. The pace of the plot never slackens and this help to draw the reader in while retaining a compensate and emotional core (despite the battle sequences and death and destruction); a difficult balance to achieve. Despite it being over 40 years old a lot of the ideas Haldeman presciently foretells in the book are still relevant today and the years haven't dated the story. A highly recommended book.
